CHAPTER TEN

It was an old spacer's tale that to stare directly into the blue tunnel of Hyperspace would drive the viewer mad. Beings weren't meant to view such a thing and it drove the mind astray. Kyle had never believed those stories.

He sat in his chair aboard the Moldy Crow, feet propped up on top of his locked out command console and face turned up towards the clear transparisteel panels on the canopy of the cockpit. The blue ribbon above him undulated with brilliant white light that shimmered through the cabin like the sun reflecting off of a river.

There had been an artificial river near his childhood home, part of an irrigation system that carried water from a reservoir kilometers away through several of the moon's farms before ending in the capital of Baron's Hed. He and the children of the other local farmers used to play by the river, despite their parents' protests. He had fallen in once, when it was just him and his father's droid. While he was sputtering and struggling against the fast current, the usk-shaped droid reacted fast enough to save him.

WeeGee was likely disabled now, killed with his father along with how many of those childhood friends. The friends that he had met at the academy had fared no better. His defection to the Rebellion had cost him his friendship with Meck Odom, another young Imperial officer that Kyle had convinced to help him during the mission to Danuta. While Meck had complied, he had made it quite clear that he never wanted to see Kyle again. Another one of his academy friends was killed during his defection aboard a luxury liner, life ending along with his parents as a captured protocol droid exploded aboard their yacht.

People aboard the New Hope and even in the commando unit that he had briefly been a part of had wondered why he was such a loner, preferring to take on missions alone or with Jan only. If they had the bad luck that he had with friends, they'd certainly understand. Now even she was close to meeting the fate that so many of his other friends had met.

The door to the cockpit opened, banishing all thoughts save for the present from his mind. Tarrin Datch walked through the opening and took a seat in the other chair. The pilot had a somewhat exhausted look on his face. "How far are we from the next waypoint?" Each Hyperspace jump had to be calculated from a series of waypoints, the best and most stable routes through the constantly shifting stars and space debris had grown throughout the millennia into trade routes that the majority of spacers used.

Kyle removed his feet from the console and unlocked it. "Two hours from Brentaal and then a quick hop onto the Perlemian to Coruscant. Then it's go-time."

"You're going to head right there?" The fear in Datch's voice was evident no matter how much the young pilot had tried to hide it.

"No," Kyle said. "You are going to get as close as you legally can to the building, though. I doubt we'll be able to get a complete scan of it, but I want to see it for myself before I do anything."

"How much time do you think we have to rescue her?"

Kyle turned around in his chair and pretended to check the console. "I don't know," he finally said. He knew that she was a trained intelligence agent, and was very likely trained to withstand torture if she was captured, but all of the training in the galaxy went out the viewport once reality set in.

"It's been four days since you brought me into this. How long before that were you contacted?" There was a pause in the young man's voice and silence fell over the cockpit of the freighter. "How did she get a hold of you that she was in danger?"

Brief silence was Tarrin's only answer. "You have to kidding me..."

The front seat swiveled around as Kyle turned to face the pilot. "I'm sorry."

Any other words that the rebel agent wanted to say were drowned out by Tarrin. "You don't know! By the Force, you don't even know..." The pilot buried his head in his hands.

"I'll drop you off on Brentaal when we get there. You can find a trip back to a rebel-held planet easily."

Brown eyes smoldered like embers. Tarrin pointed in ineffectual finger towards Kyle. "That's not good enough! You said it was unauthorized and I was fine with that risk, but now you say that you don't even know that Jan's in danger?" The anger faded in his eyes and the pilot's face went slack, chin dropping nearly to his chest. "I risked my career for this..." His mouth opened and tried to form more words, a few stammers the only result. "I'm losing my career for this..."

Kyle opened his mouth as if to say more, but turned around and faced the front of his ship. There weren't any words in the galaxy to console the pilot behind him. He looked at the console: still two hours left until Brentaal. He'd have to find a half-way decent piloting droid for the credits that he had and what parts of his armory he felt that he could spare to lose.

"How did you know that she's in danger?" Tarrin's paltry voice barely audible.

"I don't."

There was a slight scoff from behind Kyle. "I've been in Rogue Squadron and I've known some pretty reckless beings, but none of them would go all the way to Coruscant unless they were sure of something."

"It's just a feeling that I have."

"What kind of feeling?" The look in Tarrin's eyes reminded him of Mon Mothma's aide; curiosity mixed with a hint of knowing.

A laugh escaped from Kyle's lips, hollow and self-deprecating. "You're the third person to ask me that in a week," he said.

"And?"

"Look, I don't really like talking about it..."

"It's strong enough to not only risk your career with the Alliance for it, but others, too... That sounds a lot like someone I know..."

Kyle shook his head in disbelief. First Mon Mothma's aide and now Tarrin Datch. "And now you're the second person to tell me that in a week."

"You've seen it happen, or the feeling that it would happen." The pilot continued. "In your mind."

"Look, I've already had this conversation before, so can you hurry to the point?" A look over his shoulder let Kyle see the serious look on the pilot's face.

"That was it, wasn't it?" Tarrin nodded his head either in a nervous tic or fully making up his own mind. "I'm still in."

"Are you sure?"

"I've seen Commander Skywalker have so many of those 'gut feelings' to know to trust them. You're no Skywalker, but you believe that feeling like he does. One condition, though."

"That is?" Kyle's voice was suspicious. As much as he needed the help of the human pilot, the word "no" was already forming in his throat.

"We contact the local rebel cells. If Jan was in any danger, she might have tried to place a warning to them."

Kyle mulled the thought over. Whatever her mission was, she might have coordinated things with the local cells before she moved. She always did. On their last mission to Coruscant, she had him memorize the current location of half a dozen rebel cells on the planet and how best to contact them.

"It's a deal."

Tarrin breathed a sigh of relief. "Good. If you get her out of there and you both make it out alive, you two better put in a few good words for me..."

A small laugh that never escaped the agent's throat was Kyle's only reaction to Tarrin's request. He had planned from the beginning to lie to the Mon Mothma-again-and say that Datch believed that he was acting in an official capacity to special ops. Whether it worked or not would be an entirely different matter.

The prisoner in front of him sat remarkably alert for haven't slept more than an hour at a time for the past three days. The skin under her eyes had the telltale puffiness of sleep deprivation but they still burned in silent rage towards them. Leco Daam had been unnerved just seeing those eyes staring in his general direction from behind the one-way reflective transparisteel, but seeing them looking directly at him was entirely different. The anger behind them, cool and calculated yet barely restrained, could nearly be felt.

"Lieutenant Shalmohar, Captain Strange, Commander Ecclin, Captain Ors." Daam placed the thin datapad containing the files of each of his prisoner's aliases down upon the table as punctuation for each one of them said. "You've got quite the collection of identities, captain, and these are just the ones that we've been able to find."

Jan Ors did nothing but continue to stare at him, a caged animal that would pounce if given the opportunity. Leco pulled the chair opposite from her away from the table and took a seat. Clasping his palms together and resting his bearded chin upon his thumbs, he studied her in silence. He allowed her to stew internally for a minute before he finally placed his hands on the table.

"You covered your tracks very well, captain," Daam said. "Most rebels who have infiltrated Imperial Intelligence weren't as careful as you were." He cleared the datapads away from the center of the table with the swipe of an arm. They clanged violently onto the metal floor of the room.

"I didn't get where I am by being sloppy." The Kuati accent that had been perfect down to the inflections on the correct syllables was gone now, replaced by an accent from the late Aldera region of Alderaan. Each and every word that she said dripped with venom.

A grin appeared on Leco's face, curling wide and open. "Captain, you're here because you did get sloppy." He gestured towards the datapads at the side of the table. "You covered your tracks, sure, but not well enough to escape the Director's archives. Whatever your mission was, you waited too long to do it."

"You're lucky you didn't wait another day..."

Leco's face sank almost invisibly. "Yes, we found the rifle in a nearby building. Right next to a walkway overlooking where I run. A sniper rifle." He nearly laughed at the thought. "Not the best way to go about it."

The captured rebel agent remained stoic and silent despite the insult. Leco stood up and paced around his half of the room, the boot steps echoing off of the durasteel walls. "Let's skip the bantha fodder and get right to it." He stopped and motioned towards the mirrored wall behind him. "You've been behind that wall and you've watched me interrogate a prisoner. You know exactly what's going to happen here, already." He leaned across the table at her. "Here's your chance to avoid it all. The sleep deprivation, the interrogation droid, all of it."

His tone turned sweet, almost fatherly. "All you have to do is to tell us a few things: what other agents are infiltrating the Empire, what you were doing here precisely, and the location of the Rebel fleet."

"Go to hell."

It wouldn't be easy. That was a fact that Leco knew from the beginning but he had to offer her that out. She had refused and now what was coming her way was completely on her hands.

"You're quite defiant for your position. We know of your partnership with the rebel responsible for the ISB massacre and you're no doubt hoping for some rescue." He studied her face, hoping for any discernable clue and returned disappointed. "My facility here is very secure, believe me."

An almost feral grin appeared on his prisoner's face. "It's not him that you have to worry about. You better hope that if Kyle does come for me, you meet him before I get you..."

A chuckle escaped from Leco's lips. "You're not in any position to make threats, captain." He gestured towards the window. The sealed door opened and Donlat entered the room, carrying with him one of the storage crates that had been found in her quarters. "Speaking of..."

Donlat sat the crate down on the table, well away from their prisoner despite her restraints. "You wanted this now, Commander?" The well dressed intelligence agent moved back towards the wall and stood there. He fidgeted where he stood, eyes halfway down to the floor instead of watching.

"Yes." The top lip of the crate opened easily and was set aside next to the table. "Let's just see what you were up to."

Leco removed the three blasters from the crate and placed them on the table. The energy cells were removed from each of them. "Three blasters," Leco said. "One a standard Imperial issue DH-17 blaster pistol and two BlasTech HSB-200 holdouts. Some very nice blasters, two of which were used to kill three of my stormtroopers."

He put the pistols back in the box and removed the electrogarrote. "Nifty little thing, and good work on making this into a tripwire. Inventive." He placed the device back in the crate and continued his demonstration, removing and replacing the throwing knives and the detonator.

"And now, my personal favorite." He removed the electric toothbrush from the crate and held it up for everyone in the room to see it. A laugh escaped from his lips as he set the device down. "Pack something in the wrong place, Captain Ors?"

She made no move that she even recognized the item. "Forget about it when you found out that we provided toiletries for everyone here?" He handed the toothbrush over to Donlat. "Check it."

The younger Imperial took the device and opened the side panel. Leco overlooked the inspection, watching as the thick plasteel covering the power cell was removed, followed by the large cell itself. "It's a little larger than standard, Commander, and it's been modified to hold the cell, but I don't see anything." He grabbed a small scanner from his belt and moved it over the brush. "Scanner doesn't pick anything up. It's clean."

Leco held the power cell up towards the captured rebel. "Your little group has to make do with what you have it seems." The flick of a wrist handed it back to his pupil. "You can keep this. When you talk, and you will talk, I don't want a repeat of the last prisoner..."