Star Wars - Gathering Shadows - The Origin of the Black Curs - Unpublished

by Kathy Burdette

  Still, the Imperials had numbers on their side, and he could see some of them digging comlinks out of their belts. In a few seconds the whole station would know what was going on.

  Tru’eb looked over at Platt, who had situated herself at a computer terminal near the turbolift. He squatted down, got one fist around the handlebar controls of the nearest bike and his other hand on the footpedal. Then he pressed the activation button, and set a random automatic course. The bike lifted off of its maintenance cradle, shook for a second, and plowed straight into a pile of its brethren strewn around the floor. There was a loud popping noise as the whole mess burst into flames.

  The blaster-fire stopped for a moment. Tru’eb ran over to Platt and ducked behind the terminal.

  A voice over the intercom announced to the entire station that there was a fire in docking bay three.

  “‘Droid maintenance hatch,’ indeed!” Tru’eb shouted, reaching around and firing at those troopers who weren’t busy running for an extinguisher. “Where did you get that one from, Platt? ‘Palpatine’s Military Guide for the Recently-Lobotomized?’”

  “All right, so they changed a few things!”

  “A few, yes!”

  “Calm down!” Platt shouted. “I found out that there’s only one detention level at this place!”

  “Where?”

  “Level eight! I already called the turbolift!”

  Tru’eb glanced behind them; several meters away the turbolift door was open and waiting. Ahead of them, some of the troops were still trying to return fire and the rest were shouting orders at each other or into their headsets.

  “You know it says here that the whole station only outnumbers us a hundred to one? They must have captured Dirk out of sheer paranoia! What do you wanna bet they don’t even have a shield generator?”

  “Just keep your head down and think up some other grand plan,” Tru’eb said, and ran into the turbolift.

  Behind him, Platt called, “I already thought of one.”

  “Fight back! Fight back! Fight back!”

  The interrogator’s voice came through between waves of dull pain across Jai’s stomach. Her hands were free, but she didn’t try to stop him.

  “In the face of the Empire, you are nothing. The Infiltrators were nothing, and you were a noncommissioned nothing because you didn’t have enough brain power to become an officer of nothing.”

  The pain stopped. Jai heard the interrogator step back and then begin pacing by her head. “Well, I guess this is getting us nowhere,” he said loudly to somebody else. Jai lifted her head enough to see the reflections of several gray-suited people across the polished floor. The room wasn’t very big; there was a massive desk against the far wall, and most of the rest of the space was taken up by computer terminals. The lighting was soft, almost relaxing. An atmosphere of both utility and comfort. Somebody’s office.

  The interrogator pushed her head back down with his boot and stood there for a moment. “I am taking my blaster out and setting it on ‘kill,’” he announced. “Now I am aiming it at your head, Sergeant Raventhorn.”

  A moment or two passed.

  “I said I’m aiming this blaster set on ‘kill’ at your head.”

  Another moment passed.

  “Here it goes!”

  Pause.

  “It’s on ‘kill!’”

  “I heard,” Jai said.

  He lifted his boot from her head. “Okay, I’ve decided not to kill you,” he said in a tight voice. “But I will when I feel like it.”

  Another moment passed.

  “Oh, get on with the interrogation,” said another, exasperated voice. A woman’s voice. “I haven’t got my whole life to spend watching you annoy her into submission.”

  “This is how you conduct an interrogation, Major. You show them who’s got the power.”

  “Currently it doesn’t appear to be you,” the major said. “Interrogation takes control and skill. Which means you’re hopeless for starters.”

  “Oh, aren’t you hilarious. Look. I don’t care if this is your garrison—interrogations are my forte. Why are we even doing this in here? I say we take her downstairs and do this properly.”

  Footsteps across the floor, coming closer to Jai. “This isn’t the same as before,” the major said. “I’ve got a different plan. Did you not read the mind-probe data results?”

  “Who needed to? Take one look at her! She doesn’t care about anything!” the interrogator said. “You could set her on fire and she wouldn’t care!”

  “Of course she wouldn’t care, idiot. You could set her planet on fire, you could blow up the New Republic and she wouldn’t care.”

  Jai was curled up in the fetal position. The voices of the Imperials disappeared into a loud ringing, which Jai thought was in her head: but then there was a deep, tinny voice in the room announcing a fire in one of the docking bays, and she recognized the sound of a fire alarm.

  After a few moments, the alarm died down. The major was finishing off a sentence.

  “…See what happens when we bring her mercenary friend in.”

  Jai focused on the floor again. There were a few drops of blood near her head, a couple more now, a blemish on the spotless Imperial war machine. It made Jai’s head clear out a little bit. In fact, she suddenly felt lucid.

  Bring her mercenary friend in.

  Jai looked up, past the face of the interrogator and into the face of the major. Their eyes locked for a second, and Jai saw the major’s face register that a fatal mistake had been made. In that instant, it was no longer a question of whether Jai was going to talk. It was now a question of who was going to reach the major’s blaster first.

  At that moment, Dirk’s world was the mezzanine across from him and the ground floor eight stories below him, the view divided by vertical black metal bars. One of the Imperials was trying to bang Dirk’s head on the rails in a vain attempt to get him to keep still. Apparently Jai’s indifference had led the guards to believe that her cellmate would be just as easy to drag to the interrogation chamber; as a result, several blasters lay scattered across the corridor, two officers lay unconscious by the cell block door, and somebody was screaming for reinforcements over his comlink. Harkness wasn’t sure how many there had been to start with or how many were left. He just knew that he couldn’t manage to get hold of anybody’s blaster, not with his burning, slippery feet sliding out from underneath him anytime he tried to stand on his own, and not with a terrified, unarmed guard shaking him by the collar. Harkness wasn’t sure he could prevent his head from being shoved right through the bars. But then it got worse: the guard gave up on the bars and started ramming Harkness’ head against the floor. There was a resounding pain through Harkness’ skull, a blinding ache that shot through his temples, his teeth, his neck.

  Then there was the sound of a blaster being fired—no, several blasters—and some shouts. The guard hesitated. That was all Harkness needed. He reached back, got his fingers underneath the guard’s helmet, and yanked the guard’s helmet clean oil.

  Now Harkness had something better than a blaster. The guard turned out to be a stocky, blond kid, whose face took on an expression of unadulterated panic as Harkness got up on his knees and started bashing away with the helmet.

  “Stop, he’s out already, take it easy!”

  Someone grabbed Harkness by the shoulder. He looked up. blurry-eyed, at someone wearing white and green, and an unmistakable Imperial cap.

  “Back off!” he shouted, swinging the helmet at the person’s knees. Whoever-it-was managed to dodge out of the way, and said, “Hey, whoa! It’s me! Take it easy!”

  Harkness stopped himself. His vision cleared; the Imperial was a platinum-haired woman wearing a fancy white smuggler’s shirt and half a trooper uniform. He looked wildly into her eyes, which shifted nervously back and forth as she took him in. “Remember? We’re your partners…. We brought you to Zelos.”

  Someone else appeared behind her, a Twi’lek wearing dar
k glasses and gray robes caked in dirt. Harkness wasn’t sure what their names were, but their manner was familiar; he felt his whole body relax.

  “You…” he said after a moment. “We went to the—didn’t you help me nail down a shipment of Imperial blasters? You’re Tru’eb… and Platt.”

  “Actually, we’re Platt and Tru’eb,” Platt said.

  “You came all this way to get me?”

  “We’re funny that way. Do you think you can stand? We’re going to get you out of here, okay?”

  Harkness jerked away, as if he suddenly remembered to be crazed. “No! They took her down the hall!”

  “Who?”

  “Jai! One of the New Republic agents—they were taking both of us down to the chamber, but she wouldn’t even fight—”

  “Which chamber? Where?” Tru’eb asked, grabbing him around the waist and pulling him to his feet. Harkness leaned on Tru’eb’s shoulder with most of his weight; Tru’eb didn’t seem to strain at all.

  Which door? Harkness looked down the corridor at the row of black doors to his right; the guards had taken Jai through the one with the large white Imperial seal painted on it, although Harkness could have sworn he remembered being shoved through two red-stamped doors before his own interrogation. Moreover, this white-stamped door turned out to be labeled “Command Center.”

  As Platt worked at getting a code cylinder into the slot, Harkness found himself looking at his reflection in the metal doorframe. In fact, several seconds passed before he realized that the reflection was actually his; it blinked when he blinked and moved its head when he moved his. But its face was pale, with a mangy light-brown beard sprouting around the hollow cheeks, and the white eyepatch was now a filthy gray.

  Platt turned around, scowling. “I lost the other code cylinders with the jacket. Anyway, there’s no way Radlin had this much clearance.”

  “But you did say you had thought of a plan?” Tru’eb said.

  “Yeah, but it had a hitch in it.” Platt said.

  “Who cares?” said Harkness. “Tell us!”

  “Okay—first, I pretend I’m a prison guard and I tell everyone I’m bringing Tru’eb in as a prisoner. Then we get into a heated fight in front of the Imperials, so that they’re totally confused for half a second, which is all the time we need to stun everyone, get into the cell block, and free Dirk from his cell.”

  Dirk and Tru’eb looked at each other, and then back at her.

  “Of course that’s somewhat irrelevant now,” Tru’eb said tersely.

  “Yeah, see, that’s the hitch.”

  Harkness leaned his head against the door. He couldn’t hear anything going on inside, which made him feel worse. He should have known something like this would happen. It wasn’t like it was with Golthan’s people; pick a prisoner, teach him or her respect, and then forget about them. That was why Harkness’ eye couldn’t be replaced—the subsequent infection had destroyed the nerves. It wasn’t the pain of the torture that hurt the most to remember; it was the sense of being nothing, a brief amusement to be thrown into a cell like a heap of garbage and then forgotten for three months. Certainly he hadn’t been left in solitary, but his cellmates that time were Alliance intentions wimps, and not part of his team. They wouldn’t even help him make any escape attempts.

  The sound of Tru’eb’s voice brought him back to the present.

  “Oh, no. They’re here.”

  The four turbolifts on the opposite side of the mezzanine arrived almost simultaneously. One after the other, the doors opened, and Imperial troops and officers came pouring out, all of them armed, all of them running, all of them shouting. Within seconds, Dirk, Platt, and Tru’eb were surrounded.

  “Drop your weapons! Now!”

  They obliged.

  Harkness’ head started throbbing. This is not happening, not after all this, not after I made up my mind…

  “Stand down!” somebody shouted.

  A new voice. Everyone froze. Two figures were standing in the doorway to the command center.

  Harkness blinked a couple of times. He saw a female Imperial major with a red-spattered uniform; her face had flashed into his mind several times since his interrogation, but he hadn’t recognized it until now. Then he saw her.

  Jai was as bloody a mess as Harkness. Her eyes squinted in the combination of bright lights and, probably, a splitting post-interrogation headache. There was a thick, red seam across the bridge of her still-bleeding nose; an arm locked around the head of the barely-conscious major; and a heavy, Imperial-issue blaster aimed at the major’s right temple.

  “Stand down,” Jai said again. “I have a proposition.”

  A young, skinny lieutenant spoke. “Let her go, Rebel,” he said. “Drop your blaster, put your hands on your head.”

  “You can’t afford to waste time taking us back into custody,” Jai told him.

  “And why not?”

  “Because the Major and I made a little call to the planetary government.”

  The lieutenant blanched. A faint murmur started up amidst the troops.

  Jai went on, “Apparently they aren’t amused to find out what’s been lurking here in the Valley of Umbra. I think you’d best evacuate your troops before Governor Nul sends a full-blown air strike.”

  “Don’t you think that would be a little paranoid. Rebel?”

  Now Platt spoke. “Don’t you think the entire population on this planet is a little paranoid, buddy?”

  “Aside from all that, I’m giving you an order,” Jai said. “Because as of three minutes ago, Zelos II belongs to the New Republic. Isn’t that right. Major.”

  The major took a deep, rattling breath and nodded faintly.

  The lieutenant stared at Jai for a minute, his eyes darting from her to Harkness to the major. It was obvious the boy had never made an executive decision in his life.

  “Cut your losses, son,” Harkness told him. “Do what the nice lady says.”

  The lieutenant looked at the floor.

  Then he turned around and signaled the troops. “Initiate evacuation procedure. Come on, do it now! Let’s go!”

  Nobody seemed to object. Some of the grunts closer to the turbolifts had already put their blasters away when Jai had said “air strike.” Within seconds the troops had begun to disperse, some of them swearing, most of them trying to shove through the crowd.

  “What about the major?” the lieutenant asked Jai.

  “I think she’ll be coming back to my base with me. I also think she’ll be loaning us her shuttle to get out of the valley. You don’t object, do you, Lieutenant? Unless you’d like to come along?”

  “It doesn’t appear as though your troops would be interested in stopping us,” Tru’eb said.

  The boy licked his lips and mumbled something about Docking Bay One, and clearance; then he turned and walked away.

  Harkness untangled himself from Tru’eb’s shoulder, leaned against the wall, and took a few excruciating steps toward Jai, who was visibly struggling to keep her adrenaline going in order to hang on to the major. Aside from Jai’s injuries, nothing about her appearance surprised Harkness at all. She matched her voice exactly. And she did look like her sister, a taller, blonde version, with the same ice-blue eyes. The only difference was what seemed to be behind the eyes; Morgan’s were clear and knowledgeable, a window to the brilliance beyond the absentmindedness. Jai’s were bright and painful and hard to look into. Across her left cheek was a long, pink scar, testimony to a wound that had never seen a bacta tank; but in a strange way, it didn’t seem ugly or out of place.

  Something inside of him felt oddly settled, seeing her for real.

  And in those troubled eyes, he saw a glint of recognition as she finally took a second to focus on his face.

  “Harkness.”

  “Sarge.”

  “You’re… just as I pictured you.”

  “You mean happy and handsome?”

  “Here, I’ll take Major Psycho,” Platt said. “You guys
lean on Tru’eb. Just concentrate on staying conscious until we get inside the shuttle.”

  Jai seemed to noticed Platt and Tru’eb for the first time. “Who are you people?”

  “Your ticket off the planet,” Platt said, taking Jai’s hand and shaking it.

  At first, Harkness had resisted the idea of being injected with a heavy sedative. He needed to remind himself that he was on board Platt’s ship, the Last Chance, already light years away from the garrison; and that the major was imprisoned in the hold. At least that was what Platt had told him. He didn’t remember anything beyond hobbling into the major’s Lambda-class shuttle and sinking down into a shiny black passenger seat.

  Beyond the concept of taking the sedative, however, he just didn’t want to sleep. In his experience, sleeping drugs tended to pull you down into heavy fever dreams you had a hard time waking up from. And he knew what kind of dreams he was going to have.

  “Sorry I don’t have a bacta tank on board,” Platt said, rummaging through the cabinet next to Harkness’ medical bunk. “But it’s only a couple days to Wroona from here. Jai, I’ve got a couple of Rebel friends out there. They can help you contact your base.”

  “Thanks,” Jai said. She was lying in the bunk across the room, on her stomach.

  Tru’eb came in. “No medpacs in the forward berthing compartment,” he said.

  “You’re kidding, I thought we just stocked up on… oh, here we go.” Platt tossed one to Tru’eb.

  “I don’t want to sleep,” Jai said.

  “This really isn’t a strong mixture,” Tru’eb told her, sitting on the edge of her bunk. “It’s actually designed to kill the pain while improving the quality of your sleep. That way your injuries don’t interfere with your normal sleep pattern. Which means you are less likely to have vivid dreams.”