Consequences: Part Two
Dec. 24th, 2018 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
virtualvoyages
Jezari closed up the medpac and eyed the blinking message light on the lounge holocomm. She needed to change into a pair of pants that wasn’t missing one knee, and there was a bruise on her butt that could use some kolto. The message could wait. It was probably some old smuggling contact who’d seen the Luck in port and had a job for her, or wanted to catch up over a friendly game of sabacc. Unless the SIS had thought of something else she could do while skulking about Nemro’s palace.
If it’s the SIS, I’m changing my holofrequency. There weren’t enough credits in the galaxy to get her back inside the palace until she was absolutely sure they hadn’t been spotted.
The light blinked insistently.
She frowned down at it. The SIS wouldn’t have sent a message. It was too risky, and there was no need. Corso would’ve answered an active transmission. Even an old contact would’ve just called. Why send a message? You didn’t do that unless you knew nobody would answer. Or you didn’t want them to.
She reached out and hit the playback switch.
“Hey, Captain.” Kaliyo’s smirking face appeared above the projector, blue tinted and slightly larger than life. “Your friend’s got himself in real trouble this time. Official trouble. Think they’re takin’ him to Korriban. Something about execution. Bet it’s gonna be messy.”
“What!?” Jezari’s shout brought her crew running. “When!?”
“But, hey, least it won’t be quick, right?” Kaliyo continued. “You hurry and there might be somethin’ left to rescue.” She grinned. “Good luck, Captain.” The message blipped off.
Jezari slammed her fists down on the comm console, her howl of rage drowned out by Bowdaar’s. “Damn her! She didn’t give us anything!”
“Captain, what…?” Corso began.
Jezari cut him off. “When did this come in? How long ago?”
“I don’t… not long…” He shook his head. “Half an hour? Captain? What happened? Who’re we supposed to rescue?”
She growled.
Risha reached down and replayed the message.
It was no more helpful the second time. A destination only. No timetable, no hint at what had gone wrong, or where. The recording was low quality, the sort you could make at any public holoterminal. Kaliyo could’ve sent it from Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine, any planet in the Empire, or the next docking bay over.
“That’s it?” Risha tapped the holocomm’s display, as if she could coax more from it.
“She just wanted to gloat!” Jezari swore. “I never should’ve let him go back!” Kyrian had been so certain it would work out, so confident that the Empire would see his “failure” on Nar Shaddaa as nothing more than a mistake. He’d even holoed her after reporting in to assure her that it had gone “as expected.” She gripped the edge of the console, trying not to remember that last cheerful – if not entirely reassuring – holocall.
Something else went wrong. Later. While she’d been messing around on Hutta, he’d finally done something the Empire couldn’t miss. I told you to run! Damn it! “Why doesn’t anybody listen to me!?”
“Captain...”
Korriban was somewhere deep in the Empire, probably days from Hutta. There was no guarantee that Kaliyo had even sent the message right away. She could’ve waited, laughing, until it was far too late.
You don’t know that.
Fear wasn’t logic. Kyrian could’ve been arrested days earlier, yes, but even that didn’t mean they’d shipped him to Korriban right away. If there was a chance, no matter how small, that she could save him…
Jezari straightened and turned to face her crew. “I’m going after him. If any of you want off, I understand. But I’m going after him.”
“We’re with you, Captain,” Corso said. “Wouldn’t leave my worst enemy to the Empire.”
Bowdaar agreed.
Risha sighed. “The heart of the Empire takes special permits. I’ll see what I can do. You need a plan, Captain. You can’t just storm in and demand that they give him back.”
“I know that. When we get there, we’ll… I’ll…” Her knowledge of Korriban pretty much ran out after “Imperial” and “full of Sith.” Something about artifacts... Not that that helped. They needed something that would give them landing permissions, not another reason for the Empire to arrest them. “Fine.” She waved at the cockpit. “Get her warmed up. I’ll holo Savler.”
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The comm chirp cut through the darkness of the hotel room. Savler groaned and disentangled herself from Mako, who stirred sleepily. Unexpected comm calls were rarely a good thing, particularly in their line of work. She thumbed the switch, squinting against the sudden blue light of the comm.
“Yeah?”
“I need your help.” Tiny as the image was, Jezari’s worried look was only too clear. As was the scrape on her chin.
Savler sat up. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“It’s not me. The Empire… Kaliyo...” She ran a hand over her face and started again. “Kaliyo sent me a message. Kyrian’s been arrested. They’re gonna execute him.”
“Oh.” Mako leaned into the comm’s pick up range. “I’ll see what I can get.” She fumbled over the side of the bed for the datapad she used to supplement her implant.
“Kaliyo?” Savler repeated. The Ratataki mercenary hadn’t seemed notably more trustworthy than Imperial Intelligence. And she trusted Imperial Intelligence about as far as she could throw it, building and all. “You’re sure it’s not a trap?”
“He’s my friend! They’re gonna kill him. I need your help. I know you don’t like him. I don’t care. I need you.”
“Calm down.” Savler made an appeasing gesture with her free hand. “I’m just tryin’ to look out for you.”
“You want to look out for me? Help me rescue him.”
“Okay, okay. Tell me what you’ve got.” There’s not a hope in hell, Savler thought. The Empire didn’t screw around. She wasn’t sure they even bothered with trials.
“Not much. Kaliyo said they were taking him to Korriban. And implied…” Her voice faltered. “They’ll… Why didn’t I kidnap him!?”
“Jez, hey, we’ll think this through. Okay?” She rubbed her chin. Sith, huh? Maybe it wasn’t entirely hopeless. “You sure he’s been arrested?”
“She made it pretty clear.”
“You trust her?”
“No.”
Mako leaned in again. “Forward the message to me. I want to see it. And I want to see where it was sent from.”
“Smart,” Savler agreed.
It took less than a minute for Jezari to forward the message to Mako’s comm. Savler studied the message, and Kaliyo’s almost exaggerated casualness. Running high on adrenaline, she thought. Bet she recorded this right away.
“Sent from Caprida,” Mako said. “Imperial agriworld. There’s not much there besides crops, droids, and a few soldiers to run things.”
“Doesn’t sound like Kaliyo’s kind of place.” Savler glanced at Jezari’s image for confirmation.
“So it was today.” Jezari’s relief was audible. “Can we intercept them?”
“Hang on. The Luck’s not outfitted to be a pirate, unless you’ve really changed things. Where are you, anyway?” Carrying the comm in one hand, Savler started gathering her and Mako’s things.
“Hutta. Where are you?”
“Commenor.”
“Damn” Jezari said. “I was hoping you were closer.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’d have to meet near Korriban anyway.” Savler tried to work out how to get dressed while holding a comm, gave up, switched the pick up to wide audio, and set it on the nightstand. “If that’s really where they’re headed.”
“Caprida doesn’t get a lot of traffic,” Mako said, raising her voice for the comm’s benefit. “Not much to sort through. Ah! Small personal craft, internal code shows it registered to Intelligence. That’ll be your friend.”
“Kyrian,” Jezari said. “He has a name.”
“After he arrives, departures are…” She frowned. “Huh. That was fast. No, that’s it, unless they took him in his own ship, or he’s still there. Let me see who owns… Oh.” It wasn’t a good “oh.”
“What’d you find?” Savler asked.
Mako glanced at the comm, and the small impatient figure of Jezari. “I… uh… It might be a coincidence. I’ll see if they’re holding anybody.”
“You don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
“What?” Jezari demanded.
“No. I’m sorry.” Mako turned to the comm. “The first ship to leave Caprida after Kyrian landed belongs to Lord Dralick.”
“He set him up!”
“Jez-”
“Where’s Caprida? When did they leave? I have to stop them!”
“Jez! Hey!” Savler scooped up the comm, flicking it back to a visual pick up. “Listen to me. Don’t do anything stupid. They’re in hyperspace. You’re not a pirate.” It was the wrong kind of logic. “Jez, if Kaliyo was telling the truth, Dralick needs to deliver him alive.”
“Dralick tortures people for fun!”
“Dralick’s not stupid. If your friend’s supposed to face a Sith execution, he’s gonna be facing it alive and in one piece. Anything else, and Dralick’d be in trouble.”
“Everything checks out,” Mako said. “Dralick’s headed to Korriban, with Kyrian. And it all looks official. Intelligence had security cameras for a room in the administration building cut for a few minutes, but whoever did it didn’t think about the cams in the hall, or the street, or the port.” She shook her head. “Typical Imperial thinking – do exactly what you’re told.”
Savler relayed the information to Jezari. “We’ll use our ship. It’s got permits.” She rubbed her eyes. “I’m not planning this on four hours sleep. We’ll get going and I’ll holo when I’ve got it figured out. You head for Korriban and wait for my call.”
“I hate this,” Jezari said. “I shouldn’t have let him go back.”
“Hey, that’s his fault, not yours. Hang in there.” She smiled. “I’ll think of something brilliant. You know I will.”
“Thank you.” The transmission winked out.
Savler stuffed the comm in her pocket. “I knew that Imp was gonna be trouble.” She pulled her jacket on, and buckled her gunbelt over her shirt. They’d wanted to avoid attracting the attention when they’d arrived, which meant her armor was packed neatly in a case. Her scowl deepened. “We’ll be lucky if we get back here in a week.”
A week in which the other Great Hunt contestants, including whoever their rival on Commenor was, could pursue their targets and cut her and Mako out of the running. To save a damned Imp. If it had been Jezari in trouble... She sighed. It will be if we don’t get a move on.
“Aori.” Mako put a hand on her arm. “Braden would understand. She’s family to you. Of course we have to help.”
And Braden was family to you. She drew Mako close. “It won’t take long. I promise. Then we’ll get back here and win the Great Hunt.” And avenge Mako’s mentor in the process.
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Jezari paced the Luck’s lounge. The hours since they’d left Hutta had dragged so slowly she half expected to glance at the chrono and find that time was actually running backwards.
“Glaring at the holocomm won’t make her call any sooner,” Risha pointed out, not looking up from the datapad she was studying. “Have Corso fix you some dinner, at least. Or throw something in the autochef.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re wearing a groove in the deck plates.”
She stopped. “Damn it, there’s got to be some way to intercept them!”
“Even if we knew exactly the route he’s taking, and exactly when and where he’ll pop out of hyperspace, Savler’s right – this isn’t a pirate ship.” Risha looked up at her. “Captain, I know you’re worried.”
“It’s this waiting!” Jezari dropped onto the other end of the acceleration couch. “If there were something to do. But there’s not. And I can’t stop thinking about...” She held up a hand. “I know what you’re gonna say. I know. I know he’s a trained agent. I know Dralick has to deliver him alive. I know.”
“He’ll be okay.” Risha held out the datapad. “Here. Read up on Korriban. It might help with the planning. I’ll zap you something to eat.”
The image was red tinted, as if the display were out of adjustment; the rocks, the sky, even the light seemed rusty. Jezari tried not to think the first word that came to mind. Blood. Trickling down the blade of a knife, spattering the gleaming deck of Dralick’s ship.
“No.” Her stomach lurched. “No food.”
“Captain? Are you all right?”
Jezari shook her head. The image stayed, cold and sharp, in her mind. It isn’t real. Just likely, a nasty voice in the back of her mind added. Dralick had had it in for Kyrian from the beginning. Everything they’d done since could only have made it worse. “I should’ve forced him to defect. Handed him over to the SIS. Anything but this!”
“That’s not like you.” Risha picked up the abandoned datapad and sat next to her. “He knew the risks. He knew you’d take him in, or help him walk away. It was his choice. It had to be.”
“So, what, he pays for being brave?”
“No, he pays for being stupid. And you’ll patch him up and give him the spare cabin.” She handed her the datapad. “Read this. Eat something. When Savler calls, we’ll work out the details.”
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Nothing in the encyclopedia entry, or the other articles and mentions Risha had found, struck Jezari as terribly useful. As far as the galaxy at large was concerned, Korriban had been a mostly abandoned and more than half legendary planet before the Sith Empire had popped out of nowhere and reclaimed it from the Republic. It had been off limits when it was in Jedi hands and it was even more off limits now that it was in Sith hands.
Most of the information was almost forty years old. Then, there had been an abandoned Sith Academy, of interest mostly to treasure hunters, and a couple of largely deserted cities. Now, to the Empire, it was home to the gloriously reborn Sith Academy – she’d shuddered at the brochure, only slightly more subtle than a tourism ad, and far more disturbing – and to everybody else, it was a place people just didn’t come back from.
“It’s bad and full of Sith,” Jezari grumbled. “I already knew that.”
“And food and supplies have to be shipped in from off planet on a regular basis,” Risha said. “The wildlife is dangerous, even to Sith. There are still a few really reckless or desperate people hanging around Dreshdae, and, even though the only official port is at the academy, treasure hunters have made it on – and off – world.”
“It’s pretty much all rock. You don’t need a port. The problem is the Sith. And the wildlife. And the fleet in orbit.” Jezari slumped back in her seat. “There’s got to be some place Dralick’ll stop before Korriban. Or…” She sat up. “I could holo him and taunt him about wrecking all of his computers.”
“He’s not stupid. He’s not going to trade Kyrian for you. Or meet you for a duel. He’d send bounty hunters or soldiers after you and keep going.”
“It’s two and a half days from Caprida to Korriban. Longer if Dralick takes his time.” Jezari rubbed her forehead. The screaming was only her imagination. The blood, the crackle of electricity, the sizzle of burning flesh… only her imagination. Not real. None of it’s real.
“Captain?”
The holocomm chirped. Incoming transmission. Jezari dove for it.
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Savler wasn’t sure any plan could live up to the desperation Jezari had answered the holo with. That called for something more like a miracle, and she didn’t have any of those up her sleeve.
“Getting on Korriban’s not the problem,” she said, once Jezari’s crew was assembled. “Sith use bounty hunters, just like everybody else. The trick’s finding your friend. And getting off planet again. There’s also the chance this is a trap. So we’re making Corso a bounty hunter. Dralick might be on the look out for me, or you, but he won’t be expecting him.”
“What?” Corso said.
“A little paint, a better helmet. I think they’ll buy it. Maybe pick up a cheap dart gauntlet if you can find one. Mako even found a bounty rumored to be on Korriban.”
“Wouldn’t it be safer for him to look for somebody who’s not there?” Jezari asked.
“It’s not like he’s gonna be asking in the cantina. Just a name to give if the Imps ask who he’s looking for.”
“Are you sure we can’t catch Dralick somewhere before he gets to Korriban?”
“Jez, you’re not a pirate. I’m not a pirate. We don’t know any pirates.”
“Maybe there’s a fueling station or a… a… I don’t know. Something.”
“We know he’s going to Korriban,” Savler said. “We make our move there. That’s how it works. We go flailing around trying to find him somewhere else, we might miss our chance altogether. I’ve got this worked out.”
Mostly worked out.
There was just one thing they didn’t know, and couldn’t find out until they got there: exactly where Dralick was taking him. There were holding cells and torture chambers in the Sith Academy proper. And there were holding cells and torture chambers, or things that amounted to them, in at least some of the assorted other buildings and workshops scattered throughout the Valley of the Dark Lords. Sith used prisoners for a lot of things – slave labor, experiments, bait.
They’d probably hold a traitor in the Academy. For apprentices to practice on. Anything else’d be too quick. She wasn’t sharing that line of reasoning with Jezari.
“Get everything on the list Mako sent you. We’ll take care of Corso’s new identity and the registration for the ship. We’ll meet on Mycia Prime. Imperial, of course, but comfortable enough not to be too suspicious, and about as close to Korriban as you’re gonna be able to get. The spaceport in Nyron should be safe. You get there first, you wait for us.”
“I don’t like this,” Jezari said. “Can’t we, I don’t know, sneak onto Korriban or something?”
“This is sneaking onto Korriban. You pop out of hyperspace anywhere near there in the Luck and they’re gonna know you’re up to something. Doesn’t matter what kind of registration we put on it, it’s a freighter. And not a military one. You get everything on that list, give Corso’s armor a paint job, and meet us on Mycia.”
“And then what? We just sneak out of your ship while Corso’s playing bounty hunter?”
Savler nodded. “Pretty much.”
“There’d better be a lot more to it than that,” Risha said. “You’re supposed to be good at plans.”
“There is. I don’t want you or Jez worrying about the details until we get there, okay.”
“I really don’t like this,” Jezari said.
“I’m not sure I like it either. Sonic dissuaders? Swoops?” Risha had pulled Mako’s list up on her datapad. “What are you planning?”
“A rescue.” Savler paused. “You need me to send some credits? Getting some of that on short notice might be pricey. Here.” She didn’t wait for an answer. The swoop bikes alone were likely out of Jezari’s budget. “I transferred enough to cover you. Your Imp’s gonna owe me.”
“Savler.”
“I’m doing this for you. He’s a whole nother story. And don’t think I’m happy he got you into this mess. He owes us both. Big time. See you on Mycia.” She cut the comm before Jezari could argue.
“You okay?” Mako asked.
“I don’t like risking your life like this. Or Jez’s.” Savler sat on the low crate the ship’s previous owner had bolted to the floor in lieu of a chair. “I’m half tempted to ask you to stay with the Luck. If anything goes wrong...”
“It won’t.” Mako took her hands. “And if it does, we’ll fix it. Together.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
She nodded. “Just… promise me you’ll be careful.”
Savler sighed and squeezed Mako’s hands. “We’ll need a back-up plan.”
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Mycia Prime was exactly as Savler had suggested: a fat, happy planet, content under Imperial rule. Jezari hated it.
She hated Nyron's gleaming skyscrapers, visible even over the rim of their docking bay. She hated the oh-so professional port workers who would clearly have preferred her to be human. She hated that the docking bay was meticulously clean. She hated the thunderstorm they'd landed in. She hated the clear skies afterward.
Mostly she hated that they had arrived two hours ahead of Savler, and that they were still ten hours from Korriban.
Everything was purchased, prepared, and ready to go, loaded onto a pallet for quick transfer to Savler's ship when she landed. There was nothing left to do to distract her from the horrors her imagination threw at her, or from her growing fear that there was no plan good enough. Could you fool Sith with maintenance coveralls and swoops re-tuned for quietness? Surely the Empire had guards and sensors to keep people from trying what she was pretty sure Savler planned.
Not that you need them with Sith. The first one they met would see through any disguise. Even Corso's. They'd sense fear and lies and it would be all over. Saving Kyrian was impossible. They were all going to die. Horribly.
Every sense of self-preservation she'd ever had shrieked at her to flee, far from Imperial space, far from Sith. Impossible. Hopeless. But the only nightmares she'd had had been of Kyrian. Dralick had to deliver him alive and in one piece. Once the Sith had him, it would be a different story. They could keep him alive for days – weeks – until there was nothing left that was identifiable as human. And then, maybe, they'd let him die.
Dralick won't get there much more than an hour ahead of us. Another hour to get there, find him... It was too long. It was all a mistake. They should've found a way to intercept them. Pirates did it. It had to be possible. Why had she listened to Risha and Savler?
Bowdaar's rumble of concern cut through her thoughts.
"I hate waiting. I hate all of this. I want to just fly in there, blast everything, and rescue him."
Bowdaar gave her shoulder a squeeze. The waiting was almost over. And they might yet have a chance to blast things. Even Sith weren't completely immune to blaster fire, or vibroswords.