YOU DARE TO DEFY ME!?
Foolish, foolish child!
No. Do not seek to deceive me. I have outsmarted Jedi before you, and many times over.
Jedi more powerful than you. Better trained, older, wiser.
You are nothing to me! Do you understand? NOTHING!
Your power compared to mine is like a drop in the ocean. A DROP!
Small. Tiny. Insignificant.
Tell me, what did you do? Where is it hiding?
I will find it again, you cannot stop me.
Do you understand?
Listen carefully, young one. I will find that mind again, and it will be mine. Just as yours is mine already.
Yes, mine.
You are mine, and I have not finished with you yet.
I gave you your strength. I gave you the training you wished so badly for.
I gave you more than you ever imagined you could have.
Now it is time for you to repay me in full.
* * *
When Yaela first awoke, she had panicked. Her mind raced to piece together what she remembered before passing out, and to process her new situation. Since then, her panic had morphed gradually into fear. Her fear had turned to frustration and, finally, her frustration to anger.
Her first thought when she awoke was to wonder whether or not Byler knew she was alive, whether he had intended for her to be alive, but she had dismissed those questions very quickly once her awareness came into its full form again.
The first and most obvious clue that Byler had meant to keep her alive was that she was not dead already. Byler had stunned her, when he could just as easily have shot her with the same blaster he had used to kill Dand. He had then dragged her to her quarters. He would not have bothered with that, had he wanted her dead, Yaela reasoned. Second, she couldn't hear the ship's main engines running, which was a good sign she hadn't been moved anywhere. Or at least that she wasn't moving at present. All she could hear was the low thrum of the reserve engines, which powered the shields, communication systems, and life support functions while the main engines were on standby, or when they were shut down completely.
She had then immediately confirmed for herself that the life support was indeed still operating. She could occasionally feel the air streaming through the vents and swirling around her, tickling the skin and rustling the soft, invisible hairs on her arms. The smell in the room also held the unmistakably false and sterile freshness of recycled air.
Those observations would have been enough to convince Yaela that she was being kept alive deliberately. Had she still held doubts at that point, however, they would have dissolved when she looked to the table beside her bed. On it, Byler had left a small collection of basic food supplies - ration bars, food blocks, dehydrated fruits and vegetables, one or two fresh pieces of fruit, and finally some sort of bladder made out of an animal's skin, which held maybe three or four litres of water.
Byler had gone out of his way to ensure she had everything she needed to live. He definitely intended for her to still be alive. Which, of course, she was grateful for. But it was a bitter gift - 'A blaster that fired both ways,' as the phrase went. Looking at the food now, she could see it was enough to survive on for at least a few days. More, if she restrained herself. So how long did he intend to hold her captive? And what exactly did he need her captive for at all?
Partly because she did not know what the bounty hunter intended with her, and partly out of a childish defiance, she had so far drunk a little water, and eaten nothing. But as she looked over once more at the food, her stomach growled. Her resolve was quickly diminishing. She had starved herself for long enough that she knew it was starting to affect her judgement.
She had lost count of the hours she had been sitting, pacing, kicking, cursing, and battering everything in the room now. She couldn't tell, without any viewports in her cramped quarters, and with no holo-reader, how quickly time was passing. She guessed the better part of a day, perhaps more. But without more to do than lie on the bed and shout curses to the walls around her, while plotting and planning what she would do to Byler when she found a way off the ship, and then what she would do to Pace when she found him, her sense of time was not necessarily trustworthy.
Yaela was starting to tire, too. She felt fatigued, as she would at the end of a normal day. But that wasn't necessarily anything to go by, as she had been tense from the moment she came around, and since spent most of her time and energy on futile attempts to wrench and beat the hatch open, as well as screaming countless obscenities into the air around her. Mostly they were directed at Byler, but occasionally she had invoked Pace's name too, as she felt he was in some small way responsible for her predicament. Whether he was complicit, or even aware of it was irrelevant.
Yaela gave the door one last, half-hearted kick, before sagging onto the bed behind her. With that her thoughts drifted, infuriatingly, to Pace again. Like a dune beetle that circles back to the same dung heap for its meals day after day, her thoughts had gone no significant length of time lately without Pace making an appearance. The bastard was alive. Alive.
Yaela almost went back for another swing at the door thinking about it afresh. For all the good that would do And that notion made her even more livid. Pace was alive - and here, trapped on the Rook, Yaela could do exactly nothing about it. Nothing.
Yaela let out a groan. At least, she had intended for it to be a groan. It came out as a growl instead, starting low, and seeping through her clenched teeth, then escalating in pitch and fury until her jaw came open, and it finished as something more like a primal howl of rage.
As soon as she was finished letting the sound out, she felt silly. Her only consolation, sitting there in the echoes of her cry, was that with all the electronics in the room either disabled or removed, she could be certain there were no witnesses to her childish outburst. Her Lekku whipped around at the back of her head, reflecting her roiling rage within. The silver beads which adorned them rattled angrily too, as if in agreement.
In an effort to force her mind towards more practical matters, Yaela looked around the room, assessing her situation yet again, looking for anything that she might have missed earlier. That might give her some way to get the door open, and get her out of the room. Off the ship.
The control panel that operated the room's door was blackened and inactive, the small, spent ion mine still clinging to its outer surface. Even if she were able to remove the casing that protected it, she doubted there would be much left inside that she could use to re-activate the panel itself. The ion charge would have forced the power crystal inside to overload, and there would likely be very little of it intact that she could work with. In any case, she had already tried to beat the panel casing off with one of the crossbeams she had worked loose from the end of the bed. All she had achieved with her efforts was to leave a few small dents on the top of the panel.
In contrast, the comms panel near the head of her bunk had been blasted to the point that it was near unrecognisable. There was nothing, barring a few loose wires, which would have been salvageable from the damage. Unlike the door's control panel, the plating which had covered the comms panel had been completely blasted off, and underneath, frayed and burnt wires were splayed outwards. Beside them was the wrecked power crystal that the wires normally fed into, cracked and dim, with shards lying about on the shelf and floor underneath the panel. Even if the crystal was intact, and even if she could hook the wires back in, the rest of the panel was so badly shot up that none of the connections leading to the communications array would have been intact. Short of dismantling the entire bulkhead, and half of the ship itself, she would not be able to rewire the panel and restore communication to it anytime soon.
Yaela's gaze swept down to the untidy heap of clothes on the floor beside her emptied leather pack. There was nothing there that could help her.
Her blaster, that she had last held outside in the lounge, before Byler had stunned her, he would have taken, of course. Yaela felt an unexpected pang of loss. She liked that blaster. It had taken her years to find one she liked as much as her SE-14X. She would have a hard time replacing it with one as comfortable to use and hold, and that fit on her belt without taking away from the shape of her hips.
She almost laughed at herself, then. At the inane thought of being suddenly upset by something so petty, so trivial. How had her thoughts guided her there? Trapped, in a tiny room on a ship and with no way out, held by a person who killed for a living, for a purpose she had no knowledge of - and she was irked by a small blow to her vanity. The thought was so out of place that, useless as it was, it helped her to feel more like herself than she had for days. She had been so caught up in politics, the shock of her discovery about Pace, and her subsequent capture - things that were far bigger than her, a single Twi'lek - that she had spared no time for the mundane. Inane and trivial it was, but it was her thought. Hers. She hadn't lost control of everything yet, and that counted for a lot. A thought could be more powerful than any conventional weapon. A thought had brought down Palpatine's Empire, long ago. As long as Yaela still had her thoughts, she would never be unarmed.
Her resolve, however, did not grow as she continued to look around the room.
The only thing Byler had left behind other than clothing, bedding, and food, was the small, rusty tin box in her pack. Whether or not Byler had found it, or checked inside it, she wasn't sure. She wondered if he would have recognised Pace's old neck wear if he had. Probably, Yaela thought, but would he have cared? Perhaps if he had seen it, he might have taken it as further proof of her collusion with Pace. Either way, it was as close to useless as her clothing for getting her out of the cramped room.
Strangely, he had also taken her notes on Grayare. She was initially puzzled by that, but she supposed that information on the Rebellion's activities was valuable in itself, and could be sold to hundreds of people and organisations across the galaxy, if not thousands.
Yaela sighed. Byler had done a good job of leaving behind nothing that she could use to escape.
She felt the last vestiges of her reserve energy starting to ebb away. She would have to sleep soon, loathe as she was to do it. Feeling as vulnerable as she did already, trapped in a cage like an untamed animal, the last thing she wanted to do was willingly submit herself to a state of unconsciousness. But she could feel her strength fading.
The only thing she had eaten or drunk in over a day, was the little water she had taken from the bladder Byler had left her, and two large glasses of Mingo's ale, which she wholeheartedly regretted drinking now. She knew, with increasing resignation, that it was past time for her to eat. She leaned across the bed and reached towards the platter of food. Attempting some level of pragmatism, she took up one of the fresh fruits, leaving the longer-lasting, processed foods for later.
It was a gaba fruit, she realised, studying it closely for the first time. Not her favourite, but not entirely untasty. This one had a little too much green on it for her liking, but she bit into it nonetheless. As she had expected, it was tart, sour. Too sour for her sensitive taste buds. The acid was harsh on her tongue and cheeks, and she found her face screwing up involuntarily.
She sat there for a moment, chewing mechanically on the sharp, tangy fruit, wondering how much she could get through before giving up. Then she suddenly stopped, her mouth open, and her brain firing at a million parsecs.
Acid…. That was it!
Yaela had to tilt her head back to keep from spitting chunks of the fruit out as she laughed aloud, remembering something Pace had shown her years ago, in an effort to impress her. Of course a memory of Pace would come to rescue her at a time like this. It could almost have been beautiful in its irony, if it hadn't left a taste in her mouth as sour as the fruit itself.
Yaela swallowed the rest of her bite in one go, almost choking, and jumped up off the bed. She stared at the panel that housed the door controls thoughtfully. Dislodging the casing with the crossbeam had not worked. The casing was too firmly pinned, flush against the wall, and the best she had managed was to very barely bend just the corner of the casing a hair-width from the wall. But she hoped, fervently, that barely was all she would need.
Suddenly inspired, she reached for the small tin box from her pack. Opening it, she fingered the string and pulled it gently, until the warped and melted power coupling dangled from the knot at the bottom. She paused only for a moment to consider Pace's strange choice of jewellery - he had never explained to Yaela why he wore it - before shoving it inside a pocket at the back of her pants. She wriggled the lid of the box, twisting it as she did so. It took a few minutes of work, twisting, pulling, and in the end jerking it violently back and forth, until the rivets holding it together bent loose and one popped out, and she was able to pop the other out with her thumb. The lid now free of the box, she tossed it onto her bed, watching where it came to rest before she stepped up to the door panel with the now empty, lidless box.
Turning it upside down, she placed the back side of the open box so the thin edge rested behind the back of the casing's top corner, where it joined to the wall - where she had created the tiny gap. It was not without significant force that she was able to slide the box in a little, so it was wedged between the wall and the casing. She kept pushing until it was jammed far enough behind the casing to hold itself in place.
Satisfied, she retrieved the crossbeam, backed into the corner to give herself as much room to swing as possible, and hefted the crossbeam up over her head. With as much effort as she could muster, she brought the beam down onto the box. The crossbeam bounced off the wall on the way down, and glanced off the box, which sprung out and clattered to the floor. Yaela let out a frustrated grunt.
She bent to retrieve the box, and as she replaced it at the top of the panel she noted, with some small sense of hope, that it was somewhat easier to wedge the side of the box back behind the casing this time, and it slid down further, without near as much effort. Once she had it jammed firmly in place again, she stepped back and swung the beam up again. Taking care to pull the crossbeam in a little shorter than last time to avoid the wall, she hammered at the box a second time.
As the end of the beam came down square on the box this time, she felt the full force of the impact vibrate up through her arms. It was painful, but she ignored it, instead taking the moment to enjoy the satisfying crunch as the box's back edge slid all the way behind the casing, and as it twisted and crumpled under the beating, levering the casing another several hair-widths out from the wall.
With a few more jarring whacks of the crossbeam, the box drove the casing out further, and further again each time, until there was almost a generous two fingers or so worth of space between the top corner of the panel casing, and the wall. Sweating, lungs working hard, and her arms shaking from the jarring, she stepped over to the panel and flung the twisted and bent remains of the tin box out of the way. She wedged the crossbeam in behind the casing. With a little pressure, and bracing the crossbeam against the bend of the doorframe, she quickly popped the top of the casing out from the wall entirely. It tipped over itself once before bouncing from the wall and onto the floor beside her strewn clothing.
Yaela tracked the fall of the casing, then looked back up to the exposed contents inside the door panel. As she had expected, the power crystal that operated the door panel was fried, and cracked, much like the one in the communications panel. She hammered at the crystal with the end of the crossbeam gently, until the broken chunks of it crumbled outwards, and all that was left were two broken shards, dangling from wires in the space the missing crystal created. She curled her fingers around each useless shard, and yanked on them until they broke free of the wires. Like the ruined box, she tossed them behind her without regard.
With the pieces clear, and the wires unencumbered, Yaela turned and dropped to her knees. Scouring the floor, she quickly found one of the screws that had held the crossbeam in place, before she had worked it free, and took it up in her hand. Then she stepped quickly back to the bed and picked up the gaba fruit, as well as the thin, metal lid she had removed from the box. She had to sit on the bed for a moment to balance the three items in her lap while she worked. She pushed the screw into the flesh of the gaba towards one end, then stabbed the sharp edge of the box lid into it at the other.
With her contraption in hand, she stood up and moved back to the exposed door panel. Balancing the fruit on the lip of the panel, then pushing it in against the inside walls so it held itself in place, she took each of the exposed wires and held them against the screw and the lid. Nothing happened.
Hoping against hope, she switched the wires over, touching them to the opposing screw and lid respectively. She nearly started when the panel came to life. Lights blinked for a second, and buzzed. The whole collection of them flickered on and off. Then a sound that was as music to Yaela came. The door, with an infinite slowness, began to hiss open. Yaela watched with agonising impatience as, slower than a sun disappearing below a horizon, it edged apart from the frame. Yaela felt as though her heart was climbing her throat, pounding its way up in anticipation.
Then she smelled burning. She looked to the wires in her hands, to the exposed ends of them, and saw smoke slowly drifting from them. Let them burn, she thought. She didn't care. The door was opening!
Suddenly, painfully, a spark leapt from the wire on the right and struck her hand. Yaela yelped and jumped back. She stumbled over her crumpled clothing and fell back onto the bed, clutching her hand, just in time to look up and see the panel fizzle and crack, then blacken. Puffs of smoke wafted out, but it didn't look to Yaela like flames were going to catch. Which was just as well, she thought bitterly, as she looked to the door. It had slid barely a handspan out from its frame. She might not get out of the room after all, despite her efforts.
After a few uneasy breaths, she opened her unhurt right hand, to look at the left she was cradling. Her thumb was burnt. She could smell the cooked skin, as much see the mark that the electricity had left. It wasn't too serious, she decided, and quickly disregarded it, imagining what worse she might suffer if she did not escape from the ship.
Yaela pushed herself up from the bed and took up the crossbeam once more. She slid the end of it through the small gap in the doorway, halfway up, letting the end inside the room balance on part of the bed frame, and braced herself against the wall beside it. With one leg pushing up against the bed frame to support her weight, so that she was suspended between the bed and the wall, she brought the other up off the ground and pushed on the beam as hard as she could. The door moved maybe another finger width open, possibly not even that. But it was something.
Yaela, exhausted now, began to kick at the beam. Where she drew energy from, she might never know. Every time her booted foot connected with the crossbeam, a jolting vibration rang up her leg and shook her entire body. By the time she was ready to give up, her leg was numb and shaking. Her teeth felt funny too, as if they were loose and free in her mouth. She grunted, and kicked one last time, putting whatever she had left to give into the thrust, and it pushed the beam so violently that it rebounded from the bed frame and fell to the floor.
After taking a moment to recover her breath, Yaela moved to the door. It was almost halfway open. Triumphant, she squeezed into the gap, ignoring the discomfort as her breasts squished against the cold durasteel. She didn't care what she had to suffer through if it got her out of here. Just over halfway through, she had a moment of animal panic, fearing that she had gotten stuck in the gap, but calling once more upon her own determination, and letting out a cry of purest anger, she pulled herself through. She almost couldn't believe it when she felt her shoulder pass through and her body come loose, to stumble sideways into the ship's lounge.
When she did, she looked around slowly. Within moments, the blood in her veins turned cold. She fell to her knees, and breathed a heavy breath of defeat.
From the corridor into the cockpit, Yaela could see a rippling, dancing blue light, washing the walls with its glow. The tiny morsel of fruit she had eaten sank instantly to the pit of her stomach.
She knew what the light was without having to walk to the cockpit, and look out the viewport. It was the blue shift created by faster than light travel. She was in hyperspace.
She let her head drop, and cursed herself for an idiot. Because the Rook's main engines weren't on, she assumed the ship wasn't travelling. Byler's ship was big though, and she should have remembered that. He was towing her through hyperspace.
To where?
Whatever the answer was to that question, Yaela thought, it was probably not good news for her.
However trapped and helpless she had felt a moment ago, locked in her quarters, she felt it tenfold now.
"I'm impressed."
Yaela jumped at the sound. Byler's low, grating voice sent a rush of fear down her spine, compounding her sense that she was trapped in a cage. Fear was quickly replaced by anger. Cold, burning fury.
Her eyes darted around the lounge until they settled on the ground where Dand had been lying. Where Byler had shot him. On the wall, just above the ground where his body had lay, remained the only evidence of her skirmish with Byler, a blood stain that had smeared from left to right as Dand's body slumped down. Below that, on the ground, was a comlink. Dand's comlink.
"Byler?" Yaela matched the growling tone of the bounty hunter's own voice. "Where's Dand? Is he dead?"
"I would very much assume so," Byler said, his voice flat, neutral. "And to answer your second question... floating somewhere between here and Mak'Leth. Don't be angry, though. Please," he added, a little belatedly. "Believe it or not, I did not want to kill him. Collateral damage, you know - it's not good business. I don't get paid for making accidental enemies."
'Accidental'? Yaela fumed at the dismissal. Dand was a good officer, a good man. He had died trying to protect Yaela, and he had deserved better. Far better. But Byler had shown no compunction in shooting the man.
Yaela's hands were clenched in fists. But holding onto her rage, after all her exhausting efforts to break free of the quarters, was becoming quickly untenable. Her head was swimming. She should have eaten something more. She had little energy left for this conversation. In spite of herself however, she pushed up from her knees and stumbled over to the comlink, scooping it up with one hand.
Slowly, Yaela stumbled to the cockpit, her legs aching, and still quivering from exertion. She brought the comlink up to speak directly into it as she shuffled forward. She did her best to keep her voice from shaking, "You wouldn't have had to kill him at all, if you didn't sneak onto our ship!"
"What did I just say?" Byler spoke like a teacher softly reprimanding a pupil, "Don't be angry, Yaela."
"You killed the lieutenant in cold blood," Yaela cut back instantly, "Stunned me, and locked me my quarters. Now you're dragging me across the galaxy to I don't know where! Why, for all the suns in the universe, would I not. Be. Angry!?" Yaela was starting to screech. She was not proud of it, and once again wished she had conserved more energy, eaten something. At least drunk more water, even. On the other hand, it felt good to have something other than solid walls to direct her anger at for once. And someone she felt deserved the full brunt of it.
"Fair enough, I suppose. But I promise you, I do not mean you any harm. I left you food, which I'm sure you noticed. And I left the life support on. You had everything you needed in your room." Byler's tone lifted then, becoming quizzical, "Speaking of which, once again, I'm impressed. I didn't expect you to get out, really. And definitely not that soon. How did you manage it? Not that it matters, of course, but I am curious."
Yaela ignored Byler's question, there was not a single part of her that cared for where he wanted to take the conversation. Instead she asked, "Where in hell are you taking me, Byler?"
"You do not need to know that, I'm afraid. But, as I said, I don't intend to harm you. My client has no wish for you to be incapacitated."
"Your client? I'm a job?"
"Mmm," The Bothan replied dismissively, "In a way."
Yaela grunted. She had trudged down the passageway to the cockpit now, to find her assumption confirmed. Looking out the viewport, she watched as the wavelengths of the universe's background radiation, warped by the speed of hyperspace travel, zoomed past in the familiar tunnel shape, dazzling in all their shades of blue.
Yaela looked down at the ship's controls to see they were lifeless. Byler had accounted for any outcome. Not that banking a ship out of hyperspace while it was being towed was ever a good idea, anyway. But she may have been willing to risk it in this case. She sighed. A last glimmer of hope glowed within her, and she turned out of the cockpit to make her way to the aft of the Rook.
"How long will you be towing me through hyperspace?"
"A few days, I'd guess."
Yaela had expected a response much the same, but she felt the words as a small blow nonetheless. As she walked through the lounge, she scoured the room quickly with her eyes. As she had guessed, her blaster was nowhere in sight. Byler wasn't a genius, but neither was he a complete fool.
She kept on walking, to the opposite side of the lounge, and the blast door that led into the comms room slid open as she neared it.
"What about Reethers? Did you kill him too?" Yaela snarled.
"Is that the kid that was with you? I'm not even sure if he knows you're gone. He didn't come back to the ship before we left, if that gives you any comfort."
It did, but Yaela did not want to concede anything to Byler at the moment. She stepped through the hatchway into the comms room, and found exactly what she had expected to find. The communication panel was fried. Blasted, much like the smaller version in her quarters. She hadn't expected anything different, of course.
Byler's voice came to life through the comlink again, "By now you've had a good look through the ship, I imagine. So you know there's nothing you can do to change the situation."
Yaela said nothing. She did not want to give him the satisfaction.
"OK, I'll take that as a yes, I guess. Well, the other thing you need to know, is that I've rigged explosives around the hull. I'm not sure you could manage to, either way, but if you do try anything stupid, I'll blow the Rook apart."
Yaela's teeth pressed hard together, but she remained silent.
"Got it?" Byler was waiting for her to acknowledge him.
His voice was so calm, and pleasant, almost as if he were baiting Yaela into an outburst. It was for this reason alone that she did not give him one.
"Of course. It's all perfectly reasonable, Byler," She said pleasantly.
Byler laughed, the sound even more throaty over the comlink than it would have been in the flesh. "Well," he said, "It's been great catching up, Yaela, but I'm afraid you won't hear from me again until we get to where we're going. Like I said, don't do anything stupid."
Yaela felt the conversation was far from over. She wanted to ask about Pace, wanted to ask again where he was taking her, and why. But she knew he would not indulge her. He would have given her all that information already, if he had wanted her to know. And she did not like the thought of begging to Byler for more.
All she said was, "I've never done anything stupid in my life, Byler."
The Bothan laughed again, "I beg to differ, counselor," he said the word with heavy sarcasm. "Look around you, for example. Anyway, I have… things to attend to over here. Enjoy your rest."
And that was it. The comlink cut off with a click, and Byler's voice was gone.
Yaela breathed out heavily. For now, there was nothing she could do to change her situation. Byler had made sure of it.
She threw the comlink carelessly to the floor beside her, and turned to her left. She walked across the room to the far wall. There, mostly hidden, was the panel she had popped open yesterday - or at least she presumed it was yesterday - and had punched her emergency transmission code into.
She pushed it gently with her forefinger again, and it popped open softly. Behind the panel was the pad with six buttons. Above the numbers, a single red light pulsed, blinking at every count of twenty.
Byler had not disabled the emergency beacon. He was good, but not infallible.
Yaela had no clue who might receive the signal, or what they would do if and when they did, but it was the only hope she had left, now.
A small, but satisfied smile crept slowly across Yaela's face.