Back flat against an inclined surface, Cal found his wrists and ankles shackled in place. Moving in a sudden flurry of panic, he slowly remembered the disastrous end to his fight with Trilla. As he tried to crane his head upward to search the room, Cal was stopped by yet another restraint across his brow.
Don't remember that from the echoes. He dryly thought to himself as reality dawned on him.
As if he were back in the waking nightmares he had seen through the Force, the interrogation room stretched out beneath him. Orange light and dense fog wafted up from the lava flows hundreds of feet below the floor, casting harsh shadows onto the ceilings and distorting the features of the few others in the room.
Two stormtroopers stood on the other platform. Masks permanently blank, they didn't react to Cal's small and hurried movements. Between them stood the Second Sister. Blank mask replaced, she stood with a perfect poise that hid how recently their battle had ended.
"So glad you've finally decided to join us." She said as Cal's gaze centered on her.
Not in the mood for a witty reply, Cal simply tugged at the restraints the kept him trapped in place.
"You won't be getting out of those," Trilla remarked, "but, of course, you already know that."
Trilla's taunt that he was about to experience the same tortures she had wasn't lost on Cal. While the look of the room from the table was unnerving, Cal did his best not to let the fear get to him.
"Talk all you want. I won't give in." Cal spoke with a faked bravado.
Not needing the Force to know that he was lying, Trilla spared a hand to tap a key on the command terminal. In response, body length electrodes rotated around the table with a mechanical whirr, blue-white arcs of electricity leaping across their surface.
Wide eyed and knowing exactly what was coming, Cal flinched before bracing himself. As he did, the panels stopped, their crackling surfaces scarce inches away.
"Are you so sure about that?" Trilla asked, voice heavy with conceit and hand hovering over the control panel.
Looking past the arcs of crackling energy and down to the faceless people, Cal cliched his jaw and didn't dignify Trilla's question with a response.
He wasn't sure.
With the hellish torture chamber folded out beneath him, the Ninths Sister's final words haunted Cal. She'd spoken as if a fall to the dark side was an inevitable fact of life, an impossible to avoid fate if the empire ever caught him. Cal's own visions on Bogano lingered at the back of his mind. Though he had destroyed the holocron, he'd still been captured.
The uncertainty of his fate set Cal's skin crawling. And this time he didn't have Cere's reassuring wisdom.
Cere… a half-formed memory of watching her get thrown to the volcanic vents below this very room crawled across Cal's mind. He'd told her to run. She hadn't and it cost her life.
"No response then?" Trilla's voice, distorted through her helmet, interrupted Cal's thoughts, "A pity. I hoped you would be a little more vocal."
Not realizing he was being purposefully goaded on, Cal gave an acidic reply, "I hoped you would turn back to the light."
Flinching below her mask, Trilla didn't show any response to Cal's comment. Instead, she indifferently activated the torture table once more.
Not regretting his comment, Cal screwed his eyes shut as the panels crept closer. Electricity crackled and snapped, growing louder with each second. Bracing himself and straining for how hard he tried to flatten himself against the table, Cal tried not to dwell on what he knew was coming.
A moment ticked by, the noise unbearable. But then, the machine rotors below the table whirred once again. Creaking an eye open, Cal found the anodes and their cracking surfaces rotating away.
On the ground, Trilla took a moment to appreciate the confusion on Cal's features. What a pathetic way to hide fear, she mused to herself.
Before he recovered enough to demand an explanation, a second set of motors beneath the table hissed to life. These brought a series of droid's arms around, each of them ending not in hands but in some grizzly tool.
With a glance, Cal found a scalpel, a needle, and a narrow spinning drill that droned with s terrible mechanic whine. Though he'd seen Trilla's fall, he hadn't seen these tools put to work. Trying in vain to squirm away from the surrounding arms, Cal suddenly decided that he preferred knowing what was about to happen to him, no matter how terrible.
"I've switched up the machines programing. Just for you." Trilla called from the floor.
Cal knew she was trying to get a rise out of him. About to tell her that it wasn't going to work, Cal didn't get the chance to say anything before the restraints clinched beyond their already numbing tightness. Wrenched back, there was nowhere to go as the machines reached over him.
Knowing exactly what was about to befall the young Jedi, the Second Sister watched as the half dozen robotic arms closed in.
She didn't flinch when the screaming started.
.***.***.***.***.
Toxic green plasma hissed through the air. Narrowly avoiding a zig-zagging Mantis, they fizzled against the water and sent up plumes of superheated vapors.
Engines flared and Greez rocked back in the pilot's seat, yanking up on the yoke and taking the Mantis vertical.
Taken off guard, two of the five pursuing TIEs screamed forward. Rocketing over the surface for the water, they quickly dashed too far away to have any chance of catching back up.
Just arrived and unsecured in the living quarters, Cere and Merrin scrambled for a foothold. Climbing more than walking, they clambered into the cockpit just in time to be thrown to the side by more evasive maneuvers.
"Captain!" Cere shouted to Greez, unsure if he even knew that they were aboard.
He hadn't, but there wasn't time to address that now, "Grab some seat, it's about to get worse."
To punctuate Greez's point, fresh bolts of plasma flashed past the cockpit.
Pained and working despite her defeat, Cere reached for the navigator's chair. As she grabbed it, the Mantis suddenly clattered to a halt.
Spoilers extended and forward thrusters engaged, the Mantis hung in the air for a split second. Shocked by the sudden stop, the remaining TIEs rushed past the stationary Mantis. Only one turned in time to see the Mantis falling back to the planet's surface.
Just as the TIE completed its turn, a thin bolt of red plasma launched from the Mantis and cut straight through its cockpit.
Dropped into a freefall a split second after taking it shot, the Mantis rolled to the side. Anticipating and correcting, Greez swung the ships counterbalancing fin to the side. Twisting back upright, the Mantis shoot off once again, this time free from the pursuing TIEs.
Greez tilted the Mantis upward once more, meaning to leave the planet rather than outmaneuver deadly enemy ships.
Still on edge, Greez clung to the yoke while trying and failing to diffuse some of the nervous tension on the ship, "That was a close one. You guys sure are lucky you have me to come bail you out."
Barely having recovered, neither Merrin nor Cere replied to the lateron, instead exchanging a look heavy with regret.
When he didn't get a snappy reply from any of his normally talkative crew, Greez tried again.
"Ain't that right, Cal?" Greez asked over his shoulder. Not immediately hearing a reply, Greez asked, "Hey, kid, you listening to me?"
Breaking her look with Merrin, Cere looked to the ground and considered what she would say. Pained and trying not to be angry over her failure or afraid on Cal's behalf, she hadn't come up with anything before Greez twisted around to look at the cockpit.
"Cal?" instead of finding the young Jedi, he found Merrin clinging to the doorframe, and Cere looking blankly at the floor.
Terrified that he knew why Cere had a pained look to her, Greez almost didn't want to ask, "Hey, Cere. What a… Where's Cal?"
Cere looked away and slowly lowered herself into the navigator's seat. A long and heavy moment stretched out while she centered herself.
She tried not to dwell on the day. Tried not to remember what terrors she'd seen in the fortress. Tried not to think of what the empire would do to Cal.
She tried not to dwell on Trilla's fate. Tried not to remember how heavy the guilt of abandoning one apprentice was. Tried not to think of the fact that she had led not one, but two promising young Jedi into the clutches of the empire.
Cere tried to do many things.
Most of all, she tried to answer Greez.
But like so many things, she failed.
.***.***.***.***.
Alone and afraid, BD-1 scampered through a narrow ventilation shaft.
Rotating his lone antenna down so that he could squeeze through increasingly tight gaps, BD processed and reprocessed what had just happened.
His friend, his true companion, had been struck down.
And BD could do nothing.
He wanted to run back into that terrible interrogation room and splice Cal free of whatever restraints the empire had put him in. But the controls were in the middle of an open space, and BD knew that the armed guards would never let him pass. So the little droid took to walking between walls, sure that he could find a way to some forgotten control panel.
The tiny gaps between cabling opened up as BD came to a grate in the wall.
Peering out of the durasteel slats left BD with a ground level view of an open room. There were two doors. One closed and being watched by two guards who muttered to each other, their voices not reaching BD's audio receptors. On the other side of the open space was a pair of open blast doors. Beyond those was a darkened room, one wall lined with seats, while the far wall blinked with a series lights that signaled a control panel.
Perking up at his find and having to purposely suppress an excited chirp, BD reared back onto one foot before kicking at the metal grate.
It tumbled away with a clatter.
Pausing for a moment, BD looked back at the guards. Finding that they hadn't noticed, the little droid scampered along the edge of the room and towards the open blast doors.
Just as he reached his destination, the set of doors on the opposite edge of the room whooshed open. Suddenly, the rumbling of dozens of marching troopers filled the room. Thinking quickly, BD ducked around the doorframe he had just passed.
The control panel was in the middle of the far wall, and clearly visible to the score of troopers. Much to BD's annoyance, the troopers also came marching towards his hiding place. Almost panicking, the little droid scampered beneath one of the many seats lining the walls.
Just as he was out of view, the first of the stormtroopers entered the room.
They fanned out. Several took seats along the side walls, while one with an orange pauldron over his shoulder approached the control panel.
As the troopers settled into place, the blast doors snapped shut and a mechanical groan sounded as the room lurched forward.
Unsure of what mess he had gotten himself into, BD pushed against the wall and hoped that he wouldn't be spotted.