Escape from Vodran

by Disney Book Group

  His guards scoured the kitchen on the presumption that whatever was squatting in their palace was hungry. They made an ambitious mess, blasting a hole in the side of the kitchen, without much more success than a fleeting glimpse of the diminutive intruder, just enough to identify it. Its isosceles ears and gaping snout and, most of all, its woolly exterior classified their pest without question as a nanak from the planet Egips.

  Wanten would have it destroyed. The interloper caused him to lose sleep. It mocked him from hidden places within his throne room, the throne room he’d stolen fairly from the Hutt. It told him he was worthless, that he’d squandered any potential he might have had under the Empire. It told him that the First Order didn’t respect him and that they saw him as a crumbling relic of the former regime. The First Order pitied him.

  It was possible that the nanak was just muttering an oddball salad of words and phrases, but it was what Wanten heard, and it angered him. As if his job weren’t difficult enough! These stormtroopers were so by-the-book and not creative thinkers, not like in his day. They were eager, perhaps too eager. They too often fired first and didn’t worry about the big picture, like plasma-blasts wrecking his walls.

  What’s more, the facility he’d been tasked with turning into a detention center, Harra the Hutt’s former palace, possessed a number of architectural problems. Most pressing and frequently addressed was the perimeter fence, which needed constant maintenance to barricade against the beasts that used to make the palace their home. Just the day before, one of Wanten’s force—a keen stormtrooper with the call sign VC-2123, to whom Wanten had warmed—was gobbled up by a tawd. Wanten was sorry to see VC-2123 go. But the occurrence wasn’t unusual. He lost stormtroopers too often to the hungry creatures in which the Hutt had trafficked. His facility also suffered frequent damage from that loosed menagerie. Luckily, Wanten had prisoners to rebuild the detention center. It kept them busy, which was another advantage, and if the prisoners were busy, they wouldn’t notice what a meager crew Wanten had on Vodran. Wanten lived in constant fear of being overthrown by his prisoners, few of them as there were.

  And then there was the arrival of the youths from the Resistance. Wanten disliked them. They made his stomach feel weak. They were such believers in their mission. It reminded him of himself, back in the old Empire days. He missed that young Wanten, though not enough to attempt to become him anew. He was too old, too tired, and had seen too much hypocrisy and bureaucracy. He knew too much about the way the galaxy worked. He wished to be rid of these young people. They exhausted him. Even the Jerjerrod boy, whose family Wanten knew and for whom he mustered a modicum of respect (leveled with a healthy dose of repulsion at the upper classes of the First Order officers), exhausted him. Jo Jerjerrod talked and talked—a lot about droids but also about spaceships and other things. Farming? Perhaps. After a certain point, Wanten’s attention wandered, but he knew that, thus far, the boy hadn’t told him anything useful. At least nothing that made him sit up straighter. When that happened, when Wanten’s interest was piqued by some bit of information and his spine unfolded, he would know that he had something that would impress his superiors in the First Order. Wanten suspected that the Zeltron girl knew more than the Jerjerrod boy, but he wanted to give the boy a chance. After all, should it become public that he was dismissive of a son of the First Order, no information that he might offer would make a difference in his career.

  “We have to catch that nanak,” Wanten choked out to the stormtrooper nearest him.

  “Sir?”

  “I think that’s our most critical issue right now, don’t you?”

  The stormtrooper wasn’t one of his usual personal guards. “I don’t know, sir,” he said.

  Wanten frowned, fleshy folds enveloping his lips. “I do,” he told the guard. “What’s your call sign, trooper?”

  The stormtrooper turned to tell him but was interrupted by the appearance of Ingo Salik in the throne room.

  “Commander Wanten,” Salik hailed him as he entered.

  Wanten didn’t like his second-in-command. Wanten didn’t really like anyone, but Salik was young, which was one good reason to dislike him, and physically fit, which was another. He was also well liked in the First Order hierarchy. Wanten wasn’t sure why, then, Salik had been sent to Vodran with him—they’d told him something about “earning his stripes” and “doing the job of two men,” Wanten vaguely recalled—but he really didn’t care. Salik’s confidence and matter-of-fact manner irritated Wanten.

  “What do you want, Salik?” Wanten sighed. He looked around for something to occupy him—a beverage or some tassel on one of his pillows.

  “A couple of things. The scouts we deployed a week ago have returned, sir.” The way Salik said “sir” made Wanten’s skin feel too loose.

  “I thought they were dead.”

  “We lost two ships, that’s true. But the pilot of the third ship is here now. Shall I show him in, sir?”

  Wanten shifted. “Yes, yes, I don’t know why you didn’t just bring him in with you.”

  “I didn’t know what you might be doing in here, sir.”

  Wanten looked at the stormtrooper he’d berated a moment ago, but the trooper just stared blankly back at him with those black lenses and shrugged.

  “I was telling this waste of armor to catch that blasted nanak who’s been causing so much trouble.”

  Salik already had his back turned and beckoned the pilot to enter. The pilot was a young man, too. Wanten despised him on sight.

  “Tell Commander Wanten what happened, Humphris,” Salik whispered. “But keep it brief. The commander has a tendency to…get distracted.”

  Wanten wished he hadn’t flushed upon hearing his second’s hushed warning, but it was nothing. His underlings respected him. That was why they felt they could joke around with him. He would make a special effort to pay attention throughout the pilot’s report.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  The pilot, Humphris, carried a jacket over his arm. He handed it to Salik, who passed it to Wanten. “I chased the rogue shuttle through a debris field to this—there’s a moon out there, sir. It doesn’t get picked up on scans. I don’t know why. It’s populated by droids.”

  “Droids!” Wanten repeated in disgust.

  “Yes, sir. They destroyed the rogue shuttle when I arrived and they told me that they tore its pilots to pieces. All that was left was that jacket.”

  “That happened a week ago!” Wanten said in realization. “Why didn’t you return immediately?”

  “The droids, they took me, sir.” The pilot hung his head. “They locked me in a subbasement in their bunker. I was the only human there. They wanted to know if I was from the First Order.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I told them nothing. Finally, after all of this time, I escaped. I knocked over an astromech droid and fled to my ship.”

  “Why didn’t they destroy your ship as well?” Salik asked.

  “They said it was good for parts that they could use to repair themselves. They said First Order ships are the best ships. I remember they said that several times.”

  Wanten nodded. That was true. First Order ships were the best ships. “A moon full of droids, eh?” Wanten said. “This bears consideration. But, as long as they’re up there, and we’re down here, then we needn’t worry about them.”

  “Sir—” Salik made to argue, but Wanten held up a meaty hand.

  “I don’t wish to engage droids, Salik,” he said. “Besides, our pilot here says we won’t find that moon anyway. I don’t have the manpower to send a bunch of shuttles up there searching, do I?”

  Salik agreed he did not.

  “Thank you, um, pilot,” Wanten said, unable to remember the pilot’s name. “That will be all. Salik, was there something else?”

  “Yes, sir,” Salik answered through a set jaw. He waited for the pilot to leave before he continued. “The Genhu prisoner wants to speak with you.”


  Wanten pretended to distract himself by scratching his neck, which was sweaty, and then looking around for somewhere to wipe the sweat before deciding upon the pillow with the pretty tassels. In truth, he was trying to remember who the Genhu prisoner was.

  “Bring the prisoner in,” he said.

  “She’s nervous,” Salik told him.

  “She needn’t be! I’m so nice! I’m really so, so nice.” Wanten opened his arms wide in an effort to appear welcoming, but it made him tired, so he dropped them again.

  His second-in-command turned and ushered in the rail-thin Genhu prisoner. Wanten remembered her now. She was his informant; it was the Genhu prisoner’s job to tell Wanten what the other prisoners were plotting. It was so much easier than Wanten torturing them himself.

  “What have you learned, prisoner?” Wanten asked. He was confident that there was syrup in his voice. He didn’t like the way Salik blinked one eye when Wanten spoke, as if he were looking at a bright sun.

  The Genhu prisoner’s wide mouth moved, but Wanten couldn’t make out her words. Before he could signal Salik to move her closer, his second-in-command scuttled her forward.

  “Speak up, prisoner,” Wanten said imperiously, but also, he hoped, generously. She should think she would be rewarded for betraying her fellow captives. She wouldn’t, but she should think she would. That was Wanten’s clever secret to maintaining tranquility in his detention center: to make promises he had no intention of keeping.

  The informant stood before the commander of the detention center and bit her lower lip. Her mind had a habit of drifting away. Her teeth tapered into sharp points, and the tiny pain she felt from jabbing her own lip always brought her back to the present. She’d been confused since they’d arrived, the First Order and their piggy commander, and they took advantage of her confusion. They promised her more rations and more blankets if she would tell them what the other prisoners were saying and doing.

  Cost told them, but she couldn’t remember if she ever received those prizes. Her thoughts were a hurricane of confused activity, and they took advantage of that. The idea was fleeting; soon it was gone.

  “We have a blanket waiting for you in your cell,” Wanten told her. He grimaced in a way that Cost thought was supposed to make her calm. Instead, it made her queasy. Because Wanten looked queasy.

  “Jo Jerjerrod doesn’t like you,” she said.

  “That’s not valuable information,” Wanten said to Ingo Salik, who sometimes took care of Cost. Ingo talked a lot with Cost’s cellmate, Lorica. Cost wondered if she should tell the piggy commander about that talk-talk-talking. Cost liked Lorica, though, and if she told the commander about the talking, maybe Lorica would get in trouble. Lorica had told something to Cost, though. Something that made Cost feel warm and thankful. What was it? If she could remember, Cost would tell the First Order people.

  “Tell the commander something valuable,” Ingo ordered Cost. His voice wasn’t like a heated towel the way it was when he talked with Lorica. It was like rocks.

  “Jo Jerjerrod likes the Resistance,” Cost said. “He’s going to free his friends.” Cost swallowed hard as the ideas in her head closed into a point that she could read and recognize: she’d made a mistake. There was no taking it back. She’d doomed her new friends, the people who said they’d take care of her. She’d tried to tell Lorica that Cost would only help herself, that the First Order manipulated her, but the words had come out a jumble and Lorica hadn’t understood. So now Cost did the only thing she could think to do: she kept talking. “After they escape,” she said, “they’re going to return and explode this place.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, while Mattis was on perimeter detail, the bed Ymmoss had destroyed was replaced. When he returned to his cell, it was as it had been the week before. There was no evidence of a struggle. Mattis thought he’d imagined the nighttime visits from Ymmoss and then Gherd. His tether to reality was fraying, he knew, so he clung to what was real: the cell, the pipe with which he continued to chip away at the corner of the cell, and the outside world. If he hadn’t seen the outside world daily during his work detail, he might have thought he’d imagined that as well.

  In addition to the repaired bunk, Lorica and Cost were waiting for him in the cell. Mattis had pushed his own bunk against the growing hole he’d chipped in the wall. It was well concealed, as the corners of the cell fell in shadow naturally. Cost huddled on Mattis’s bunk, above her usual corner where the hole was. The hole wasn’t big enough for him to fit through, but in a couple of weeks it would be. Mattis was giddy with the anticipation of it. He couldn’t wait to show Lorica and Cost, and he was about to do so when the cell door clanged open.

  AG stood beside Ingo, both ramrod straight. Ingo’s mouth was a thin, disappointed line. AG flickered his lens-lights a couple of times.

  “This detention center has a security breach,” Ingo told them. Lorica started toward him, but he stopped her with an upheld palm.

  “Remain where you are, prisoner,” AG said.

  “We’re here to excavate the wretch,” Ingo said.

  “Aw, if I’d known you were coming over, I’d have baked a pie.” Lorica batted her eyelashes sarcastically. “But of course I don’t have any flour or eggs or fruit or a cooker or, you know, anything except walls and metal bunks. So, sorry. No pie for you. Or me. Or anyone.”

  “We’re looking for a nanak,” AG announced. Mattis sensed Lorica relax. He wondered why she’d been tense. If Ingo and AG were looking for Gherd, surely they’d scour the cell and discover his escape hole. Lorica knew he was working on it, so why wasn’t she nervous about them finding it? Or had she been worried about some other secret she held? There was too much to keep track of, Mattis thought. There were too many secrets.

  “What’s a nanak?” Mattis asked with pretend innocence.

  “Never mind, prisoner.” AG scowled. He pushed past them and moved into the cell. “Did some redecorating, huh?” He motioned to the bunks pushed against the wall.

  “The ceiling dripped,” Mattis lied, pleased that he’d thought of a good excuse.

  “All the ceilings drip,” AG retorted. He passed Mattis and pushed him gently down into Lorica’s bunk. “Sit,” he said.

  “Ingo,” Lorica began, “we’re not harboring some creature. I think you know me better than that.”

  Ingo smiled despite himself. “You’d never have stood for that on Kergans. Mother would have called the exterminators immediately.”

  Lorica nodded and smiled. Mattis felt a pang of jealousy. He clung to his hope that AG and Ingo wouldn’t find his escape hole.

  “It comes here sometimes,” Cost told AG as he roused her from her corner. She slapped her hand over her mouth and issued a muffled “Sorry.”

  “You’ve seen it?” AG asked them. “The nanak?”

  Ingo told Lorica, “It’s stealing food and other stuff. It’s making Wanten crazy.”

  “Wanten’s already crazy,” Mattis said, then covered his mouth, too.

  Ingo pretended not to have heard. “Wanten wants to have it stuffed and mounted on a wall. Hopefully in his new chamber somewhere. He thinks he’ll be promoted to the Bittelari Cluster.”

  Static that sounded like a laugh came from AG’s vocabulator. Mattis thought this odd for a First Order droid. They didn’t find anything funny.

  “Look around,” Ingo told AG. He ushered Lorica off to one side of the cell and they spoke softly; Mattis couldn’t make out what they said, but they gave off a sense of intimacy. Another stab of jealousy shot through him.

  He took hope, though, in the fact that Gherd was not only real but was proving himself to be a thorn in the side of Wanten and his command. AG walked along the walls, tapping them, finding nothing, though what he expected to find by doing that Mattis wasn’t sure. There wasn’t any scratching in the walls or laughing from any dark hole. Gherd wasn’t there, and that gave Mattis even more optimism. Gherd could come and go.

  “There are tunnels under this facility,” AG
said, looking at Mattis, as if he’d read his thoughts. “Not big enough for a hunk like you, prisoner, so don’t get any ideas, but big enough for a starving nanak.”

  “So he could be anywhere,” Mattis said.

  “He?” Ingo turned from his hushed conversation with Lorica to Mattis. “You know our nanak, Banz?”

  “Not personally.” Mattis shrunk back into the bunk. “I just assumed…”

  “What did I tell you about that stuff, Mattis?” Lorica jumped in, saving him yet again. She touched Ingo’s shoulder lightly; perhaps he didn’t even notice, but his attention was suddenly back on her. “Mattis is lonely because we’re spending so much time together,” she told Ingo. “He imagines he sees friends, and his imagination is limited. Very, very limited. Like, his imagination could fit into a Jawa’s thumbnail. Do Jawas have thumbnails? Do they have thumbs? I guess it doesn’t matter, but you see what I’m getting at.” She smiled brightly and spoke in a soothing, even voice. It didn’t matter what she was saying. She was lulling Ingo back into an emotional trance.

  It felt to Mattis as if they’d been talking for ages. As often happened when he was in Lorica’s presence, time took on a hazy, floating feeling. Whatever she was doing now permeated the room so that Mattis felt at once sleepy and calm. Even Cost was sitting quietly now in her same spot. Mattis felt a vague sense of surprise that AG hadn’t moved her so he could look behind the bed, but neither could he be troubled with any anxiety at all.

  AG-90 was the only one unaffected, which was to be expected, since he was a droid. He continued his search of the cell. It didn’t take long, of course, but AG appeared to make a thorough investigation of the upper corners and walls. At least inasmuch as Mattis’s clouded perception allowed him to see.

  “There’s nothing here,” AG finally proclaimed, bringing them all back to dank, cold reality.

  “As we expected,” Ingo remarked. “I’ll let you tell Wanten.”

  “Tell me what, Salik?” Wanten was there, his mass filling the open cell door, his hands held behind his back.