Kyle lay upon a rocky ridge at the very edge of the seething black jungle, ignoring the whine of hovering glip gnats and blinking of sparkflies in the thick, humid air. The dirty amber sky above was fast bleeding toward the color of old blood as the sun set, and acrid black clouds swam like gaseous leviathans.
Ahead, the jungle had been sliced away as if with a gigantic scalpel, and a twenty-meter stretch of vine-choked dirt led up to a duracrete lip that surrounded the Rebel prison: a central dome reinforced by an octogonal prism, which was in turn capped at each corner by a guard tower. The main gate, immovable to mortal strength, was big enough to accommodate two AT-STs side-by-side, and looked like it could take a pounding from the Moldy Crow's guns. It was a vaguely familiar design, probably late Republic or early Imperial.
In addition to his full mission gear, Kyle had donned a composite armor helmet (purchased used on Kamar), though less for added protection than for anonymity. He couldn't risk his face being fully exposed to security cams.
Sweeping the place over and over again with his macrobinoculars, he spotted the maintenance hatches that Jan had mentioned, set into the slanted walls of the octagon, which the program in his "borrowed" code cylinder should allow him to bypass.
The problem was, how was he supposed to reach one without being spotted? No matter what direction he approached from, he'd be within view of at least two of the towers. If he waited until it was darker, he might be able to make it over the stretch of bare dirt, but then there were twenty meters of bright, flat duracrete to cross before he reached the octagon.
Kyle's strong jaw clenched as he considered his options and found none to his liking. He could simply blow the maintenance hatch and blast his way through the base to his objective—blistering speed and overwhelming firepower were a favorite combination of his. However, he wanted to get at least as far as Madine's cell block before alerting the whole base, and though he had put up a show of cool unconcern in front of Jan, he wasn't eager to start trading live blaster fire with other Rebels.
The dark frown of Dathomir's sky deepened overhead as he counted the minutes, uncertain, and the gloom of the jungle crept up on the prison, one decimeter at a time. An ugly green reptavian creature glided past, squawking mournfully.
A new detail revealed itself when Kyle inspected the compound yet again: dotted along the duracrete ring's outer edge were more hatches—smaller, easier to miss, heading underground. Using one of those as an entrance might be preferable... Still, Kyle wasn't sure what those hatches were for. It was an odd distance from the main building to put maintenance access. What if they weren't that at all, and his code cylinder didn't work?
He was still deliberating a quarter of a standard hour later when an unnatural wind suddenly kicked up, disturbing the trees. Over the sound, Kyle recognized the unmistakable hum of a repulsorlift drive. Stowing his macrobinoculars, he watched as an Alliance Lambda-class shuttle appeared overhead, drifting in for a landing on the ring of duracrete.
Adrenaline flowed as Kyle realized that the shuttle would touch down directly parallel to the main gate, between it and one of the mysterious hatches, and its broad, upfolded wings would at least partially block the views of the guard towers on either side.
He tensed, fingers gripping the crest of rock. It was moments like this that defined the life of Kyle Katarn: moments of orgastic terror in which he must decide whether to take a shot or wait for a better one, to charge in or to play it safe, having his well-honed instincts and training to rely on... but never knowing, not truly, not with certainty, whether his choice would pay off or make him pay dearly.
The shuttle was now less than ten meters from the ground, its landing struts extending, the red Alliance Starbird gleaming proud on its central wing even as darkness rose over Dathomir.
The decision was made. Kyle braced himself, then launched into a low sprint. The terrain wasn't as flat as it had appeared, and he could only pray that there wasn't anything to trip over in the dark. Meanwhile the shuttle touched down ahead, hissing and spitting clouds of steam from its joints. Hoping that would offer a bit more concealment, Kyle at last dropped prone next to the hatch. A plastoid panel covered what he assumed to be a set of controls, and he hurriedly pried it off. He found a port for the code cylinder and shoved it in, covering the little blue indicator light as it started its work.
He glanced up. The shuttle's ramp had dropped and a trio of POWs in blue jumpsuits were emerging, escorted by Rebel soldiers. Farther ahead, the massive front gate of the facility was groaning open. If Kyle's code cylinder didn't work, that would be his only ticket in, and he'd be going in hot.
"Prisoners! Move into the building now!" one of the soldiers commanded redundantly.
The control panel chimed and the hatch slid open. Breathless, Kyle yanked out the code cylinder and dropped into a metal tunnel hardly big enough for a womp rat. When it closed seconds later, he was sealed in a darkness like the belly of a sarlacc.
Navigating those shafts was neither smooth nor straightforward even with the help of his headlamp, but suffice it to say that after much crawling and getting lost and backtracking, Kyle Katarn eventually dislodged a metal grate and slithered out into a dingy metal corridor. Three of the nearby doors led to different barracks, one for the men of each duty shift.
Surmising that the middle shift was still ongoing, Kyle decided to tour that barracks until he found the room of someone with spare gear. A short time later he marched out in a muted hazard-orange combat vest and a blast helmet with overextended neck guards. The headgear looked ridiculous, but it would largely obscure his facial features, especially with the opaque flash goggles. The equipment pack accepted his composite armor helmet, jacket, and E-11. The holster on his side hid the barrel of his bryar pistol, so as long as nobody gave it a close inspection, he hoped it wouldn't stand out.
With that, Kyle took a stroll.
Any military base to Kyle Katarn was like Mon Calamari's Salinrerian Sea to a blutfish. Not only was he disguised as one of the numerous guards he passed, but he knew the rhythm, the wavelength of a place like this. He could glance at a soldier and tell from the man's posture if he was sharp enough to notice an extra man on patrol. Kyle knew how men on duty stood and gestured and moved, knew the tightrope they constantly walked between professional alertness and mind-numbing boredom, and he knew how to blend in.
Kyle pretended to simply be on patrol for the millionth time while the main corridors led him around the octagon. Whenever possible, he paused at wall terminals to study the facility's layout. He couldn't stay still for too long, but his mission became progressively clearer with each stop.
As he had suspected since first laying eyes on it, everything mission-critical was inside the dome. The command center and officers' quarters were housed in the top levels, so the commandant was most likely to be found there—behind secure doors and surrounded by Rebel soldiers.
The central part of the dome contained the main detention facility, which accommodated a mere hundred and fifty inmates. This place was a shack compared to any Imperial prison. Then again, the Rebel Alliance didn't have the resources to turn criminal justice into a galaxy-wide industrial complex, nor did they have arrest quotas to meet.
Two cell blocks designated MAXIMUM SECURITY were in a separate level underground. There was no telling which one Kyle needed to get into, but he would have bet every credit in his account that Crix Madine was down there. The maps showed multiple turbolifts and stairwells to choose from, but didn't provide enough detail to estimate which, if any, might be easiest to penetrate. The only certainty was that the entrances would all be locked and the cell blocks heavily guarded, inside and out.
Kyle needed to break into command/control at the top of the dome, get ahold of either the commandant or his Red Key, then make his way to maximum security detention in the basement—and he had to do it quietly. At the very least, he had to make it as far as the cell blocks before getting found out, if he wanted a chance of leaving Dathomir in the Moldy Crow and not in a body bag. Surviving the mission, let alone succeeding, would become orders of magnitude less likely once the shooting started.
So if, or more likely when the shooting started, Kyle would need every possible advantage, not to mention a good deal more firepower than just his bryar pistol and E-11. The maps he found on the wall terminals marked several armories scattered across the base... but those were surely well-guarded to begin with, and would be swarming with soldiers once an alert was declared.
Still, as the Alliance's best mercenary and a nominal member of Special Operations, Kyle was privy to a few secrets about the inner workings of Rebel installations. Secrets which, if he was lucky, might even the odds a little...
This time he was lucky—apparently. Scanning the map closely, he eventually found a certain conference room with a location code following a pattern which, while meaningless to most beings, was instantly recognizable to anyone trained in Special Operations protocols. Hidden in that room was something that could save Kyle's life, if he ended up having to blast his way out of this place.
But it was an absolute last resort. True, he needed less than one hand to count the number of missions in his mercenary career that he had pulled off clean—that is, completed without killing anyone at all—but for Jan's sake as well as his own, he was forcing himself to hold out hope that Dathomir might be the first. He memorized the last resort's location and hurried along, wary of loitering or of being spotted in the same place twice.
Transparisteel viewports afforded frequent views of the landscape, and Kyle could appreciate Dathomir's sky as it turned truly hellish, and the black jungle as it seethed with sparkflies. Completing a circuit of the octagon, he came to an oversized viewport which directly overlooked the main gate. The shuttle he had seen offloading prisoners was gone, but even as Kyle looked, a new ship was landing.
It was a Cygnus Spaceworks escort shuttle: faster, tougher, and more heavily armed than the Lambda-class. Kyle and Jan had tangled with Imperial-piloted ones from the controls of the Moldy Crow, so he knew they meant business, especially with the rear turbolaser turret. They even looked mean—the laser cannon-tipped wings were narrower and angled forward, like talons eager to seize prey.
Kyle stopped to watch. This was interesting. Supply drop? More prisoners—higher priority, perhaps? Or something else?
A Rebel soldier appeared in the corridor, marching toward him. Kyle half-turned, started to ask about the shuttle—
"Better shear that grass before the commandant sees you, pal."
The soldier barely opened his mouth and did not break stride. Kyle frowned after him as he disappeared down the corridor. He rubbed his jaw, suddenly self-conscious. Sure, there was a little stubble, but he hadn't thought it was noticeable.
Just great.
Footsteps came from the direction the soldier had gone—several people, coming swiftly. With a final glance at the escort shuttle (its ramp was only starting to lower), Kyle hurried along.
The pressure to stay on the move rose once he was inside the dome. Tighter and shorter corridors, more security cams, and a lot more guards. There was no point trying to get into the regular detention facilities, but Kyle got a good look at them anyway. The hallways linked hubs lined with one-way transparisteel floors and windows, affording expansive views down into the detention facilities.
All the prisoners Kyle saw were male humans in blue jumpsuits like the ones he'd seen getting dropped off. What looked like fifty or sixty were crammed into a grimy machine shop, assembling power pack accessories and other small gadgets. Another dozen or so were in a sparse recreation room, passing a depowered shockball back and forth. A few times Kyle caught himself looking down at one slouching inmate or another and wondering what had landed him here—captured Imperial, insubordinate Rebel? Then again, what difference did it make? Those jumpsuits only came in one color.
But such diversions were fleeting, and Kyle quickly refocused on his mission. Somewhere there had to be a turbolift he could take to the top floor. Then, after locating the officers' quarters, he would find the commandant's room and introduce himself. He couldn't seem to find any turbolifts that went up, though—only down into the regular detention facilities, where he didn't need to go, or maximum security, which he wasn't ready for yet.
He spent a while continuing his fake patrol, trying to match the actual base up with what he'd seen on the diagrams. As Jan had explained, though, this base used a standard three-tier military security system, and he was repeatedly forced to backtrack after encountering second-level doors that wouldn't open for him—no Yellow Key. He could feel the looks that followed him as he marched off, hiding his trepidation. Looks that were puzzled, derisive, or suspicious. Sorry, took a wrong turn was only going to work so many times.
It soon became apparent that the turbolifts to command/control were all behind those doors, meaning that if Kyle was going to get up there, he had to find some mid- or lower-level officer with a Yellow Key.
Just one damn thing after another, Kyle thought. He decided to head back out into the octagon and check another diagram. Security was laxer out there, and maybe he'd see something he had missed before, find a good place to catch one of those officers alone.
He turned off the main corridor and headed down toward the medical wing. There was another wall terminal somewhere along the way.
Before he found it, though, something happened.
Kyle opened a door linking two hallways and found himself face to face with another human. Nothing remarkable about the guy. Swarthy and short, pudge-faced and pot-bellied, with dark messy hair, and a blue prison uniform.
The two men froze, millimeters short of colliding head-on. An embarrassed grin cut its way across the prisoner's fatty visage. His mouth opened wide—
Paralyze vocal cords. Stop scream.
—and whatever sound he would have made turned to a hissing cough-gag as Kyle's open-hand blow met his throat. It wasn't hard enough to crush his larynx, only to make him think that had happened.
Despite what he might have told himself, Kyle's reaction had been mostly instinctive. Yes, he was dressed as a guard and this was obviously an escaped prisoner, so it fit his persona to apprehend the man. Nevertheless, there was something about him, something beneath the level of conscious perception, that had triggered Kyle's aggressive reflexes, provoked his need to dominate.
Employing a level of gentleness concordant with that of his greeting, Kyle grabbed the prisoner's collar and yanked him toward the nearest hallway corner. The door shut with a hiss.
"Prisoner!" Kyle barked harshly, then paused to read the elastex tag on the fat man's jumpsuit. "Prisoner 1-995, what the hell are you doing out here?! Answer me!"
When the man got his breath back, he started to say, "Can it really be—"
Kyle repeated his question, shaking the prisoner harder each time. When he left off, though, it dawned on Kyle that this guy was not staring at him in fear so much as gawking in disbelief. "Your voice...," the prisoner croaked. "Kyle Katarn?"
Kyle's mouth opened, stayed open, then levered shut as the realization hit him like a round from a mass-driver cannon. He had met this man before. Almost literally walking into him with no warning had thrown Kyle off, yes, and the man actually had lost some weight... but also, Kyle had never seen him without his mirrored goggles, never seen his muddy gray eyes...
An appropriate color, considering his fondness for sewers...
Sheer amazement loosened Kyle's grip. "Moff Rebus?"
"Hmph. It's just Rebus now, thanks to you—Rebel scum."
The unmixed contempt in that remark was enough to tractor Kyle back into the present moment. Spying a nearby side-door, he dragged his corpulent quarry over and pitched him through.
Rebus made a racket as his bulk caught itself against something on the other side. Flicking on the glowbank and shutting the door behind them, Kyle discovered that it was an old desk with a built-in holoprojector, facing a bank of chairs. This was some kind of presentation room. He checked the corners. No cameras. Along the opposite wall, a tool kit and scattered articles sat beside a gaping maintenance panel.
"Kyle Katarn. What a surprise." The former moff's chunky shoulders sagged as he bent over the desk, shaking his head. "I can't say it's a welcome one, though."
"That makes two of us."
The Imperial grunted and turned around, rubbing his chubby throat. "Mm-hmm... So, what brings you here, young man? Not a career change, I hope."
"Make one false move and you're dead, Rebus. And while we're at it, I'm the one asking questions here." Needless to say, the bryar pistol was already in Kyle's hand. This former moff was an unabashed coward, but he was also ruthless and vindictive, and he had somehow blundered right into the middle of this critical mission. He was not to be underestimated.
Those murky gray eyes lingered on the pistol. "BlasTech Industries, bryar small arms line out of Lantillies for Outer Rim distribution. Hm, doesn't look like factory standard. Cut down from a rifle, fourth- or fifth-generation..." The right side of his face twitched in a begrudging half-smile. "Not a terrible job."
Kyle clicked the power trigger up once. The sound it made, the grip in his hand, felt good—and so did the frown it put on Rebus's face. "Glad you think so. Now start telling me things I want to hear—like why you aren't currently rotting in a cell where you belong."
Rebus pointed at the tool kit which sat across the room. "Well, not that it's any concern of yours, but I'm on duty this hour. Right in this room, actually."
"What the hell are you talking about? What duty?"
"Of course you're confused—you don't know anything about these facilities, do you?" Rebus snorted. "As soon as you Rebel thugs had ruined my life's work on Anoat, I was condemned to this place—thirty years to life. However, I soon discovered that my captors are strangely impressed when I follow all the rules. Even more so when I'm polite to the guards and make myself useful.
"Commandant Kre'fey noticed my good behavior and decided to reward me. He appointed me ambassador-warden for the entire prison..." Noticing Kyle's appalled expression, Rebus thrust his chin out proudly and added, "Believe me, nobody was more surprised than me. It seems to be part of an... experiment that your Alliance is conducting in its judicial system: find the most valuable prisoner and elevate him, treat him kindly to encourage his, ah, moral reformation.
"I can tell you it's a busy life, being ambassador-warden. My fellow prisoners come to me for all their needs. If there's conflict between them, I make peace. I practically run the machine shop—that place was a mess before I whipped it into shape! And on days like today, I'm allowed out of the detention area to fulfill maintenance work orders. In fact, I'm supposed to service the air scrubber in this room. I was just on my way back from the refresher when you, ah, said hello."
Kyle scrutinized Rebus as he spoke, picking out details that had gone unnoticed before. There were workman boots on his feet, not slippers like all the other prisoners had. A pair of gloves were stuck to his waist by a velcro wrap strip. Sewn onto the breast of his jumpsuit opposite the ID tag was a cloth patch showing two hands clasped in cooperation, one bearing the Alliance Starbird, the other encircled by an unlocked stuncuff.
Another glance at the ID tag revealed a pocket directly below it. Rebus flinched as Kyle's free hand struck into it like a volt cobra, then drew out a thin wafer of duraplast and crystalline microcircuitry, bright yellow in color.
Clenching it hard, Kyle regarded the Imperial coldly. "That's all bantha shit. You stole this."
"Stole it how?" retorted Rebus. "Look at me, Katarn. I'm a scientist, not some kind of master spy. The commandant personally gave me that key card, and all the guards here—"
He broke off at the muffled sound of boots clacking past the door outside. His dismayed faced stretched like a balloon as the bryar pistol came close to going up his nostril. "Make one sound and it'll be your last," Kyle promised under his breath.
They listened for a moment. When the footsteps were long gone Kyle half-lowered the blaster and nodded for his captive to speak.
"All the guards know me by name," Rebus explained, "and they're very grateful to have me fixing up their decaying little shack of a facility. The standards for your technicians are even worse than your troopers."
Kyle had already slipped the Yellow Key into his pocket. "So they just let you go around unsupervised?" he asked.
The fat man shrugged. "Sometimes."
"And you get all this, you even get a security key—all this for good behavior?"
"Yes. It's quite stupid, isn't it? Utterly insane." For the first time Rebus showed that same wide, inexplicably smug grin that had impressed itself on Kyle's consciousness when apprehending him on Anoat. "You Rebels and your ideals. You really are like some kind of alien species. Being interrogated about Mohc wasn't very pleasant, but after that, once I had been processed here, suddenly I was hearing fewer threats and accusations, and a lot of prattle about 'rehabilitation' and 'compassionate justice.' Ha!
"Despite my so-called crimes against the Rebellion, I'm apparently valuable enough to warrant a sympathetic ear, and I'm not the only one. Ambassador-Warden is not an invention of Commandant Kre'fey—it's a mechanism for willing prisoners of your regime to prove that we've seen the errors of our ways." Rebus pulled a face, then grinned again. "My case will be reviewed next month. If the commandant's pleased, I'll be granted even more privileges. He may apply to have me transferred to a more hospitable facility, or even petition for my sentence to be reduced... You never know, Katarn. Find me in another standard year and I might be building weapons for the Rebels. Heh heh!"
He chortled heartily, gleefully, as though the blaster still trained on his vast, doughy midsection was no more dangerous than a water pistol. "Who would have thought that some old-fashioned bootlicking could pay off so handsomely? It never took me so far in the Empire."
Kyle was like a statue of neutronium as he absorbed the Imperial scientist's cynical tirade. Early on he dismissed the suspicion that Rebus was trying to spur his temper. More likely, he just couldn't help himself.
Since the arrest of Crix Madine, Kyle Katarn had been discovering vast swathes of the Rebel organization which had previously been cloaked from his perception and understanding, and truths about its members that were bitter to the taste. Once again he found that there was far more dysfunction than he had ever thought possible.
Was this how the Alliance treated war criminals? Special titles and positions? Allowing them to help run the same facilities that were supposed to be keeping them prisoner? Expanded privileges and a "compassionate" bureaucracy, willing to commute punishments for conspirators in Imperial mass murder and oppression? Giving them a chance to sabotage the Rebellion from a place of unearned trust, to endanger even more innocent people? Who the hell had even invented this concept, and why? Did they think it was somehow more enlightened than the traditional system of galactic justice? More civilized?
Moff Rebus had happily designed many effective weapons for the Empire before joining the dark trooper project. He'd enjoyed a long career, and there was no telling how many deaths he was indirectly responsible for. The carnage that the dark troopers had left behind in Talay using Rebus's prototype assault blasters was worse than barbaric, and it was still sharp and vivid in Kyle's memory. He recalled finding one of those blasters, damaged and accidentally left behind after the massacre. It was the clue that had implicated Rebus in General Mohc's scheme—because it had Moff Rebus's initials stamped on the barrel, a clear testament to the designer's fantastic egotism and cruel indifference to sentient life.
What kind of lunatic judge would look at a man like this and think that he deserved compassion? That rehabilitation was a viable priority? Had the entire Rebel Alliance truly gone insane?
Kyle wrestled down his outrage and forced himself to refocus. "That all sounds very nice," he growled, "but I didn't come all this way to listen to you babble."
"Oh, well that's obvious. If the Empire knew where I was, they sure wouldn't send you to rescue me, and if the Rebels wanted me someplace else, they'd simply take me there." Rebus suspended his amusement with surprising ease, and his murky gray eyes became searching. "You wouldn't be involved at all, much less disguised as a common soldier. You're here on personal business, which can only mean..." He smirked coldly. Knowingly. "Crix Madine. One traitor, come to rescue another."
Kyle's brow furrowed. No point denying it. "Extraction," he corrected. "Not rescue. The bastard has information I need. That's all."
"You're not the only one who'd like to get his hands on Madine."
"Oh?"
"He's in Maximum Security One. Has the entire cell block to himself down there. If he weren't kept away from the other prisoners, they'd tear him apart, and I'd be right there with 'em. We all know what he did. Truly despicable crimes... but then, what else do you expect from a man who'd betray his oath to the Empire?"
"How tight is the security down there?" asked Kyle, not rising to the bait.
Rebus shrugged. "As tight as it gets. I've never been down there myself, but it has a full guard shift. If I had to guess, there's probably somewhere between thirty and fifty Rebels... and no one else can enter the cell block except Commandant Kre'fey."
"He has the Red Key."
"Of course he does."
"Where is he now?"
The prisoner made a show of jogging his memory. "Probably in the living section of command/control, having dinner with the other officers."
Kyle only nodded, mentally reviewing his scheme, and Rebus saw his chance. "What do you intend to do with me now, Katarn? I know that model of blaster hasn't got a stun setting."
"No, it doesn't."
"But it's against your precious code of ethics to kill an unarmed prisoner, isn't it? Even though I could quite easily alert the Alliance to your presence here?" The Imperial nodded. Like the imposter Shaparo, he was uncannily good at reading people. "Ah, yes. You're nowhere near as ruthless as you let on, you know. No wonder you couldn't hack it in the Officer Corps."
"Killing you's not my only option," Kyle pointed out. "I could always beat you unconscious."
"I'm sure you could, but I'd make you work for it, and someone may hear the struggle. But I think there's a better way to resolve this impasse." Rebus's knees twitched, like he was restraining an urge to step forward. "You need my help, Katarn."
"Don't flatter yourself."
"That Yellow Key will only get you past the corresponding doors in the dome. It won't get you through any checkpoints in the upper levels. You'll be sent away or detained, and have no choice but to fight... and something tells me if you were willing to do that, you wouldn't have bothered with the disguise."
Kyle ground his teeth. Why did this son of a ruskakk have to be so clever? "Suppose I do need your help. What could you do for me?"
"I could create a maintenance work order for something in the place you need to go, assign it to myself, then go there to fix it—with you tagging along as my minder. Set up an impromptu interview with Commandant Kre'fey. After that, there may be other ways I can help you secure Madine."
"That sounds great, but what do you want in return?"
"You must have come in that garbage scow of yours... What, the Moldy Crow?" Rebus licked his lips. "It's got enough room for two passengers, hasn't it? When you leave Dathomir, you can simply bring me along and drop me off at the next spaceport. You'll have your prisoner and I'll be a free man, and we can go our separate—"
"When Tatooine freezes over," said Kyle through clenched teeth. "I'm not breaking you out of prison. Thirty years to life's too good for scum like you."
"Fine. Then leave me. Go on alone and get ready to blast your way through command/control to Kre'fey, then down to Madine, and out of this place. See if I care—you won't be killing any friends of mine." Rebus's gleeful leer returned, and his captor simmered with impotent fury as his words sank deep. "Ah, but again... what would that precious little conscience of yours have to say about putting blaster holes in your fellow Rebel scum? You have to keep that voice down somehow—at least be able to say you tried as hard as you could to spare them. The dead won't care, but you will... After all, some things are a matter of principle, aren't they?"
Kyle thought for a minute.
He thought of Rebus: a petty, vicious, revolting little slimeball of a man. After Jabba the Hutt, he was probably the vilest being Kyle had ever met. He cared nothing for the lives of others, showed no remorse for the evils he'd committed for the Empire—and in exchange for aiding Kyle's mission, he expected to be freed in order to wander the galaxy and cause Force-only-knew what mayhem. Kyle thought about about the dead in Talay City, the black skeletons, the ruins of Tak Base and the gutted homes beyond, how that was only a taste of the evil that this man was capable of.
He thought about the asteroid raid on AX-456 a lifetime ago, his Omega Exercise before graduation. The snug fit of his stormtrooper armor, Sergeant Major Hong's tough voice in his ear, the Rebel troopers at the end of his E-11's electroscope flailing and falling in the dust and dark.
He thought about the secret he had sniffed out on the map, that conference room: the skifter up his sleeve, the last resort. He thought about what would happen after he went for that last resort, and what it might be like to wake up and remember it every morning for the rest of his life.
That day in the asteroid base, he had killed Rebels in ignorance, but ignorance was like innocence: once you lost it, there was no getting it back.
A matter of principle, Rebus had said. Principles mattered to the Katarns. Always had, always would... but Kyle had never expected to have to juggle them like live thermal detonators.
He took a deep breath. "All right, have it your way. Help me pull this off, and I'll get you out of here."
"Mmm, not quite good enough. I need some reassurance, Katarn." Rebus's dusky gaze shimmered with mirth. "Give me your solemn word of honor as a soldier of the Rebellion."
That went right in the heart. Right where it really mattered—where it had always mattered, from a rough, hardworking childhood on Sulon raised by quietly decent and practical parents, to that day on the jungle world of Dathomir.
"You have my word." Kyle nodded slowly. "You know, Rebus, it's too bad you didn't defect like me. You could've been a decent Rebel—if you weren't a lump of Circarpousian pond scum."
The Imperial spread his hands. "Nobody's perfect."
With extreme reluctance, Kyle returned the Yellow Key. It did belong to Rebus, so another person using it would be suspicious.
After collecting his tools, the Imperial led the way to the nearest wall terminal where, under Kyle's watchful eye (and whistling all the while), he manufactured a bogus work order for the air scrubber in Commandant Kre'fey's quarters.
"It'll be a cinch, Katarn," Rebus said, chortling as he stepped away from the terminal. "I'd never get in there unsupervised without a Rebel watchdog. And as for Kre'fey, he's a middling officer, even for a Bothan. Your brute force should be more than enough to persuade him to help us."
The mere act of hearing Moff Rebus refer to them together as an us filled Kyle with loathing as they headed back toward and then into the dome. They passed plenty of soldiers standing guard or on patrol. Sure enough, the most interest any showed in the pair was to give Rebus a casual greeting as they passed. Doubtful to the last, Kyle felt his heart rate rise at the first few encounters, but when it became clear that the former Imperial had (appallingly) been truthful about his status, he turned his thoughts elsewhere.
Assuming Rebus's plan proved as effective as he promised, everything would soon hinge on the encounter with Kre'fey. At the very least, they'd walk away with his Red Key, but if Kyle's luck held out, maybe he'd be able to strong-arm this Bothan into clearing a path out of the facility. No matter how well that went, though, once outside there'd be no choice but to make a run for and then through the jungle to the Moldy Crow. Hopefully Crix Madine would be up for the trip, but as for Moff Rebus—
AWOOOGA... AWOOOGA... AWOOOGA...
The first toll of the alarm staggered Rebus like a proton mortar had hit the building. His tool kit crashed to the floor. The regular hallway lights dimmed a shade. In their stead, blaring emergency illuminator banks came to life, pulsing in and out like the pumping arteries of a technological megafauna, while security glowbulbs spun like gyrothopters. All at once the base became a waking nightmare of flashing, glaring red.
A voice as deep as the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy bellowed, "Attention! Attention! Intruders have been detected inside the facility! This is a Code Red! I repeat, Code Red! All prisoners are to be secured in their cells immediately! All security personnel, report to your officers for further instructions! This is not a drill! Repeat, this is a Code Red!"
Kyle Katarn stood as still as death in the hallway, blood curdling, his mind sprinting full-force to catch up with the new circumstances, to wrangle them back into intelligible order. Shock froze him for a standard time part or two, but by the time the intercom's message was complete, he had finished adjusting his plan.
The revised plan wasn't complicated.
Just very, very difficult and very, very, very disappointing.
"Oh no... Oh no," Rebus jabbered, instantly breathless. "Oh, no no no no no... Oh, Emperor's Black Bones, they're on to you! I mean, us! They've caught us!"
"No they haven't," Kyle hissed back. "I got in here clean. If I'd tripped anything, this would've happened an hour ago."
"Then who could it be?! What's going on?"
"I don't know. You tell me."
Kyle still hadn't moved. Briefly, his thoughts flashed to the escort shuttle he'd seen landing earlier. Was that it? Was someone else breaking in? If so, why? Had they come for Madine too, or did it have nothing to do with him?
He shook his head. There was no way to know, no time to try and find out. Finally he rounded on the prisoner. "Where's Kre'fey gonna be now? How do we reach him?"
Rebus stared up at him, gulping like a gooberfish. "In the— the command center, but... It's hopeless, Katarn! They're on full alert. The only way to the commandant now is to blast your way in..." He looked in dismay at the lonely bryar pistol at Kyle's belt. "...but you'll never make it. You don't have the firepower!"
Kyle's only answer was a soulless, thin-lipped, hollow-eyed stare. Despite all appearances, there was a path to completing the mission. The situation was not hopeless.
It was only horrible.
Sometimes that was the way it went in this galaxy.
Kyle Katarn stared into the eyes of the war criminal and thought, Show them no fear. Show them no pain.
An avalanche of boots came down the hall. "You're a prisoner too," he said aloud. Then he roughly grabbed Rebus and started frog-marching him just as a squad of Rebel soldiers appeared, blaster carbines out.
"Let's go, Rebus! Back to detention with ya, slimeball!" Kyle snarled as the troopers charged past. Keeping a handle on the former moff was more difficult here than it had been on Anoat—not from struggling, but because Rebus was trembling like a giant, shaven bantha that had gotten drunk and been dipped in zaffa oil. The guy was babbling at a kilometer a second, too. Clearly, he was not as resigned to his fate this time. The instantaneous vaporization of his smugness would have been amusing, if not for the direness of the situation.
"Shut up and calm down, you murglak," Kyle hissed in his ear after they'd shambled past several patrols. "I need to concentrate."
"C-concentrate on what?!" the Imperial blubbered. "You can't— You're not going to take me back to my cell!"
Though extremely tempting, the pretense of doing so was more useful. "No, I'm trying to remember the layout of this place."
"But why? Where are we going?"
"I said shut up." A good, rough shove that almost sent Rebus head-over heels and spilling to the floor like a sack of Iridonian potatoes was enough to quiet him down. Gruffly satisfied, Kyle steered him as quickly as possible through the bloodlit corridors, praying that no one would think to ask why they were heading away from detention.
That they reached Kyle's destination without incident told him that the fuel tank where he stored his luck had at last gone as dry as the Doaba Badlands of Socorro. It had to happen sometime.
It was the conference room that Kyle had marked on the map before, completely unremarkable in every way, sporting all the basic furnishings and equipment of such a place. Rebus shut the door behind them and watched in utter befuddlement as Kyle Katarn started ransacking the room—knocking chairs over, jostling the conference table and the holo-projector, rifling through the filing cabinets.
"I don't believe this. I can't believe it," the Imperial said over and over, having regained some of his composure. "You've actually lost your mind, Katarn—gone space-happy!"
Kyle didn't waste his breath with an answer. Having finished with the furniture, he moved on to the contours of the room. There was a number of hidden signs that he knew to look for, thanks to the SpecOps training that had tipped him off about this room in the first place, but he was quickly exhausting the list of possibilities. Methodically, he pounded his fist against the wall, repeating the same six-point pattern every meter. His pulse soared higher and higher as Rebus threw up his hands, fretted, and griped. If he was mistaken...
Then he found it—heard the presence of a hollow compartment behind his fist. Kyle completed the sequence, and Rebus (standing by his shoulder) gasped in tandem with the hissing of the hidden compartment as it opened. A single glowbulb switched on, illuminating a small walk-in closet crowded with steel containers, all marked with the insignia of Alliance Special Operations.
"By the Cold! What is this?"
What this was was a secret cache of the kind sometimes installed in Rebel facilities for members of SpecOps, for use in emergencies such as an Imperial attack. According to standard security protocols, this compartment wouldn't have opened even for Kyle's signal unless an alert had been declared.
"Nothing you need to worry about." Pulling his bryar pistol, Kyle encouraged his companion to the other side of the room. "Have a seat over there, Rebus. I know you're a coward, but all these goodies might be a little too much even for you."
The Imperial did as he was told. Kyle stepped into the hidden compartment and emptied the stores. The containers were specially vac-sealed and purred softly as atmosphere flowed into them for the first time since their installation.
The first one contained an Imperial Machines repeater rifle—latest-generation, with the tri-shot secondary mode, a sling, and extra power cells. The second contained a pack of sequencer charges. In the third, along with another sling, he found a rail detonator—much smaller and lighter than a packered mortar gun, but equally devastating. Three rail charges clicked into its revolving launch chamber, while three more hooked to Kyle's belt.
The weapons smelled brand new, sparkled under the glowbulb like gifts from a transcendent guardian, and their new owner savored the glorious feeling of a secret uncovered, knowing he might never experience it again. Only after stepping from the now-emptied compartment and laying eyes on the goggle-eyed former moff did he remember where he was and what he must do, and he felt every last kilo of the arsenal he now carried.
He'd never felt such a weight in his life, knowing what lay ahead.
The secret room sealed itself and Rebus got to his feet, approaching cautiously. "Well played, Katarn. I would ask if you could spare any for me, but ah, as you well know, I don't play with these toys—I only make them. I suppose I'll just follow you at a safe distance, then... Watch your back..." His confidence flagged, dwindled by the second—no doubt weighed down by the mere thought of being so close as within earshot of a firefight.
"That's a very generous offer, Rebus, but actually..." Letting the repeater gun and rail detonator hang by their straps, Kyle reached over his shoulder to the equipment pack, produced his E-11 blaster rifle, and brought it to firing position. "...I don't think I'll be needing your help after all."
A tremor shook Rebus's pudgy frame like a jostled container of Kubindian royal jelly. "Uhm— H-hold on now. What do you think you're—"
"Don't get all excited. This one's set to stun. You'll just have a nice, long nap, and all this will be like a bad dream."
But not for me, Kyle thought. For him this day would be all too real. It would haunt him forever. It had come down to the wire, and he had chosen the last resort. He was going to turn this arsenal, and all of his deadly skill as the Alliance's top soldier, against the personnel of this base in order to get to Madine. But first...
Rebus's face went red, his voice low and, for the first time, something in the neighborhood of truly dangerous. "Oh, no you don't. No you don't, you double-crossing, slime-chuffing spawn of a dianoga. Even if you make it out of here alive, I'll tell the Rebels everything when I wake up. They'll put a death mark on you for this! There won't be an inhabited system in the galaxy where you can hide!"
"Tell 'em whatever you want. You'll have a hell of a time proving I was ever here, considering none of the cams will have a clear shot of my face." Kyle's grin was contemptuous and nakedly cruel. Choosing the last resort was going to cost him a piece of himself, but it had come with a consolation prize, and he was going to enjoy it for all it was worth while it lasted.
The Imperial sputtered and cursed and fumed, nearly tripping over the disturbed chairs as Kyle herded him back across the room. "You... You can't do this, Katarn, you traitor! We have a deal. You made a promise. You gave me your word!"
"You're right," Kyle admitted, unbending. "And I hate to break my word, but I've got no right to make a promise that violates justice."
Rebus stared at him like he had grown another head. "Justice? What in the name of the Emperor are you rambling about?"
The blaster rifle leveled with his nose. "Not the Emperor, Rebus—the Constitution. That's what we follow in the Rebel Alliance. It's thirty years to life, right? You've got a term to serve..." With a double-click, Kyle primed the E-11 for a stun bolt. "...and like you said, some things are a matter of principle."
"...You Rebel scum!"
An electric-blue halo flashed over Rebus and disappeared, knocking him back. The prisoner slumped into the corner and slid heavily to the floor, his fat legs splaying, his chin resting on his doughy chest.
Kyle stowed his E-11 and his mirth. The one Imperial on Dathomir that he'd gotten dead to rights, and he was letting him live.
This was going to be a bad night.
The alarm still tolled, the hellish light pulsed, and the corridors swarmed with Rebel troopers.
After consulting another wall terminal, Kyle threaded his way through the chaos, sometimes tagging along at the back of a patrolling squad, other times hiding and letting them pass by. At a glance he provoked no suspicion—he wasn't the only trooper who had geared up when the Code Red was initiated—but that would end as soon as he reached a high-security area. Or as soon as he ran into whoever had triggered the alarm.
In any case, his mission had been cut short in a way. Now that going in hot was inevitable, there was no longer any point in hunting down Commandant Kre'fey for his Red Key. Kyle had been betting on being able to threaten the Bothan, bluff him, use him as a hostage, maybe even bribe him—just something so that he could pull this mission off clean, but there was no hope of that now. Nothing to do but blast his way to Madine, then blast his way out.
Rebus's Yellow Key got him into the previously restricted area of the dome. Rather than the turbolifts, he opted for a stairwell that would take him down to Maximum Security One. His weapons and explosives clicked and clattered together and against the cold metal railings as he made his zigzagging descent, repeating blaster at the ready.
It was a long way down. Just long enough for him to think about how in the galaxy it had come to this.
The shuttle ride back from the Redemption. The news, the FleetNet posts, the incompetence and obfuscation of High Command. The imposter Shaparo and his henchmen, their wild-eyed warnings of conspiracy, Mon Mothma's vacuous dismissals...
The unbearable weight of ambiguity, the thought of passing the rest of his life without ever knowing the truth of Crix Madine, and the rot that may have penetrated the Rebel Alliance to its very roots...
It all came down to that: truth. The Alliance's leadership had abdicated its responsibility to the truth. That responsibility was now up for grabs. Until the institution could earn back the trust it had squandered, the duty to truth would remain in the hands of those who were willing to take it up, to shoulder the burden and to pay its price.
No matter what it it was.
Sweat beaded on Kyle's forehead, drew a damp line along the rim of his flash goggles. Somewhere between thirty and fifty Rebels, Rebus had said, but that was only in Maximum Security One. Not counting the ones Kyle would meet when he was on his way out with Crix Madine in tow. And unless they surrendered, he was going to deal with them the same way he had dealt with so many stormtroopers and lowlifes the galaxy over.
As far as he knew, they were guilty of no crimes. They wore the right uniform. Circumstances had set them at odds with Kyle, but in the final analysis he was the same as them: a man with a blaster and a cause. A soldier. A mercenary. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, you've got to kill to stay alive, went one unofficial SpecOps motto.
Information warfare is for the enemy, Kyle. Not other Rebels, Jan had said—neither of them having the slightest idea how much farther this would go at the time. They had both committed to this mission, had agreed that they would do whatever they had to, but Kyle couldn't help wondering if Jan would ever forgive him for this—and if he would ever forgive himself.
His shock boots left the last step and met duracrete. Four meters ahead stood a security door of black metal, bordered with crimson illumistrips. A key card-reader panel was set in the wall nearby. The door itself was magnetically sealed, but a high-grade explosive would open it as surely as the Red Key would.
Kyle approached, step by step, reminding himself to breathe. His hand went into the pouch for a sequencer charge, and he came within a half-meter of the door—
Which opened with a mechanical wail. Kyle's heart lurched into his throat. Rather than freezing, though, he threw himself against the door frame, his repeater snapping up, the safety clicking off. "FREEZE! DROP YOUR WEAPONS!"
His full-throated bellow echoed through the chambers beyond as they would in the Caverns of Colla-Di. A moment passed, one spine-tingling second after another, as Kyle waited to be answered by a fusillade of blaster fire or a clatter of charging boots, but there was nothing except the low hum of the air filtration system.
Finally it registered: they hadn't ambushed him. The door was just unlocked.
One of the doors to Maximum Security Detention Block One—
In a Rebel Alliance prison facility—
During a Code Red—
Was unlocked.
Ready for anything, Kyle leaned in, preceded by his repeater. There was a standard checkpoint: control panels and guard stations all facing him. Short stairwells led up to hallways lined with cells. Every surface was black metal, shining like the carapace of a mora beetle, and the lights were glaring the color of fresh blood.
And there wasn't a single living creature in sight.
Kyle stepped into the room, his mind blank with confusion, checking every corner and cranny, but there was nothing. No blast doors slammed shut on him. No one leaped out in ambush.
After sweeping the room, he consulted one of the consoles for a prisoner registry. As expected, Crix Madine was the only name on there. Cell No. 013.
Locating it on the map, he stepped up to one of the cell halls and slowly started his way down. His shock boots felt like they were made of collapsium. His nerves were as brittle as glass. The air tasted like a motionless desert. Everything was black and red and very, very cold.
Though it felt like hours, in reality he didn't have far to go. Every cell had its beetle-black door shut except for one: 013. As Kyle approached, however, he saw that the force field was on, red shimmering with white like a blizzard in hell.
He centered himself before the field and looked into the cell.
What he saw only came to him in pieces.
Madine's face a dark purple veiled by thin ragged hair—
The twin bunks, the ladder between them—
His eyes sunken like holes leading right into his skull—
The tiny refresher, the little table—
His tongue bloated and hanging out—
The sheets crumpled and strewn except for the taut one knotted about his throat.
Kyle assembled the pieces and stared.
And stared.
And stared.
His soul fell away from itself into a silence deep enough to swallow the universe.
After some minutes—or days, perhaps—numbly, unthinkingly, he looked for a panel to shut off the field, but there didn't seem to be one. His feet carried him back to the security room, to the various computer consoles. He found the cell containment controls, but they wouldn't respond, and he wasn't a slicer, nor did he have the Red Key.
Drifting to another console, he queried the security holocam controls. They responded, but there was nothing to show. Not only were the cams offline, but the footage archive for the entire block was empty. No data for the past twelve standard hours.
That was enough to prod Kyle at least partway out of his shock. The facts hit him like blaster bolts.
Dathomir Base was under a Code Red.
The detention block had been left open.
There were no guards inside.
The holocams had been taken offline, their footage deleted.
And Crix Madine was dead.
All at once, the lights shifted from bloody red to stark, eye-cutting white. Kyle strained against it. The base's intercom blared, "Attention, attention! Cancel Code Red, repeat, cancel Code Red! All personnel, return to your regular duties. I repeat: all personnel, return to your posts!"
Jagged pieces of half-forgotten memories fell through his mind like tumbling shards of glass: Moff Rebus in the sewers, in his dream, then here on Dathomir in real life—Crix Madine in the sewers, again in the dream (or had it been a dream? What had it been?), his croaking voice saying, It's almost too late. Shaparo tried to tell you; All of this murky and uncertain, nowhere as clear as the last image, mere hours old, of a mysterious Alliance escort shuttle drifting in for a landing topside.
Kyle Katarn looked up and said, "Motherfracker."
And he ran.
Lurched from the detention block, thundered up the stairs and then through the halls, barreling past confused Rebel soldiers and technicians, everything a blur, everything an obstacle, everything existing only to stand in the way of that shuttle and whoever it belonged to. Kyle Katarn swung on his last thread of hope over the abyss of failure, the abyss of not knowing, until finally he came skidding to a halt in that same corridor from before, heaving and gasping, with all his unused weaponry dangling from him and pulling him down so that he had to catch himself against the viewport—
—and outside, of course, there was nothing.
Only an empty lip of duracrete, awash in snowy light and crisscrossed by patrol beams from the guard towers, cold light that stood against the tangled blackness of the jungle and the skies of Dathomir.
No escort shuttle.
No answers.
Nothing.
When the eternity had passed, Kyle took out his comlink, raised it to his lips, and pressed the ping button once.
Jan answered him immediately. "I'm here. What's your status?"
"Get the engines hot. I'm on my way out."
"Did you get the package?"
"We're too late, Jan." Kyle's voice was stone-cold. "It's over."