XVI: Return

A black fog had been there for a week now. It lay everywhere, impacting both hearing and sight.

He could barely see fifteen feet into it. There was nothing around him except the fog; there had been nothing except the fog. He sighed. "Damn it. Where did this come from?" he asked for the twelfth time.

He examined the surrounding area once again. Something suddenly seemed… different.

The black fog finally lifted. He could finally open his eyes again. "Where… where am I?" He opened his eyes and saw.

He was on board a Nebulon-B frigate. He tried to think of any frigate he would be on. Was it…

A familiar voice spoke. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Corporal."

Dax got up, slowly. "What happened?"

Sergeant Volk was there, a datapad in his hand. "Well, we sent you on a secret mission to… test your abilities."

"What kind of abilities?"

"We were testing if you would be capable of becoming a commando. You did really well, I must say; sneaking through the ventilation system the way you had, not to mention you didn't give anyone a chance to find the bodies."

Memories zoomed back into Dax's head. The Blue Milk Run. Odd name for a frigate. That probably meant he was now on the Vulpine; that would certainly explain Volk's appearance.

"So, that frigate I was on, was that really…?"

"No, it was a Rebel frigate. We stole the armor and weapons." He turned towards Dax. "Also, that DH-17 you were using? The modifications were for more than silencing it. It was a stun pistol."

Dax nodded. "I see… so, about that test..."

Volk looked back towards the datapad. "The score was about… 71. Bonus points for hiding the bodies well and sneaking through the vents, but failing the mission got rid of a bunch of those. Decent enough, at least."

Dax felt he was catching on. "So then, the security cameras were…"

"Exactly," Volk finished. "Linked directly to our own monitors, so we could see how well you did. Most of them were hidden, of course." He put that datapad on the bed, for Dax to examine and evaluate his own performance. Dax was a good soldier; he wasn't too proud to assume he did everything perfectly. He would learn from any mistakes he made… or be able to realize when surrender is the only way to survive, Volk thought.

He continued the debriefing. "I would say that was just about a passing grade, Dax. As soon as your services are needed, you'll be sent as a spec-ops agent. You'll be working with the best, and your assignments will be much more difficult." Dax didn't exactly like the sound of that. If the sergeant's standard for difficulty was the test, Dax might not last very long in his new line of work. With the debriefing done, Volk left.

Dax had to get something to eat, badly. He had no clue how long he had been out, or even how long it had been between his post-Hoth lunch and the test. He entered the cafeteria, trying to find any food that hadn't been served to anyone yet. There, same as usual, the half-wall with the food and the servers on one side and the rest of the cafeteria on the other. The only one he saw in line was kind of short, though. And his head was oddly dome-shaped. Wait a minute.

"F3?" He walked over, tapped the droid. Its head spun towards him, with a short, confused beep. This quickly turned into what might as well have been a song of happiness in droidspeak. "Hey, glad to see you too, F3. Hey, uh… how long was I out?" A few beeps. "A week? Jesus." The food came back into his vision.

F3 and Dax found an empty table. Good. Dax would need all that room; he had piled a tray full of his favorite foods. As soon as he set the tray down and had seated himself, his stomach growled. Taking it like an order to charge, Dax assaulted the pile of food. If F3 hadn't understood humans as much as he did, he would probably have been disgusted.

Well, at least his friend was still alive. That counted for something.