Mattis started to say he was sorry, but Cost continued.
“It drank them up. It took away the things I knew. Mother and Father and Other on Genhu. They found me in the Hendo bushes when I was a sprout. Other’s big hands scooped me up and brought me to their cottage. I used to be able to feel it, those hands, leaving the dry, dry air of the Hendo orchard for the cool of the cottage. But no more. The feeling is gone. I know it is fact, I know I had Mother and Father and Other, but I don’t know their faces, I don’t feel them anymore.
“The beast took it all with his tentacles. Now I just walk through a sunken dream of them. Like finding a story on the images on a smashed vase. Bushes and someone hiding inside them, but I don’t know if I’m hiding or seeking. A man with teeth on the outside. And Other’s hand outstretched, but did I take it? And the purple sky and how wide open it all was. Then.”
Cost shrugged and wiped her pointed nose with her filthy sleeve. Then she settled down into herself and said, “Anyway. I know I fished for dianoga. And I know they make good soup.”
“When the First Order came…” Mattis began.
“When the First Order came,” Cost continued, “they used big guns to make holes in the Hutt’s throne room. Some of her bad ones got blasted away. Most ran. Some are here. Your friend, the pig man. He was one of her bads.”
The Gamorrean who’d challenged Mattis in the Fold had been part of Harra the Hutt’s entourage. Mattis wondered what other prisoners might have been with him and what that might mean for their intentions.
“First Order set all of the Hutt’s creatures to run free. That was a good thing, I think. They built the fences, but the creatures come back. Hutt fed them, and they want easy foods again. So they come back and Wanten builds more fences and they knock them down and then Wanten builds more. But at least Wanten doesn’t make prisoners fight creatures.”
Cost was optimistic tonight.
“Why didn’t you run, Cost?” Mattis asked.
“Where to go? Couldn’t remember. The jelly-beast took it. So, Cost stayed. And then it all went away. The faces of Mother and Father and Other and the rest. All that remained were the bars, and the walls, and the cells. And then the walls got itchy and then they laughed and laughed and laughed.”
Cost dropped her head and sniffled.
Mattis didn’t know what to say to Cost, who’d lost everything she knew. Until he did. Because Mattis still had something to give him hope, and he could share that with her.
“Cost,” he said, nudging her. She sat up again. “You know Lorica and I weren’t here alone. There was a group of us. Two of our friends got away. Dec and Sari are their names. Dec is my best friend. He’s a good pilot, but what he’s really good at is getting stuff done. Any situation, Dec can turn it over and over and figure it out.”
As he talked about his missing friends, Mattis felt hope swell inside him, inflating like a balloon.
“And Sari is amazing. I think you’ll love her. She’s big and strong, so strong! She could probably even beat up Ymmoss! She’s maybe the smartest person I know.”
“You said Dec is clever.” Cost was skeptical.
“He is. He’s clever. It’s different. Sari is smart. She knows all kinds of things about all kinds of things. She can work computers like no one I’ve ever seen. Like she can talk to them. And she knows about insects and birds and…just everything. She reads all the time.”
“I want to meet this girl who talks to computers,” Cost decided.
“You will. You will. They got away, Cost, I just know it. And they’d never just leave us here if there was even a bantha hair’s chance that we’re alive. And we are.”
Cost looked at Mattis with puzzlement. “Then where are they?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re headed for a friendly planet so they can contact the Resistance. And the Resistance will come down here in their X-wings. Maybe they’ll send the big guns, too, Poe Dameron and Snap Wexley and Black Two. What was his name? I forget, but him, too!”
“I hope they send those big guns,” Cost agreed, angrily sizing up the walls of their cell.
“They will,” Mattis told her. “I just know they will.”
They sat there together a moment, nearly hearing the distant X-wing squadron approaching, believing in their hope and clinging to it because hope was all they had in that gray cage.
“Tell me more about the Resistance,” Cost said after a spell of silence.
“Yeah, by all means, keep running your mouth.” The voice came out of the darkness beyond the bars. Mattis looked in that direction, and when his eyes adjusted, he saw AG-90’s glowing eyes and a glinting light coming off his plating.
“Aygee,” Mattis gasped, starting off his bunk.
“Stay where you are, prisoner,” AG commanded.
Mattis fell back stiffly.
“That’s not your friend,” Cost told him.
Mattis heard AG’s servos whir as the droid shook his head. “This can be easy. You two can have a pajama party if you want, but keep it quiet. You make noise, you get the electrostaff. You try anything, you get the electrostaff. You open your mouths about anything, anything at all, you get the electrostaff. I like using it. Get me?”
Mattis nodded. His friend was gone. His years of personality, his tics and idiosyncrasies, all of the things that made AG himself were gone. He wasn’t deep down somewhere in this droid, in some secret coding from which Mattis might rescue him with sentimental speeches or dramatic pleas. This was the new AG-90. Ruthless, callous, and nasty.
“I can’t hear you, prisoner,” AG said. A bright beam of light sliced through the bars into Mattis’s bunk. He blinked against the harsh white.
Across the brief divide, Lorica sat up in her bunk, shielding her eyes. “What in the name of Ptak is going on?” she asked.
“I’m telling your bunkie to keep his trap shut. Goes for all of you.”
“I was sleeping,” Lorica spat. “So how was I gonna say anything?”
“It’s a warning,” Cost explained.
In the too-bright beam, Lorica glared at her. “I get it.”
“Get it?” AG said, and swept his gaze across all of them. “Good. And get to sleep.”
Cost lowered herself from Mattis’s bunk and silently climbed back into her own. Mattis hoped she’d remember their talk and find comfort in what he’d said.
AG switched off his light and took a step away from them. Then, as if it was an afterthought, he turned back to face them and said, “Your friends? The ones who escaped this planet? They’re dead.”
Mattis felt his face rush hot and red. “You don’t know that!” he shouted.
“What’d I say about making a racket?” AG said, lifting the electrostaff from its holster. It hummed as he charged it up. “And don’t tell me what I know. I was in the communications center. I heard the call come through. Some of our scouts found your pals circling Vodran. Gave chase. First Order soldiers are good, prisoner. So your friends? Dead and gone on some moon.”
AG charged down his weapon, replaced it in its holster, and turned away.
“Sleep on that,” he said, and left them.
Mattis experienced a moment of disbelief. He’d just told Cost that Dec and Sari would return for them. Against his will, he let out a whimper. But AG, the new AG, had no reason to lie. He probably couldn’t lie; it would go against his programming. Which meant that his friends were gone, gone forever, and he was stuck there. Stuck forever.
In the thick silence of the cell, he suddenly heard the scratching. Scritch-scritch-scritch. Faint at first, then bolder and unmistakable. Scratching in the walls. Soon they would be laughing, too.
After a few days of trudging between their cell and the Fold, Mattis and Lorica were put on construction duties. In that time, neither Wanten nor Ingo nor any First Order personnel approached them for information about the Resistance. They seemed to just be prisoners now, like any of the others. Lorica sensed in Mattis an acceptance of his fate. She
didn’t like that the fight had gone out of him. When the fight is lost, the fight is lost, she recalled reading in a history book about war. She carried that sentence with her. You had to stay angry; you had to hold on to the fight. If you didn’t, where could you get the energy to go on?
Talking about feelings wasn’t Lorica’s strong suit. Having them and tapping into them in others was. So, when she noticed the change in Mattis, she tried to draw him out. One morning—she thought it was morning, anyway, since the haze that surrounded their cell was a lighter gray than it was when they slept—Mattis was just staring at the corner of the room.
“What are you doing, Mattis?” she asked, trying to speak in her gentlest voice. He had been jumpy lately, like Cost had been when they’d first arrived.
At first he said nothing. She wasn’t even sure if he’d heard her. But then he tilted his face to her, and she saw what he must have looked like when he was a little boy. “The scratching in the walls,” he whispered.
“Mattis, that’s not real.”
Mattis shook his head. He appeared as if he hadn’t slept in days. “I guess the good news is that when I go totally crazy, I won’t have to worry about going crazy.”
Lorica laughed. “That’s a bad joke,” she said.
“Yeah,” Mattis said. The color didn’t return to his cheeks, but something in his eyes made him look like his old, annoying, upbeat self, if only for an instant. “It’s a bad joke,” he agreed. “But it’s a good truth.”
“Mattis, you’re not going crazy.”
“I’m definitely not going sane, though.”
He was keeping some version of a sense of humor, she thought, so that was a good sign. He wasn’t all the way gone. She tried to keep him talking, asking him for stories about their brief time in the Resistance—something she knew he liked to think about—and the good things about growing up on Durkteel.
He responded, but every few minutes he’d sink back into that vacant hopelessness. At a certain point, Lorica abandoned the idea of letting Mattis share and just filled the room with words.
One day, when his gloom got to be too much altogether, she told him, “Snap out of it.”
“There’s nothing to snap out of,” he replied.
She smacked him on the back of his head. They were slogging through the Fold on their way to the far side of the throne room to repair the hole that had been put there by the First Order when they’d initially arrived. It was their second day on the detail, and Mattis was terrible at it. Lorica had done the work of both of them, really. She’d made sure that the other prisoners who worked beside them didn’t see just how small a load Mattis could carry with his skinny arms. She’d made sure that she did his work so the guards wouldn’t notice his pathetic effort. At the end of the day, Lorica had been spent and aching.
“No physical contact,” the stormtrooper escorting them barked. Lorica could see that he just wanted something to yell at them about.
“I can’t do this forever,” Lorica told Mattis.
“Too bad,” he mumbled. “This is what we do now.”
“Mattis, I mean it.”
“So do I.” He tripped over a stone, and she caught him. The stormtrooper was on them in a moment, yanking them apart.
“He tripped,” Lorica complained.
“Don’t care,” the stormtrooper informed her.
“I’m okay,” Mattis said, shaking it off.
“Also don’t care,” the stormtrooper said. “Keep walking.”
They did, with their guard half a step behind them.
“Mattis, I’m not going to carry your load today,” Lorica said. “I can’t.”
Mattis shrugged. “Okay.”
She sighed impatiently and shook her head. Mattis was beyond help. He was resigned to remaining in the detention center for the rest of his life. Well, Lorica wasn’t. She’d carry on with her plan. In a few days, she’d made some progress with Ingo. It was nothing like the moment they’d shared that first night, when he’d given her the rations packet, but his demeanor softened when he was in her presence. Whatever it was that Lorica possessed, whatever ability her Zeltron blood gave her, it appeared to work. There was even a marked difference in the way Ingo stood, from when he first approached their cell to when Lorica came closer to him. She could see his shoulders fall a little less square, the set of his chin become a little less harsh. For now, that small effect was enough. She would keep at it. She was certain she could get him to release them.
For now, she had to carry on. She’d let Mattis wallow, if that was what he needed to do, but she wouldn’t encourage it and she wouldn’t cover for him. That would only get her into trouble. She needed to avoid angering her keepers. That was the only way to succeed. That was the only way to survive.
When they arrived at the far throne room wall, Lorica took a moment to re-tie her boots while Mattis stared gloomily into the sky. She remained resolute: she wouldn’t help him again.
While the other prisoners—the Gamorrean who’d been part of Harra the Hutt’s coterie, a Pau’an with a large scar across his high forehead, a Flann with his timbered heart exposed—retrieved their tools and deliberately got to work, Mattis shuffled around in small circles. He kicked at plants and bugs and rocks and things and didn’t do much to make himself look busy. He clearly didn’t care. Lorica knew that Mattis figured it made no difference if he worked on repairing the wall or didn’t; he was still stuck there.
A couple of their stormtrooper guards put their helmets together and talked quietly, motioning to Mattis. He couldn’t be bothered to change what he was doing, so he just kicked another rock down the hill behind him to the pile of bigger rocks that was down there. It made a satisfying knocking sound when it landed.
“Hey, prisoner,” one of the two stormtroopers hailed him. Mattis didn’t stop his shuffling rotation, so the stormtrooper, annoyed, had to go over to where he was. He put a hard armored hand on Mattis’s shoulder to stop him from moving. “You can’t do this work?” the guard asked.
“I actually really can’t do this work.” Mattis pointed to the beefy Gamorrean. “That guy is like ten times my size, and he’s struggling to haul that lumber.” The Gamorrean shot Mattis a look and snorted. Mattis pointed to the Flann. “That guy is literally made of trees. He’s crazy strong.”
“You’re asking for an easier detail?” the stormtrooper asked.
Nearby, Lorica listened to the conversation. She hoped Mattis wouldn’t say anything stupid but knew that he probably would.
“I’m asking to go back to my cell so I can go to sleep.”
Yep, he’d said something stupid.
“You don’t seem to understand your role here,” the stormtrooper said. “Your job is to do as you’re told.”
“Or else what?” Mattis asked. “You’ll lock me up?”
This took the stormtrooper aback, and he looked over to his companion—Mattis couldn’t tell if it was in disbelief or for assistance. The other stormtrooper, the one Mattis called Patch, approached. As he passed Lorica, she tensed, her instinct to trip the stormtrooper very strong. But she didn’t. Mattis was on his own.
Lorica knew all this wasn’t going to end well for Mattis.
IT ENDED BETTER for Mattis than Mattis had anticipated. He knew he shouldn’t have been kicking rocks and pouting about his work detail. He caught all the warning looks Lorica was throwing at him, but he couldn’t help himself. He was so far in the dumps that all he could see was the bottom of the dumps. And no one wants to spend his days looking at dumps-bottoms.
So when Patch approached, all commanding attitude and clipped questions, Mattis just knew he was going to make the mistake of giving his guards some lip. “What’s the problem here?” Patch asked.
“This prisoner doesn’t like his detail.”
“My guess?” Mattis said, sounding more to himself like his old friend Dec the more he talked back to these guards. “Nobody likes their work details. It’s muggy and sticky and hotter than two
suns smushed together out here.” It was like Mattis was channeling Dec’s dislike of authority figures. He missed his friend so much.
“Two suns smushed together wouldn’t be any hotter than two individual suns,” Patch said. Mattis was pretty sure the stormtrooper wasn’t making a joke. Did stormtroopers even know how to make jokes? Was it against their protocol?
“Get back to work,” the other stormtrooper said irritably.
Mattis didn’t know what overcame him, whether it was the heat or the misery, but instead of picking up a tool, he just dropped onto the ground and sat. He was sorry when he did it, not only because it was bound to anger the stormtroopers, but also because the ground was wet and muddy.
Still, it made Lorica laugh, so that was something.
“That’s it,” Patch the stormtrooper said. “Separate these two. Give the smart guy another detail. Send him out to the perimeter.”
“Are we authorized to make that decision?” the first stormtrooper asked.
“I’m authorizing it,” Patch answered. “Ingo told us to solve problems. So, I’m solving this problem.” The stormtrooper looked down at Mattis. “With any luck, he’ll be eaten by a tawd before anyone even notices we’ve moved him.”
Two days later, Mattis had a new detail. The perimeter fence on the outside of the palace’s spread needed constant repair. It was frequently torn apart by rancors returning to the palace for food, which they’d once been given in abundant supply, as if they were pets of Harra the Hutt. Which they kind of were.
Mattis’s job was to walk the length of the fence every day, flagging areas that needed repair. It was, by turns, tedious and dangerous. The walk took over an hour. When he completed the circuit, he was meant to begin again. After all, something might have damaged the fence while he was on the opposite side of the palace. Mattis spent all day literally walking in circles on a hike that might be interrupted at any moment by a throng of tawds or a pack of rancors.
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