Escape from Vodran

by Disney Book Group

  “I don’t think you get a vote in this matter,” Ingo told him.

  “It’s not real!” Mattis yelled. And now that he had said it, there was no going back. He’d destroyed her plan; Lorica’s weeks of working Ingo were for nothing, all because Mattis was losing hope. “She thinks she can get you to take us out of here. She thinks if she likes you enough, you’ll let us go.” Mattis nearly said “pretends to like you,” but he wasn’t sure she was pretending.

  “I thought we were really talking,” Ingo said to Lorica, disappointed.

  “We were. I mean, I like talking to you,” she replied.

  “I don’t like being played for a fool, Lorica,” Ingo stated.

  “I didn’t play you,” Lorica said crossly. “Mattis is just jealous. He wants what we have.”

  “And what is that?” Ingo was growing angry. “Are we friends? We can’t be friends. I’m your jailer. That makes no sense. Do you—” He sniffed, as if the possibility of the idea that had dropped into his mind was inconceivable. “Have you feelings for me, Lorica? Is that what you mean to say?”

  Lorica affected a soft smile. “Of course I have feelings for you,” she replied. “Just as you do for me. Whatever our stations, Ingo, they are just trappings. It’s an odd way we’ve come together, but at least we are together.” She made their love story sound like the doomed romance of an ancient tale. She touched his fingers through the bars.

  Ingo snatched his hand away. “I’m not a fool,” he told her. His face was burning red. “And I won’t allow this to continue. Jo is being sent to his parents. I’m certain the First Order will want to meet the two of you as well.” Ingo stared daggers at Lorica. “It’s better if we don’t interact any longer,” he said. “I’ll send a more suitable replacement to guard you lot. Jerjerrod, come with me.”

  Ingo punched the keypad and the cell door slid open. Like a freed beast, Lorica tore from the cell and attacked Ingo. Mattis was too stunned to move until Jo nudged him.

  They stepped to the open cell door. Lorica had Ingo against the opposite wall. She held him with her forearm, and he struggled for air. “Let…me…go…” he managed.

  Ingo pulled at Lorica’s arm, trying to free himself, but she was too strong. His hands dropped and fidgeted at his sides.

  “We’re leaving here now,” Lorica snapped. To whom, Mattis didn’t know. His own anger had faded since he’d exploded at Ingo, but Lorica’s was bringing it back.

  “Knock his block off,” Mattis growled in a voice he almost didn’t recognize as his own. “Then let’s get out of here.”

  Lorica increased her pressure on Ingo’s throat. His hands continued to dance at his sides. Too late, Jo realized what was happening. He tried to warn them: “His hands—” But Ingo had already grasped the small blaster that hung from his belt. He jabbed it into Lorica’s side and pulled the trigger, sending a shock of blue electricity through her. She flew off him and stumbled back into Jo and Mattis, who caught her.

  With her teeth still chattering, Lorica said, “That…hurt….”

  “We’re all getting hurt today,” Ingo gasped, catching his breath.

  Lorica was tougher than Mattis had even imagined. Despite the pain of the shock, she went after Ingo again, kicking the blaster from his hand. Then she landed a high kick right to his head. He snapped back and hit his head on the wall behind him, but managed to stay upright.

  “We need to help her,” Jo said. He held his side and limped a step closer, but Mattis held him back.

  “She doesn’t need our help,” Mattis told him.

  It was true. Lorica and Ingo squared off, trading jabs and kicks. She was strong and fast, but she was also weakened by the shock. Ingo wasn’t at his best, either, but he succeeded in blocking half of her attacks.

  “Go!” Lorica growled at them through gritted teeth.

  They went. Mattis supported Jo as they hobbled down the corridor. He heard Ingo shout, “Guards!” Mattis didn’t like their odds. The detention center was too big, too dark, too confusing. They’d never make it out. The surge of hope he’d felt when they’d escaped their cell was draining from him. It was flushed away altogether as they turned a corner and came face to face with three stormtroopers, their weapons drawn. One of them was Patch.

  “I was hoping you’d try to escape,” Patch said. He fired his blaster at Mattis.

  For the second time in his life, Mattis felt the electro-shock of a stun-blast course through his body. He had a split second to feel guilty for bringing such pain on Jo, too, as he still held fast to his friend. Both of them hit the ground, convulsing, and then all Mattis saw was black.

  BECAUSE THE DROIDS couldn’t return Dec and Sari to their former cell (it was presently missing a door), they were deposited in more spacious and, Dec would almost say, comfortable quarters nearby. It was a large room with a nest of pillows, blankets, and sheeting against one wall. Small torches flickered, giving the room the appearance of a religious cavern. A couple of dented astromechs sat lifelessly in each corner; Dec would’ve thought them powered down, but when he and Sari entered followed by Harra the Hutt and J-9A, both astromechs swiveled and chirped.

  The room was warm and comfortable, but it was still a cell. Dec was certain of that from the way J-9A slid the heavy door closed and locked it behind her.

  “I’m afraid, Mistress Harra, that you’ll need to share your quarters with these…people,” J-9A told the Hutt, with more than a little distaste.

  “Hey, we’re not thrilled about breathing in Hutt air ourselves,” Dec countered.

  Harra the Hutt laughed. “I’m glad for the company,” she said. “You serve me well, Jay-Nine-Ay. You’ve seen to it that I’m not lonely.”

  “It saddens us to see you lonely, Mistress Harra,” the droid confided.

  “It saddens me to sadden you,” the Hutt admitted.

  “Save some sad for us,” Dec piped up. “We’re stuck in here with a stinky blob pile and a deadbeat bucket of bolts.”

  “There’s no need for rudeness,” J-9A ruffled.

  “Not sorry!” Dec said, exasperated.

  “She’s right, Dec,” Sari pointed out.

  “You’re on their side?”

  “I think we’re all on the same side. We just don’t want Harra to be lonesome, right?” Sari gave Dec some big eyes meant to imply that if he didn’t get on board with some pleasantry, they might never get out of there.

  He pursed his lips and blew out loudly through them. “Yeah. We’re in for the long haul,” he said. “Hutty, my new pal. What’s on the ol’ to-do list for tonight? Game of grav-ball? Eh, you ain’t got legs, so probably not. Pie-eating contest?”

  “I don’t think we have any pies,” Harra said, as if Dec’s question were asked in earnest.

  “I apologize that there aren’t any pies,” J-9A added. “Our food supplies are very limited. Until recently, we only had Mistress Harra for whom to provide.”

  “Aw, don’t beat yourself up, Nine-Volt. But I reckon if you bring Sari here to whatever hot plate y’all have that passes for a kitchen, she could make us up something good to eat.”

  “I’m afraid we don’t have much in the way of ingredients…” J-9A began.

  “Sari’s real smart about chemistry and that sorta thing. Betcha she could make something out of nothing, if nothing’s what you got.”

  Sari nodded. And while she was there, Dec was thinking, she could maybe find some tools to pry their way out or some powders to make explosives. He knew Sari was thinking the same. “I’m a Jedi in the kitchen,” she told the droid.

  J-9A was delighted by this. “Very good!” she cried. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll lead you to our provisions storage. Our cooking droid will appreciate your assistance, as he is down to his last two hands!” With that, J-9A unlocked the door and led Sari to it. The droid paused before exiting, telling Dec, “Please do not attempt to escape whilst we’re away. That would sadden us.”

  Dec gave her a wink and a nod, and then J-9A s
lammed the door closed and locked it again from the other side. Dec turned back to Harra the Hutt.

  “Let’s dish,” Dec said in his friendliest tone.

  Harra the Hutt shuddered with a nervous giggle.

  “Aw, c’mon, Harra old girl. I never met a Hutt. Just wanna get to know you.” Dec plopped himself down on the floor beside Harra. He could smell her meaty stink. It wasn’t completely disagreeable, though, once he was used to it. It was almost comforting, like the stench of the swamp where he’d grown up on Ques. “Gimme the whole story. Who are you? Where’d you come from? Why’re those droids so into you?”

  “Those droids served me in my palace,” Harra said. Then she added despondently, “When I had a palace.”

  “Most droids I know,” Dec said, thinking of AG-90 and his brother’s independent personality, “if they were held captive and then given a chance to be free, they wouldn’t take their captor with them. Never mind continuing to serve her.”

  “My droids are loyal,” Harra said proudly.

  “I can see that,” Dec agreed. “How’d a nice Hutt like you wind up on a bogwater planet like Vodran?”

  Harra bristled. “I am not nice,” she announced.

  Dec put up his hands in innocence. “Nah, nah, of course not. You’re a big nasty Hutt,” he said. He hoped Harra didn’t see his half smirk, but he couldn’t help it. Even in these drastic circumstances, Dec found comedy in this sad-sack deposed gangster who didn’t have a lick of self-awareness.

  Dec wasn’t a strategic or long-term planner like, say, Jo or Lorica. He lacked the discipline. What Dec was good at was two things: talking and improvisation. He knew he had charm. He’d known it since he was a kid, when the adults who lived on the river near his family would always welcome him and treat him like an equal. They’d talk about scrapping and boat repair with him same as they would with his pops. And the kids who’d huddled in Teacher’s cabin to learn to read and do numbers had always looked to him for guidance, even the ones older than he. People naturally liked him. He felt self-assured when talking, and he made others feel the same about sharing their thoughts and feelings.

  And while Dec didn’t always consider the course or outcomes of his actions, he always felt confident in his ability to figure things out on the fly. So he didn’t have a plan regarding Harra the Hutt. He didn’t know how she would figure into his and Sari’s eventual escape, but he knew his strength was in getting her talking, and he was assured that it would, somehow, lead to freedom.

  After a moment, it was clear to Dec that Harra the Hutt wasn’t quite at ease enough to be forthcoming. Luckily, he knew how to draw her out.

  “Let me tell you something about me,” he said. “You know the planet Ques?”

  “Naturally,” Harra replied. “It’s in Hutt Space. We don’t go there, though. It’s very wet.”

  Dec laughed. “Yeah, you can’t tell where the bayous end and the swamps begin. And we know Ques is in Hutt Space, but I think sometimes you Hutts forget that regular folk live on those planets, too.”

  “We remember,” Harra said. “And we tax you accordingly.”

  Dec didn’t laugh. He recalled well the heavy taxes inflicted upon his poor family and their neighbors. On his part of Ques, they didn’t even deal in credits; theirs was a favor-based society. It was easiest on everyone, and there were few enough people that no one took advantage. But the Hutts came through every cycle demanding payment just for living on “their” planet. Somehow Dec’s community scrounged and scraped to earn enough credits to get them through that hard time. But it wasn’t easy.

  Dec wouldn’t bring any of that up now. He needed to get Harra the Hutt talking, so he plowed forward with his own story, not realizing how much of himself he was revealing until he was in the thick of it. “Well, folks on Ques, we’re a close-knit community. Always up in each other’s business, hangin’ around one another’s shacks. When I was a little’un, I rigged up a pontoon boat to see how far downriver me and my brother could ride, see if we still knew the folk down at the end where the river bends and leads out to the thick marshes. We didn’t know what was out there, but it was the kinda fearless you can be when you’re just little. Plusways, my brother’s good protection, y’know?” Harra didn’t know, of course, that Dec’s brother was a droid, but he didn’t feel the need to derail his story more than he already had. “Anyways,” he continued, “we rode that junker pontoon downriver and folks’ homes got more and more ramshackle the further down we went till we found this little, I dunno, ‘lean-to’ I guess you’d call it. Not much more than some wide-leafed branches set up against a decaying log. But there was a woman out there cooking up something stringy over a campfire. For sure it was some varmint she’d caught herself. Wasn’t much more to it than a couple of bites.

  “We got outta the float nearby her, and I was hot and grubby and worn to bits. And you know this woman, whom we didn’t know, whom we’d never met, she stood right up and helped us pull our pontoon onto drier land and she offered us not just some water to drink but as much of that critter she was cooking up as we wanted. She didn’t know us except that we were from upriver, and we didn’t know her except that she was from down it. And I had a few bites of that critter, and it tasted terrible, but my hunger went away enough and I got back some strength so’s Aygee and me could head on back home.”

  “That’s a story about a person sharing meat with you,” Harra observed. She scratched her lower lip with her stubby hand, confused.

  “I guess it is,” Dec said, “and not much of a story at that. But I just want to give you an idea of the kind of place I come from and the kind of folks I grew up with.”

  Harra shrugged with her whole body, not understanding. “Now I know,” she said.

  “Now you know. But that all is just preamble, is what you don’t know, to the real story I aim to tell you.” Dec danced in his mind a bit, trying to conjure some anecdote that would convince Harra the Hutt that he was a friend. He’d thought that just by filling the air he might soothe her into comradeship. He’d have to dig deeper.

  “Ques folk are the kindest in the galaxy,” Dec said. “Still, much as we’re always in one another’s business doesn’t mean we know everything about each other, does it? Came a time I realized I wasn’t quite like the other kids I knew. Being honest, feels like I always reckoned as much, only I didn’t quite have the wherewithal to put it into real thoughts until this time.” He sighed deeply. He’d never told anyone this story. He wasn’t embarrassed by it; it all just seemed unbelievable to him. That he had been the kid in the story—so unsure of himself. It wasn’t Dec as he presently knew himself.

  “When I started ruminatin’ on this,” he continued, “I sorta stopped doing all the things that I’d been doing—runnin’ around the swamp with the other kids, wreakin’ havoc and gettin’ in trouble; I stopped showin’ up to Teacher’s reading and numbers classes and for grabbin’ up woodward eels with my pals at suns-up. Just spent time by myself, ruminating, as I said. Floatin’ out on a raft, figuring that the others would cast me out anyways, so I might as well do it myself.”

  Harra the Hutt listened with interest, trying to tent her fingers but failing because of her girth and stubby arms.

  “You like stories about folks being sad?” Dec chided.

  Harra was taken aback. “No!” she cried. “But I think you didn’t stay sad, so I’m curious to hear how you worked your way out of it.”

  “Aw, I ain’t worked a day in my life,” Dec joked. “But while I was down in the doldrums thinkin’ about how everyone was gonna hate me—me! Can you even imagine someone hatin’ me?”

  Harra shook her head. She was hooked on Dec’s charms.

  “Well, I could think of it. And it was all I could think of. If the Ques folk found out I was different from them, then they would hate me. Or so I thought. And I also thought that I was just stewin’ in my sadness and no one was takin’ notice. ’Course, that wasn’t true. My brother, Aygee, noticed. ’Cause my
brother and me, we always did everything together. So when I stopped doing everything, with or without him, he told me he wouldn’t stand for it. ‘Enough is enough,’ he told me. He didn’t ask what was wrong. He just said, ‘We always done everything together, and if you’re gonna go about feelin’ bad for yourself, we’re gonna do that together, too.’ Thereafter, he came with me on my lonesome jaunts through the bogs, both of us feelin’ bad for me.

  “Sooner or later, as I suspected Aygee knew I would, I started talking to him about what got me so dragged-down feelin’. And once I told him, he said to me the smartest thing I ever heard anyone—person, droid, or other—say. He told me, ‘Just because you’re not the same as everyone doesn’t mean you’re not normal.’”

  Harra the Hutt let out a thick purr that seemed to take her off guard.

  “Makes sense, don’t it?” Dec asked her. She nodded minutely. “Just ’cause you’re not the same as everyone doesn’t mean you’re not normal. How a monster-droid came up with something so clever is beyond me, but Aygee always was the one with brains in the family. But can I tell you somethin’, Harra?” She motioned for him to go on. “It wasn’t just the words that comforted me. It was that, even after I told him the thing I was so afraid of, the thing that made me different from everyone else, he didn’t leap into that mucky swamp and paddle away fast as he could. He kept on comin’ out on the raft with me and sitting in silence or yakkin’ about who-knows-what, nothin’ in particular. And yakkin’ with Aygee made it easier to do the same with my folks, who also didn’t care about what I thought made me so different. They just loved me, same as they always did. And talking to Mom and Pops made talkin’ to the other kids easier, and then the neighbors, and even that woman downriver who, when I told her about myself, just said, ‘I don’t give two cares about any silly boy from upriver! Go gather me some dry sticks so’s I can make a fire and make my dinner, dum-dum!’ I’ll never forget her wisdom.

  “Anyway,” Dec finished, stretching his arms over his head, “that’s my story.”