After several dozen meters everything disappeared into a bluish-gray soup.
Far below, winking on and off through the fog, there was a small blue
light. And another, and another, and a hundred, neatly lined up. Platt shut
her eyes and then looked again.
"Running lights," she said, amazed. "But it's too dark to make out the
garrison."
"Hence, the Valley of Umbra," Tru'eb said.
"Yeah, I get it. Look at the waterfalls. Twenty credits says that's a
leaky aqueduct."
"Look there," Tru'eb said. "Do you see that? There, and over there-all
around."
Platt looked. Weaving in and out of the cliff was a series of metal
ladders and walkways, probably leading to maintenance ducts hidden in the rock
face.
Tru'eb took her macros. "Six hundred meters down." He looked up. "And the
distance across is twice that. I suppose we can safely say we know where
Harkness is."
Mist oozed up over the edge of the valley. Platt wasn't sure whether she
should be excited or appalled at knowing Harkness's location.
"There must be a turbolift or a flatbed loader leading down." Tru'eb
said. "You have code cylinders in that uniform, correct?"
"Yes, but I'm not keen on explaining why we're not at our post. Or why
one of us grew head-tails and fangs and the other decided he was much freer as
a woman."
Tru'eb shrugged. "Then it's straight down."
"How?"
"We'll take the maintenance ladder wells. They must eventually lead all
the way to the bottom."
"Suppose somebody's working on them, genius?"
"Why would they? They have repulsors."
"Yes, but I'm trying to delay this as long as possible." She looked at
him. "I really don't want to go down there."
"But you will."
"But I will." She sighed and slid down on her belly, wedged her foot into
the cliff face and hoisted herself down. The nearest ladder was about five
meters below, according to the macros, but it wasn't hard to get a foothold on
the crags. Before long the two smugglers were standing on a solid, grassy
boulder that jutted out over the valley. One of the rusty maintenance ladders,
dripping with moisture, stuck out of the rock face nearby.
"I'll go first," said Tru'eb, dusting up his hands with dirt and taking a
step toward the ladder. Platt grabbed his shoulder. "Tru'eb." "Yes, Platt."
"Why are we doing this?" "Harkness is our friend." "So what? We have lots
of friends." Tru'eb stepped onto the ladder. "No, we don't."
Before Morgan had died, Jai had experienced several incidents in which
she had forgotten who she was.
The most prominent of them had happened about eighteen months earlier,
when she led a five-man Infiltrator team to Bevell Three on a supposedly well
planned assignment. They were to capture four Imperial agents, but somebody
had tipped off the Empire; a squadron of TIE bombers appeared out of nowhere
and razed the area. Everybody fell, except forJai, who walked away without
even a bruise. As usual, she got everybody out. But for the first and only
time in her SpecForces career, she didn't get somebody out alive; Leong, the
team's comm specialist, died en route to the medical frigate.
Jai went through the next week completely numb, not responding much to
anything or having any sort of recognizable emotion. High Command promoted her
to master sergeant and she didn't object, even though she knew it was a
propaganda tool. No Infiltrator assignment should ever have garnered that much
attention, but this one had, and on her watch. Still, she accepted the
promotion and went on about her routine business.
Then, one day, rummaging through her locker, she found one of Leong's
gloves and her heart shattered into a million pieces.
Now, lying on the floor in the dark, Jai recalled that moment with a
great deal of distance. As if it had happened to somebody else. The memory was
vivid, and she could access the sounds and smells and visions of the time with
clarity. No matter how hard she tried, however, she couldn't access the
emotion.
What would Leong say if he could see that Jai had let the Imperials take
her? Surely he'd be disappointed. But after two months of feeling nothing,
suddenly there had been an onslaught of pain, rage, fear, shame-every bit of
which was preferable to numbness. For a couple of blissful days, her brain had
been so ravaged by the interrogation that she had forgotten to be numb. And
now she was back in the same old rut, wishing the pain across her back, the
dried blood on her face, the memory of the Imperial soldier swinging the butt
of his blaster rifle at her face, any of it would jar her back into emotion.
"I'm starting to wonder if we've been forgotten. Personally I'm kind of
hungry."
Harkness's voice, coming out of another world. Jai had to mentally adjust
herself. "Huh?"
"I said I'm kind of hungry," he said.
"Hmm," she said dully.
"And that maybe they forgot about us."
That got Jai's attention. "What-you think they left us to rot?"
Rotting away, that was something that wouldn't grant any real emotion,
either. Her thoughts drifted back to Bevell Three.
Several minutes later, there was a scraping sound next to Jai's head.
Harkness let out a quick, pained gasp.
"What?" asked Jai.
"Sorry. That hurt my eye," he said.
"I don't get what you-was
"Didn't you see the light?"
Jai hadn't seen anything.
"The hatch by the door, it opened for a second-was said Harkness.
"I'm not facing the door," Jai told him.
"But you're near the door?"
"Yeah."
"I think somebody slid something in here," he said.
Jai lifted a sore arm and felt around where she thought she had heard the
scraping noise. After a moment she touched something soft and wet. Burrowing
her finger down into x, she touched metal.
"I think it's food," said Jai. "On a tray."
"Taste it," said Harkness.
Jai licked her lips; they were metallic and salty with dried blood. "I
won't be able to. Anyway, I bet it's drugged."
"You think?"
"You're the prison veteran here. Maybe they want us doped up for some
reason."
"For what-another interrogation? They don't need to sneak us drugs for
that, not in our condition. They could just come in and-was
Harkness stopped.
"And what?"
"Is it me, or did that food come awfully quickly?"
He was right. It came as if he'd asked for it.
"Oh, great," saidJai. "We've been monitored."
How could they have overlooked that? She tried to think whether she had
told Harkness anything about her past missions, or where she was stationed, or
anything at all that could be of use to the Imperials. While she was still
racking her brains, she heard the door open, and then footsteps vibrating
through the floor, right next to her head. Light flooded into the room, and
Jai shut her eyes.
Somebody grabbed her by the hair, hoisted her under her arms to a near-
standing position.
> "Get up. Rebels," said a man's voice.
It was familiar, but Jai couldn't place it, even as she was dragged from
the room, even as Harkness began shouting, and his voice trailed off behind
her.
Platt and Tru'eb came straggling across the valley floor sometime close
to 0600 Standard, Tru'eb estimated. Somewhere beyond the fog and the overhangs
he thought he could see the sky turning pink.
Working their way down the cliff had taken the entire night, although
everything had blended together in the end; Tru'eb didn't really remember what
the journey had felt like or even looked like. They had just pressed on and
on, barely speaking to each other, and when they thought they just couldn't
take another step, they'd do it anyway. Then one more. And one after that. And
another. Most of the night had been eaten up in that fashion, and now that the
climb was over, Tru'eb felt dazed and dreamy.
He looked to Platt, clambering unsteadily over the rocky ground in her
oversized Imperial army boots; she was covered in dirt and white rock dust,
and her face was almost gray with exhaustion. Getting across the valley floor
was no less difficult than the trip down, as the ground was covered with
small, wet, rocky crags.
Platt caught him looking and gave him a wink. Tru'eb smiled back; Platt's
eyes were tired, but clear. The approach of morning was making both of them
feel sharper. Moreover, they were both filled with wonder and a sense of
brilliant accomplishment. If they didn't have a greater mission in mind, they
would have considered the climb alone to be story fodder for years to come.
Right, let's not blow it now, Tru'eb thought as he heard a loud, raw
voice echoing across the valley. He grabbed Platt's sleeve and pulled her
behind a boulder. A few minutes later the yelling got louder; a squadron of
drilling Imperial soldiers came crunching by, the sergeant screaming out
cadence. His voice rang off the canyon walls and floor and disappeared way,
way overhead.
His men marched on, yelling back in unison. They clambered easily over
the rocks, past Tru'eb and Platt, across the deep stream where the waterfalls
let out, and finally the troops jogged underneath a landing platform and
disappeared around a corner. On a distant cliff wall, a massive flatbed lift
sat with an AT-AT on top of it. Two army grunts stood off to the side giving
hand signals to the pilots. Standing in the base's weak spotlights, they were
a sickly yellow color.
"Small operation," Tru'eb said.
"Pathetic operation." Platt indicated the landing platform. "If this is a
standard garrison, there should be a droid maintenance hatch near there."
"Will the droids give us any trouble?"
"No. They're maintenance droids."
"And the humans?"
"We shouldn't have any real trouble finding an unmanned security station.
This Sergeant Radlin guy should have enough clearance to at least get a look
at a prison roster."
"And then?"
"No idea."
Tru'eb sighed.
"Don't fade out on me now, Tru'eb. You're the one who made us start down
the cliff."
"I know. Come along."
They made their way over the rocks and across the stream with
considerably less grace than the soldiers had done. But it wasn't long before
the landing platform glowed blue over their heads, and Platt struggled to get
a code cylinder out of her jacket sleeve with her numb fingers.
The only light source they had had throughout the journey down the
mountain was one glowrod, which had gone out shortly before dawn. With the
platform overhead, it was almost pitch-black where they were. Platt felt
around the wall for what seemed like an incredibly long time before she found
a slot and inserted the code cylinder.
As Tru'eb's eyes adjusted to the dark, he began to see a weak seam of
light where the door was located.
Something suddenly occurred to him. "I say, Platt-was
"Oh, yessss," Platt said happily, as a swishing noise heralded their way
into the garrison.
"Let's hear it for the servants' entrance. Don't you think this door is a
bit large for just a-"
Both of them winced as the garrison's blinding light shot out of the
doorway; Tru'eb was just starting to see again when he heard somebody yell,
"Hey! Who's out there?"
Tru'eb's entire body tightened. There was a long silence as he focused on
who was speaking: a man in a green Imperial uniform, like Plait's. Beyond him,
there were two rows of what looked like a patrol, maybe ten or twelve men,
standing in a small docking bay. Beyond them were speeder bikes, neatly lined
up and resting on maintenance cradles.
"Um... coming through," Platt said, stepping inside and pushing past the
soldier nearest to the door. Tru'eb followed, his head down. He knew that was
completely pointless. There was no way they hadn't been made already, and yet
the troopers were shocked into indecision for a moment as Platt made her way
past them with stunning audacity.
Finally one of them grabbed her by the arm and said, "I don't think so."
"Run!" Tru'eb shouted, charging ahead. The Imperials around him were
still confused, but the ones by Platt were already drawing their blasters.
Plattjerked free, right out of Radlin's jacket, and stumbled forward. When she
had gotten her bearings enough to run at a decent clip, she started kicking
the speeder bikes off their perches.
Tru'eb followed suit. Blasterfire spattered behind them, over their
heads, into the speeder bikes. The soldiers who had gathered enough sense to
run after Tru'eb and Platt came roaring blindly across the docking bay and
tripped over the vehicle in their paths. This really is a pathetic operation,
Tru'eb thought as he ducked behind a bike and fired a couple of shots.
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 foot pedal.
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 blasterfire stopped for a moment. Tru'eb ran over to Platt and ducked
behind the terminal.
A voice over the comm unit 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 theirthe
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
Tales From the New Republic Page 19