Chapter 5
"Smugglers!" Venka exclaimed, pounding his fist on the table. "Just how did you come to that conclusion, Lieutenant?" He loomed menacingly over where Lieutenant Del'Goren and Tilyer sat in the cramped briefing room. His cheeks flushed red with anger, matching the hue of his bloodstained uniform. He now wore adhesive tape to hold his shattered nose in place, and the flesh around it was already starting to bruise. Evidently he thought the debriefing took precedence over his own bacta treatments.
"That will be quite enough, Commander." Captain Ygra said calmly, waving Venka back to his seat.
Captain Ygra turned back to the pilots. Tilyer couldn't help but notice that his face seemed less sallow than just a few days before, and his eyes no longer had that hollow look about them.
"Lieutenant Del'Goren, while I trust your judgment, my second brings up a good point. How can you be sure these fugitives were indeed smugglers and not rebels as Commander Venka seems to believe?"
The dark-skinned pilot ran a hand over his bald pate, obviously trying to curb his impatience, "First of all, sir, they were carrying a very large arms shipment."
Tilyer bowed his head to hide his embarrassment as a chill ran through his body. He hadn't known it at the time, but those black objects he had managed to saturate space with were the weapons Del'Goren was talking about. They now resided in the Enforcer's impounded cargo bay.
Venka was quick to interrupt, "Rebels also need weapons, Lieutenant."
"But Captain Ygra stated earlier in the debriefing that the Dug were embroiled in a conflict with the Gran on Malastare. The smugglers were most likely trying to furnish arms to one side or the other. Besides, no self-respecting rebel would allow his cargo to fall into Imperial hands without more of a fight."
"What would you know of how a 'self-respecting Rebel' would behave?" Venka sneered. "Regardless of all that, you allowed the freighters to escape. We cannot allow—"
Ygra silenced his second with a simple gesture. Venka's eyes flared in anger, but he fell silent nonetheless.
"Your performance was commendable—both of you," said Captain Ygra. "You performed your duty to the best of your abilities, and I can find no fault with your actions. Shower up, and sleep well. Dismissed."
The pilots stood and filed out of the debriefing room. As soon as the door hissed shut, Venka turned toward Captain Ygra, obviously fighting to control his irritation. "Captain . . . are you sure this is wise?"
"Is what wise?"
"Your treatment of the pilots. You praise them, despite their failure. We cannot seem to tolerate such dereliction of duty, sir. We need warriors we can count on, not babies to be pampered. I held my tongue before in deference to your position, but I must object."
Captain Ygra raised his eyebrows questioningly, "You think this operation was a failure?"
"Well, Flight Officer Raan did allow the freighters to escape."
"Do you really think he could have prevented them? Two fighters against a pair of YT-1300s? We were fortunate the craft had not been modified with any weaponry. I doubt we would have been able to seize their cargo otherwise, much less survive."
Venka swallowed hard, "Yes sir."
"Very well then," Captain Ygra said. "Send a message to high command and inform them of our progress. I will be on the bridge preparing for departure." Ygra stood and left with a curt nod.
For a moment, Venka hardly moved. He was still trying to come to grips with the sudden change in Captain Ygra. The man had always been a staunch ally for any decision Venka made, even if he was a burn-out of sorts. Now he was suddenly disregarding his second's advice where as before, he wouldn't act without asking another officer of his opinion. He had never conducted a debriefing himself before. He had always left it up to his subordinates and never taken an interest in the minute details of an operation.
Venka was decidedly uneasy about the abrupt metamorphosis of his commanding officer. He was normally such a reserved man, and now he was suddenly making rash decisions like taking that detour into the Malastare system. Maybe he scented some kind of glory on the horizon with the new deployment, and he just wanted to accomplish something worthwhile before it was too late. Venka didn't know what motivated the captain, but he did know that it could bode ill for the Enforcer.
He began to tap out commands on his noteputer to compile the message Captain Ygra had requested, but with a few revisions. He detailed an encounter with possible rebel forces, the destruction of two enemy fighters, and recommended a more in-depth investigation into the activities of the system. Captain Ygra would hardly notice the revisions, and Imperial command would undoubtedly be delighted with the destruction of more rebel assets. Pleased with his handiwork, he headed up to the communications relay.
A harsh clang rang through the pilot's locker room as Lieutenant Del'Goren hurled his helmet into his open locker, "Venka is even stupider than I thought he was. Rebels operating out of Malastare? It's ridiculous! The Gran and the Dug are too concerned about their own petty squabbles to worry about a galactic revolution."
"Commander Venka doesn't strike me as the stupid type," Tilyer said mildly as he shucked his own flight suit.
The bald officer gave his subordinate a wry grin as he wrapped a towel around his waist. "Well, I suppose you're right about that. He's a very intelligent individual, even if he is a conniving snake-in-the-grass. He knows I was right."
"So if he knew it was the truth, why didn't he say so?"
Del'Goren stepped into a refresher unit and Tilyer took the adjacent one. "My first guess would be that he gets a kick out of making the rest of us look incompetent so he can feel good about himself. Maybe his mom didn't hug him enough. I don't know. That man is a social climber. All he cares about is making himself look better in his own eyes and those of High Command."
Tilyer wanted to say something, to voice the singular question bouncing frantically around his mind like a pinball gone mad. How could the Lieutenant rationalize slandering another Imperial officer so viciously? Del'Goren's words screamed in protest of everything he had been taught at the Academy. Commander Venka may have seemed cruel and callous on the exterior, but Imperial officers were of the finest moral and intellectual caliber. To make such derogatory remarks about another officer bordered on a court marshal-worthy offense.
But instead he said nothing. The pilots finished their showers in silence. After getting dressed in a clean uniform, Tilyer headed back to his quarters.
He punched in the proper entrance code and the door rasped open. From the darkened interior, Tilyer could guess that Gabel was on duty somewhere. A good time to get some sleep, he thought as he entered the room. His first footfall sent something skittering across the floor to rebound off the opposite wall with a metallic clang. Frowning, he reached over to slap the light switch.
The overhead glow panels flickered on to reveal a chaotic mess. Everything in the room that had not been tied down now lay scattered across the floor. Of course, that wasn't much, but several sheets of flimsiplast and what had once been a pair of neatly folded uniforms littered the deck. To make matters worse, the desktop light had fallen off, and the glow panel within had shattered leaving a mess of broken glass and white goo.
As he surveyed the wreckage, his eyes fell upon the object he had kicked earlier. He stooped and picked up the small silvery disk with a reminiscent smile and hit the small button on its side.
The image that would have normally oriented itself over the small holo projector was gone, now replaced with a haze of colors and shapes scrambled beyond recognition. Tilyer couldn't even make out the faces of his mother and father amid the morass of muddled pixels. He sighed and switched off the projector and begin to pick through the mess on the floor.
