buckethead
/buhk'∙ǝt∙hed/ noun. 1. a derogatory term used in reference to an Imperial pilot or Stormtrooper. 2. a choice insult used in a friendly exchange between those who are (or closely resemble) siblings.
"Buckethead" was the last thing I said to her before our lives were changed forever.
5 BBY
YAVIN 4
Davits Draven walked down a dark hallway. The walls of the passage had been cut through solid bedrock. They leaked a constant stream of viscous water and smelled of mildew. Only the worst cases were kept down here, or the most secret. It really wasn't his to say, but Draven had his theories.
At the end of the hall, a small elevator lowered him deeper into the crust of Yavin 4. This smelled of rust and shuddered in ways that made his toes clench in his boots. At the bottom of the shaft, the doors opened onto another darker, danker hallway. To his right, a sheet of thick transparisteel was fitted to the opening of a small containment cell. The window stretched from floor to ceiling and had a door cut somewhere into it, though Draven would not see it until it opened.
He strode past cell after cell like this, most of them darkened so he could not look in at the inhabitants, and they could not look out at him. He often wondered for whose benefit this design was intended. They kept all sorts in these cells, each of them in some way valuable, or dangerous, to the Alliance. Hostages, burned assets, turncoats. Insurance, protection, safekeeping. Now psychological restraint, he thought.
He stopped at the seventh cell, just as a Togruta in a white lab coat was exiting through its transparisteel door. It hissed quietly shut behind her.
"Doctor Maasua," said Draven, feeling his own voice reverberate off the stone walls.
The doctor returned his greeting with a nod.
"How are we today?" he asked.
"Calmer, to be sure. Almost fully healed." Draven could hear the dissatisfaction in her voice.
"But…"
"But he refuses to eat, still," the doctor continued. "We can sustain him on infusions only for so long."
"How long?"
Maasua looked up at him as if he had asked her to kill someone.
"A week," she said with something like indignation behind her words. "The fact remains, general, if he does not eat soon, his body will be too weak to carry on."
"Maybe he doesn't want to carry on," came a muffled voice from the other side of the transparisteel. "Maybe he just wants to be left alone."
Draven and Maasua exchanged a silent look.
"I'll leave you to it," she said coolly, and headed back down the hall.
Draven took a metal card from his pocket and waved it over the transparisteel. The edges of the door reappeared as it slid open for him.
The room was surprisingly, almost unbearably, bright compared to the dimness of the hallway. It was sparsely furnished with a toilet, a sink, and a small bed in the corner. On the bed was a pile of bones and skin and rags passing for a human.
"Lieutenant," said Draven. The pile on the bed stirred.
"Please don't call me that."
Draven clenched his jaw. "I hear you're still not eating."
No answer.
"Lieuten—"
"I left her there." Draven forced his hands to remain at his sides as Cassian dragged himself into a sitting position with no small effort. It had been two months since his return from Carida. A bacta tank and time had healed his body, but they had been helpless when it came to his spirit. At first, he had been as a madman, rabid and inconsolable, then he had pleaded with them until his voice was gone. Then he had fallen silent. Then he had stopped eating. Draven could not decide which of these had been the worst. The emaciated creature left behind was proof of the torture that had continued long past Cassian's rescue. "I should never have gone after her," he continued, and Draven could see his skull moving beneath the pale, papery skin. "I should have let it be."
"You did what you thought was right," the general answered after a pause. "That's what we're all trying to do here."
"If I hadn't gotten caught, she wouldn't have set off those bombs. She would still be safe. Now she's dead." These words were familiar to Draven now. They had become Cassian's tired mantra.
"Look," Draven said, "we have our feelers out. If there is any sign of her, we'll know." It was small comfort. They both knew that missing relations of foot soldiers were the least of the Rebellion's priorities. Of course, they cared, but they could not afford to spend time on those things. Not now. Still, somewhere beneath the layers of callous, grit, and scar tissue, Draven wished he had the words, the rapport to rouse him, this gaunt thing that had once been his best agent.
"Cassian." The man looked up at his name, a name that felt so foreign in Draven's mouth. "I promise, you'll be the first to know if we hear anything."
As Draven spoke, the air seemed to go from the lieutenant. He slumped back onto the bed and rolled away. After a silent moment, Draven decided it was best to leave it. He waved his card over the door, walking purposefully from the cell, and straight into someone waiting outside.
"Oof! 'Scuse me, general. I was just coming to see Andor." Ruescott Melshi. The sergeant had a covered tray from the mess hall in his hands.
"I don't think the lieutenant is up for any more visitors at this time."
"Well," Melshi cleared his throat, "begging your pardon, sir, but he might be a bit more agreeable to a friend."
For a long moment, Draven stared at him, trying to identify the prickling at the back of his neck. Then, he folded his hands behind him.
"Don't you have something to be getting on with?"
"Duties are all done for the day, sir." The answer came almost too quickly. "Thought I'd spend some of my free time usefully."
"You don't have the clearance to be down here, sergeant."
"Sir." Melshi's tone was suddenly sincere, and perhaps a bit anxious. "I'm worried for Cassian. It may be only a matter of time before—" He stopped, swallowed hard. "I just want to help if I can. Maybe he'll eat something for an old friend." He nodded to the tray in his hands, then met the general's gaze evenly.
Draven considered this for a moment. It felt earnest, despite the insistent itch that told him there was something else going on. Still, Melshi did not have access to the cells. Not without a key card. He gave a curt nod, and swiped the card once more over the door.
"Thank you, sir," Melshi said, and slipped through.
Inside the cell, Cassian sprang upright again, with a vigor his malnourishment should not have allowed. Melshi put a finger to his lips. It took Cassian a moment to realize he was listening for the general to leave. There was quiet in the hallway outside, the expectant, discerning quiet of someone lingering past their welcome.
"Right Andor," Melshi said authoritatively. "Just came by to make sure you get some food in you." There was a pause as Cassian processed the meaningful look on the sergeant's face. Play along, it said.
"I thought I asked to be left alone," he said, letting his voice drag in his throat. "Get out of here, sergeant."
They both paused and listened. A pair of footsteps scuffed on the floor outside, then retreated down the hall. A new, empty quiet settled. Cassian turned expectant eyes back to Melshi.
"Did you take what I gave you?" he asked, feeling his words catch. "Do you think it was enough?"
Melshi sat at the end of the bed and balanced the mess hall tray on one knee. "I think we can make it work," he said finally, "but I'm going to need something from you."
"What?" Cassian felt his throat closing, his chest burning from desperation. There is always hope, he tried to remind himself, but he had learned that wishing a thing would not make it so. The walls he had built over nine years, his impenetrable, emotionless prison. It had stranded him since his discovery on Carida. He had found himself unequipped to cope with the loss, the grief he had pushed off for almost a decade of his life. Hope, though. Hope he could at least aspire to, even if it, too, escaped him.
"Anything!" he urged Melshi.
The sergeant grinned and pulled the cover off the tray.
OON
The canteen was crowded but quiet. The low din inside was hardly loud enough to hide their voices comfortably. Ruescott Melshi made a note to never again arrange a meet in a bar at midday. A bark of Drabatese from beside him drew a few desultory glances in their direction.
"Shush, Pao." Melshi nudged his companion hard in the ribs. Pao emitted a garble of displeasure.
"Yes, you'll get your payment," Melshi answered. "Would it kill you to show a bit of crikking compassion? We're doing this for Cassian." Pao replied with an impassive grunt and slumped deeper into his seat. Melshi slid out of their booth and started over to the bar, whispering "greedy bastard" under his breath.
While he waited for their drinks, he thought on what had become of Cassian, the husk he had seen in the cell not twenty-four hours ago. The events on Carida had all but destroyed him. Melshi still remembered the sounds Cassian had made on the shuttle when he realized what had happened. Like his insides were tearing apart. No one had known what was going on until they made it back to base and Draven had explained to them. The reason why Cassian's op on Carida had gone sideways. The secret Cassian had kept buried for years. Benduday Andor.
"Vann?" Melshi turned to see a slight man in poorly made mechanic's coveralls. "Hahtu Vann?"
"Yup," said Melshi. "You Thules?" The man nodded. Melshi picked up the drinks and jerked his head in the direction of their table.
Pao took his glass without a word and stuck his tongue into the liquid.
"Yeah, you're welcome," Melshi muttered as the newcomer, Thules, slid in on the other side of the table.
"This has to be quick," he said. "Gotta report back onsite by tonight."
"No problem." Melshi smiled in a way he knew didn't quite reach his eyes. "All we need from you is to answer a few questions and we'll have you off, lickety-split."
"And my payment?"
Melshi pulled a credit chip from his pocket and placed it on the table. Thules stretched out a hand for it. A soft, feral purr came from somewhere in Pao's throat. The man retracted his hand slowly, shifting in his seat.
"Now," Melshi took an unhurried draught of his Lothal spicebrew. "Our contact told us to search this sector."
"And who is your contact?" asked Thules. Melshi smiled again, putting a bit too much stretch into his face. Thules stared back at him, silenced, and visibly unsettled.
"He said it was our best shot at finding our target," Melshi continued. "Problem is, we don't have the time to scour the entire sector. That's where you come in."
"Your target," Thules kept his voice low, "they're an Imperial captive?" Melshi blinked in confirmation. Thules turned his face slightly, keeping eye contact, weighing his options. Then he coughed once and swallowed. "If there's any chance you target is still alive," he said finally, "they'll be on Kessel."
"Kessel?"
"Yeah. There's a prison block, which if you ask anyone, doesn't exist. Empire likes to keep it secret." Thules smirked, as if relishing this knowledge he wasn't supposed to have. "Use the prisoners as spice slaves, in the mines."
Melshi looked down into the cloudy depths of his brew. "Right," he said, pushing his glass away and turning to Pao. "Looks like we'll need back up after all."
"Sooner rather than later, I'd say." Thules had an almost smug look on his face. "Have what you call a high turnover rate. Prisoners don't tend to last very long."
He reached once more for the credit chip on the table. Melshi caught the man's wrist in a tight grip.
"Ah," he said, holding up a finger, "we're not quite done with you yet."
YAVIN 4
"General." Draven felt a light hand on his shoulder and turned in his chair to see Doctor Maasua.
"I'm busy."
"Yes," she said, and he recognized barely-concealed panic beneath her expression. "We have a"—her eyes darted around and she leaned in close to his ear—"a situation. Down on V-Block."
Draven's chest tightened. "I see." He turned back and regarded the Council seated around the table in front of him. "I'm afraid this can't wait. Please excuse me." He dipped his head to an incredulous Mon Mothma as he rose. "Ma'am."
When they were safely outside, he turned to the doctor. "Please summon a security team."
"Sir, one team won't do much good." When he looked at her again, he saw the panic on her face had given way to pure terror. "Someone opened the cells. They're—loose down there. All of them."
Draven swallowed and nodded his understanding. "Please get to the control room and summon security, as many teams as you can," he said as calmly as he could. "Notify me when you've done so." He pulled a comlink from his pocket to ensure she understood.
Massua nodded and hurried away. Draven withdrew his blaster and set off deep into base. Down the hall, onto the elevator. It had hardly gone anywhere when he realized he could already hear the chaos. He fitted the comlink to his ear.
"General?"
"Yes. I'm on my way down." Draven marveled at the steady tenor of his own voice.
"Security will be there in less than a minute."
"Understood. Thank you, Massua."
The sounds of mayhem were growing louder. Belatedly, he thought he should have waited for reinforcements. Then the lift doors opened.
A wall of noise assaulted him first, the methodical blaring of alarms. Then he spotted three figures madly rushing the elevator. He took them out one after the other. He didn't have time to register their faces. The passageway was pitch black, flooded intermittently with flashing red light. It made the three prone forms look like they were submerged in blood. He continued down the hall, blaster ready, trying to hear over the wail of the alarms. Every single cell was wide open, gaping black rectangles cut into the transparisteel.
A muffled explosion from behind forced him to the ground. He laid flat and covered his head. A vaporous smoke began billowing from the direction of the elevator and quickly enveloped him. Smoke bomb. The security team must have arrived. A number of footsteps sprinted past him into the hall ahead. By the time he got back to his feet, they had disappeared into haze and red light. The sounds of screams and whirring stun batons came between the shrieks of the alarms. He raised his blaster and continued.
Even in the confusion, Draven picked Cassian out almost immediately. He was the only one standing still. Draven thought this was perhaps the first time he had seen the lieutenant on his feet since Carida, and by now there was almost nothing left of him. He turned, seeing the general, and regarded him for a moment. Even from this distance, through the smoke and the red glow, Draven saw a dark, terrible intent in his eyes. A look that sent the back of Draven's neck prickling again. Then, Cassian held up a hand. Clasped between two slim fingers was a metal key card.
Draven's body stilled. "General!" Doctor Massua's voice came over the comlink in his ear. "An extraction team has left without orders. They're not responding to communications."
"Get them back!" he yelled, not daring to peel his gaze away.
"They're already in hyperspace, sir."
Draven saw a cold triumph creep into Cassian's eyes.
"Which team?" he asked.
"Bravo, sir."
KESSEL
Melshi didn't remember much from Kessel. He thought later that perhaps this was a good thing. What he did remember was patchy, more a collection of impressions than the traumatic experience it surely had been.
He recalled entering the mines alone, toolbox in hand, wearing a gas mask and a pair of coveralls with 'Thules' stitched into the breast pocket. He recalled the sounds of his own breath rushing past his ears. The still, suffocating heat on his skin. The sickly-sweet spice of the air that came through the filter.
He remembered flashes of uniforms. Imperial insignia, turned orange in the dim glow of the tunnels. Blaster rifles held in metal hands.
He remembered the others, too. The ridges of spines through grimy skin, the backs of slaves bent to their work. The ripples of their ribs with every movement. Shackles around bony ankles. Empty, sightless gazes.
He recalled feeling naked with neither a weapon nor a comlink to connect him to Pao and the approaching Bravo team. He remembered being sure that they would never arrive in time, the thought pounding through his head that this was both the stupidest and last thing he would ever do. He remembered being convinced he was going to die.
More than any of those, he remembered the odd terror that shot through him when he found her. The horrible confirmation that, yes, the Empire was absolutely capable of these evils, and no, they did not care about the cost.
The first word that came to mind when he saw her was 'damaged'. He could see it, not in her scars, but in her eyes, the hollow way they stared at him. Then he thought, Aren't we all damaged? In truth, starved and scarred and covered in filth as she was, Ruescott thought he had never seen anything more beautiful than Benduday Andor. He was momentarily rooted to the ground. Then the sirens went off, and they were plunged into darkness.
YAVIN 4
Silence.
It felt like it dragged on for years. Back in his cell, Cassian had no way of telling. He tried counting meals as they arrived, the number of times the transparisteel slid open and shut, but he found himself unable to focus. He was caught in some stagnant place between actions, between this thing that was done, and the next one. Surely there was something more to do. Surely he should have heard by now if their plan—the intel, the distraction, the key card passed from beneath the cover of a mess hall tray—had worked. It was only a matter of time, right?
Right. Time. That thing which eluded him now. Every second—or estimation thereof—was like the passing of a grinder wheel over flesh. It tore at his soul. He was ragged to his core, and when he looked inside himself, all he found, like the hallway outside, was a terrible silence. Without breath or purpose. A compliant stillness to the prison he had built and carried since that day, ten years ago on Bakura.
A stillness he now gave himself over to. If their plan had not succeeded, then Melshi and his team and who knows how many others were dead along with her. It was only a small chance after all, he told himself. It was only a hope…
"Lieutenant."
Cassian's eyes snapped open. How long had he been like this? He looked to the doorway of his cell. It was Draven, his face drawn.
"You'd better come. She doesn't know who we are."
A couple of security officers awaited them outside. Cassian had to blink into the dimness to see anything. He floated down the passage, hardly feeling his feet touch the ground. In the elevator, he almost collapsed, and the guards pulled him upright. They supported him all the way to the hall outside the hangar.
From down the hall, he heard a familiar voice yelling at the rebels.
"Let me go! Damn Loth-rats! You all stink!"
Cassian began to run, ripping himself from the hands of the guards. His chest was burning, not from exertion, but from something new he could not identify. He halted when he rounded the corner. He caught sight of wild hair, dirt-caked skin, and restraints. She was spitting and kicking and biting whoever got too near. Cassian felt his bones turn to blue butter.
Her words hitched in her throat when she noticed him there. The rebels and the hangar and Yavin 4 dropped away.
All the years that had separated them contracted into nothing, into this single moment. He stared into those hazel eyes, those pools of fire and serenity. Suddenly he was three years old, hiding and afraid. Then the ghost of a tiny finger touched his cheek. A hot tear burned down his face.
Somewhere inside, deep within his still prison, a seed of hope took hold again. Cassian felt his heart of ice begin to thaw, felt his tattered soul begin to breathe.
"Buckethead," she whispered.
"Dirtball," he answered. It was instant. It was everything.
He fumbled at her restraints with trembling fingers, never once taking his eyes from hers. If he did, she would surely disappear. Her arms were around him before the cuffs it the ground.
They were shaking. They sank to the ground in each other's arms, making sounds somewhere between laughing and weeping. He kissed her forehead, her hair, her scars. Then he held her. He breathed her in and thought he could run forever. He had his hope again.
"I will never let you go."
Hi! Remember me? I'm back again.
I dug deep for the essence of this chapter, and it took me to a darker place than I expected. I also wanted to include more of the auxiliary characters like Melshi and demonstrate a group effort in getting Ben back. Hopefully it wasn't too choppy.
Only a few more chapters to go...
