“What’s a nanak?” Mattis asked.
“Gherd is!” Gherd lifted himself to his full meter height and brushed some of the filth off his woolly exterior.
“Of course. Gherd is. You’re a nanak.” Mattis understood what Gherd was conveying. “And you live here? In the walls?”
“Not always,” Gherd admitted sadly. “Just now. Since the white-shells and the small Hutt Wanten come to Mistress Harra’s palace.”
Mattis began to put the story together. “You lived here with Harra the Hutt,” he said, “whose palace this used to be.”
“Mistress Harra is Gherd’s mistress,” Gherd agreed. “But the white-shells made holes in Mistress Harra’s house. And small Hutt Wanten sent Mistress Harra away.”
“Wanten didn’t kill Harra?” Mattis had figured the First Order would have executed the Hutt whose stronghold they’d invaded.
“No one can kill Mistress Harra!” Gherd yelled. Mattis shushed him. The cell door remained ajar, and Mattis didn’t want Ingo or AG or anyone else reminded of that until he’d decided what to do about it.
“So Wanten just let her go?”
Gherd’s head dropped and his ears drooped. “White-shells were so, so mean,” he said. “Dragged Mistress Harra to the pod with other garbage-beings. Sent her away to the stars in pod.” Upset, Gherd blew wet snot out of his snout, spraying Mattis’s blanket.
“What are the ‘garbage-beings’?” Mattis asked, wiping away Gherd’s mucus with his sleeve.
Gherd shrugged his narrow shoulders, as if Mattis should understand his odd descriptors. “Garbage-beings are garbage-beings!”
“What do they look like?”
“All kinds. Little rounds and long shinies and some like cylinders with wheels or spindles.”
Mattis understood that Gherd was talking about droids. The First Order must have evacuated Harra the Hutt’s droids off-planet, along with Harra herself. Gherd added, “Oh. Here’s your cylinder. No wheels or spindles.” Gherd reached behind him and pulled out Mattis’s metal rod. Mattis took it from him and thanked him for finding it.
“Gherd finds everything. When Wanten the Hutt came with his white-shells and flew away Mistress Harra and the garbage-beings, they tried to make Gherd go away into the swamp with the other pets. But Gherd wouldn’t go. Gherd belongs with Mistress Harra, and Mistress Harra will come home.” As he recounted his story, Gherd seemed so small and alone. Mattis felt bad for the little creature. “Gherd hid in walls,” he continued. “Plenty of room for Gherd. Can run, run, run around, too. Steal food from the white-shells. Don’t steal food from Wanten, though. Hutt Wanten loves food like a Hutt!” Gherd slapped his leg and pealed into laughter.
“I’m happy I found you, Gherd,” Mattis admitted. He was also relieved. The scratching in the walls, the laughter echoing through the cell, they weren’t figments of his desperate imagination. He wasn’t losing his mind. There was just a tiny woolly nanak living in the walls who was definitely, undoubtedly real.
“Gherd is happy you found Gherd, too,” Gherd said. “Mattis was so alone, so sad.” Mattis nodded. It was true. Gherd had been watching through the cracks in the walls, and he’d revealed himself to Mattis right when Mattis needed him most. “But Mattis won’t leave Gherd, will you?”
Mattis had nearly forgotten the open cell door. Now might be his only chance to run. Gherd’s question remained, however: to where? Even if he escaped from the detention center, he’d be out in the wild where there were rancors and tawds and other creatures that wanted him for breakfast.
Still, it was a chance. Maybe Mattis would do better facing a hungry menagerie than he would the First Order.
The thought was interrupted by the sound of footfalls in the corridor, growing louder. Someone was coming.
“Gherd,” Mattis whispered. He was going to tell his new friend to hide, but Gherd was already gone. Mattis hadn’t even seen it happen. The little nanak was quick and quiet when he wanted to be.
AG-90 appeared at the open cell door. “Talking to yourself again?” the droid sneered. “That road leads to planet crazy.”
Seeing his old friend with his new programming made Mattis fume. He didn’t respond. He was afraid of what he might say.
AG didn’t care, though. He just pulled the bars closed and punched a code into the keypad, and the lock slid true. AG strolled away, leaving Mattis in his cell.
But this time, Mattis wasn’t alone. He had Gherd. And Gherd was going to help him escape.
LORICA WAS ONLY a few cells away from Mattis, and she heard him yelling and muttering. She was worried about him. He wasn’t the strongest of their little group (she considered herself to be) or the cleverest (also herself). She’d done what she could to help him in their time in the detention center, but she couldn’t help feeling she’d failed him. Though she felt that he’d failed himself even worse. Still, she wished she could have done more. Mattis just made it so difficult sometimes. He didn’t realize that the Zeltron people, due to their unique nature, experienced amplified versions of the feelings of those around them, especially those they cared about. And against her better judgment, she cared about Mattis. His anxiety, his fear, and his general disquiet were all magnified in her when she was around him. But, then, so was his belief in his friends and in the general goodness of all people. And his sense of adventure. And his unwavering desire to help the galaxy. She was overwhelmed with affection when she was with him because he had affection for just about everyone. Ugh. Being a Zeltron was difficult. Experiencing emotions was difficult.
Now Lorica’s emotions were a confusing mess. Thoughts got mixed up with feelings and all of them barreled around a track in her head like the podraces she’d watched back on Kergans, crisscrossing and bumping into one another so pieces broke off and memories flitted in and out of coherence. She was trying to get her head straight when Jo appeared at her cell door.
“Lorica,” he said, jarring her out of her own jumble of thoughts.
“You coming in?” she asked. If she could get him to open the door, and if she could get him to step inside the cell, she knew she could fight him and win. Jo was strong and disciplined but, right now, Lorica might be stronger. Maybe she could entice him in the way she was working on mind-itching Ingo. She stood and approached the cell door. Jo just rested his hand on the bars.
“I’m not coming in,” he said. He seemed unaffected by her. It made sense. Of any of them—including the droid—Jo was the least emotional.
“Then leave me to sleep.”
“I’m going to get you out,” Jo said seriously.
Lorica wasn’t sure what to think. She’d argued with Mattis when he told her that Jo was a traitor to the Resistance. She’d spent more time with Jo than the others had; she felt she knew him, though, really, didn’t she only know what he’d shown her? He was angry and militaristic. Those qualities served the Resistance expertly, but couldn’t they equally well serve the First Order? Lorica lived inside others’ emotions, although she was only just becoming aware how much. Surely she’d have known if Jo was lying to them, back on the Resistance base or on Vodran. And if he were a traitor and a spy, wouldn’t he have just let them die in the sarlacc pit? She had trouble reconciling all the various versions of Jo Jerjerrod in her mind and in her memory: the leader, the hero, the suitor (and the suited, too), the spy, the traitor, the son of the First Order.
“I’ll stay here, thanks,” Lorica finally replied.
Jo began to speak, but Lorica stopped him with a sharp gesture.
“We don’t need your help,” she said. “We’re doing just fine.” She didn’t tell him that both she and Mattis were working on their own escapes. She didn’t trust him. She couldn’t.
“Lor,” Jo breathed. “I’m out here working for you.”
“Yeah. Out there. You turned around awfully quickly, Jo.”
“What good would I be if I were trapped in a cell with you and Mattis? Out here, pretending to be a First Order spy, I can keep Wanten a
nd his soldiers away from you two. I can buy us some time while I figure out a way to spring you. And Mattis. And Aygee.”
Lorica shook her head. It was true that she and Mattis had mostly been spared any attempts at information extraction by First Order soldiers, but Jo claiming credit for that was unprovable to her. More telling was his mention of AG. Jo had never liked the droid and must know that AG had been reprogrammed. Removing AG from Vodran as part of some vague escape plan would likely set off all kinds of alarms. And what would taking AG with them accomplish anyway? He’d have to have his memory wiped and be reprogrammed again; he wouldn’t be the droid that Dec called his brother anymore.
“Sorry,” she told Jo. “We choose to stay.”
From a few cells down, they heard Mattis fretting.
“He’s not going to last very long,” Jo said. It might have been the most honest thing Jo had told her. “He’s losing it in there.”
Lorica nodded.
“You have to believe me, Lor,” Jo said. She didn’t like when he shortened her name. Her mother used to do that. She hadn’t liked it when her mother did it, either.
“I don’t. I can’t.”
“What choice do you have?” The way he said it was brittle, and Jo realized it immediately. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, really. But the circumstances are dire. I’ve kept Wanten distracted this long, but he’s getting restless. He wants to impress the First Order. It’s—it’s a complicated story, but he has a long history with them and needs to make good. He thinks information from you and Mattis—more you than Mattis, to be honest—he thinks Mattis is kind of a dolt….”
Lorica laughed at both Wanten’s assessment of Mattis and Jo’s old-fashioned slang.
“But he thinks you know something worth finding out, and he’s not afraid to torture you to get it out of you.”
“I can stand up to torture,” Lorica responded, sounding tougher than she felt.
“Mattis can’t. Wanten will go after him, too, just to get you to talk. I’ve told Wanten as many inconsequential things about the Resistance as I could. Like the kinds of droids they’re using.” Jo laughed dryly. “Wanten’s attention drifts off when I start talking about droid specs, and he interrupts to ask about how he should redecorate the throne room. He really doesn’t like to think about droids. So I try to talk about droids a lot. But pretty soon, he’s going to demand more.”
“Try talking about ships,” Lorica suggested. “The First Order knows we fly X-wings, mostly, so just go on and on about them. Pretend you’re Dec.” She wasn’t sure why Dec popped into her head at that moment—probably because he loved the tech of X-wings, and pretty much any mechanical thing, so much—but it made her miss him. They were often at odds back on the Resistance base, but they’d turned a corner on Vodran. She didn’t think they’d ever be good friends, but Dec was a formidable sparring partner, both physically and verbally, and she liked that she never felt any dire affection or neediness from him, either. He just accepted her as another person, another foil, another squad mate. She was sorry he was dead. It hadn’t struck her in any real way that he was until that moment.
If she accepted that Dec and Sari were dead, that AG was lost to her, that Mattis was losing his mind, then all she had left was Jo. Which meant she had to believe him, didn’t she?
“What do you need from me?” she asked. She still didn’t trust him, not completely, but she needed a contingency plan should Ingo get cold feet when the time came to release her.
“I need to know what you know,” Jo said. “I’ve already told Wanten every insignificant detail I can think of. I need to be able to mislead him. Lorica…” Jo reached through the bars and touched his fingers to hers. “Do you know the location of the Resistance base?”
Lorica was not a stupid person. In fact, she was clever, crafty, and always noticed anything that might help her later on. She did know where the Resistance base was. She’d put it together shortly after they’d arrived, based upon the route of the shuttle that had collected the new recruits, the weather on the planet, and the flight patterns of some of the X-wing squadrons that had come and gone. The Resistance base was on D’Qar.
“The Resistance base is on Endor,” Lorica told Jo.
Lorica wasn’t stupid at all, which was why, though she had to trust Jo right then, she knew she could only trust him to an extent. She couldn’t arm him with actual information with which to run back to Wanten.
“Endor?” Jo asked. “Isn’t that a moon? The place with the—the little fellows.”
“Ewoks.”
“Why didn’t we see any? Ewoks?”
“Because then you’d know we were on Endor. And the location of the base wasn’t for us to know. I mean, you’re the one who told me that.”
“So how did you find out?”
“I went for a run one morning before training,” Lorica lied. “And I ran right into an Ewok who was sneaking onto the tarmac. He—it—tried to eat me.”
“Ewoks eat people?”
“I guess. I punched it right in its furry face, though, and ran like a demon back to base.” Lorica shrugged. “I don’t know how General Leia brokered a peace with those little creeps, but that’s the only encounter I know of with one of them. I guess she told them to leave us alone, and they did.”
“Endor,” Jo repeated thoughtfully, and Lorica nodded. “I’m going to tell Wanten a lie. I’m going to tell him the Resistance base is on…” He considered. “What’s far enough from Endor but is realistic to have a base on?”
“Cole-Haddon?”
“It’s inhospitable. No one would believe it.”
Lorica tried again. “Hreeshi?”
“Hreeshi is nice, but as the home for a Resistance base? Maybe too nice. What about D’Qar?”
Lorica tensed. Was he onto her? Nothing in his face betrayed as much, but, again, Jo had always been difficult to read.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. Apparently, Lorica was easier to read than Jo.
“Nothing.” She tried to wave away his concern and project an air of innocence. “Do you think he’d believe it, though? D’Qar? Are there resources there?”
“I’m just picturing a map. And D’Qar makes sense.”
Lorica nodded slowly, resigned to acceptance. Jo had settled on telling Wanten the Resistance base was on D’Qar, which was where it really was. It was possible he’d known this all along, but Lorica didn’t know what to think anymore. Was Jo playing her? If so, he was certainly with the First Order. Or was he truly innocent and looking to deceive Wanten? If that was the case, then he might indeed be loyal to the Resistance. Lorica didn’t know what to do.
The only thing she could think of was hastening her escape.
Jo touched her hand again and told her to remain optimistic. He’d feed the information to Wanten, hopefully distract the commander in that way, and then get Lorica and Mattis out of there. AG, too. Jo’s face was lit up with what Lorica understood to be hope. She wished she felt it, too. Instead, all she felt was that swarming confusion as she turned back to her bunk. She listened to Jo’s receding footfalls; they sounded like raindrops, and she stuck out her hand because, fleetingly, she thought maybe they were raindrops. She shook her head. Why was she so confused? Why was everything such a jumble?
“Are you confused, too?”
The voice came from within her cell. Lorica jumped back, slamming her shoulder blades against the upper bunk behind her. “Ow!” she cried.
Cost pulled the blanket off her head in the bunk opposite Lorica. She smiled, showing all her rows of teeth.
“Cost!” Lorica whispered. Lorica shook her head again, dispelling the cobwebs that had gathered there. Lorica must have magnified some of Cost’s emotional turmoil.
“You saw your friend,” Cost said. “But I didn’t see him any.”
“Jo, you mean? He might not be my friend.”
“He’s your friend,” Cost affirmed. “He wants to help Lorica and Mattis. I want to help, too
. Help Cost.”
Help Cost. Her cellmate’s plea was so simple. “We have plans in action,” Lorica assured her. “When we get out of here—and we will get out of here—we’ll bring you with us.”
“You won’t.” Cost shook her head sadly.
“Cost.” Lorica took the slim woman by her narrow shoulders and braced her, looking into her eyes. If she could make Ingo swoon and become malleable, then she could impart to Cost the truth of her statement. “We will. You’ll come with us.”
Cost nodded slowly, but she said, “I don’t know.”
“I do.” Lorica let her go, and Cost disappeared again into the bedding. She was so slight that once the blanket was over her, she was gone. “Get some sleep. Rest your mind. Think of tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Cost repeated. She fell asleep repeating it.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.
It was all Lorica could think of as she, too, fell into restless slumber.
When Wanten was handed his assignment on Vodran, he suspected it might drive him around the bend. He didn’t think, however, that it would happen so soon. Since his arrival, not only hadn’t he eaten a decent meal—his major indulgence and, for the past thirty years, his only pure happiness—but the walls had been talking to him. He feared, at first, that it was his imagination, but Wanten recognized that he didn’t have a very good imagination and ruled out that possibility. He was left with the notion that there was something living in the walls of his new home. A creature, some remnant of that obscene Hutt, running about Wanten’s throne room, Wanten’s cells—even Wanten’s dining room! The creature, whatever it was, might foul Wanten’s food!
He tasked his personal guards with locating the creature. It took a fair bit of effort to convince them it existed, but after he made the guards sleep on the floor in his throne room (while Wanten slumbered in the quilted bedstead of the deposed Hutt), the guards agreed. There was something living there that Wanten hadn’t brought with him.
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