insert typical star wars "this is not my own little galaxy" type disclaimer here. and enjoy!
I had been in Madam Director's presence several times in my several years enjoying her hospitality, if you could call it that, but she had never scared me. When I was first introduced to her, I was only thirteen or fourteen and had lost everything I had known, along with more that I didn't and would never know. I had nothing to lose; why be scared? She promised me safety, and I believed her.
Maybe I had been naive then. Maybe I still was, because the Old Man's words rang true but I couldn't bring myself to believe them.
At any rate, I wasn't so sure I believed the Director anymore. The only thing I was sure of was that I didn't like her, which was probably why I was standing here, cowering before her towering, blood-red presence. Her blue eye glittered like ice and her red burned like fire. Iceheart. It made sense, in a twisted, Rebel sort of way.
Her scarlet clothes seemed a little different than last time. Her office, too: it was warmer and more humid, which seemed to be the reason for her altered clothing. The change didn't make much sense; it was out of place for a woman who was known to worship the Imperial throne and its world. If anything, her office should've felt like Imperial Center, or at least like my home. This couldn't be my home – were those green trees outside her window?
Green was life. She preferred its opposite, red, the color of blood and death. Wherever we were, she had to hate it.
"Where am I?" I asked timidly.
Her mismatched eyes bored into my soul. "I didn't bring you here to answer questions, prisoner."
I shrank back, scared. She was angry. I couldn't recall her ever referring to me as a prisoner before, even though I had figure out by now that I was one. The previous times I had seen her, I was a "guest." How naive could I be?
So that's how it was. Lying Huttslime.
No, wait. Hadn't the Old Man said that she had murdered her own father so she could rise to power herself? It was probably only one in a million murders she had committed.
Lying, murdering Huttslime.
I almost smiled. My revised opinion felt much better than my view of her as a caring rescuer, a viewpoint that I now realized made as much sense as my "story." Her records proving my story could just as easily be fakes, more lies to suit her personality; maybe, when I was free, I could find the real records and the truth.
"You've been lying to me." The words slipped out faster than I could control them. I clamped my hand over my mouth. If I had felt like a schoolboy before the Corsec-stranger, this was exponentially worse.
She laughed harshly. "Something's wrong with your head, little child. You're being transferred, a reward for good behavior despite that last comment.
I perked up. "Th-th-thank you, Madam Director," I whispered. It was finally happening, just like I knew it would. Maybe Dodonna was the Huttslime after all.
But that didn't seem right . . ..
Iceheart had stolen my name. I had mulled it over for at least a week, and there was no escaping that conclusion. Celchu had retained his name when she was dealing with him, because it suited her for him to keep it. To hear the others tell it, Celchu's name enabled her to use him to capture the Corsec-stranger; whether he actually committed the murder and treason was irrelevant.
It suited her to destroy my name. Nameless as I was, without a soul in the galaxy who really knew who I was, I could be whoever she decided I was. Corsec's face popped into my mind, along with an even less welcome thought. He had mentioned the traitor time-bombs that came out of Lusankya, the name given for our home every time one of those little time-bombs exploded. Without a name, I could be one. A variable bomb, adaptable to absolutely any situation she deemed worthy, was the ultimate weapon and nightmare.
I loathed the idea of being her precious superweapon.
But now I was confused. She was lying, the Rebel was lying . . . maybe they both were Huttslime. Maybe the galaxy was full of slime.
The Director grew wary of my silence, her eyes simultaneously burning hotter and freezing colder. "I think you'll be one of the prisoners coming with me to Ciutric if the Ashern rebellion actually succeeds. Maybe I can find some use for a sniveling baby rancor like yourself there. Guards! Bring me the next one!"
I frowned. What had I done to deserve that, let alone the whole insult of my life at Lusankya . . . well, besides calling her lying, murdering Huttslime. But I was pretty sure I hadn't said that out loud.
The guards, perfect imitations and replicas of the Emperor's royal guardsmen I had once seen on the holos, led me to a small chamber, an isolated cell. It was the first time in years I had been alone, betrayed and absolutely worthless. Biologically, I was supposed to be a grown man, maybe nineteen or twenty years old, but I knew I never acted like one.
I never knew how. My childhood was stolen along with my name. Ashamed, I began to cry.
Maybe Iceheart was right. About the baby part, anyway.
Thyferra: the Life-Giver planet, lusciously green capital of the bacta cartel and the sole reason that millions of people who should have died still lived, had been our home for the past two months or so.
No wonder Iceheart had been in such a bad mood for the past few weeks.
Our accommodations planet-side were decidedly better than they had been aboard the Super Star Destroyer, Lusankya. Not that that said much, of course; we were still buried underground, in a mine shaft long forgotten by anyone but the Director's people. It looked much the same, but felt better: warmer, more humid, more human. The confirmation that our prison had been a ship was enough for me to revoke Dodonna's label of "lying, murdering Huttslime" and upgrade the Director's label to a collection of insults hand-picked from the finest pilots' vocabularies in Corellia's spaceports during my childhood. Even worse than "living" on the SSD was all the implications of our, my, presence there.
In addition to revealing our former and present locations, she let us watch the Holonet while there; strictly to torment us I imagine, because all we ever saw were the increasingly dismal and painful news reports from the Rebellion's – the New Republic's – Imperial Center – Coruscant – detailing the plague she had unleashed on the city-planet.
The image of the utter destruction left behind from Lusankya's departure from its place buried beneath the surface of – I almost choked getting the name out the first time, having lived and believed in the Empire for so long – Coruscant remained fresh in my memory, despite it having been two months since the only time I saw the holos. It was beyond terrible, beyond the reaches of anyone's colorful vocabulary to describe. The Old Man had remarked that even Han Solo, cocky smuggler-hero who only stuck around the Rebellion for her princess, couldn't come up with enough curses to describe what Iceheart had done in bringing the ship out from its home far beneath the ground.
We all felt somewhat responsible, in a twisted, Rebel sort of way. We were buried down there; some of them thought we were the only reason for the ship. I doubted that, but the idea stung. the Old Man even went so far as to say he thought the Corsec-stranger had escaped, having figured out the secrets of the prison, and Iceheart's flight was in response to that.
The name-stealer murdered billions in a gross, terrified overreaction to one man's escape. And that wasn't even counting the Krytos plague we repeatedly heard about on the Holonet. I think Derricote had a hand in it; the biotics genius had landed in prison and the Director's disfavor right around the time the holonews claimed the plague started. It scared me to think that the disease wasn't potent enough to please the Director, and its existence completely confirmed that everything I had grown up believing was wrong.
If she was the head of the Empire, there was nothing but evil in the government.
Maybe in the galaxy.
Lusankya, we think, hangs in the Thyferran sky we can't see, still covered in the dirt and grime accumulated from sleeping under Imperial, no, Coruscant's surface for so long; a filthy, nasty super-warship befitting a filthy, nasty, name-stealing super-villain.
I shook my head. Billions had died, and millions more would die, by her hand, and I was still stuck on the fact that she stole my name. It struck me that I could easily create a new name and defy her once and for all, but I didn't want to do that. That would be to lie, and lying would bring me down to her level.
There I go again, twisted Rebel logic.
Of course, the Imperial logic I had come to believe led to more deaths than there are numbers known to man. Maybe theirs was the twisted logic. Everything the Empire said had to be a lie in the face of the atrocities occurring on Im- Coruscant. Hell, they were probably the ones who destroyed Alderaan, not the Rebels. Just like the Old Man and everyone else had said all along. The Jedi Purges, they were responsible for those, too. It didn't take much imagination to place the pirates that constantly struck around Corellia on the Imperial payroll.
It didn't take much imagination to accredit every evil that had ever struck the galaxy to the Empire, from the smallest act of piracy to the destruction of Alderaan. Simply being a known Rebel stronghold couldn't be a reason to annihilate an entire planet. Even a "scourge" like the Rebellion was no reason to unleash a plague like the Krytos virus: the Holonet reporters were predicting that entire species would be extinct within three to five months, some of which never had anything to do with the Rebellion.
I sat in front of the screen, clenched fists, jaw set in anger. "You know, kid," the Old Man said quietly. "She's showing us this to scare us, not to incite us against her." He paused. "I thought you always wanted to be an Imperial."
I glanced at him. "If that," I spat, pointing at the images before us, "is what being an Imperial means, I want no part in it."
The Old Man smiled kindly. "I agree."
Slowly, mineshaft began to shake, beginning with the odd collection of threatening bones that supposedly belonged to the Corsec-stranger rattling on the floor. But this time, Iceheart's henchmen – because just as much as we were prisoners, the servants were henchmen – rushed to our rescue. We were hastily herded onto a trio of innocuous-looking luxury shuttles and strapped in, our hands bound behind our backs.
Despite the company- or, more accurately, the financier of our trip, it was one of the nicest freighters I had ever traveled on. Granted, it was several long days in hyperspace, all of which we spent strapped in the only place large enough to hold us all together, the cargo hold. We ate stormtrooper rations and shared a single refresher.
"It could be worse," Sette remarked out of the blue, the second day of hyperspace and the second day of silence.
The other forty or so prisoners, myself included, turned and stared at him.
"He's right," another piped up. "No mines."
"No make-work," someone else added.
"Yet," a fourth voice, cynical and callused.
"Shut up in there!" a harsh voice bellowed from an opening doorway towards the front of the hold. "Don't make me ask twice!"
We fell silent. It was better not to risk retribution for something as silly as commenting on our ever-so-slightly improved conditions. Despite the anger our exposure the holonews had generated, it had instilled a healthy amount of fear, which was the Director's intention in the first place. The implication of the Krytosreports was overwhelmingly obvious.
None of us wanted to be the next victim.
Another day or so passed in silence; it might have been two or even three days, but keeping track of time had become as elusive to me as remembering names. A year ago, I would've quickly and eagerly blamed the Rebels for putting me in this situation to begin with; now, thankfully, I knew better.
I was infinitely glad the revelation had come before I was released to the wilds of the galaxy. I think the Old Man was, too. After that last conversation on Lusankya, he had grown warmer towards me, almost like a father. In fact, the entire Rebel contingent had become even nicer than I realized they had been before; he must've told them about my ever-so-slow change of heart. I resented the idea of effectively being gossiped about, but at the same time, rejoiced in it. It was . . . humanizing.
Gossip was for people. And if we gossiped, we were people. And people were free: Iceheart couldn't really do anything to us.
I grunted. More Rebel logic.
I liked it.