Symmetry and Imperfection

Part 9

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Vader stared out into what men of an earlier time might have taken for Hell. The Algeda system was filled with mobile refineries and smelting platforms venting superheated gasses into hard vacuum. The turbulent gas giants, rich in ammonia, hydrogen, methane and rarer gasses reflected a sickly light. Massive rings of flying rocks, all that remained of Algeda's other six planets after being caught in conflicting gravity wells, collided with flashes of amazing brightness as their kinetic energy was released. Even the light from the primary was the livid, unhealthy red of a dying star.

Certainly for the rebel elements, Algeda now fit the classical definition of Hell. Pacification was well underway on the industrial platforms and in the belts, with resistance being worn away and rebellious conspirators being uncovered in every sweep. Each round of interrogation brought fresh information to light, and though time consuming, Vader found such activity deeply rewarding. It had taken much work to refine the Empire's interrogation techniques to separate sterling truth from brass-bound lies, but the success rate had greatly improved.

Vader had his own methods that meshed very effectively with the standard psych and neurotech to extract what he wanted from his subjects.

He turned back to the troopers flanking one such subject. The man knelt on the deck, head bowed and shaking. Ostensibly a rockhound with the appropriate brawler's face and sunken knuckles, Vader had picked him out of a lineup of prisoners for only one reason.

His ID claimed him to be Gress Joolan, human unadapted type 4 from Bespin in the Anoat System, an asteroid miner and cargo loader of ten years experience. Vader had simply noted that the man had all of his fingers, something unusual for anyone who spent more than a year or two in either occupation, and waved him out of line. Basic prisoner intake procedure established that anti-interrogation measures had been hypnotically implanted in the man's mind. Vader was determined to find out by whom.

Some time in an isolation tank under the influence of heavy psychotropics and hallucinogens had softened the barriers in the rebel's mind considerably.

"Again," Vader prompted. Thus far, the man had told the same story twice, using different words each time. Some operatives were of such strong self-will that they could memorize and hold a story against the most trying of circumstances, forcing them to tell the same story differently each time made it less likely that they could maintain the fabric of the lie.

"The... rebels pay me for each load of raw or processed metals and minerals I can skim. I make up the mass with ballast so the container weighs the same." The man's voice was soft, the words slightly slurred. "When I have enough stash, I call in for a pick-up on an outbound drone string from Beggalo Corporation. The string drops out of hyperspace a short way out from Algeda and the load is pulled. My pay comes in from a Beggalo account on Kal Madedo."

Beggalo was a Chandrilan corporation that ran droid-piloted drones all over Imperial space, Vader was unaware that they had any interests in the Outer Rim, much less on smuggler's pits like Kal Madedo.

"Who recruited you?"

"A rep from Madedo. Worked as a free-lancer, but I've seen him mingling with the big shots." The man broke a sweat as he ground out each word, this was pushing against the conditioning the subject had undergone upon recruitment. The consequences for breaking such conditioning ranged from painful to fatal.

"Name?"

The simple question caused the man to pant and stutter, his neck cording with the strain. His eyes rolled desperately, looking anywhere but at Vader.

"I find that your concentration is less focused than it should be." Vader raised his hand, tightened it into a fist, and the thick flesh of the prisoner's neck indented as if being constricted by a garrote. The guards shifted their feet minutely, edging away from a display of something they had been told could not and did not exist.

Vader watched with a clinical detachment as the man went through the stages of oxygen starvation, releasing his grip just before actual unconsciousness. In those few seconds after the subject got his first breath no amount of conditioning could keep him from insuring that he would have another one coming.

"Jik Haora! His name's Jik Haora!" The man lay on the floor, wet-eyed and sucking air in great gulps.

Vader continued with like methods until Gress Joolan had firm comprehension of the fact that a continuing flow of information assured a continuing of Gress Joolan. Vader then dismissed the guards with orders to permit the prisoner to have a cell with light; a novice Interrogator could handle the prisoner easily now.

Vader thought that either the rebel intelligence apparatus was getting slipshod with induction techniques, or that he had been doing this far too often for far too long.

The Dark side eddied violently, then settled to an ominous, glassy calm. Abhaia's presence was there in an instant, in the center of the disturbance, her presence echoing the eerie stillness.

The stillness and the hollow feeling that went with it were familiar to him. Once, many years ago, a young man knelt in a stifling, stinking hut with an emptiness inside him that was so vast that it might swallow planets. Searing pain and grief only fed the void; making it darker, deeper, and larger.

Now Abhaia was the empty vessel, soon to be filled from a dark well of rage.

So it begins.

The wisps of the approaching firestorm brushed his perception and for a moment, just for the least part of a second, part of him that he thought long buried cried out in protest and horror. He squashed the dead man's voice ruthlessly as he headed for his chambers, wondering what moved the dead to speak.

~