Even worse, no one knew where she was. Her own people had no idea she was even in trouble. Her only option right now was every prisoner’s sole option while under interrogation: to last as long as possible and hope that something better would happen down the road.
“Let’s not waste time lying to each other. I know who you are, Starling. I know that you’re the one who turned our upstanding Captain Cardinal into a childish idiot who deserved what he got. I remember when you pushed him past me on the hovergurney in the Absolution, and I noticed that your armor was an imperfect fit, but I didn’t stop you.”
Ah. So that was it. It was personal. Vi fought the urge to smile.
Kath withdrew one of the slender silver tools and leaned close, inserting the sharp, hooked point of it into the tender pink corner of her eye, letting the edge of it barely caress her eyeball.
Vi didn’t dare move.
“I was reprimanded for that, when they watched the recordings,” he said softly, almost regretfully. “I should’ve stopped you, they said. I missed an aberration in the system. I was chastened by that rebuke and have only grown more punctilious. I never liked Cardinal, although I was happy to use him, and I wasn’t surprised by his defection and stupidity. But I deeply resent that stain against my record. From you.”
He tugged the instrument down, and Vi’s entire world centered on that tiny, hot pinprick lodged in that tender, wet tissue.
Med droids could do many things, but fixing busted eyeballs wasn’t one of them.
“I’d like to make you pay for that,” he continued, “but I need information. So: You tell me where Leia and the Resistance fleet are hiding, and I’ll remove this instrument before I tear your flesh.”
Struggling to keep her breath steady, Vi murmured, “I’m just a minion. Do you know where Kylo Ren is right this moment? Which ship, which world? Probably not. So I don’t know where Leia is, either.”
Kath considered that a moment, turning his instrument a little this way and that and causing Vi’s flesh to twitch and shiver with horror.
“That might be true. But I know you have a good idea where Leia Organa was recently.” He sank the tip of the instrument deep into that fragile place between eye and skin with the reckless curiosity of a child reaching into a bag for sweets, and Vi fought to hold very, very still as tears and a thin trickle of blood wept down the edge of her nose.
“I haven’t talked to Leia in weeks. I don’t have a long-range comm. If you don’t believe me, ask anyone in town and they’ll tell you I’ve been trying to buy one. How could I know where she is now? Leaders don’t tell their spies their important plans. They send us out with little chunks, with just the info we need to do our jobs. You have to know that.”
He exhaled sadly and withdrew the instrument, and Vi looked down and blinked rapidly, unable to stop the bloody tears hurrying from the corner of her eye where he’d prodded her.
“And your headquarters here on Batuu?”
“I don’t have a headquarters.”
Vi’s face flew sideways as he slapped her. This time, she tasted blood.
“I don’t understand why you would lie. I know you have a facility here. Batuu is just the sort of gritty, useless planet that you rebels like to dig into like worms. Why else would you be here?”
“I needed to fuel up, took friendly fire, and crashed,” she said weakly. “You can ask in town about that, too. I had no choice but to stay. My ship is a wreck, and I’m out of creds. Black Spire Outpost is a crossroads, anyway, isn’t it? I’d be happy to leave. Just let me pack my bag.”
He smiled, but there was nothing kind in the gesture. “Oh, you’re not leaving this rock alive unless it’s in my custody, Starling. And even if you die before I can get the info, rest assured I will find your people and destroy them.”
Vi coughed, and blood dripped from her lips onto the dull gray metal between her feet. She’d spat blood onto Cardinal’s shiny red boots once, but she suspected that spitting on the well-polished black boots of Lieutenant Wulfgar Kath would enrage him to the point of a total loss of control. She had to be far more careful here. This wasn’t a give-and-take; it was a give and give and give and try not to infuriate. At least what she’d told him so far was true: She didn’t know where Rey and Leia were exactly, and she didn’t have a headquarters yet, technically. It didn’t matter how much he tortured her and beat her, she would never have the intel he craved.
On the other hand, there were bonuses to a fool who’d gone over from man to animal, to letting the old lizard brain drive the speeder. It would definitely hurt, but if she could get him to hit her one more time…
She decided to change her strategy.
“I bet if you bring me back alive, they’ll give you a promotion,” she said, grinning up at him through bloodied teeth. “Bring me home like a big ol’ shaak steak for Hux to sink his pointy little weasel teeth into. Bet he’s got all sorts of fun torture toys. And that rascal Kylo Ren could probe my brain easy as a comb gliding through your greased-up beard. But you want to do it yourself, don’t you? I bet you can’t wait to blast off and let everybody on the FO channels know that you got a Resistance spy to spill all her secrets.” She playacted a childish pout. “If you kill me, they probably won’t throw you a parade.”
Kath rolled his eyes and paced around to her other side. He made her feel like an animal in a zoo, and even if she couldn’t reverse their positions, she at least wanted him to stop thinking and start feeling. If she could just get his amygdala to kick in, she’d have a better chance of changing her situation.
“So either you bring me in and get promoted…or you lose me and get…what’s demotion like in the First Order? Do they just throw you out of an air lock or do they stop to behead you first? I bet they make you take off that jaunty hat before they turn on the vibro-ax.” She smirked. “I bet it just kills you, knowing that I walked right past you in your own ship. I’m gonna walk right past you again, Wulfguts. Right out of here.”
“You know, I’ve never personally spoken with someone from the Resistance,” Kath said conversationally, his hands clasped behind his back as he considered her. “I’ve always wondered what made anyone sign up for a suicide mission like that. You can’t fight the First Order, which is immediately obvious to anyone with eyes or a protocol droid who can run the odds. But now I begin to see.” He leaned forward, and his eyes were as flat and dead as a swamp snake’s. “You have this foolish hope, this childish instinct to rebel. To act out. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to crush all around the galaxy. You think you’re special and clever, but you’re just overly confident idiots willing to die for the most useless of reasons. Like kith-lemmings, falling off the cliff. But we are the cliff, you see. And we’ll always be here. No matter how many of you die, we remain. Eventually, as places like Batuu realize that it’s not worth fighting and your ranks diminish, there will be none of you left.”
“Better a life of foolish hope than one of committed oppression,” Vi said, unable to remain silent in the face of such an arrogant statement. “There will always be people willing to stand up to bullies like you.”
Kath pulled back again and gazed toward the hatch. “Yes, well, the people of Batuu don’t seem to share your point of view. They welcome us, take our coin, wish us bright suns and rising moons. Those that don’t love us fear us. And those that fear us will know that you’re the reason we’re here. I can turn them against you. You may have gotten here before us, but you clearly didn’t win their hearts completely.”
“Yes, well, at least I don’t go around beating up old women. Or sending my underlings to beat up old women while I sit around the transport licking my wounds because I’m on Daddy Hux’s Naughty List.”
Crack.
There it was, the punch she’d been fishing for.
Vi’s head jerked sideways, and it was an odd feeling of relief mixed with pr
etty much everything terrible in the world. Her skull felt like a sack of puffballs, and she didn’t even try to hold it up, just let it snap to the side and fall forward. She went totally limp against the restraints, and when Kath tried to rouse her, even going so far as to yank her face up by her hair, she gave no resistance and let her eyes roll back in her head.
“Blast,” Kath growled. His boots stomped across the transport, and he rapped on the metal door. “Open up.” Vi watched through her eyelashes and the veil of her bangs as the door to the cockpit slid open. A stormtrooper sat in the pilot’s seat and turned to face Kath.
“General Hux requests an update, sir,” the trooper told him. “He said you weren’t responding to your personal comlink.”
Kath glanced back at Vi, who was glad that her wig was pinned on tightly and helped hide her eyes. “She’s weaker than she looks. Watch her while I return his comm.”
The trooper stood and walked back to stand near Vi, arms crossed. Kath sat down in the pilot’s chair and sighed heavily as he settled his hat and fixed his lapels. When he pulled out a small personal comlink from an inside pocket of his jacket, Vi’s entire body went on alert.
If she could just get her hands on it…
“Lieutenant Wulfgar Kath for General Hux,” Kath said crisply.
The answer was almost immediate.
“Hux here.”
Vi had never encountered General Armitage Hux personally, for all that she knew about his father, Brendol Hux, and the fact that Armitage himself had conspired with Phasma to bring about the senior Hux’s death. Armitage sounded like someone who didn’t know how to smile and who would probably wear ironed swim trunks to the beach and drink only very dry red wine while he complained about how the ocean breezes destroyed his carefully gelled hair. The comlink most likely included a visual, but from where she was strapped in, head hanging low, Vi couldn’t see it.
“Sir, I was told you wanted an update.”
Hux’s annoyed sigh was even more melodramatic than Kath’s had been. “Yes, obviously I want an update. And?”
Kath glanced back to Vi, almost nervous, and licked his lips. “We’re very close to having the Resistance spy in hand.”
“Very close? You don’t have her yet? It shouldn’t be difficult. Batuu is a simple place.”
“Yes, sir,” Kath agreed. “Except it’s also a vast, overgrown, and largely uninhabited world. Dense, extensive forests, complex and impenetrable cave structures. The spy could be hiding anywhere.”
Hux sniffed. “Perhaps I have entrusted this duty to the wrong man.”
Kath’s meaty hand curled into a red fist against the tight leg of his breeches. “Absolutely not, sir. Believe me: I will capture the spy and deliver the information you’ve requested. I will not return until we know the location of the Resistance fleet and the girl, Rey.”
Hux let the silence draw out for an appropriately chilly amount of time before saying, “No, you will not. Wulfgar, I do not need to impress upon you the importance of your mission. Not just to the First Order, but to your own future. As an officer, and as a breathing organism. Find the Batuuan Resistance headquarters and the spy hiding there, and all is forgiven. Fail, and…well, your troopers will have their orders. Hux out.”
The channel went silent, and Kath stood. His upright bearing didn’t change, but Vi could sense him panicking, imagine his eyes twitching back and forth and his heavy jaw working as he considered his next move. He couldn’t hurt her too much, definitely couldn’t kill her, but he needed the intel he thought she possessed at all costs—and he wanted to get it personally. Her chances of escape had plummeted with every word of that last speech from his superior officer.
Kath walked to stand beside the stormtrooper guarding Vi and considered his prisoner. “Still unconscious. Pathetic. Let’s make her suffer a little. Put her facedown on the floor. Bind her wrists tightly behind her back and bind her legs at the ankles. Put something heavy on top of her. Allow no food, no water. I want her to feel what it is to be crushed and helpless,” Kath said. “I want her to lose all hope. I want us to be the only promise of succor.”
Vi forced herself to go limp as the trooper unbuckled her harness and dragged her roughly to a dark corner near the restroom, where he dropped her on her chest. She didn’t move, didn’t so much as whimper as he reached underneath her, unbound her arms, wrenched them behind her, and re-bound them tightly enough to make her shoulders burn. The real panic set in when he bound her legs and then placed something on her back—a full case of rations, if she had to guess. It was heavy enough to make him grunt, and it took everything she had not to groan as the weight settled down fully.
Her entire world focused on the points where her body was pressed between cold metal and heavy cargo. Her cheekbone, crushed against the floor. Her shoulders, on fire and pulled ever higher as the weight pushed down on her wrists. Her ribs, their points bruising her flesh, making her skin feel like the thinnest tissue. And her legs, bound together, giving her no room to adjust, no room to turn. Her lungs, burning with every scant breath. She did indeed feel crushed, but she never felt helpless.
It was part of her training, and it was just part of who she was. No matter how little space she was given, she could find a way to dwell there. As long as she had time, there was always a way out.
She just had to find it.
ARCHEX WAS CONTEMPLATING THROWING A SPANNER at Pook’s back just for fun when he heard a gentle but insistent beeping.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Ask Kriki,” Pook said, sounding bored as he installed more cables and stapled them to the ceiling. “Her ways are nonsensical. And perky. It’s disturbing.”
Kriki’s head appeared in the door as if on cue. “Is that the perimeter alarm?”
“How should we know? You install things while we’re asleep and then forget to tell us about them.” But there was no real annoyance or cruelty in his words; Archex liked Kriki and admired her work—and her work ethic. She was a genius with tech, and with cobbling together the ancient and damaged goods the Resistance had given them. Thanks to her energetic tinkering all night, they now had electricity and dimmable lights in all the caves, plus a working kitchen. It was really starting to feel like a home, if living in dark caves could be considered homey. Even the power droids seemed friendlier.
Kriki scurried in and pointed at a dusty old screen, where a red dot was blinking. “This means someone has entered the cenote courtyard. So one of us with a weapon should go make sure they’re friendly. Probably not me, though. Someone bigger. And meaner.”
“You’re getting better with your blaster,” Archex insisted.
Kriki looked down, her nose wiggling. “Better, but not good.”
“I can do it.”
They both looked to a pile of canvas on the floor and were surprised to see it rustling. Zade popped up, his hair disheveled and his jaw covered in stubble. “Even hung over, I’m probably the best shot here.” He stood, flicked some cobwebs and rock dust off his shimmersilk blazer, and swaggered out into the hallway.
Archex sighed. “Well, that takes care of that, then. Worst-case scenario, they shoot each other.”
“But we need him!” Kriki argued.
Archex held up a hand and wobbled it. “Do we, though?”
“Yes! He’s going to be a great recruiter. He just needs time. And he is a better shot. My aim is bad, and that’s just with trees and rocks. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to face off with a real stormtrooper. Probably just shriek and flail.”
“Well, you can’t blame yourself. When you haven’t been involved in violence, you don’t know how you’re going to react. Fight, flight, and freeze are the three main responses, and if you’re scared to fight, flight and freeze aren’t that comforting. I used to train soldiers, and freeze is more common than you’d guess. These days, it might be my res
ponse, too.” It hurt, every time Archex had to admit that he couldn’t do something he was accustomed to doing. The painkillers helped, but nothing Kalonia or Pook could do could fix the mess Phasma’s poison had made, rotting his lung and leg and spreading out into his bloodstream. “I know Vi and Ylena say Zade is a good guy, and you and Dolin like him, but…you’ve got to understand: The past ten years of my life were all about being stuck with people who had a bad attitude and poor work ethic and training them into being effective soldiers. But unlike them, I can’t bend Zade to my will. He’s like a wound that won’t heal to me. An annoying one.”
That was the most he’d told anyone other than Vi about his past, but he liked Kriki and wanted her to know that there was no shame in the way she felt, in her fear around violence. Maybe one day he would tell everyone about where he’d come from…and maybe not. He didn’t want them to look at him like he was a monster.
“Yes, well, life is full of wounds that never heal, isn’t it?” Kriki watched the screen, where another red light was moving swiftly toward the original one. “You know, I can get us each a tracker, just a little button you could pin on your clothing, and then the perimeter alarm would recognize our people.” She grinned and nodded vigorously. “Yes. Yes! And then Waba wouldn’t set it off, and—oh.”
“What?”
“The dots are moving very quickly toward us, so either Zade is running away from a Batuuan braga bear or there’s trouble.”
Zade appeared in the doorway. His face was no longer a cool, charismatic mask. He looked terrified, his eyes wide and his breathing labored from more than the jog.
“It’s trouble. Ylena just arrived. There was an altercation in the market—with stormtroopers. The First Order took Vi.”
AFTER ONLY A FEW MOMENTS CRUSHED between the heavy crate and the floor, Vi wished she were actually unconscious. Every breath, every minuscule movement was a fight. Playing at being unresponsive was nearly impossible. She couldn’t writhe, couldn’t wimper, couldn’t even blow the bangs of her wig out of her eyes without alerting the trooper guarding her to the fact that she was, in fact, observing everything she could about the transport and the people in it.
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