THE ESSENCES OF LIFE

Chapter 8 – The Futility Of Being Earnest

Lissa got a good chance to bring up the topic of Grievous's mind alterations just a few days later when the biodroid team received a new shipment from Geonosis of what were always euphemistically labelled as 'biological specimens', but which she knew were really the salvaged body parts of unfortunate Geonosians that had been humanely put down. The latest collection included a great many entire brains, some complete with spinal cords, being kept alive in stasis, which Nagas the Patriot had specifically requested for some experimental new weapons droid designs he was tinkering with, and as he and Attenbro happily—and Lissa not so happily—sorted through the fresh organs, it seemed perfectly apropos for the human to suddenly exclaim, "Sa-ay, this reminds me, I was going to ask you to clarify something I saw in General Grievous's brain scans."

"Of course," Nagas said cheerfully. "Ask all you want."

"It's to do with the scarring in his left hemisphere, in part of his memory center. Was that to excise some bad experiences he had before you rebuilt him?"

"Oh, that. No, we did that to suppress most of his personal memories. It keeps him more focused on his work."

"He work hard and longer, too," added Attenbro, whose spoken Basic was not as good as that of his superior, but who understood the common language perfectly well. "No sleep no more."

"Yes," Nagas continued, "that was an unexpected bonus. We're still not entirely sure why it happened, but suspect we inadvertently turned off his abstract creative processes too when we altered his memories. Whatever it was, it must have been involved in regulating his sleep cycle. I don't think he's slept since, has he, Attenbro?"

"Rest, sometimes, like a Geonosian. I see him stand once with eyes empty for one, two minutes. But never see him sleep, no, always conscious."

"I see," said Lissa slowly. "So he's not aware of his past, or—?"

"Oh no, no, he knows perfectly well where he comes from, what he did before, that he has a family…all the basics are still there. He just doesn't…dwell on it. Think about it."

"Thinks only of his job now. Fighting. Killing enemies," said Attenbro.

"And so he should," said Nagas. "The rest is just a waste of time for someone like him to think about, anyway."

Lissa smiled and nodded her head thoughtfully. "Well, that's very interesting," she remarked in a chipper tone. Privately, she was appalled by what the Geonosians were relaying to her, but would of course never admit to it. "And the alterations you did to his aggression center," she went on, "that must've been to make him meaner then, is that right?"

Both Geonosians started laughing uproariously. "Meaner! Oh no!" Nagas exclaimed when he'd calmed down and could talk again. "He was already mean when we got him. And vicious! All the Kaleesh, the males, they're like that, just very aggressive, very violent people. All we had to do was remove most of his ability to control it."

"We remove too much at first, almost. The time he go crazy in the arena."

Nagas laughed again. "He is referring to when Grievous was first learning to use his new body and fight," he said in response to Lissa's baffled, inquisitive look. "He was doing well against droids and we decided to try him against some of our Gladiators for the first time, in our arena at Stalgasin. We were all there with Count Dooku. And Grievous starts, using the same sabers the Gladiators use, and whoosh! Kills one Gladiator right away. Dooku, he says, pit him against more opponents, and we do. Grievous fights two, no problem. Kills them both very fast. Then Dooku wants to see him use all four arms. That was a little harder for him. He was still learning, not so well coordinated yet, and Dooku—what did Dooku say to him? Do you remember?"

"He say, all this time and money we put in you and still you fight like the battle droid."

"Yes, that's right! And Grievous, he begins to shake, he is so mad, and then he jumps at the Gladiators and suddenly everything works for him and he starts to move so fast we can't even see it, he's like a dust whirl, the arms flying, and cuts everyone to pieces in seconds. And then he turns to us and doesn't stop—oh no! Well, you never saw a bunch of Aristocrats find their wings so fast, even the ones who hadn't flown for months! Grievous, he's just wild now, in bloodlust, the eyes burning like fire. We had some service drones with us and you know how stupid they are. They just gawk at him until he runs up and kills them too, and then two picadors—no, wait, one was fast enough to fly off—but he got the other one, and even killed their orrays. Then it's just Dooku still standing there and Grievous is so crazy by now that he can't even think, all he wants to do is kill something, and he starts for the Count. And that Dooku, he just waits, very calm, until Grievous is almost on him, and then he throws the Sith spark—"

"Lightning!"

"Lightning," Nagas amended, "at Grievous and knocks him off his feet and down onto the ground. Grievous, he gets up again, no weapons anymore, but he doesn't care. He wants to tear Dooku apart! And the Count has to shock him and throw him down again! Four times he has to do that before Grievous gets his mind back and stays down on the ground, then Dooku goes to him and pulls him up by one arm and tells him, you stand and stay there, you! Grievous is so addled by the Sith lightning he can hardly keep his feet. He's weaving back and forth, the eyes rolling, almost falling, but he does obey. That was the first time we thought it was safe to go back down again."

"I go down," Attenbro said, jerking his snout flippantly. "You take your time, I remember."

Nagas chuckled. "Could you blame me? So, we go up to Dooku. There are bodies and pieces of bodies everywhere. Grievous is still swaying and a terrible mess, covered with sand and blood—you can hardly see anymore that his armour is white. I was mortified, of course. Grievous is my creation, my responsibility, and I say to Dooku, Count, I am so sorry. We'll get right back in there and remove some of the blocks so he can better control himself. And Dooku, he just starts to laugh and says back, no no, you leave him be, he'll learn, this is just the way I want him, and…well, we did. And Count Dooku was right in the end. Grievous did learn to control himself well enough after all. Is there anything else you wanted to know about his brain scans?"

"Actually," Lissa said after a pause, her voice a little faint, "I think I've heard about all I need to for now. Thank you very much for telling me this." And for once the sentiments with which she addressed her Geonosian colleagues were completely sincere.

The subject of their talk had, in the meantime, continued doing just what he was supposed to be doing, working hard on his next task, the subjugation of an entire multi-planet system, which was shaping up into a potentially major campaign. Grievous had his own ideas of how to best accomplish his goal and for once requested reinforcements to his fleet, which Dooku authorized after listening to his plans. But their arrival would take time, and Grievous chafed over the delay, keeping himself occupied by haunting the operations center aboard the Invisible Hand day and night, and training his elite MagnaGuards to ever more proficient levels of personalized expertise. There was only one notable occurrence that distracted him any as the days went by, and it was an important one, which would have consequences for the Republic side. A far-ranging flight patrol of his intercepted another diplomatic vessel, a genuine one this time. What attracted the General's attention and his ire was that the ship also had aboard four Jedi who claimed diplomatic immunity because they'd been employed as neutral observers for a civil matter that had nothing to do with the Clone Wars.

Grievous ordered his droids to isolate the Jedi in a large contained area despite their protestations and rushed over in his fastest suitable frigate with a large contingent of bodyguards and soldiers to set things straight. Jedi claiming to be neutral, he'd never heard of anything so preposterous! His general orders were to still acknowledge genuine political neutrality for now whenever it was somebody that the Separatists didn't care about or have any use for, and he already suspected that the ship itself was legit since it had virtually no weaponry and had acquiesced to his patrol's demands for identity and to allow boarding without protest—but these Jedi! It couldn't be allowed. It was as crazy as if he'd been the one aboard the diplomatic ship, claiming to be neutral and an observer to a boarding party of Republic forces!

He found that his pilots had actually managed to get the Jedi down into a small empty cargo bay where they seemed to be waiting under the impression that they were going to negotiate with him on the matter of their neutrality. He shattered that notion fast as soon as he entered by deploying his troops about them in an encircling ring, leaving a big open space in the middle. The Jedi drew themselves up a little, made nervous by the sudden unexpected appearance and show of serious force, yet still maintaining their air of smug superiority which he hated so much as the four of them stood there together, trusting in their belief that their way was the only way and that the Force could guide them out of any mishap. It was a faith which Grievous thought hypocritical and sickening.

Neutral they might claim to be, but they knew him all right, and when he stepped out into the open, into the area left clear in the center of the circle, one of the Jedi, a female Twi'lek, came forward to meet him. She walked with quiet courage, ignoring the encircling droids, her dark eyes fixed only on him. Grievous halted and waited. Whenever he suspected that he'd have to spring into action without delay, he affixed several lightsabers to his waist instead of keeping them in their usual sleeve pockets in the lining of his cloak, the better to enable him to snatch and activate the weapons fast. He already had a pair of them waiting thus on this occasion and his hands hovered, ready to grab, fingers twitching a little as the lithe alien approached him.

She halted herself just outside the range of his normal reach and bowed her head. "General Grievous," she acknowledged.

The cyborg said nothing in reply. The grisly faux face seemed to her expressionless, impossible to analyze. He merely stared back at her out of eyes as flat and cold as the deck they stood on, and his droid hands jittered by his artificial sides, trembling almost. The Jedi sent out her will, trying to read him, and was instantly blasted by a furious loathing, wave after wave of it, roiling past her like a thick miasma, and her soul quailed under its terrible intensity. She swiftly withdrew her tentative probe, horrified and badly rattled. Was this all that still lived in the creature, just hatred and rage?

It was immeasurably harder to meet his gaze again, knowing that he hated her so. "You must have confirmed by now that we are on a diplomatic vessel," the Twi'lek continued, still striving for calm and reason. "Our mission is peaceful, our intent neutral. We have no quarrel with you on this occasion, General."

"A diplomatic vessel, yes. No quarrel…" And here his eyes seemed to come alive after all, blazing suddenly with the same monstrous passion she'd sensed within. "I have a quarrel. With you, Jedi! With all of you."

"Surely we can come to some agreement—"

"No. No! No negotiations! Never! Not with you!" he cried hoarsely, and his control broke and his hands flicked upward. He couldn't help himself. It was impossible for him to have a Jedi stand before him for long and not act to destroy. His two ignited lightsabers traced slow arcs in the air before the Twi'lek's face. She recognized the distinctive soft violent spear of the weapon that had once belonged to Jedi Master Thur Megia, who'd been a friend, and her apprehension and sorrow deepened.

"Fight me, Jedi," Grievous commanded.

"I won't take part in this."

"You refuse my challenge?"

"It's not a challenge. It's a depravity."

The General's burning yellow eyes blinked, once, twice. His arms drew back and down, slowly, and he deactivated his weapons. He began to step backward, retreating into the circle of his droids again. The Jedi woman, once again standing all alone, jerked up her lovely head, her own eyes suddenly widening as though she too were receiving the silent orders the cyborg passed to his troops, but not in time to defend herself when they opened fire.

Grievous watched as the concentrated blaster barrage reduced the Twi'lek's body into a charred, bloodied carcass, disgusted by the look of shocked surprise that she wore until she fell. Had she thought he was bluffing? That she could talk her way out of her fate? Idiot! He was equally repulsed by the aghast expressions he registered on the remaining Jedi, the way one of them yelped when the Twi'lek was first shot. Did they really not get it yet or understand that he meant to eliminate them all? More imbeciles! Perhaps it was time to send a message that even the most doddering member of their Order could comprehend.

He strode back into the open space and over to the still-quivering corpse. The Jedi's lightsaber had fallen out of its holster and rolled a little distance away from the body. He grabbed it up and found that it had escaped being damaged, rather surprisingly, and produced a bright blue beam when he turned it on. He stared over at the Jedi that were still alive as he manipulated the slender hilt with his duranium fingers, getting a feel for the weapon's heft and handle.

"A passable trophy," he proclaimed at last, "even if its owner was a pacifist coward."

The taunt had the desired effect. One of the younger Jedi, the dark-skinned humanoid male who had cried out, abruptly pulled out his own lightsaber and started for him. The other male in the group, older, bearded, tried to stop him.

"Wanli! Hold!"

"But he'll kill us anyway," the dark-skinned one half-sobbed.

Tears were streaming down the young man's face. The Twi'lek must've been his master, Grievous thought, observing their dissention with pleasure. "You should listen to the padawan," he called over to them. "Not much of a death, to lay down your arms to be slaughtered like sheep. What would your Order think of warriors that chose such a disgraceful end?"

The bearded man regarded him sadly.

"Is that what you think we are, Grievous? Warriors? We're peacekeepers."

"Soothing semantics," the cyborg sneered. "I've seen your work."

"You don't even understand the difference anymore, do you?"

"Enough blather! Prepare yourself, Jedi. I'm going to kill you. Whether that happens in combat or as an act of butchery is now up to you."

To emphasize his words, Grievous reached up with his free hand to unhook his cape and cast it off, a gesture of both seriousness and contempt. The contempt lay in the two lightsabers he'd not touched yet which he threw aside with his cloak. He expected that three of his weapons should suffice, the pair he still wore at his waist and the new one he'd just taken from the Twi'lek woman. One lightsaber for each Jedi he meant to destroy. He thought it a generous allowance and far more than they deserved, that he was still willing to deal with them personally at all instead of leaving them to the untender mercies of his mechanized soldiers.

The older Jedi still seemed disinclined to fight, but had lost control of the others, both of whom now had their lightsabers out. Grievous slid sideways, partially circling them, testing them, watching their responses carefully. They both moved like amateurs, their inexperience showing, and the second one, another dark-skinned humanoid, female this time, wore a ridiculously elaborate headpiece and heavy robes that would surely hinder her even further—stupid of her. He concluded that he would have no trouble whatsoever dispatching them.

Grievous abruptly quit his probing, reared up to his full height, and cracked his left arm apart into two limbs. He used them to reactivate the weapons he wore at his waist with a flourish, and the young Jedi flinched back, obviously fearful of his suddenly changed aspect. The older Jedi continued to merely watch, and so did the General's droids, silent, impassive spectators all. Grievous played to them a little nonetheless, blandishing his trio of lightsabers and stepping lightly, strutting almost, as he postured. He rarely had an audience when murdering his most hated foes and was still vain enough to enjoy an opportunity to show off his prowess.

On any other occasion Grievous wouldn't have even bothered with the padawans, would have simply slaughtered them at once with a swipe or two and concentrated on their masters, if any such accompanied them. He didn't even value their lightsabers as trophies and only collected them for reasons of updating his tally. This time would be different. Their bodies, once he was through with them, would serve as his statement and warning.

He lunged forward and clashed with both at once in a flurry of thrusts and feints. They were slow, so slow, and confused by his use of all three weapons, and he easily left them reeling and cut and wide-eyed with fright and shock. Another quick dart and he wounded them again, a shallow slash to the male's chest and a rip through the female's robes and the flesh on her thigh. The older Jedi started and swore and called both padawans in to him, unable to stay uninvolved any longer.

"Wanli! Lu-matra! Fall back! Regroup on me."

The two did as told, finally, the woman limping badly as she fell in behind her master. Their gasping breaths sounded loud in the sudden stillness of the cargo bay, punctuated only by the metallic tac-tac-tac of their enemy's footfalls as he paced before them and waited. The older Jedi looked upon the cyborg with utter revulsion.

"Why are you doing this?" he exclaimed. "What kind of a monster are you?"

"One made to exterminate you," Grievous said.

The older Jedi's sudden participation and attempt to rally the padawans instantly heightened the challenge they posed and Grievous returned to the fight with renewed relish. Experience had already taught him that the more reluctant the Jedi appeared to be at first to engage him, the better opponents they usually turned out to be…strange. He glided in closer to them, still moving with needless exaggeration, weaving and swaying, torn between his driving need to kill and his desire to prolong the affair and enjoy the rare pleasure he took in his new body's dreadful efficiency. The youngsters were now terrified of him. They knew there was no escaping him and that they'd soon be dead. Grievous saw it all when he looked into their eyes and more besides, and he enjoyed that part of it too.

The young man died quickly through his own stiff clumsiness when he stumbled forward into another saber swing Grievous aimed at his belly. The cyborg rumbled angrily at that, a sound midway between a snort of disgust and a low growl. He'd meant only to wound him again. The other padawan didn't last much longer, even with her master's futile efforts to guard her. One of the seared injuries Grievous had inflicted before opened further as she staggered about and she began to bleed out, and the deck was soon smeared with her blood, slippery enough underfoot that Grievous became glad that he'd activated the magnetic option in his feet to hold him fast against any sly Force tricks the older Jedi might try, even though it somewhat stilted his movements. Eventually, she became so weak that she could no longer even hold her lightsaber aloft, could only stand helpless, panting and trembling. Grievous eyed her and her protector with disdain. The older Jedi had proven to be almost useless, no real fight in him at all, doing nothing but getting in the cyborg's way and acting defensively.

"Leave her! She's done," Grievous ordered, standing down and coming to a halt himself. "You're a poor opponent, Jedi. I expected better of you."

"I'm happy to disappoint you," the man replied.

"I'll give you one last chance to redeem yourself. You and I, a proper match, if you're capable. An honourable death by my blade, Jedi. Better that than the droids."

"What of my padawan?"

"She's dead already."

The man turned his head to look over his shoulder at her. The woman stood slumped, on the point of collapse. "Lu-matra?" he said softly. "I'll see you in a few moments. You understand."

"Yes, Master," she whispered.

The Jedi drew himself up and slowly brought his lightsaber before his face into the same familiar vertical rest position Dooku had taught Grievous. About time, the cyborg thought, and stepped back to safely deactivate two of his own weapons and reintegrate his halved arms into a single limb. He began his own formal gesture to start the duel.

The Jedi whirled at once and slashed his blade through the neck of his padawan, beheading her, then completed his revolution and launched himself straight at Grievous without pause, aiming for his durasteel throat.

The cyborg's heightened reflexes saved him, his own lightsaber lashing out to knock the incoming weapon aside and out of the man's hand before he could reach him, standing firm as the humanoid body completed its leap and crashed into his own. He seized the Jedi's own throat with his free hand and threw him down head-first onto the floor so hard that he fatally crushed his skull and didn't even need a follow-up stab of his blade to kill the man, but he did it anyway, in a pure paroxysm of instant rage. He should have known that he couldn't trust the Jedi to behave honourably! Sneaking liars and scum, the lot of them! How he hated them all! He sliced through the fallen body once more, and then, for good measure and because it made him feel a little better, did it again. He went to the bodies of the padawans and mutilated them too, methodically, one after the other, until all the corpses lying on the deck of the cargo bay were a torn and shredded mess and his anger had receded, and his soldiers and bodyguards watched all the while with their blank, unfeeling, mechanical eyes.

Grievous marched up to the bridge of the ship and told the cowering captain that the next time he found Jedi acting as so-called neutral observers aboard any diplomatic vessel, that he'd kill said vessel's bridge crew along with the Jedi. If it happened again after that, he'd slaughter the entire ship's complement, one by one, and impound the ship as war booty. The captain said that he understood. Grievous left, satisfied and with four new lightsabers tucked into the sleeve lining of his cloak. The mutilated bodies of the weapons' former owners he left behind where they'd fallen.

The incident gave Grievous a good excuse to ignore his latest scheduled bacta treatment appointment and he finally presented himself to the Geonosian team on the droid tender a week later than he really should have, after putting it off for as long as he dared. A few days more, he knew from painful past experience, and the depleted nutrients and accumulating wastes contained within the fluid inside his chest would reach starvation and toxic levels respectively and he'd be forced to report in, ill and dizzy, whether he liked it or not. Nagas clucked over his tardiness, as usual, then sent him off to begin the procedure. He also sent along Lissa, to watch and learn. The Geonosian had suggested that since the General's new command ship had all the facilities he needed now, that Grievous utilize his personal physician to take over his routine maintenance in addition to her battle duties, and the cyborg had been agreeable to that. It would save him having to travel over to the tender at all anymore, and it would save Nagas, who was in truth getting a little bored with overseeing Grievous's everyday care and who wanted to save his time for his exciting new projects, from a lot of tedious nagging and coaxing of his temperamental creation.

Grievous had good reason to need coaxing. He'd come to hate his bacta treatments. He hated being cleaned up beforehand, when he had to suffer the humiliation of being treated exactly like a droid. He hated being in the tank itself, his chest opened up and his faceplate off, vulnerable for anyone to see. And he hated the aftermath, having to be hosed down again and dried, and then having his eyes and facial remnants inspected, and sometimes his brain too, whenever the Geonosians decided to have a look-see. Not that they ever cared how he felt about it, but Lissa, who was made of different stuff, saw at once how much he loathed the whole affair, and found herself growing sober and apprehensive at the thought of having to work with him alone when he was in such a state. Surely there had to be ways of making his necessary medical procedures more acceptable to him? He was a lousy enough patient already. She sure didn't need him aggravated anymore!

For now, however, all she could do was observe as he underwent a high-pressure wash in one of the same stalls used to clean, well, droids, then escort him down to the ship's infirmary where he was readied for his half-hour immersion in one of the healing bacta baths. He had to half-squat to fold himself up well enough to fit inside even the largest tank, and even though Lissa knew that such an awkward position did not discomfort him and that he could lock his body and maintain it forever, still, it made her uncomfortable to see him so and witness his plainly evident anger and embarrassment. Nagas saw it too, yet ignored it as a matter of course as he showed the woman how to use the robotic hands within the tank to undo the various stopcocks and fastenings and open up the General's chest to allow the fresh fluids to circulate freely and flush him out. The Geonosian, unlike Lissa, had a lengthy and more intimate frame of reference against which to judge the cyborg, and he considered that on this occasion that Grievous was actually behaving very well and calmly indeed…for Grievous.

They left the cyborg to stew alone for a while so Nagas could run his alien colleague through the maintenance schedules the Geonosian scientist had devised for Grievous, pointing out all the high priority checks that absolutely had to be performed and those that could be put off, if need be. Grievous was supposed to come in for a bacta treatment every two weeks. Lissa would be lucky, Nagas told her, if she could persuade him to show up every three weeks. The purely mechanical routine work didn't seem to bother him so much. He'd been pretty good so far about having his droid body serviced.

Lissa ventured to address the subject of Grievous's emotional health, which was still troubling her. "He seems so…so mad," she said.

"Oh, he's always that way," Nagas replied dismissively. "Just ignore it and be insistent. You'll have an advantage, too. He's more inclined to listen to a female."

He was? If so, it was news to Lissa. It also seemed to conflict with something else she remembered—hadn't Gregory said that his species was male-dominant? Something else to look up, she decided. She suspected she'd need all the help she could get in dealing with Grievous in the future, and it mightn't be a bad idea, she thought, to learn more about Kaleesh sociobiology and psychology in general.

Attenbro the Citizen and a couple of the other biodroid scientists meandered in later when Grievous was sitting in his special chair and Lissa was having her first go at examining and treating his exposed brain. They weren't quite as bored yet with the cyborg as was their boss and weren't about to miss their last chance to see how their work was holding up inside, and they leaned in to watch over the human's shoulders. Lissa's use of the fixed microsurgical laser instead of the usual handheld instrument seemed to amuse them and they cheerfully mistook her caution and desire for precision for uncertainty and began uttering their own observations and words of advice as she worked away, baldly issuing such statements as "Careful now." and "That bit there looks bad." At one point Attenbro said, "Oops," when she very carefully lasered away a tiny shred of tissue that sent up a perfectly normal little wisp of smoke, and they all started tittering. Lissa, her hands full, settled for glaring at them with some exasperation, although she also had to admit to herself that it was kind of funny, or would have been if poor Grievous hadn't been sitting there conscious and perfectly aware of everything that was happening to him and able to hear all they said the whole time.

He made eye contact with her only once, as she was refastening his face plate and held it briefly between her hands to ensure that it was properly centered on his head and secure, and the expression that flashed through his golden orbs when she looked back was even more disturbing to her than his anger, just a weary glum despair that reminded her of the way he'd wordlessly pleaded for help when he'd been badly injured on Shartil. She couldn't say anything in front of the Geonosians, but did try to convey to him with her own expression that things would be different the next time, that she'd try to make it easier for him from now on, and after a moment he looked away again.

As before, as soon as he'd been put back together and cleared to go, Grievous simply got up and began to leave without further looking at anybody or saying a word. Lissa, sensing an opportunity, suddenly excused herself and hurried out after him, into the corridor.

"General Grievous, sir? May I speak with you a moment, please?"

"Yes?"

He stood normally, waiting, the long face tilted to look down at her, as receptive as he was ever likely to get. "It's about my escorts, General," Lissa began.

"What of them?"

"Well, I still have them, that's just it. I don't mean the battle droids you assigned for when I'm on battle duty—I appreciate those. It's the ones I still need when I move around the droid tender or visit other vessels. It just seemed to me that if I'm going to be coming over to the Invisible Hand more often and sometimes on short notice to accommodate your schedule, that I'd be able to respond faster and more easily if I didn't have to wait for an escort all the time, and—and I am security-cleared now, after all, General, and—"

"You're right," Grievous interrupted. "You don't need an escort anymore."

"Oh! Really?" she exclaimed, happily.

The cyborg became cool and speculative as he continued gazing down at her. "Yes. Go to sickbay and tell them I've given you permission to have a transponder implanted instead."

"A—what?"

Lissa was appalled. Ships and droids had transponders. Even pets and valuable breed animals were sometimes fitted with transponders. But a person?

"But, sir, I don't—"

"The transponder or the escorts, it is your choice," he said roughly, then spun and stalked off by way of terminating any further discussion. The woman stared after him, quite dismayed. To think that she'd imagined she had a little rapport going with him!

In the end, Lissa decided to get the transponder. And came out of the infirmary afterwards wincing and cursing under her breath because the med aides had inserted the tiny disc under the skin on her back right between her shoulder blades where it would be the most difficult for her to reach and tamper with, or even scratch at while the incision healed.

TBC