For a moment Marcus' mind went blank. As if he had been an astromech with a memory wipe. And if Tom Rannan hadn't wiped the eyeball behind him this moment would have been his last.
The explosion behind him somehow shook him out of his reverie and forced him to concentrate on the tasks at hand. Which, basically, just meant surviving this chaos. Above, below, right and left of him and generally everywhere fighters were zooming past him, coming frontally… Luckily for him his instincts took over and if he was asked later how he had survived this living nightmare he couldn't answer. He just could remember one thing: He had to protect the Predator. She was somewhere in there and he just somehow knew that she was alive.
It was strange, she thought. Here she was, inside the rancor's den, at the brink of death or – what might even be worse – imprisonment aboard the Predator. And still she felt an unnatural calm after the wave of fear that had engulfed her when she had been drawn into the belly of the ship. It was as if she wasn't in her body anymore, as if she was watching everything from a position out of her ship even. She could see them all, the storm troopers in their terrifying white garments, the fleet officers in their gray and black uniforms, ordering the crewmen and troopers around… With a thud her X-Wing made contact with the hull plates and she could hear someone say: "Open the hatch. Surrender unconditionally." And she did it, with movements that seemed like that of a droid. She half-expected someone to shoot at her right in the moment her hatch had risen wide enough but nothing like that happened. The storm troopers were only holding up their guns, aiming at her as was the gray-clad officer – a captain – who shouted up to her: "Hands up and out of the X-Wing, rebel scum!"
Slowly she got up in her seat, always mindful to let her hands be seen. With equally slow movements she turned around and jumped out of her canopy. In the moment she made contact with the hull she almost felt the laser beams penetrating her. But nothing happened. The whole scene seemed surreal to her. But only until two storm troopers charged up to her and took her by her arms, while a third one searched her and stripped her off her weapons and the remaining three had their rifles trained on her. The captain came up to her, his weapon now at his side. Faster than she could foresee it he slapped her. Hard. In an instant she felt warm blood slowly dribbling down the side of her mouth. And then, with a grin as malicious as anyone could muster, the officer said: "Welcome aboard the Predator."
In that moment something inside her snapped. All the pent-up anger together with the overwhelming fear that had always been there underneath the unnatural calm and the desperation that suddenly engulfed her broke free. Before she knew what happened the officer in front of her started to choke as much as the six troopers surrounding her. Her mind went blank and only anger, fear, hate and desperation remained. She felt it erupt from her body and drain it out of her. And suddenly she collapsed into oblivion.
"Stop attack… have… prisoner… withdrawal…" Reslin's mouth twitched. She pushed the button on her communicator just a little bit to adjust it to the frequency she had just found. Quickly checking her HUD she found out that she had found an Imperial frequency that was labeled "unused". The Mon Calamarian blinked in mild surprise. Obviously Windrunner's cracking program worked better than everyone of them – including its writer – had thought.
Just as she was about to fine-tune her communicator just a tad more her R2-unit screeched and dodged the eyeball that had been coming her way with full force. As suddenly there was only static hissing on the frequency she had been listening to she cursed in her native language. Hitting keys on her HUD she frantically tried to find again the position she had been in seconds ago. Her gut feeling told her that this was important. She dared not switch her frequency to inform her wing mate what she was about.
Carefully she steered her ship towards the position her HUD showed her. Suddenly the hissing was gone and a well-known voice sounded over her cockpit. Immediately she hit her recording button and listened. "This… Zifra… acknowledged. Will… withdraw. Zifra out." The answering voice said: "Chesfer acknowledged. Prisoner aboard. Withdrawing our forces." Her eyes widened. Something inside her said that she now better should switch back to her wing pair's frequency. She hit the button and suddenly her cockpit was filled with Stevas frantic voice: "…tried to call you. What was that? I thought…"
"I made an interesting discovery. I just heard…" A blinking light indicated that their commander was trying to call her. She switched her frequency. "Biniir Leader to squadron: Abort your recent actions and return to the hangar. I repeat: Return to the hangar." She heard someone argue and Rannan silencing him. The tone he used made it clear that this time he wanted them to follow his orders explicitly, even if he wasn't agreeing with them himself.
Suddenly cheering erupted over the comm and she wondered what happened. Then Reslin saw the Imperial forces withdraw themselves. Her eyes widened in shock. So the conversation she had been listening to had been real. She shook her head. Until now something inside had simply denied that this was what the rational part of her mind thought it was. They had a traitor aboard. And it was their own captain.
Rannan was just about to leave the hangar when he heard Reslin's voice calling him. "Commander… Sir!" He turned. "How many times do I have to tell you lot that I don't want to be called like that?" In an instant he regretted having sounded so harsh but something about this whole battle and their strange sudden victory vexed him. And it vexed him even more that he couldn't quite put a finger on what it was that made him so agitated. He looked at the Mon Cal. Outwardly she seemed her normal calm self but he knew his people. He had frightened her off with his reaction, and he could hear it in her voice when she opened her mouth and said: "I… I'm sorry…", but he stalled her with upholding his hand. "Now, no need to apologize. Just tell me what you wanted to say when you called." Her barbs twitched. "Not… not here. I… we… just listen to that. Somewhere you can't be listened to, okay?" And with that she brushed past him. Startled he looked at his hand and found a little data card in it.
"What was that about?" He almost jumped when he heard Marlin's voice from his left. He briefly considered lying to her but finally just said: "Sometimes I wonder who our people really are." He then took a short look a their surroundings and said: "Come on, I need you to have a look at something." She raised and eyebrow: "Aren't we going to celebrate, just like the other pilots?" Rannan just smirked. "I don't see anything to celebrate. And if you're true, you don't see something either." Instead of answering she heaved a sigh and fell in step beside him. When he was in a mood like that it was better not to argue with him, even for her.
Only when they were finally inside his quarters he spoke up again. "Look what I just got from our Mon Cal.", he said and showed Marlin the data card. She took it out if his hand and examined it. "It's a recording card. Whatever did she want you to do with it?" He took it back and stuck it into the nearest data pad. "Listen to it. I just hope Byo was thorough with his bug sweep." With that he hit the "play"-button on his data pad and instantly the brief conversation Reslin had recorded emanated from it. Then, silence.
Only after a moment of complete shock Marlin finally said: "Tell me I just had a hallucination."
"If there's any little chance that we could have the same hallucination with exactly the same contents then I would." Smoothing a hand over her curls Marlin started to say something but only got out: "Sithspit." Rannan threw the data pad on the upper bunk. "You name it." For another second or two both were silent. Then Marlin said: "Ran… what are we gonna do about this?" He felt uneasy. This was one of the few occasions in his life where he absolutely had no clue at what to do. "I…", he started but before he could finish his sentence she said: "Me neither, Ran. And you what that means." Rannan rubbed his neck. "Yeah. Trouble. Big trouble. Really big trouble."
Suddenly feeling exhausted he sat down on the lower bunk and rubbed his hands over his eyes. In an instant two small hands were working his neck and shoulders to ease out all the knots and tensions. "You know…", Marlin's voice said and continued while her hands went on massaging his neck and shoulders, "there're a lot of questions now. I won't question Reslin's loyalty and honesty but how de we know if this isn't something forged? You know, a decoy, a fraud, something set up to make us look away from something else." He simply nodded, and she went on. "Then: Who was that prisoner they were talking about? Was anyone captured?" He nodded again. "Yeah. Mallan." For a second her hands hold still. "What?"
"Was quite unspectacular. I only noticed it because her XO tried to get it through to Control over the open frequency." Her hands moved a little lower now. ""When was that?" He tentatively sat up again. "Like… 10 minutes before the Imps' withdrawal. You think…?" She nodded. He couldn't see it, because she was sitting in his back but he knew her gestures inside out. "So we've got one question answered. Which only leads to a new question: Why her? And what's so important about her that they turn tail after they got her instead of finishing us? And what is Zifra's role in all of this? How many people are involved in this?" She stopped shortly, then said: "What about her XO? The seemed to have a quite strange relationship to me. Maybe we should start with him." A smile lit up Rannan's face which turned into one of his trademark grins. "What would I do without you, Lin?" She stopped massaging his back and crawled to sit beside him. "Go to sleep with a stiff neck and without any clue how to command your squadron. Good night, Ran." And with that she stood up and stepped out of his quarters after giving him a quick wink. He smiled again and just said: "I'm just damn lucky you don't know how much of that is true, Lin."
It was way past his relax time but he didn't care. Didn't care he missed the debriefing an hour ago. Didn't care he hadn't ready any speech he could give his pilots at the assembly that was due in two hours. Didn't care about whether anyone saw him standing there in the pilot's lounge, staring into the black void that space had become for him. To be precise, Marcus didn't care about anything at the moment. The Emperor could have been dancing right there before his eyes and he couldn't have cared less.
He looked at the half empty glass of cheep brandy in his hand. No, he did not even care about being drunk or not. The void in his heart which mirrored the blackness outside the transparisteel window just swallowed everything. There was only one thought in his mind: Why? He looked out of the window again. Debris from the battle passed by the window and the thought if that maybe had been a part of Randy's ship fleetingly crossed his mind. Marcus closed his eyes. How came that it was stirring up absolutely nothing? Had… her fate covered up his mind so completely that he was blind to any other feeling? How could have that happened? How could he let himself get so much out of control? How could he have…?
In a bout of sudden pent up rage, frustration and depression he turned and threw his glass into the nearest wall with every strength he could muster. But not even the crystal clear and crisp sound of bursting glass helped against all the feelings that were suddenly building up inside him. Instead of quelling something it only opened the gates that had held the gurgling, overpowering flood of emotions at bay. Tears welled up in his eyes but before they were spilled he shut them tight and turned back to the window, crouching down in one of the chairs that were standing before it. Having curled his hands into fists he leaned his head on them.
"You know, you could be charged for destroying valuable war material for that." He looked up and turned into the direction the voice had come from. Standing beside the pool of brandy with shards of glass in it was Tom Rannan, someone Marcus was least expecting. "Don't you have a victory celebration to attend to?", he asked with a bitterness in his voice that even shocked himself a bit. Rannan shook his head and came nearer, taking the seat opposite to Marcus and sitting down. He put his feet up on the table that was standing between the two and leaned back in his chair. Finally he said: "Is there a victory to celebrate?"
Marcus laughed a bitter, humorless laugh and retorted: "I don't even care." Rannan didn't answer, just turned his head and looked out of the window. Then, after some minutes of silence he suddenly said: "She wouldn't want to you to wallow in self-pity." The younger man looked up. "I… beg your pardon?" Everything in the tone of his voice and his demeanor told Rannan he was likely to be walking through a minefield but he didn't care. He needed to find out where Lochlin's loyalties laid and how he was involved in this whole traitor business. "Mallan. She wouldn't want her 2IC to sit in the deserted pilots lounge and drown in self-pity. She would want you to act as it was your duty. She would want…"
"Just what do you know Coreena would want anyone to do?" The malice and scorn in Lochlin's voice startled Rannan a bit. Obviously Marlin's theory that there was more between the two leading officers of Grey Squadron did have some truth in it. "I've flown with her for two whole years. Trust me, I got to know her."
"You bullied her.", Lochlin started, just matter-of-factly. Rannan tried to answer just in the same even tone: "Maybe. But I still got to know her. And what she wants most from fellow pilots is that they follow their duty. Whatever other problems they have, for her always duty comes first. She'd be disappointed in you." Inwardly Rannan cursed himself. He was about to get carried away. This was about investigating Lochlin's loyalties and not about giving the man advise on how to carry on after losing his… whatever Mallan had been.
Lochlin's gaze swept over him and he was surprised to see so much conflicting emotions in the man's eyes. When he finally spoke he couldn't quite find the balance between sounding professional and agitated. "She's been abducted by a sadistic specialist in torture who seems to have taken a special delight in taking female prisoners. How would you feel if it was your XO that would have been taken?" He remembered Marlin giving him the information they were able to gather about their Imperial opponent and involuntarily shuddered at the thought of her being taken as a POW by the man. "Right, I thought so.", came the cool reply. And then Lochlin said something which really surprised Rannan. "And then imagine that you know she's been taken because of the fault of someone of your own people. Someone who gave away the ship's position. Someone who betrayed us all. Now, how would you feel?" In an instant Rannan had his feet on the floor again and was leaning towards Lochlin, saying in a hushed voice: "I know just one thing. I sure as hell wouldn't run around the ship and yell my ideas at everyone who might come the way." Then he made a gut decision and gave Lochlin Reslin's data card when he stood up to leave and said: "Maybe you're interested in this." And with that he left the slightly confused looking younger man alone in the pilots lounge again.
A/N: Look, Sir, another chapter! Ahem, what I wanted to say was: I don't believe it! At least for some hours my writer's block has broken! Anyway, how was that? There's more to come, I daresay. Just stay with me ^_~