"Not good enough," Kyle said, shaking his head with slow, deadly finality. "This is not even close to good enough."
He sat in the con-form chair like a manka cat crouching in a bush, ignoring its luxurious softness. His legs were spread and his arms were flat on the armrests, ready to go for his bryar pistol—concealed in his blast jacket this time—at the slightest hint of danger. The guards would have complained of him taking it into this room, but Kyle had decided not to worry them, and he was done taking chances after what had happened in the hangar. Jan often teasingly accused him of sleeping with the weapon under his pillow, but that wasn't going to be a joke anymore.
Much as he did not feel the chair, the holopaintings of garish alien landscapes on the walls and the gleaming abstract statues decorating far corners could have been samplings from the garbage planet of Raxus Prime, for all he cared, and his water glass on the nearby side table might as well have contained sludge from the Anoat City sewer. Kyle Katarn had no eyes except for the regal, white-robed figure that, for the past few years, had simultaneously been the main supplier both of his greatest need—cold, hard Imperial Credits—and many of the greatest frustrations of his professional life.
If Kyle played his cards right, he might be able to maneuver her into taking both roles today, instead of just the latter.
"This is the best the Alliance has to offer, Commander. For the time being, it will have to be good enough." Chief of State Mon Mothma faced him with none of her renowned senatorial charm or wit, only the uncanny feminine serenity which betrayed her status as the most powerful being in the Rebel Alliance. Her modest coppery hair was in a contemporary style, yet her face was unmistakably lined beyond her years.
The sound of Kyle popping his knuckles was like a fusillade of miniaturized mass-driver cannons. "I want those murglaks found."
"As do General Cracken and I," soothed the Chief of State. A tightening in her eyes was the only hint of her distaste for profanity. "This incident constitutes a major security breach, which calls for a full investigation. Even Cracken's best men will not be able to solve this overnight—and I have no sorceress ways that can conjure up these fugitives."
It was rare to hear a quip from the likes of Mon Mothma, but Kyle Katarn was in no mood for novelties. "Cracken's best men," he repeated sharply. "That's another thing: I'm not inspired by the idea that Alliance Intelligence is going to investigate itself."
Mon Mothma tipped her chin up as though rising to the challenge. "There is no other department of the Alliance up to this task. If it gives you any reassurance, I will verify the integrity of the agents Cracken assigns—personally."
"That's a start," Kyle grumbled. His scowl lowered and began to burrow into the synth-baquor carpet.
The Chief of State's mention of "sorceress ways" may have been a bad joke, but in a way it wasn't altogether unwarranted. The disappearing act that Shaparo and his cronies had made seemed impossible, absent the involvement of black magic.
As sensibly paranoid as ever, Jan had tried to hail Kyle via comlink when she was done packing up his gear. Receiving no answer, she'd gone to the Moldy Crow's hangar with blaster in hand, and a bloodstain near the ship prompted her to alert Alliance Naval Security. Though the officers on duty were eager to help, ANS protocol forbade them to initiate a Code Red or an official shipwide search until a person had been missing for two standard hours. By that time, Kyle was just coming around after being stunned the second time, and Shaparo had a massive head start.
Once free to do so, Naval Security duly swept the Independence while Kyle convalesced in the flagship's medical bay. Half a day later, they discharged him with a dozen bacta patches on his body and an acti-splint grafted to his nose—only for ANS to hit him in the face with the news that, against all odds, the trail was already cold.
There were a few security cams in the main concourse that had briefly caught sight of Shaparo and his accomplices—or rather of people who sort of looked like them, based on Kyle and Molindi's descriptions. The ones in the repair bay, though, had been tampered with, their recordings either corrupted or replaced with footage from a week ago. The same had happened in adjacent sections of the ship, including the one containing an emptied ration supply room where Kyle had been held, and several main hangars. From the latter, more than a dozen shuttles and transports had left on routine, scheduled departures. The fugitives could have hitched a ride on any one of them, or several—or, Naval Security had to admit, possibly none at all.
So: practically no cam footage. No alarms tripped. No reports of suspicious activity. No physical evidence except for Kyle's injuries, the signs of struggle near the Moldy Crow, and the table and chair welded to the floor of the ration supply room. No witnesses except for Kyle and Molindi. They'd made the cleanest getaway possible, and catching them would take the resources of Alliance Intelligence.
To make matters worse, not to mention more confusing, it also turned out that Kyle had underestimated how professional his abductors really were.
Case in point: Shaparo, Troomis, Garek, Vewin, Bertos, R2-Q8—preliminary inquiries confirmed that these were the names (or aliases) of Alliance Intelligence agents, but there was no record that any of them had come aboard the Independence or were even stationed with the main Rebel fleet at all. Bertos Goodner, apparently the Twi'lek, was listed as KIA on Naboo, and the rest were either on leave or deployed on assignments across the galaxy. None were attached to the Madine case. The real Captain Shaparo had conducted Moff Rebus's interrogation, but he'd never been to Kolaador Base, and he was not known to have a son.
And, as Mon Mothma had summarized, there was no proof that Kyle's tormentor had one, either. Those men were obviously mentally disturbed. The mere thought that such savage beings could even be members of Alliance Intelligence is fairly preposterous.
Well, what else could they have been? Kyle had demanded.
Sure enough: At this juncture, such speculation is futile. But they will be caught and see justice, I assure you.
It had been years since Kyle had felt less assured of anything than he did right now, sitting in that audience chamber with the Chief of State of the Rebel Alliance. His stomach groaned like a starving whaladon, but he hadn't been able to eat since leaving the medbay. Nor had he slept. Only two things kept him upright. One was a large quantity of stimcaf. The other was the plain, spine-tingling fact that, while the seven thousand other beings aboard the Independence were Rebels like him...
You can't tell good from evil by a uniform.
Kyle would have felt safer in the belly of an Imperial garrison.
"There's something else you need to explain," he said. "What about FleetNet?"
Mon Mothma raised an eyebrow. "What of it?"
Kyle couldn't help but grind his teeth before answering. He'd explained this already to Naval Security, to the Intelligence liaison, and to Mothma's aides. Had none of them mentioned it to her? "All those blasted nodes talking about Crix Madine and his accomplices. I don't know if you've spent time reading them, but it's, it's out of control. People are getting smeared, accused with no evidence, threatened. Someone needs to get on the monitors so they'll start doing their damn jobs."
"Ah, yes. I'm informed that the Communications Ministry is working on that."
"They are? What are they doing?"
"Surely I need not remind you that the Alliance's resources are limited—that is why we have such great need of skilled mercenaries like yourself. I'm given to understand that a staff shortage has led to an overdependence on the use of droids for monitoring user conduct on FleetNet. Alliance technicians are engaged in upgrading the droids' programming and processing capacity, so that they will be better equipped to keep FleetNet safe." The woman joined her hands in front of her. "I ask your patience with this, Commander."
"I was just attacked and kidnapped. I can't afford to be patient," Kyle snapped.
"How is this related to FleetNet?" Mon Mothma looked genuinely confused, and Kyle tried to crush his chair's armrests.
"How is it related? I saw a bunch of nodes where people were talking about me, questioning my loyalty to the Alliance, saying I needed to be investigated—or worse—because of my 'connection' with Crix Madine. The next thing I knew, I got jumped in that hangar!"
"Are you sure those transmissions were responsible, Commander? That they set that man, who claimed to be Shaparo, on your trail?"
The imposter's voice echoed in Kyle's thoughts—I never needed to read those nodes, Katarn—and he had to answer, "No, I'm not sure, but there's a good chance they're related. And even if not, allowing that kind of talk on the network is still dangerous. It could get other people hurt too."
"I understand your concern, but again, this matter is in the hands of the monitors and the technicians who are upgrading the droids. In the meantime, transmissions can still be reported for violating the Code of Conduct, and ones that apparently call for violence will be given serious scrutiny." Mon Mothma paused. Then, with an apologetic incline of the head, unwittingly took her own life in her hands by adding, "I'm afraid that FleetNet is beyond my purview as Chief of State... and I must confess that I've never had much time to spend on it myself."
Kyle Katarn's hand twitched once. Had his hostess been so careless as to add a self-deprecating smile, he was certain that the bryar pistol would have left his jacket. Too much had happened, too fast. The thread he was hanging from was very, very thin.
He forced himself to breathe deeply, choked his battle-readiness down with an intensity nearly invisible to an outside observer: a mere twitch of his eye, a slight crease in his forehead. Maintaining focus was key. Kyle had not demanded this meeting merely so he could gripe at the Chief of State for a half-hour and then go his merry way.
"Yeah, me neither. I only use it for reading." Locking his gaze onto Mothma again, Kyle crossed his arms. "But look here, I got back from Talus almost a month ago. In addition to sitting around without any more work, I've just been subjected to— to kidnapping and torture, which was enabled by the incompetence of Alliance security. I'm not leaving this room without being compensated for my trouble—beginning with some information."
Mon Mothma, who had been drifting (almost unconsciously) toward an ornate holotable, stopped and regarded him. Her white robe rippled, then went still, like a phantasm caught off guard. There was a gravity in her face now, a presence that had been absent before. From this point forward, she wouldn't be bolshitting him—at least, that's not all she would be doing. "You're a valuable asset to the Alliance, Katarn. I'll cooperate... as far as I'm able."
"Okay, then," said Kyle, nodding. "First of all, I want to know what's going on with Crix Madine—and whoever was covering for him at Kollador Base. When are they going to dealt with?"
"Ah—" Mon Mothma cleared her throat. "I don't understand."
"When are they gonna be punished?" insisted Kyle. "The Alliance needs to know. And when it happens, everyone needs to see it so we can have closure and stop all the gossip and speculation. So we can put that kriffing boy-raping pervert's carcass behind us and forget about him."
The Chief of State answered him slowly, almost ploddingly. "Commander, the... I'm afraid I don't have an answer for you. Cracken's investigation is ongoing. There is still a great deal more information to gather—even more now, after what happened to you. And there have been... accusations of conspiracy and collusion, which complicate the process."
"So? How long can it take to sift out the other pedos at Kolaador?"
"You misunderstand," Mon Mothma said, taking a step toward him. "I tell you this in the strictest confidence, but the paranoia and innuendo to which you refer has not been limited to FleetNet. Accusations have been made between certain members of the Alliance Advisory Council and the High Command Advisory Council, as well as other high-level institutions within the Rebellion. There is much... disagreement as to whether certain officials were aware of the initial complaints made on Kolaador, and whether they responded as promptly as dictated by regulations, or in the appropriate manner. Every such accusation widens the scope of Major Gen— of former Major General Madine's alleged crimes, and thus of General Cracken's investigation. Madine's trial has already been delayed four times."
Kyle swallowed thickly, trying to process what he'd just heard. It was as if she had dumped a bag of live concussion grenades into his lap. Which one was he supposed to toss first?
"Wait. Madine's trial? His alleged crimes?" he hissed.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Alleged crimes. Alleged crimes. Alleged," Kyle repeated, his fists clenching like industrial electro-pincers. His still-raw stomach tightened. The things he'd seen, that he'd been forced to look at, were still in his head... "What do you mean, alleged? It was all over the FleetNet— The parents, the witnesses, the— The pictures he took of those little kids. That's not kriffing alleged anything. Madine's a monster. He needs to die."
"That may indeed be his fate." Mon Mothma's whole manner had changed. She was colder now, harder, like a living sculpture in ice. "But this is not the Empire, Commander. We preserve the Constitution which Palpatine discarded; Madine will stand trial, and he is presumed innocent until proven guilty."
"Innocent. He might be innocent." Kyle spoke the words in astonishment, almost rapture, as though they contained some titanic meaning which could only be revealed in their pronouncement. The concept, the idea, the mere notion that Madine might have been framed, falsely accused, or implicated by accident... Kyle had not considered it, even hypothetically. Not since he'd seen that node on FleetNet with the images, the ones leaked from Madine's datapad—allegedly.
Before Kyle realized it, he was out of the chair, his thoughts tumbling from his mouth. "If he might be innocent, then... then why the hell did Command go public with all this? Why did they strip him of his rank? Doesn't that actually presume guilt?"
"We could not recall him from duty and launch an investigation without giving a reason, Commander," asserted Mon Mothma.
"But the— All that stuff on FleetNet, all the people from Kolaador with their testimonies, the details, the rumors— The whole Alliance has already made up its mind that he's guilty! If he's not, if he was framed or something..." He shook his head, slack-jawed, and had to resist the urge to start pacing. "Even if Crix gets cleared of everything, his career is over. You could have destroyed an innocent man's life! For nothing!"
"Excuse me, but aren't you exaggerating slightly?" Mon Mothma asked, her brow furrowing. "After all, Madine is a former Imperial, implicated in the depopulation of Dentaal and the creation of the Empire's infamous storm commandos... yet his reputation recovered from that."
You stupid chuff-sucking schutta, Kyle wanted to roar, do you have any idea what you're even saying?! Simply keeping his mouth shut caused him to break out in a sweat. Half-turning, he walked heavily back to the con-form chair and dropped into it.
Part of Kyle could not believe that he was sticking up for Crix Madine, after all these days of wanting to see nothing more than a holovid of the man being put up against a wall and riddled with heavy blaster fire. The events of the past standard day, however, had unexpectedly given Kyle a new perspective on the situation: he now had some understanding of what it meant to be falsely accused. The man calling himself Shaparo and his fellow imposters had only given him a taste, and it had rattled Kyle to his core. The mere thought of having all of his friends and colleagues turn on him, being falsely condemned as a child predator by the entire Rebellion, seeing his good name and reputation reduced to utter and irretrievable ruin, was absolutely horrifying.
Still, hypothetical empathy notwithstanding, Kyle had at least one equally potent consideration pulling him in the other direction, one reason to want Crix Madine to be every bit as guilty as the scandal-mongers claimed: he was not prepared to accept that it was possible for the Rebel Alliance to do this to an innocent man. That those thousands and millions of freedom fighters, who worked to preserve the sole beacon of justice and equity in this cruel, spiteful, bloodstained galaxy, were capable of taking a good man, who had sacrificed so much in the fight against tyranny, and completely destroying him to satisfy their own paranoia and their sordid appetite for spectacle.
Mon Mothma's voice broke in on him. It was softer than before. "Believe me, Commander, I share your frustrations. This is a trying time for all of us. I may not look it, but I've hardly slept in days, nor have I had time to see my family. This scandal has all but consumed my waking hours."
Motionless except for his eyes, Kyle stared up at her, wanting to ask if she had been beaten or maligned or forced to look at images of the unspeakable. How afraid she had been with dozens of armed Rebels protecting her at every moment... but he gave nothing away. He sensed that Mon Mothma was done offering him information. The audience was nearly over, and he needed to appear begrudgingly satisfied.
She went on. "Again, this is deeply concerning and a grave embarrassment for Alliance security. I'll see that you are compensated for your distress, and— In case I was not clear before, neither you nor Lieutenant Ors are under any suspicion with regard to the Madine case. I've had a word with General Cracken, and he has no intention of interviewing either of you... In fact, I think I'll encourage him to make another official statement, explicitly condemning rash accusation and vigilante action of any kind. We will promise severe consequences for any such infractions."
Kyle bit the inside of his lip, nodding and listening. He'd guessed right. This was the wrap-up.
"Also: you and Jan, your requests for leave of absence... You may consider them approved, for as long as you wish."
"How much are you giving me?"
The Chief of State blinked, her genial smile evaporating like condensation on a power coupling. "I'm sorry?"
"You mentioned compensation. I said, how much?"
"Well—" she began, tilting her head, but Kyle had his opening and bulled into it, his face as hard as permacrete.
"Remember when you sent me to Restuss, on the moon Rori? The Rebellion paid 8,000 for that job, plus a thousand and a half more 'cause the Imps interrogated me, then shot me while I was breaking out." Kyle grinned mercilessly. "Funny enough, it was faulty intel that got me captured in the first place. They had me in a cell for an hour, and Shaparo and his goons had me for two, so..."
He paused, pretending to do the math in his head. "...No ship expenses since the Moldy Crow wasn't involved, so I think that'll make four for the wrongful detention, one more for being assaulted in the hangar, and another thousand for extra-judicial cruel and unusual punishment."
Mon Mothma eyed him blankly for a moment. "...Consider it done."
Frack, thought Kyle. I knew I should've asked for more.
"Boarding Gate Two," the intercom droned. "Boarding Gate Two."
The main concourse of the Independence looked exactly the same, with its sleek mirrorchrome floor and towering walls. The crowd was thin, and no one gave Kyle more than a glance, but his mind was stuck in combat-readiness mode, and the concourse might as well have been strewn with primed sequencer charges.
Every time Kyle saw a Rebel trooper standing guard or on patrol, he automatically noted the nearest object (or pedestrian) that might be used as cover, tried to guess his odds of outdrawing their DH-17 blaster carbines. He gave a wide berth to technicians and pilots, preparing himself to block or dodge if the tools on their belts suddenly became impromptu weapons or projectiles. He cast long, suspicious looks at the narrow tertiary doors, keeping his distance. Someone could be on the other side, waiting to pop out and drag him into a darkened tech room to do Force-knows-what to him. Even the astromech and protocol droids whirring or clanking around were suspect.
Everyone and everything looked the same as before: minding their own business, attending to their own duties. According to all reason, they definitely were, virtually all of them.
But a couple of them might not be.
There was simply no way to know.
No way to know anything.
Moving cleared his head a little, enough that when he left the concourse and found himself passing through quieter, more deserted corridors, he was able to think.
Though Kyle had managed to fenagle some credits out of Mon Mothma, his assessment of their meeting remained unchanged: Not even close to good enough. In fact, she proved even less helpful than he had hoped—which was pitiful, considering the audience had come after Naval Security all but gave up on tracking down Kyle's assailants.
Who the hell were those people, and what had they been trying to accomplish? Thinking soberly about that was a formidable challenge for Kyle, considering what they had done to him, but Mon Mothma's non-answers were impossible to take at face value.
The kidnappers had detailed information about Kyle's missions for the Alliance, including the Anoat operation and Moff Rebus, and pictures from Crix Madine's case file—the ones they'd put on the table had included duplicates of the six leaked ones in the FleetNet node. They had penetrated the security of the Rebel flagship, getting on board and off again with hardly a trace.
Of course they were Alliance Intelligence. They had to be. What else could be the case? If they were Imperials, they'd had their pick of high-ranking Rebels to abduct, interrogate, or assassinate, or they could have called the Imperial Navy in to trap the main Rebel fleet. They wouldn't have gone after Kyle at all, let alone spun this insane story about a conspiracy of pedophiles in the Alliance hierarchy.
What was the phrase Mon Mothma had used? Mentally disturbed... but Kyle knew that was gundark spew. It could no more explain the imposters' motives than it had Crix Madine's. Crazy people did not carry out successful rogue spy missions. So what had they been after?
The riddle, of course, was centered around their ringleader, the man who had claimed to be Captain Shaparo. He'd said that his son was among the children victimized by Crix Madine. If that was true, wouldn't his real identity be uncovered by the investigation at Kolaador Base?
What if I told you that Crix Madine was only the mass shadow of a supergiant?... That men and women like him are everywhere... That they already have partial control over the Rebel Alliance itself?
The false Shaparo's claims were so outlandish, so utterly beyond belief that Kyle might have laughed... except that what had been done to those children on Kolaador was real. Their suffering and the pain inflicted on their families was real. As real as anything got. Kyle had lost both his parents, seen his father's severed head impaled on a spike, so he knew a thing or two about tragedy. It wasn't something that anyone could just shrug off.
Hypothetically, it could drive a man insane. It could lead him to retreat into a fantasy world of his own making, an elaborate delusion, as a means of coping with otherwise unbearable anguish. Having failed to foresee the threat, failed to protect his own child from molestation, such a man might manufacture a mythical mission for himself against an imaginary enemy—this supposed conspiracy of perverts that had taken over the Alliance—in the hopes of atoning for his failure.
At least, that was what Kyle would conclude, if he went by the humanoid psychology courses from his Imperial Academy days. The holotextbooks had been full of that kind of stuff. Even then he hadn't put much stock in them. When it came to understanding how sentient beings thought and behaved, he figured that his actual life was the only education he needed.
It would take a lot to make him reconsider his opinions of humanoid psychology... but his faux-interrogation fit the bill, between the calm, psychotic conviction of the fake Shaparo and the screaming, irrational rage of the fake Troomis...
Still, even with all that, it wasn't good enough, because it wasn't just the imposter Shaparo's behavior that needed explaining. If he was simply having a psychotic break, how could his four accomplices fail to realize it? Whatever their true identities, those men couldn't all be strangers to each other. They had nothing to gain by playing along with his delusions.
So, in the kilometer-long list of possibilities as to what in the high holy frag-all was going on, one proposition could be filed under Slightly Less Crazy Than Everything Else: whoever they were, whatever else they were after, it seemed that the men who had abducted Kyle were acting out of conviction. They believed what "Shaparo" had said.
Alone in the corridors, Kyle was so absorbed in his ruminations that he nearly walked into the welcome desk outside the medical bay. It was manned by a droid, the protocol/general labor variant on which the more famous 21-B medical model was based. Inexplicably, embarrassingly, its chassis was bright pink.
"Uh— Sorry, excuse me," Kyle stammered, aimlessly adjusting his jacket. "Listen, there was a patient in here, a friend of mine. A Mon Calamari named Molindi. They were keeping him for observation. Has he been discharged yet?"
"May I see your identification, sir?" The droid's voice was masculine and slightly hoarse, but rather genial.
Kyle let it scan his identity chip, then waited as it consulted a data screen. He had briefly seen Molindi from across the ward while being treated for his injuries, but they'd had no opportunity to speak. After being besieged by multiple conversations with Naval Security personnel between treatments, plus a brief visit by Jan, Kyle had gone straight from the medbay to his interview with the Intelligence liaison and Mon Mothma's staff, then finally to the Chief of State herself. A nurse had mentioned that Molindi checked himself in nearly an hour before Kyle arrived, physically uninjured but babbling and incoherent. Whatever the rogue Intel agents had done to the Mon Cal, it had shaken him up terribly.
The droid made a sound that simulated a throat being cleared. "Patient Molindi was transferred to the medical frigate Redemption one standard hour and three minutes ago."
"The medical frigate? What happened? Was he hurt somehow?"
"I'm afraid that patient Molindi suffered a panic attack, sir." The droid's head bobbed up and down. "He has been placed on leave and is scheduled to undergo post-traumatic stress therapy aboard the Redemption."
"Oh," said Kyle, blinking. "Oh. I just wanted..."
He trailed off. The droid attempted to keep the conversation going, but Kyle dazedly excused himself and drifted away down the corridor.
More than just wanting to see how Molindi was doing, Kyle had a feeling that the Mon Cal might blame himself for not warning Kyle about the rogue Intel agents waiting in ambush. But Mole was a mechanic, not a soldier, and he shouldn't have felt guilty. If anything, Kyle owed him an apology for unwittingly putting him in danger.
So much for that.
He'll be back, Kyle told himself. He'll be okay in a few weeks or whatever, and then I can tell him. Or I can pay him a visit on the Redemption sometime. Or, hell, just send him an e-mail...
He shook his head and sped up to a brisk walk, trying to outpace his disappointment. He succeeded, but at the cost of walking right back into his earlier contemplations.
The false Shaparo and his accomplices: unhinged, sure, but probably not insane. They had a self-consistent theory of what was going on, and they believed in what they were doing. Dangerous, for sure. Loose laser cannons, just as likely to hit an ally as an enemy... but who did they think their enemy was?
Well, whether there was a gram of truth to their grandiose theory of mass sexual corruption, the Alliance was their enemy now, after what they had done to a Rebel-aligned mercenary. Again, if their leader's claim about his son wasn't a lie, then it shouldn't be hard for Intelligence to identify him.
Whatever they found, though, Kyle could not shake the feeling that he was never going to hear about the false Shaparo again. That Mon Mothma (and for that matter, General Cracken and everyone else working on the case) wanted nothing more than for Kyle Katarn to take his credits, enjoy a nice long leave of absence, and get on with his life.
Practically from day one of this karkshow, the Alliance had missed no opportunity to amaze Kyle with its rank clumsiness, incompetence, and apathy at dealing with the Madine scandal. He now found himself at the threshold of a bizarre, almost mythologically unlikely point of reasoning: the point where one cannot decide whether an institution is acting out of fatal stupidity or willful malice.
Men passed Kyle in the corridors, sometimes nodding or saying hello, only to be met with a cold threat-assessment stare. His shock boots echoed over the bulkheads. Compulsively, he checked his chrono. He still had half a standard hour to meet Jan.
All his stuff was packed and loaded onto the Moldy Crow, so there was nothing for Kyle to do in his quarters, but he ended up there anyway. The room was bare and stark, but didn't look much different from before. He traveled light.
He switched the main glowbulb on to its dimmest setting and locked the door. After a moment he went over and powered up the wall terminal, logged into his Alliance Electronic Mail account. There were nearly two dozen unread messages. He almost never let more than a few pile up like that.
Well, too bad, Kyle thought to himself. I'm on leave.
Thinking of Molindi, he pressed the NEW MESSAGE button, stared at a blank screen for several minutes, then closed it again. He hated saying personal stuff over e-mail. It was always a lot better in person or even over holocall, and Mole would appreciate that more.
Kyle was about to log out when one of the unread messages caught his eye. The sender ID was starkillerisstillalive77 , and the subject line just read "KATARN" in all capitals. Against his better judgment, Kyle opened it.
There was no proper message enclosed, only a static image: a drawing of a mouth-wateringly curvaceous Zeltron woman. Though she wore the dress uniform of an Alliance Army general—complete with command cap, epaulets, and a dozen gleaming medals—her flowing indigo-streaked raven hair and improbably large bust were much more prominent. Her neutron-gold eyes were wild and manic, her smile ravenous. In one arm she cradled an A280 blaster rifle, while her free hand pointed a DH-17 at the viewer.
The caption read: Oh, you had no idea Crix Madine was into little kids? You never suspected a thing? Of course we believe you. Please face the wall now.
For the first time in his life, Kyle clicked the REPORT MESSAGE button and filed it under Harassment/Threatening Conduct, then shut the terminal off and stomped into the refresher. When he caught sight of himself in the mirror, he stopped cold.
With all that had been happening—the all-consuming scandal, his ferocious focus on getting the ship repaired and on burning his pent-up energy in the training rooms—at some point Kyle had started forgetting to shave. It must have been a standard week, because now he had the beginnings of a beard: a scraggly, patchy mess of whiskers matting his cheeks and jaw.
Kyle stared as he would at an infestation of Sargonian behemoth ticks, or an epidermal jungle of Utapau rotweed.
Crix Madine had grown a messy half-beard like this during his imprisonment at Orinackra.
Not exactly like it.
But more than close enough.
The refresher drawers banged as Kyle yanked them open, one after another, but he knew it was hopeless. All his stuff was packed with the Moldy Crow. He slumped against the counter, bowing his head as though admitting defeat before his own beleaguered doppelganger.
It was a small thing, he knew, something that could be fixed soon enough.
Still, it would take more than a sonic shave to banish the specter of Crix Madine.
"I'm gonna get you, you son of a kriffing ruskakk," Kyle vowed under his breath.
"Evening, Commander Katarn."
The speaker was a sleepy-looking Bothan in an orange flight suit. Kyle didn't recognize him. Not visibly armed, but one good blow from his helmet could crack a person's skull. Kyle replied to him only with a sharp nod and kept well out of arm's reach as he passed, not slowing down. The Independence's main hangar was worse than the concourse: wide open and much larger, with landed starfighters, purring repulsor sleds, lumbering droids, and hulking pieces of equipment—a thousand things that a man with a blaster could be hiding behind.
He passed a cluster of battered X-wings squatting on their landing struts. Astromech droids rolled around, beeping and bopping, while technicians fussed over the battle-scarred fighters. Ahead to the left, the group tending an Alliance Lambda shuttle was being barked at by a tall, furry humanoid who practically bulged out of his flight suit. Recognizing Connor at the last second, Kyle zipped across an aisle, ignoring the angry shouts of drivers as he threaded between repulsor sleds, then crouch-walked under a pair of landed Y-wings. The last thing he needed was some small talk to hold him up.
And finally he came to the Moldy Crow, with Jan Ors waiting at the bottom of its boarding ramp. At the sight of her smile, Kyle felt like the whole galaxy suddenly bloomed with warmth, as if everything he had gone through was unquestionably worth it as long as that smile was waiting for him afterward.
They didn't speak until they had entered the Crow's cramped galley and sealed the hatch.
"The ship ready to go?" asked Kyle perfunctorily.
"Of course she is—soon as I know where to take her." Jan's smile disappeared. "How are you doing?"
Kyle scratched at the stubble on his jaw. No point in dressing things up. "Terrible."
When he was done relating the audience with Mon Mothma, Jan shrugged and said, "At least you got some credits out of her. That'll give us more time to shop around, maybe pick up some new gear while we're hunting for jobs."
"Yeah, well... I'm not sure I'm ready for more mercenary work yet."
"What do you mean?"
Kyle let out a long sigh and passed a hand over his eyes. He was so, so tired. Tired of being awake, tired of thinking. Tired of not knowing what to think.
Slowly, almost painfully, he said, "Jan, everything that's happened with this... The way this scandal's affecting the Alliance, how it's being handled... Does it sit well with you?"
She sniffed. "Not even close."
"Me neither. I didn't get a chance to tell you before, but when I was being... interrogated..."
Jan already knew the basic facts of the ordeal from when she'd visited Kyle in medbay, but now he recounted the whole conversation as well as he could remember it, most pertinently the false Shaparo's ominous and chimerical allegations about the Alliance hierarchy.
Crix Madine is only a sacrificial nerf, the man had said. No one of high rank in the Alliance can be trusted.
"You're not telling me you believe that psychopath, do you?" asked Jan, appalled. "After what he did to you?"
"No, I don't— I don't trust him," Kyle said, fumbling. "He said he'd contact me at some point, but if I ever see him again in person, the first thing I'm gonna do is punch his teeth in. But he was... He seemed so sure of himself, and the other guys with him. They knew details about our missions against General Mohc and had pieces of evidence from the Madine file. Tell me, Jan, how easy is it to steal data from a top-priority investigation being conducted by Alliance Intelligence?"
"If Cracken's heading it, practically impossible," she admitted.
"That's right. But somehow these guys managed it. Whoever they really are, they were highly placed. They know something about what's going on that Cracken and Alliance Command and all the rest of them want to keep hidden. And... whenever they finally put Crix away, I'm not going to be able to trust whatever statements they put out."
"Who says we need to trust them?" Jan retorted. "Why should we care? They have Madine, and they'll get whoever was letting him abuse those kids."
"Jan, whatever's going on is way bigger than Madine. Mon Mothma told me that members of the Advisory Council have been accusing each other and..." Kyle paused, trying to remember the exact words and coming up short. "...and other higher-ups. All that skragslinging on FleetNet is just a mirror of what what the top chain of command is doing to itself. It's dragging everything out... It's gonna make everything a lot messier."
"That's why we need to get away from the Rebel fleet, make a bundle doing freelance work for a couple of months, and forget about Crix Madine."
Kyle shook his head and braced himself. "I can't do that, Jan. I want to know exactly what happened at Kolaador Base, who knew what Crix was doing, when they knew it... and who he's connected to. I need to know if this really does go higher than Madine."
Jan stepped toward him, but her furious look oscillated between Kyle and the bulkheads. She looked ready to throw something. "Ugh, for kriff's sake, Kyle, listen to yourself! My whole Intel division's been gossiping about me for weeks, and you— You just got attacked and tortured by a bunch of blaster-happy thugs! Why do we need to know? Why do you need to get involved in this?"
"Because I'm involved already!" he snapped. "Shaparo and his people— They came after me. They're dangerous, definitely paranoid, but they're on to something. There's no other way to explain what they did. Shaparo, he..."
He trailed off, wavering as Jan's laser-sharp glare locked on to him, as all of her exasperation and confusion and pain and worry for both of them bored into his soul. But the words of Kyle's interrogator, his tormentor, that man with the monstrously clear eyes which never, ever blinked... Shaparo wasn't his real name, but there was nothing else to call him by. And some of the things he had said in that awful room—against all reason, and certainly not according to Kyle Katarn's will—resonated:
Either you are a part of it, or you are one of the only men in the Alliance who can help us fight it... You have experienced a bare fraction of my pain. We are bonded now...
"What he did, he wasn't really interrogating me." Kyle chose his words slowly, as carefully as possible. He was trying to articulate a conviction so bizarre that it ventured on the obscene—and trying to neutralize the rage that threatened to boil up within as he remembered the vile images from that paper folder. "Not from his perspective. And he didn't see what he did as torture. He wasn't just taking his anger out on me—he saw it as vetting me. For recruitment."
The anger on Jan's face showed no dilution when it was joined by bafflement. Kyle was losing her—and gaining a splitting headache for himself. Rubbing his eyes again, he pressed on. Behind his words he silently begged her to understand.
"Jan, it, it's impossible to explain. I know it sounds crazy, but I was right there listening to the guy. He... Shaparo needs me. He needs my help, or thinks he does. Somehow he has access to classified data across the Alliance. There must have been all kinds of Rebel agents he could have picked, and for some reason it was me. I'm his top guy."
He swallowed and emptied his last power cell. "I don't know what it all means... You know, everything's nice and simple when I'm out there, gunning for Imperials. Everyone's got uniforms, so I know who the enemy is. But now it's like suddenly there's a whole new side to the Rebellion, and nobody knows who the fragging enemy is. I can't go on like this. I want the truth, and I know I'm not gonna get it from Mon Mothma or Cracken or anyone else at the top, so I'm gonna find it myself... and right now there's no one in this galaxy I trust except you."
He left it there. Jan's expression had cooled. Her arms were crossed, her eyes shaded by her dark hair as she stared at the floor.
"You never know when to quit," she said finally, "do you, Kyle?"
His heart hammering, Kyle was careful to keep his mouth shut. He didn't know what might come out if he opened it.
Jan looked up and cleared her eyes with her cybernetic hand. "Well, if you're gonna do this, you'll need someone to bail you out... and I guess there's only one ship anyway."
Cautiously, Kyle cracked a smile. "I try to think of everything."
"All right, then," said Jan, putting her hands on her hips. "You want to get to the bottom of this, what's the plan?"
"Well... looking for this Shaparo imposter's off the table, at least for now. Not only do we have no leads, but Rebel Intelligence is sure to be hot on his tail. I doubt he'll want to meet until after he's given them the slip. Even if he manages to do that, though, I don't feel like waiting around for him."
Jan looked puzzled again. "What leads do we have, then? You'd better not say Kolaador. That place is sure to be crawling with Intel agents."
"No, not Kolaador Base. I'm not interested in picking up the pieces. I want to know everything, and there's only one person who can tell us everything." Jan's eyes widened as Kyle went on. "Crix knows what he did, when he did it, who knew he was doing it—and if there are other predators like him in the Alliance, he knows their names. We're going to find that motherfracker and he's going to talk, no matter what I have to do to him."
Jan took her lower lip between her teeth. "That's bold... but you're talking about breaking him out of Alliance custody. Even— Forget that, Kyle. First you need to know where he's being held."
"That won't be a problem. I know someone who can help with both."
"Yeah, who's that?"
"The only person in the Rebellion I know of who's even smarter, more dangerous, and more beautiful than I am," Kyle explained. "In fact, she's the same one who helped me the first time I had to find Madine and break him out of prison."
He saw the look on Jan's face and—her blush notwithstanding—decided to take a step back, out of reach. She had a killer right hook, especially with that cybernetic hand of hers.
"I mean it, Jan. You've been all over the galaxy with Alliance Intel. You were doing that stuff for years before I even graduated the Academy. You've got to have a friend somewhere who knows where Crix is being held."
She just stared at him, biting the inside of her cheek. Part of Kyle felt bad. At minimum, this scheme could jeopardize both their careers with the Rebellion—and on that score, Jan had a lot more to lose out of the two of them. He knew he was asking a lot... but his father hadn't taught him to go for half-measures in life.
"All I need is to know where," he pressed. "The planet. The star system, even. We can figure out the rest from there."
"I suppose I know a few people who might know. Who might talk if I asked them." Jan pinned him with her stare. "But you owe me big for this, Kyle."
Kyle's eyelids were growing heavier by the minute, but his smile at that moment was immortal. "I know. Guess I'll have to think of something really special to pay you back."
"I know I'm gonna regret this," said Jan, tramping to the cockpit. Satisfied, Kyle stowed his gun belt and joined her.
Flight control gave them no trouble, and Kyle was mostly there to enjoy the view as the Moldy Crow at last glided free of the majestic flagship's hangar bay. Leaning the copilot seat back, he gazed out at the universe as Jan deftly maneuvered them past patrolling fighters and looming capital ships and thought, Better late than never.
"Jumping to lightspeed," said Jan.
Stars turned to lines and the galaxy, so full of possibilities, burst into the infinite expanse of hyperspace. Kyle shifted and settled more comfortably into the chair, looking at everything and nothing. Flickering blue light danced across the dim cockpit. He found it comforting, almost like a campfire in the wilderness of an alien world.
At some point Jan said something and went back to the galley, but by then Kyle was already nodding off. He felt exhausted and warm and content. Jan was with him, and they were underway. What more could he ask for?
The veils of reality thinned. Remembrance settled over him like a blanket. Pushing through the sleepiness, Kyle retrieved a battered old imagecaster from his jacket, set it on the console, and switched it on.
The hologram field resolved into two figures: Kyle himself and his father Morgan, in one of the last conversations they'd had before he left home for the Imperial Academy. WeeGee had made the recording and then given Kyle a copy at the last minute.
"Yeah, the transport leaves at eight in the morning," his younger self said nonchalantly, "so I think I'll be able to sleep in for the first time in my life."
"And probably the last time in your life too, if academy life is anything like I've heard. It won't just be hard work, son. You'll have to adapt, learn to think in ways that your Rimmer old man never taught you." The hologram Morgan Katarn gave his son's shoulder a vigorous, well-meaning shake. The real Kyle Katarn smiled and let his eyes drift shut. The voices of years past soothed him as he drifted in and out.
"...everything in your classes. There's more to life than holobooks, and in my opinion..."
"...the farm... A couple of hired hands... Much bigger in fifteen years. Unless, of course, SoroSubb happens to..."
"...to remember, son, when you're at the Academy, how very proud I am of you. What a fine young man you've become. I wish your mother were here to see it... but I know she watches over you—and is proud."
Finally the comforting dark settled over him completely and took him away into silence.