Chapter 5:
Yaminul, once again acting as an Imperial officer, and Makaashyya acting as a dead Wookiee capture, left for the last known position of the Executor; the Imperial Flagship commanded by Darth Vader that was supposed to be in Hoth space. Echobe followed closely behind to take refuge in the nearby asteroids field to wait for the signal to proceed with his part.
While Echobe waited in the Starscream for a signal beacon to be activated, Makaashyya put herself into a near death sleep within the cargo hold of the Imperial shuttle, the common, triple-winged, white Imperial shuttle. It was an aged and battered thing, and scorched by Alliance blaster fire during its capture.
Yaminul was in no hurry to rush to where Darth Vader was believed to be, so he flew slowly towards the capital ship. Yaminul knew that the dark lord of the Empire could very well be on the wedge-shaped ship, and Makaashyya knew she didn't have the ability to face such an opponent. So in her dead-like sleep she let go of all thought and time to hide her presence. It was as if being in suspended animation, in hibernation, totally unaware of anything going around her.
Yaminul sped up as he got closer to the Executor, not wanting to show any kind of hesitation. The huge ship engulfed his entire view outside the shuttle before he was even within firing range. He swallowed hard with anxiety, and looked back at Makaashyya lying in the back of the shuttle. Yaminul uncomfortably fidgeted with his Imperial uniform that once belonged to Makaashyya's former commander, and he was sweating far too much for comfort and constantly wiping his brow and adjusting the air-conditioning on the shuttle, while doing his best to look proper and adopt the typical arrogant demeanor of an Imperial officer that, to his own surprise, he was able to pull off when he had faced Makaashyya. But Yaminul' greatest fear was the possible presence of Darth Vader. The arrival of the dark lord would surely end any hope for the operation of succeeding. Yaminul had no delusions that any of them had a prayer on a star of defeating him. And with Makaashyya effectively dead to the world, he had no backup. Yaminul hoped that they would just take his word at face value and obey his orders, and take Makaashyya straight to the morgue. Just then another thought troubled him.
Would they just eject her into space?
He continued to sweat and turn up the air-conditioning.
The Executor hailed the small Imperial shuttle. Yaminul was wise enough to answer immediately knowing he had dozens of laser cannons zeroed in on him the moment he became a blip on the Destroyer's radar.
"This is Colonel Banthsas Mur," Yaminul responded, "returning from Tatooine to report directly to Zav-Halis Nij." Yaminul flinched in spite of himself for being so direct. He felt to panic, thinking he had just ruined everything. Yaminul kept his hand hovering over the nav-computer to make the calculations for lightspeed as quick as possible if they decided to start firing.
Moments of silence passed, and Yaminul sweated some more.
"Shuttle Zabraxis, please hold position and wait for landing clearance."
"Zabraxis?" Yaminul said to himself. "Would have been nice to know that." Yaminul kept his hand in place over the nav-computer and looked back at Makaashyya lying motionless. Yaminul had grown tired of the short waits where survival hung in the balance, the little waits that were in abundance when around Echobe.
"Shuttle Zabraxis, Zav-Halis Nij has been informed and will meet you in hangar 5B."
"Acknowledged." Yaminul cut the radio off and breathed a sigh of relief, and shook his head to clear his blurred, oxygen-deprived vision, as if he had been holding his breath the entire time, and he was. Yaminul banked the shuttle into landing bay as instructed and landed rather roughly, scraping the deck with the skids. He looked out of the cockpit at the hangar as it stretched out in all directions, crawling with Imperial Stormtroopers, droids, and security cameras. Being in the presence of the grandeur of the Empire, inside it's flagship, was intimidating, and it took all that Yaminul could muster to not sweat himself even soggier. Yaminul lowered the platform, quickly programmed the shuttle to act as a decoy when they attempted their escape, grabbed one of the remotes to the shuttle, and walked out with as much air of confidence and dignity as he could muster. A small group of Imperial Stormtroopers quickly flanked him on either side of the platform. An Imperial officer then approached him.
The officer stood at attention and nodded, Yaminul nodded back.
"Banthsas Mur?" asked the Imperial.
"Zav-Halis Nij?" asked Yaminul in turn. They both nodded again. "We must speak," started Yaminul, "but first I have a dead prisoner aboard, evidence. It must remain on board the ship until I have decided what to do with the remains." Yaminul said, as a spur of the moment decision thinking it safer and easier for Makaashyya to escape the shuttle. Zav-Halis waved the concern away.
"Let us speak somewhere more private then," continued Zav-Halis, and he started walking towards a door on the far side of the hangar to the left of the shuttle that sealed the interior halls of the ship off from the hangar. Together, both officers walked to and through the door and then down a long run of hallway meters from the hangar door, and then they entered an unmarked office secluded from the others. No one else was inside, and there were no security cameras.
"You can speak freely here, there is no surveillance," said Zav-Halis, as he went to sit at his desk.
**********
Back inside the shuttle, Makaashyya was just coming out of her self-induced coma. She squinted her eyes and noticed that she was alone in the dark. She thought at first that it was the morgue, but a flash of memory came to her of the first time she ever stepped inside an Imperial shuttle and she then realized where she was, but she quickly shut out the rest of the memory. She wondered why she was not inside the morgue, or why she wasn't take off the shuttle. She hoped that things hadn't already gone wrong, but it was comforting that the shuttle was unmolested, and she hadn't been disturbed. She assumed and hoped for the best. The platform was still lowered, and she could hear the chaotic noise of the busy hangar outside.
She held her head in her hands for a few moments, focused her energies, and then stood up. She checked for her lightsaber on her belt, and then found the beacon hidden on her body. Makaashyya went to the open platform and peaked out. Stormtroopers flanked the ship on both sides. She then called up her powers and looked at their minds. They were obedient, young and impressionable, but not entirely foolish. Using her powers, she entered into each of the Stormtroopers minds, and did her best to cloud their vision and blur her image from their mind. She hoped that she had not lost her abilities since turning her back to the darkside.
She concentrated a few moments, and when she was confident that she had done all that she could she entered into the shadows and exited the ship, ducking underneath the lowered platform, and then she ran as fast as she could to a grouping of cargo crates about a hundred feet away from the shuttle. She bumped the crates harder than she expected. The unintentional noise made her heart shudder, and stopped her breath in her throat. She waited for someone to investigate, but a minute passed and nothing happened. She then located an access vent and ducked into it, letting out a sigh of relief safely inside the darkness of the ventilation system. She then began trying to find her way to the power conduits that powered that section of the ship according to the schematics that she had read from the Starscream's computers.
**********
"Freely then," said Yaminul, placing his hands behind his back trying not to expose the sweat stains underneath his arms. "The prison was discovered."
The Imperial behind the desk squinted his eyes and folded his hands into a triangle before him.
"Discovered?" Zav-Halis said with doubt.
"Yes," Yaminul's voice faulted as spittle clogged his throat. He fought from clearing it. "During a prisoner transfer. My top lieutenant was captured and tortured until the rebels discovered the location."
"Your lieutenant?" said the Imperial to Yaminul with eyes that seemed to pierce his story to its lying heart. Zav-Halis unfolded his hands and placed them palms down on the desk, leaning his weight forward. Anger creased his brow. Yaminul flinched, knowing he had done something wrong.
"You were assigned to keep the prison under total secrecy." Zav-Halis said with a boiling rage. "You were ordered to kill anyone who knew of the complex outside of your staff within the prison and yourself," he went on.
Yaminul unfolded his hands from behind his back defensively.
"If we were not aboard the Executor, I would dispose of you here and now!" threatened the Zav-Halis. "Do you have any idea what high command would do to any one of us had they known we were conducting such an operation without their knowledge and consent!" Zav-Halis stood from his desk. "Do you know how many credits I had to secure for this project?" His voice crescendoed. Zav-Halis reached under his desk while glaring at Yaminul. "I will not suffer the consequences of your foolishness."
**********
The ventilation system was clearly not designed for Wookiees, Makaashyya thought. If not for Makaashyya's fur, a furless, sweaty human would have been sticking to the smooth metal walls of the ventilation shaft. She was doing her best to squeeze through the ever shrinking passage hopefully to reach a, or get as close as possible to, where the power conduits would be according to the schematics that she hoped were accurate. Makaashyya traveled for what seemed like miles before she reached the point where she had to cut through the wall of the vent shaft to reach the power conduits.
She squeezed her hand to her side and grasped her lightsaber with her fingers and activated it above her head. Then bringing the crimson blade down, she began to cut diagonally into the wall. The lightsaber didn't pass through as easily as she expected, but still it cut fairly quickly. She cut an oval shaped hole, and flung herself out and into the room that was almost completely devoid of light save for the sparse twinkling of electrical equipment filling the room like stars in the night sky. She could feel a draft and that told her that the room was much larger than the schematics detailed. She started making her way along the grated floor, feeling with her feet, and watching the lights blinking all around her in some unknown sequence, until she reached the far wall meters from the hole she had cut.
After feeling around on the wall and making her best guess as to the location of the power conduits beyond, she pointed the lightsaber at the wall and cut a hole into the thick steel that was far thicker than the vent shaft, taking several strokes and the removal of several heavy pieces to reach the conduits hiding behind. She peered inside the hole she had just made, and could hear a constant, electrical hum like the buzzing of a hive of smothered insects. She reached inside and felt huge tubular structures forming another wall that were the conduits.
Makaashyya hoped that it was what she was looking for, and that the schematics were correct as she drew her lightsaber back to swing as hard as she could into the conduits, at the same time readying her mind for the sequence of events that would follow the violent reaction of the severed power, and hoping all the while that Yaminul had completed his task on schedule, the shutdown of the lights being the intended signal to Yaminul to move forward with the plan.
Just as Makaashyya's muscles jerked to swing the lightsaber forward, a droid sprung from the shadows, and grabbed her from behind like a spidery predator, knocking the lightsaber from her hands to clatter to the floor, deactivating the blade and snuffing out the most significant light in the room, and nearly falling off of the grate to the unknown depth below. The unseen droid grasped Makaashyya's limbs and wrestled with her. She grabbed at what she thought was its head in an attempt to rip it off, then something sharp pierced her abdomen and quickly pulled out, rearing back for another stab. Blood started to flow from her punctured side.
**********
Zav-Halis reached and activated a silent alarm underneath his desk. Yaminul dropped all pretenses and pulled his small blaster that he had concealed under his uniform, and leveled it at the Imperial.
"What do you think you're doing?" shouted Zav-Halis as he started to slowly raise his hands.
"I figure if you want dispose of me, I may well beat you to it." Yaminul stepped towards the Imperial and jerked the blaster at him in a come hither motion. Zav-Halis reluctantly obeyed. Yaminul was unsure how much time he had. He was sweating profusely, his finger slipped on the trigger. He then fumbled with a small explosive in his pocket, and placed it on the door. Yaminul then grabbed the Imperial and stood behind him, using Zav-Halis as a shield from the blast. Before the Imperial had a chance to protest, Yaminul activated the small explosive via a detonator. The small, but powerful explosive, went off and sent a hard shockwave through the walls and the floor, and blasted the door from its moorings. Immediately, the general alarm sounded, red lights started flashing, drowning out the normal lighting. Yaminul pushed the Imperial forward into the cloud of smoke and debris, ducking through the mangled door, and started running down the hall with his blaster to the Imperial's back.
**********
Makaashyya felt the droid rear back to stab again, its aim precise. She looked around frantically for her lightsaber, but couldn't locate it. She grabbed its spidery legs, and pulled them from her body as the bladed arm came at her. The droid loosened just slightly. Makaashyya used that moment and summoned the force and pushed the droid off of her and inadvertently sent it flying with more force than she had intended. The helpless droid flew across the room, synthetic voice screaming, into the hole she had just cut into the wall where the power conduits were. The droid slammed into the power conduits just like the boulders Makaashyya had been taught to throw by Gethzerion on Dathomir. The metal tubes housing the electrical wires tore, exposing bare wires beneath. The electricity that erupted from the pipes sent the droid into frenzy, activating all of its servos in a wild flailing, puncturing more conduits that shot more sparks into the air, temporarily blinding Makaashyya with a flash of lightning-like blue light.
Electricity arched out of the conduits and lit up the entire room with a blue, moonlight-like strobe. Makaashyya, barely able to see, but just enough to see the shining of her lightsaber, called it to her. She used the other hand to cover the wound on her side that flowed freely.
**********
Just as hundreds of Imperial personnel, stormtroopers, and officers, and even droids started pouring out into the hall reacting autonomously to the alert, the lights all at once shut off like an eclipse, plunging that section of the Executor into darkness.
Yaminul pulled out his communicator and used the small light emanating from its display to find Zav-Halis Nij who was on the floor who tripped when the lights went out. Yaminul grabbed him by the neck of his uniform, and jabbed the blaster into the small of the Imperial's back forcing him to stand. In a desperate balancing act, Yaminul guided Zav-Halis through the hallway with the small interface of his communicator over the shoulder of the Imperial, while keeping the blaster jammed into his back. Yaminul pushed Zav-Halis as quickly as he could, desperately trying not to trip and fall in the chaos, and make it to the door and back to the hangar.
The door back to the hangar was half-open. Imperials were trying to pass through the half-closed door, pushing and shoving in what seemed like a panic. Yaminul and Zav-Halis squeezed through in the confusion. An alarm sounded ship wide, and battery powered emergency lights lit sparse, but vital walkways throughout the hangar. There was so much confusion that no one took notice of two Imperials stumbling towards a lone shuttle with its platform extended. The guard surrounding it had disappeared. Yaminul then activated his beacon.
**********
Makaashyya activated her beacon to signal Echobe. She staggered, still trying to hold her gaping wound as she limped to the ventilation shaft she had entered through. She kicked a twitching, blood-covered arm of the droid out of her way. She then climbed into the hastily cut hole in the shaft, and started squirming her way through. It was completely dark, making her to travel by memory, and she had to let go of her wound and use both hands to crawl her way through. The passage seemed smaller, threatening to collapse in on her. The blood flowing over her fur was quickly drying making her stick to the metal tube. After what seemed like forever since she had started, she emerged from the entrance to the ventilation shaft, but lacked the strength to jump down. She tried to lower herself as far as she could, but her blood covered hand made her lose her grip, and she fell to the floor. Her breathing labored, and her vision blurring, she looked for the shuttle hoping to see Yaminul, and if they were really lucky, Echobe and the Starscream at any moment.
**********
Yaminul, with the help of the emergency lights, saw a form fall from a shaft in the wall next to the shuttle, and onto the ground. Yaminul pushed Zav-Halis towards it and saw Makaashyya looking back at him from the floor where she landed, a smile growing on her face. Yaminul couldn't help but smile himself.
Zav-Halis tried to struggle, but Yaminul hit him over the head and knocked the Imperial senseless, and let him fall to the floor next to Makaashyya. He then went to the wounded Wookiee and they both revealed their blinking beacons to each other, and smiled even wider at one another hoping that Echobe had heard the signal. Yaminul sat at Makaashyya's side and did his best to stop the bleeding as they waited, partially hidden by the cargo crates. Yaminul pulled out the shuttle's remote ready to activate the pre-programmed shuttle to take off the moment Echobe arrived. That's when a small group of Stormtroopers ran by. Yaminul and Makaashyya huddled into the shadows as best they could, but one Stormtrooper noticed them and stopped in his tracks. He didn't immediately level his blaster at them, but instead was a little perplexed by what he saw; an unconscious Imperial officer lying at the feet of another Imperial officer who was tending to a wounded Wookiee.
The Stormtrooper cocked his head in animal-like confusion, and then leveled his blaster at the strange trio. Yaminul feebly tossed aside his small blaster and raised his hands in hesitant surrender. Makaashyya raised her one hand, keeping the other over her wound. They moved as slow as possible, hoping for Echobe to arrive. Several more Stormtroopers stopped to look at the spectacle, and all went through the same phase of confusion at what they saw, and then leveled their blasters.
"I'm sorry." Makaashyya said in a whisper.
She blamed herself. She felt that had she not gotten hurt, and needed Yaminul's help, they would not have been seen. Yaminul dismissed her concern, knowing what the Wookiee girl was thinking.
"You cut the power, and did your part. I told Echobe it wasn't very good idea, like all his ideas. I'm surprised I live this long around him." Yaminul said jokingly.
"Stand up!" ordered the first Stormtrooper who had spotted them. Yaminul stood slowly and steadily, and reached out for Makaashyya to help her stand.
An explosion threw them back to the floor. Yaminul hit the floor hard, and Makaashyya came down on top of him, the unconscious Zav-Halis slid across the floor. It was like an angry whirlwind entered the hangar, blowing everyone in the near vicinity off their feet. Spinning out of the vortex was the Starscream that then landed in a skid towards the shuttle, its platform lowered.
The bleeding Wookiee and the stunned Yaminul, recovered as quickly as they could just in time to see the clawed fingers of a rancor reaching out of the Starscream, proceeded by a gaping mouth full of teeth, and a roar that would have made the hardiest of Imperial Stormtrooper's soil their armor.
Bilebelch almost flew out from the Starscream. He lunged from the ship, and landed surefooted on the deck. His dark, beady eyes and acute sense of smell was easily able to locate the prone forms of Yaminul and Makaashyya. The rancor ran on all fours, knocking aside any would-be Imperial attackers like they were tumbleweeds, and scattered them across the deck. Blaster fire lit up the hangar like fireworks, in a single volley, from hundreds of confused Stormtroopers in bolts of red. Bolts struck and rebounded off of the rancor's armored hide. The rancor wouldn't have bothered to notice even if they did penetrate. The animalistic tenacity to capture his targets overcame him. Droids, docked TIE fighters, Stormtroopers; nothing could stop him.
Bilebelch skidded to a stop, his claws digging gouges into the deck. His great bulk shielded his charges from any blaster bolts. One sweep with Bilebelch's long arms threw aside the Stormtroopers that stood between him, and Makaashyya and Yaminul. Yaminul stood and grabbed up the prone Zav-Halis in his arms, and Bilebelch quick to understand, stooped, allowing Yaminul to climb onto his back, and the rancor picked up the bleeding Makaashyya in his clawed hand. She was quickly losing consciousness.
In a dash, the rancor went for the Starscream with blaster bolts ricocheting off of his hide. Echobe was inside controlling the turret and shooting almost at random to cause as much confusion as he could. The hangar was in swirling chaos. Stormtroopers were being thrown left and right, officers were yelling orders to try and regain control. Makaashyya was bleeding profusely and the world was beginning to dim to her eyes. Sounds became muffled to her ears, like she had her head under water. She was hallucinating that she was the young Wookiee girl not yet of age, burying her young face in the chest of her brother back on Kashyyyk after waking from a nightmare. She dreamt of happier times on Kashyyyk, when Syymbacca was still alive, and then everything went dark as the fighting raged around her.
The rancor halted at the platform of the Starscream, allowing Yaminul to drag the prone body of Zav-Halis Nij off the rancor's back to fall into Yaminul's arms, and then to drop just inside the ship. Blaster bolts threatened to kill them all as the firing started to concentrate on the saucer-shaped freighter. Echobe fired off a missile into a grouping of docked TIE fighters. The fragile Imperial ships exploded and disintegrated, flattening anyone nearby.
Yaminul scrambled to his feet after being knocked down from the blast. Bilebelch, with Makaashyya cradled in his hands, crawled back into the ship. Yaminul then pulled the remote from his pocket while grasping onto the platform's hydraulic arm, and activated the pre-programmed route of the shuttle. The platform of the shuttle retracted, and the engines kicked on.
Yaminul took a final glance at the shuttle to ensure that it was behaving as programmed when a wild blaster bolt pierced Yaminul in the neck, knocking him onto the Starscream's platform. Blood shot out from the wound and his mouth when he hit the floor.
The world stopped for Yaminul, a veil fell over his eyes, blurring all that was happening around him. The blow knocked the senses from his mind. The world shifted, everything became muted. He didn't even feel Bilebelch grab him by the Imperial uniform and drag him back onto the Starscream. The platform closed behind them.
The triple-winged, white shuttle powered up, and slowly left the deck and half-spun towards the hanger entrance that revealed the gigantic arena of space waiting outside of the immense Imperial flagship. Towards the space it drifted. Blaster bolts from bounced off of the armor of the shuttle like harmless pebbles as it glided towards the entrance and then quickened its pace the closer it got to freedom. Stormtroopers scrambled to their TIE fighters.
The Starscream also rose from the deck and quickly flew out before the Imperial shuttle. Echobe directed the Starscream to drop down like a stone caught in gravity the moment they exited the hangar. The Imperial shuttle lagged behind in lazy surrender to its final program serving its final mission.
By that time, the power within the Imperial flagship was redirected from the severed conduits, and the lights came back on inside the hangar. The Executor's turbo laser-cannons came online as the Starscream's nav-computer brought up the calculations for the jump to lightspeed. The turrets fired first on the shuttle in the vital seconds the Alliance saboteurs needed to plot a course through hyperspace back to Mon calamari. Echobe then hit the throttle, sending the Starscream into hyperspace, and out of the reach of the quickly recovering Imperial Destroyer. The Imperial shuttle buckled from the blasts of laser cannons and exploded into dust as the Starscream entered the hyperspace tunnel.
The interdictor gravity-well generators of the Executor failed to come online in time before the rogue ship fled. The scanners came online just after the Starscream escaped, and for the poor commander of the Executor, he eventually had to answer for the havoc.
**********
Echobe set the autopilot for the several hour-long journey back to Mon calamari, and then ran from the cockpit to the loading platform. Bilebelch was hovering over three prone bodies on the floor. The rancor's bony hide bore new blasterbolt scars, but was relatively unharmed. L7 whimpered sadly by the bodies. Echobe approached Bilebelch who then stepped back to reveal what he was protecting.
Echobe saw the prone body of the Imperial officer, Zav-Halis Nij, the barely conscious Makaashyya, her head lulling about in a stupor, and the whitened, blood-covered, convulsing body of Yaminul. Echobe hollered for the R2 to get medical supplies as Yaminul's body went still. The droid beeped and sped off towards the supply closet. Echobe looked at Yaminul in horror. The wound in Yaminul's neck had stopped spurting, and just oozed blood as the Starscream's artificial gravity pulled it from his body to the floor. Yaminul's eyes were frozen in a half-open stare at nothingness. His skin had gone pale, and the warmth had quickly drained from his body and felt as cold as the Starscream's floor. The remote control for the Imperial shuttle, which acted as a decoy for their escape, hung limply from Yaminul's hand.
Echobe brushed Yaminul's face with his hand, and closed the soldier's eyes, and he went to Makaashyya. The R2 rolled quickly over to Echobe, his robotic arm full of bandages, sterile water, and blood clotting agent. Echobe spread her sericeous skin to open the wound. He then washed it out and shook the sand-like clotting agent into it, and then he lifted Makaashyya and moved her to his quarters, kicking obstacles from his path. L7 followed. Bilebelch hung over the body of Yaminul as if he were guarding it, and watched Echobe walk away with Makaashyya in his arms.
Echobe lowered the unconscious body of Makaashyya onto his bed. Her blood ran and smeared, painting the sheets. Echobe's white fur was also smeared with blood, that of Yaminul's and Makaashyya's. The Wookiee took his Ryyk Blade from his side, and in a few quick motions, shaved clean the wounded area of Makaashyya's abdomen. The bleeding had slowed as the clotting agent did its work, but Echobe couldn't tell the extent of her injuries as the blood continued to flow. He spread the wound open with his fingers, grabbed a suction tube from the little R2 droid, and cleaned out any debris from the wound, and then flushed it with water. With a small searing extension from the droid, Echobe did his best to seal the internal wound, leaving the surface wound open to watch for any more blood to flow. He put more clotting agent on it, and put a self-adhering bandage on. He then checked Makaashyya's pulse. Her breathing was steady, as was her heart beat, and then he hooked up a machine to monitor her.
Echobe stood up from the bed and breathed deeply. He grabbed his face, and shook his head in despair at the cost of the mission. His friend Yaminul was dead. The last of the original group he began with, and one of the few people who could understand him, who had been with him since the beginning, and Makaashyya injured, perhaps mortally. Tears welled up in Echobe's eyes, but a sudden burst of levity made him laugh. The thought of the reaction from Lord Vader after being told that Alliance agents had sabotaged the Imperial flagship, and escaped with an Imperial officer while causing sizable damage to numerable TIE fighters, and the hangar, and the capital ship itself compounded the emotions he was feeling. Echobe dwelled on the savage retribution that would be inflicted on the Sith Lord's subordinates. Echobe felt like he was losing his mind.
He breathed deeply again, and tried to calm himself, and to remind himself that there was still more for him to do. He went back to where Bilebelch was still guarding the body of the fallen Alliance soldier and the now conscious Zav-Halis, who was cowering in the corner to distance himself the hungry glare of the rancor.
Yaminul was unmoved, still in the position Echobe had left him in. Echobe knelt at the fallen Alliance soldier's body, his friend, and took a quick glance at Zav-Halis, who was trembling in fear of being eaten. The Wookiee then looked back to Yaminul. He pushed aside the remote that hung from Yaminul's limp hand, and picked the body up from the floor. Reaching under Yaminul's head and legs further smeared even more blood, and Echobe was now covered from head to toe in the blood of his friend and Makaashyya. Echobe deadened himself to what was welling up inside of him and choked back the urge to cry. The death of anyone affected him more than he cared to admit, but he realized that it had been some time since a death affected him as much. The blurry-eyed Wookiee remembered Burmar at that moment.
Echobe took Yaminul's body to the refrigeration unit, cleaned up the blood as best he could, and wrapped it in the sheet as Burmar had wrapped Ulchewbuk, as Echobe had wrapped Burmar. Echobe lingered a few more minutes, saying a prayer over the brave soldiers body, stood up, shut the light off, and walked out, leaving Yaminul in the dark. When Echobe went back to the platform, Bilebelch was less than a foot from the Imperial, pinning him against the wall. Bilebelch didn't move his black eyes from the terrified human. Echobe called Bilebelch off, and approached Zav-Halis with a set of binders in his hands. Echobe looked menacing covered in blood, and did nothing to pacify the Imperial's fear. Echobe tossed the binders to Zav-Halis who flinched like he was going to be struck, but opened his eyes when the blow never came. He quickly took the hint and put the binders tightly onto his wrists.
Echobe made a come hither motion to the Imperial, and Zav-Halis obediently stood and carefully scaled the ship wall, away from the rancor and to Echobe. Echobe moved Zav-Halis to the lounge and prodded him to sit down. Echobe then bound the Imperial to the chair. Zav-Halis was unusually quiet without a tapped mouth. He had no insults or threats to offer. Zav-Halis had stopped trembling, but still looked just as fearful as before. He just looked forward with not even the typical upright look of arrogance on his face, just a sweat-covered brow, and a pale expression like he too had been drained of blood. Had Echobe not have been grieving, he may have noticed, but he was too worried about Makaashyya, and in grief for his friend, and regretting having brought any one of them. Though, he was thankful that Bilebelch wasn't harmed, and could hardly imagine what he would have done if the animal too had been wounded or killed. Echobe banished the thoughts from his mind before the fear could find purchase.
Echobe went to his quarters where Makaashyya lay sleeping, still breathing steadily. She was stable, but still unconscious. Echobe checked her vitals one final time then turned and faced Zav-Halis who spoke.
"You are after our experimental program aren't you?" asked Zav-Halis. Echobe looked at the sweat-covered officer, crossed his arms over his chest and waited, lifting his eyebrows impatiently. Zav-Halis looked to the ground in thought, then continued.
"So you know of what has been happening?"
Echobe nodded.
Zav-Halis paused again, preparing himself. Echobe just watched him expressionlessly.
"It wasn't my idea. It was my CO's idea. It was his brainchild, and he called up his closest allies in the Empire to do it. He was rabidly anti-alien he hated them all. It was his idea to find a way to make them more useful to the Empire besides slave labor. He wanted to remake them into an entirely new species of the Empire's own, so he tasked us with setting up prisons, locations, and hiding the appropriations for them. No one outside of our group knew anything about it."
Zav-Halis breathed, as if he were relieved to be telling his secret.
"We were scared to let anyone else find out, we didn't want to be associated in any way if they were ever discovered, I didn't want my family to find out either. The Emperor and Lord Vader's vengeance would be terrible if they were to discover what we were doing without permission, with Imperial recourses. It will be terrifying enough to know what will happen to the commanders on the Executor for allowing rebels to infiltrate. I cannot go back now. I will tell you everything I know, the location of the laboratory, anything. I cannot go back to the Empire now." Zav-Halis lowered his head in shame, but whether it was genuine Echobe didn't care, nor did he care about Zav-Halis' plight. All that he cared about was destroying the last of the prisons for good.
Echobe didn't say anything. He wasn't sure that the Imperial would understand him anyways, so he went to the cockpit and grabbed a recorder, and went back to Zav-Halis, activated the recorder, and set it down on top of the round table in front of him. Zav-Halis nodded and began to recount everything as he had promised.
Zav-Halis spoke into the recorder his full confession, and the location of the last prison, a large mobile base that was cloaked, and that once orbited Corellia. But when word reached the conspiring Imperial's that a small band of Alliance had discovered the program, a cloaking device was installed, and the mobile base was moved into orbit around Kashyyyk.
Echobe couldn't believe it, and was astonished that he had quite possibly passed it on his way there for Makaashyya's trial. Zav-Halis went on to explain that it was the main base of operations where the entire program originated. The commanding officer, Zav-Halis' commanding officer, delegated authority to all the other prisons. It was the largest and oldest installation, and since Burmar and Echobe had started to meddle in Imperial affairs, it quickly became the best protected. Zav-Halis explained that it had since been reinforced, and remained cloaked, and was in the shadow of the planet, only de-cloaking when giving landing clearance for transports carrying more prisoners or supplies.
Some time passed as Zav-Halis confessed to the recorder. Echobe then saw out of the corner of his eye Makaashyya, who was looking out from Echobe's quarters. She had been listening the entire time. The lines of wires connecting her to monitoring devices were still connected. She stood with her hand over the bandaged wound. She looked ill, either by the Imperial's confession or loss of blood Echobe couldn't tell. Echobe quickly went to her. She went limp in his arms when he reached her, and Echobe walked her back to the bed. He turned the light on, and checked her vitals and her wound. The R2 beeped happily as it noticed that the Wookiee girl was conscious. Makaashyya stopped Echobe's worrisome checking and asked about Yaminul. Echobe could only shake his head, and she quickly understood that Yaminul was gone.
"I'm sorry," she began, but Echobe silenced her with a wave of his hand and stroked her forehead. His fur and hers were still covered in blood that had dried and turned brown, but they paid it no attention, they only saw each other. Echobe released his hold on Makaashyya and then went back to the Imperial who had stopped talking, but his head remained lowered. Echobe picked up the recorder and put it in his pocket. Zav-Halis leaned back into the chair and consigned himself to the agreement he had made with Echobe. L7 rolled back into Echobe's quarters where Makaashyya had laid back down to doze off into a blood-loss induced sleep. Echobe then went to the cockpit and sat there for the remainder of the trip back to Mon Calamari.