Chapter Six: The Most Dangerous Person
With the pirates dispatched, the unit wasted no time enabling communications with the ship. Cress called for an emergency medical droid.
Sergeant Bixwill was alive, though the droid confirmed that his lung had been punctured in two places. Another private, a new man whose name Cress did not immediately remember, had also survived his wounds, though his recovery was pronounced "uncertain."
"What were they protecting?" Hanok wondered.
Cress strode to the door near the back, the one Private J'Teel had opened in search of a bathroom. He drew his blaster, just in case another pirate remained hidden.
Inside was a bare room, with a locked compartment in the floor. Cress shot the lock away, knelt to open it.
The first thing that hit him was the smell. A nauseating miasma of stale sweat and bodily secretions. Some moans came from the compartment, which had no light. With a sick feeling in his gut, Cress retrieved a light pod from his belt and set it to descend into the compartment.
He heard Hanok behind him, catching his breath. "The Force protect us," the private groaned.
The compartment was packed with people. Young men, women, some children. All in chains, packed tightly into the space. Cress knew how this worked. They had been gathered from populations that wouldn't be missed: the homeless, the missing, the unwanted.
"Slaves," he said. He felt glad he had shot Laresh. He wished he could bring the man back to life to shoot him again.
"We are Republic soldiers," he announced to the poor wretches. "Hold tight. We will get you unchained, fed, cleaned, and clothed in short order. You are free."
A few expressions of relief from below. Most, however, just stared dully forward, having already lost the mindset of being individuals. For many of them, Cress knew there would be no way back.
He left the room, Hanok at his side.
"The ship would have dropped in neutral territory," Cress said dully. "Probably Nar Shadaa. Unloaded the cargo with the backup of one of the crime families, probably one of the Hutts. Then the Empire would have purchased them from the Hutts. At a significant markup, of course."
"The Senate will have to act," Hanok said.
Cress scoffed. "The Senate? They'll point to this stop as an example that the random intercepts are working. Nothing will change. For every one ship stopped, at least twenty make it through. Any pirate or smuggler who can stomach it would play those odds, particularly with the payout involved."
Cress had grown up on Nar Shadaa. If a Republic recruiter hadn't seen him podracing one day…
In any case, one thing was certain. Laresh had definitely been going for his gun. He wouldn't have let himself be captured alive. Slavers don't last long in prison, and they never die easy.
The Pit's feeding time was different tonight than the norm. When the overseers threw down the food scraps, Reyenna rushed in, as usual. But this time, the other slaves held back. She waited, preparing to scratch and claw at anyone who tried to take what she and her mother needed to survive, but no one moved in. The throng of slaves just waited for her to select her scraps.
She could read their faces and body language. More than that, she could feel it through the pores of her skin.
They were afraid. Of her.
She held the food to her chest and walked to the little cave she jealously guarded for herself and her mother. A discovery she had made early on. With a few displays of viciousness, she had been able to maintain it as theirs. It allowed them a hint of privacy – but more importantly, an area she could defend.
Tonight, however, the little cave was their prison.
The first thing she saw was her mother's face. She was frozen in terror, but her eyes seemed to beg Reyenna to run.
Then she saw the guards, and the overseer from earlier that day.
"Reyenna Desme," the overseer read from his PADD. "Sometimes hard to remember you lot actually have names."
The guards stood near her mother, weapons at the ready.
"That cave-in today," he said casually. "Scary, wasn't it?"
Reyenna nodded carefully, closely watching the man's face, his hands. Listening to each inflection in his voice.
"Very," she said. "We were lucky."
"Yeah. Can't think of much worse than being buried alive. Can you?"
He walked in a casual circle around her, flicking his eyes up and down the rags covering her form.
"What planet do you come from?" he asked.
"Balmorra, sir," she said. "My father was an engineer."
"Your father was a Republic sympathizer, convicted of fostering rebellion," he snapped. "That is why you and your mother are here, is it not? A warning to other potential rebels, that their families will be punished for their crimes along with them."
Her mother's eyes showed hurt at the overseer's words, but Reyenna acknowledged them as the truth. The Treaty had predated her birth; she had never known life outside the Empire. But their existence had been comfortable enough. Her father's rash choice had destroyed them.
"Yes, sir," she agreed.
The overseer stepped toward her.
"Did you… do something today, Reyenna?" he asked. "Something that kept the rocks and dirt from falling on us?"
"I don't know what you mean, sir."
He reflected on that, nodded slowly. "So just a fortunate coincidence?"
"Just so, sir."
"Just luck?"
"Yes, sir."
"I see." The overseer sighed, stepped toward the cave entrance. "In that case, you and your mother are entirely useless to me."
He made a motion to the guards. The guard on the left pulled out his knife and immediately slashed open her mother's throat.
Reyenna screamed, tried to run to her. The second guard grabbed her, restraining her in a bear hug. He pinned her arms painfully behind her back, turned her to face her mother. She contorted her body, kicked, screamed repeatedly. He held her firmly. She was helpless to do anything but watch as the life disappeared from her mother's eyes.
The overseer gave a final nod. "Do as you will, gentlemen. Just make sure to clean up the mess."
Once he was gone, the guard who had murdered her mother approached her. The bloody knife was in his hand. He touched the blade to her cheek, leering at her.
"Pretty little thing," he observed. "Too bad they don't bathe you, but I suppose we can hold our breath, right Vego?"
The larger man chuckled.
As he did so, his grip shifted. Reyenna bit his fingers, hard. He yelped, let go.
The man with the knife grinned. "Lively one. I like it when they fight."
He reached for her, his awful leer signaling his intentions. Reyenna's life would end on the same blade that had claimed her mother – But not right away. Reyenna could read that future in his eyes. And she rejected it, as firmly as she had the cave-in.
"I am not your plaything!" she shouted, putting all her hate and rage into the words.
In a blink, her mind went calm and her vision changed. It was if she could see inside her would-be tormenter. The nerves that connected his eyes to his brain. The vessels that pumped his life's blood through his body.
She reached out with her mind and took hold of a single one of those fragile vessels. She imagined it closing shut, the blood backing up behind it.
The guard screamed, clutching his head. His friend – Vego, was it? – moved toward him.
Reyenna turned her eyes to him. Saw his heart, furiously beating to fuel his outsized body. She pushed that heart, made it beat faster. Then faster still.
Vego fell to his knees, hands on his chest.
She approached. His eyes bulged as he watched her move forward, smiling malevolently.
"They say there's nothing in the galaxy more dangerous than a person who has lost everything," she said idly. "Untrue. Mostly, people who have lost everything are pathetic, broken, whimpering little things. But you already know that. Don't you, Vego?"
She pushed his heart to beat faster still, funneled more energy into the beleaguered organ. It strained to keep pace with her demands, struggled to contain all the energy she fed it.
"Do you feel it, Vego? You're losing everything right now. How dangerous are you?"
He groaned, his eyes pleading for pity.
She had none. A second later, his heart exploded inside his chest. An expression of shock fixed onto his face. His mouth opened, and blood came out of it.
Then he was still.
The first guard remained alive, twitching and moaning on the floor. She approached him, continuing her musing. With her enhanced senses, she could feel his life, ebbing away.
"The most dangerous person isn't the one who's lost everything," she said. "It's the one who's still willing to fight to get it back."
The stopped blood vessel finally burst, exploding into his brain. He twitched harder. She reached in and popped another. Then another. Finally, he grew still as well.
Two new figures appeared in the room. She felt them before she saw them. Two entities in pitch black robes, who stood watching patiently.
"You wield your hate like a weapon." Their faces were masked by their thick hoods, and she had no idea which of them had spoken. "This is good. You show potential."
She never got the chance to reply. A blast ripped through her body, smashing her against the cave wall.
She crumpled, struggling to maintain consciousness.
"A fighter, I think." Less a voice than a hiss. "I will inform Darth Zash. She will want to keep an eye on this one."
She saw the figures approaching her. Then all was darkness.