The girl stopped struggling. Lieutenant Bennet Vanderly was thankful for that. At nearly sixty, he was getting too old and too tired to deal with discordant teenaged prisoners. He disliked this business, but it was not in him to object. His service was nearly over and retirement would help put it all behind him. He would find a small planet somewhere, a warm planet, where the breezes were always there to blow through his thick white hair. Unlike most men his age, Bennet had never lost his hair. It lay atop his head like a snowy cap, perfectly combed and groomed. Mustaches and beards had come and gone with the fashions but his hair would never change. She had liked it this way.
The shuttle entered the Imperial Star Destroyer Eminence smoothly, settling down onto the deck with a slight bump, and the exhaling of compressed air. Bennet stood, his knees feeling swollen and sore from the pressure change already. Pausing by the door, he waited for the pilot to move into the main compartment. Once alone, he pulled a small flask from inside his duty jacket, unstopped it and took a drink of the bitter liquid inside. He hated the taste of bacta. He hated it even in the form they had given him for small aches. Even disguised in alcohol, it didn't stop the ripe, moldy flavor from creeping up the back of his throat. Bennet placed the flask back in his jacket and moved aft.
The girl wore a blast-shielded helmet to blind her and deafen her. Her hands had been bound together in front of her while her upper arms were restrained by a cord that ran around her back. It wouldn't have been necessary if she hadn't clawed one security officer's cheek to shreds. The thought did not seem to settle him and the sight of her made him shameful. Nineteen, he told himself again. She's nineteen, just like Kayla was.
"Move her," he said with a motion to the two black-suited, bowl-helmeted soldiers to either side of the girl's flight couch. They saluted him, then took her roughly by the arms and lifted her up. She made a muffled cry but the helmet made any sound she made impossible to understand. Don't look at her, don't listen to her. He had a job to do. The helmet was to keep her from knowing her location. Or could you just not bear to look at her? Bennet shook his head and tried to ignore the thought. As she was shoved to the ramp that led to the Star Destroyer's flight deck, he thought instead of a tropical planet with sunshine that did not hurt his knees. Just one more year. One more year.
The flight deck was in chaos when he descended and a rank smell flowered amongst a knot of dirty men all shoved onto their knees. Stormtroopers kept them under guard, carbines trained on them. Pirates, he thought. Their mission on station C-15 must not have pleased the Captain.
They skirted wide of the gathered group and Bennet motioned to the two guards. "Take her to the detention area to await the Captain's pleasure," he said. The two men nodded, saluted and dragged her off to the turbolifts. He watched them go, swallowing his concern and the vile feeling in his stomach. A means to an end, he thought as he turned from the sight of her. Bennet closed his eyes to focus himself. His duty to the Captain would demand all of his patience, all of his calm and coolness. He would deliver the news that the raid on the shipyards had been successful and his prize was in hand. That should satisfy the fat fool.
Captain Tamoth Raghar was an extraordinarily fat man. There was no standard imperial sized uniform that would fit his girth, so they were all shipped in special. Bennet was in charge of that, as well as all the Captain's many other insignificant, yet private issues. Weight requirements for Imperial service was closely regulated, and he was well outside of it. Bennet kept those precise facts hidden, and all the uniforms were shipped through odd channels to keep them away from the Regulatory Affairs. Bennet also escorted the Captain's concubines to and from the ship, as vile as they were sometimes. He kept the man's secrets, secrets that Raghar would entrust to no other officer. Bennet knew he should feel privileged but it only made him yearn for retirement more and more.
Raghar sat on a chair that been erected in the hangar bay from a TIE Bomber flight couch. It was just big enough to fit his girth and sturdy enough not to creak when he moved. His throne, Bennet thought with a frown. He has always thought himself a king. Bennet always thought he looked like a hutt on his slab when he sat on that seat. Tamoth Raghar was just as big around as he was tall. The naval uniform he wore fit tightly around his belly, which moved like an angry sea everytime he gestured. Wispy scruff adorned the Captain's round cheeks and many chins, though it was salted gray and brown. He had little hair left, and what he did was shaved short and under a small officer's cap. The only hair that truly grew thick on his head were his eyebrows, large brown drapes that ridged a heavy brow and hid small eyes. In comparison to him, the Captain's rank sigil was almost lost in a sea of brown.
Bennet had helped him obtain his current rank. He'd fudged over his mistakes, helped plan his attacks, helped him escape his failures. He'd done it all for Kayla, but she was long dead. Why do I still do it? Then he remembered the beach house and the sun shining on his tired and wrinkled face, the wind blowing through his thick white hair. All my evil for a rest. Rest is what I deserve.
The crowd gathered around the Captain was mostly stormtroopers and the few pilots who had escorted the men in after the mission. The Eminence had few pilots left, and those that remained were kept close at hand. Four of them had flown out to retrieve the pilots, Captain Marc Engy, Lieutenant Inan Orenson, Lieutenant Victor Kenner, and Flight Officer Rober Royce. Engy was an older veteran, closer to forty than he told people. His hair was shaved to nothing to hide his balding, and his tan face was lined and scarred. The only thing Bennet had ever heard said to be attractive about Marc Engy was his eyes, which were green and intense. In comparison, Orenson and Kenner were both younger pilots, leftovers from the last year's shipment of rookies from the academy. They had seen some action, gotten a few kills and survived. That had earned them their LT bars. Orenson was a short, blonde man without a hint of facial hair and a face that made him look ten years younger than his twenty-five. Kenner was taller, with curly black hair, a bulbous nose and constant stubble. Royce, the flight officer was a mystery to Bennet. He was twenty years old, a rookie from the academy with a fierce talent in the cockpit. He already outflew Engy and he'd seen a single combat against a rebel outpost and had made himself an ace already. But his record is clean, and a clean record full of talent makes for a dangerous story.
The stormtroopers kept the five pirates on their knees. One was kept apart from the others, kneeling closer to Raghar. Blood dripped from several wounds on his face where the troopers had handled him roughly. His graying hair was held back in a disheveled ponytail and his beard was ragged and burned in places. He smelled of engine fluids, urine and alcohol. Bennet's nose wrinkled as he came to stand next to Raghar, datapad in hand.
"You're late," the captain said in a nasally voice. "What took so long?"
"There was some resistance at the school," Bennet said, his voice stiff and precise. "The local planetary defenses did not take kindly to our demands." He kept his gaze straight ahead, over the pirates' heads, but he knew his captain was staring at him, a frown on his face. Bennet glanced down at his datapad. "We lost one man, a Private Jentower, and were forced to neutralize fifteen planetary police officers."
"Rebel scum," Raghar said with a wheezing breath. "I told you they were joining those terrorists, I told you."
"Yes, sir."
"Was the package hurt?"
"No, sir," Bennet reported, glancing down at his captain with a shake of his head. "She was taken in her classroom and transported directly to the shuttle." Best not to mention that the officers were killed when our shuttle opened fire on them before landing just outside the school doors. He closed the report and sent it off to Raghar's private office computer. "The report will be ready for you when you have need of it."
"Good!" Raghar squealed, delighted. "At least one of my men is loyal and able. Unlike the likes of you." The captain was pointing a sausage sized finger at the closest pirate, the one with the ponytail. Bennet guessed he was their leader.
"So," the captain said. "Was… one little station too much to ask for? Just one little station? I paid you didn't I?"
"I attack this station." The gray-haired pirate's voice was muffled slightly where his tongue had swelled from the beating. "But TIE Fighters show. Take losses, we run."
Raghar gave a signal to one of the troopers guarding the man. The trooper hauled back his blaster and struck the pirate in the face, crumpling him to the floor. "We run, my lord. Say it or I'll have them hit you so hard your own mother won't recognize you." The captain smiled at him, a big, wide smile full of perfect teeth. Bennet hid his frown.
The pirate sputtered and spit a tooth onto the deck, wheezed a breath into his lungs and then struggled to his knees again. "We run… my… my lord." Raghar was pleased and was grinning. It was a wide grin, splitting his fat face from ear to ear. A perfect row of small teeth showed, top and bottom. Then he laughed, his bulk jiggling. "That's right, you ran! I asked you to take a single small station and you ran."
The man on his knees raised his blooding head. "They had reinforcements. They show up, come from no place!"
"Nowhere."
"What?"
"They came from nowhere," Raghar said, drawing out each word slowly. "The correct term is nowhere, and the correct phrase is, 'They came from nowhere, my lord.'" He turned to Bennet. "Isn't that right, lieutenant?"
"Yes, sir," Bennet told him, hiding the exhaustion in his voice. "You have it in the right." One of the captain's more irritating habits was insisting on correcting everyone's speech. The pirate was looking at Raghar blindly, lips working but no words coming to them. Disgusted, the captain waved a hand. "I'm tired of looking at him, let's be done with this. Odan," he addressed the pirate as he lifted his bulk from the chair. "Odan is your blasted name right?"
No, his name is Oran, my lord, Bennet thought.
The pirate nodded and the troopers hauled him to his feet. "I don't think you properly appreciate the magnificence of an Imperial Star Destroyer. Allow me to show you." Raghar signaled and the troopers began hauling him bodily towards the TIE Fighter launch tubes. The man began to scream the moment he realized where they were taking him.
"Don't be such a coward," Raghar said, waddling after him and snapping his fingers to Bennet. He handed his captain the datapad with launch controls already prepped for him. "Plenty of your kin die in vacuum, why should you be no different?"
It didn't take long to load the beaten man into the enormous launch tube. The two troopers threw him inside and shut the hatch. From a window used by flight engineers to examine the launches, Bennet watched with a frown. The captain smiled. Oran beat his fists on the hatch until his hands bled. He screamed but no sound came through the thick bulkheads. With a shrug, Raghar tapped a key on the pad. Oran turned, his eyes wide with fear. His mouth opened to say something, or perhaps to scream. Then, he was gone. The TIE launch hatch had been directly below him and Bennet could see his struggling body floating through open space. He felt his stomach tighten but he had seen the captain do worse things. Much worse, he thought. And all of them I helped him prepare.
"Well, now he'll get a real good view I suspect," Raghar said, turning to him with a delighted grin splitting his face again. "Vanderly, I want you to be in touch with the commandant of the factory station by this afternoon. Let him know that we have his daughter and that we'll be expecting the TIE Interceptors ready for modification within the week."
Bennet bowed his head, wincing as his knee gave a sharp shock of pain. "If he refuses, sir?" I already know the answer but I'll hold to hope.
"Refuses?" Raghar said, chuckling. "He won't refuse. But if he does, tell him we'll send him one finger for every day he delays, and then after ten days, I'll send him toes." Heaving his bulk into motion, Raghar pushed passed Bennet and slapped his belly with a throaty laugh. "And once that's done, well I'll send him names."
Bennet nodded, feeling even more tired than he had a moment ago. Names of every man who will have had her way with her. He fell in step behind the captain, pretending to be tapping on his datapad. He was staring past it, thinking. Nineteen. She's just nineteen. A brief sense of bravado came over him and he looked up, intending to let the captain know it would only be a bluff, they wouldn't dare hurt a woman so young, so innocent. He raised a hand and then dropped it, the bravery fleeing from him. Just one more year and then I'll be sitting on a beach.
In the turbolift, Bennet finally spoke. "Captain, now that Oran is dead, we may have trouble securing the Hunter Hands Guild. If word gets out that we execute failures, it won't make us a likely employ for any more mercenaries."
"We pay well, mercenaries will come. But soon enough we won't have to worry about that. We'll have plenty of pilots." Bennet licked his lips and felt them cracked and split. He rubbed a wrinkled cheek. "But where are we getting the men? The Sector Admiral hasn't authorized us any more transfers this quarter."
Raghar giggled, his round shape shaking. "Lieutenant, perhaps you mistook the reason for our dear Hunter's raiding party?"
"To eliminate a communications relay station."
"Our own relay station, yes."
Bennet watched him. It didn't make much sense to me but what is he hiding? "Is there something you haven't told me sir?"
The turbolift door opened and Raghar stepped off, Bennet in his wake. The bridge was a bustle of activity, with junior officers running about like an upended anthill. He saw panic on almost all of their faces, yet the captain seemed pleased. Waddling down the catwalk that split the crewpit in half, Raghar went to the large viewport and placed his hands on the railing. Bennet joined him. Beyond was a sea of stars, the Star Destroyer's dagger-like bow cutting through the dark. For a long time the captain was silent, even when another junior officer came to stand, awaiting his attention. When he finally took the young man's datapad, Raghar only glanced at it before smiling out the window again.
"I have cut ourselves from the Sector Admiral's grip, Vanderly."
Shock ran through Bennet. Cut ourselves from him? That's treason! His face must have gone white because Raghar chuckled. "You poor old sod," he said and laid a datapad against his chest. "Everything's changed. I'm going to make us rich beyond your wildest dreams and the Empire can't do a thing about it. Have you heard of the Clom System, Vanderly?"
With a shaking hand, Bennet took the datadisc and inserted it into his datapad. He didn't dare look at it yet. For an answer, he merely shook his head. "I thought not," the captain shrugged and smiled, gazing out the viewport. "It's a system on the verge of civil war. Once we have our new fighters and two more Victory-Class Destroyers at our beck and call, we'll push it over that verge and see who sings the highest price for our protection."
He means to play one side against another, Bennet knew. It was how he did things, never committing, just playing everyone against each other. It was how I taught him. "Sir, is that… well isn't that…?"
"Treason?"
"Well, sir, I…"
"Yes, Vanderly, it is." Raghar turned to him and shoved the datapad into his face. "But the Empire will have a lot more to think about than Warlord Raghar." The term warlord sent another shiver up Bennet's spine, but that was nothing compared to what he saw on the datapad in his hands. His breath was driven from him and his knee gave out. Raghar laughed as Bennet weakly reached for the handrail, but ended up slumped against the walkway anyway. This can't be real. This is a rebel trick.
But it wasn't. The Emperor was dead and with him, Bennet's hopes for a quiet life.