Chapter 26
Slake sits quietly in the medbay next to Kell's bacta tank. The droid overseeing Roderick's care asks rote questions about infection and contamination.
"Did the patient come into contact with any Geonosian brain worms?"
"No."
"What parasite did the patient encounter?"
Slake slumps in her chair. "I don't know. Evil black hole ghost?" Roderick's rubbing off on her.
"I am unaware of any treatment protocols for 'evil black hole ghost.' Please describe the circumstances of the purported infection." The droid uses a recording of her words and Slake doesn't love that. If anyone's listening in, she's going to sound like a nutbar. Even the droid's use of "purported" makes her feel judged and a little bit crazy.
"Look, we both might have been impacted by hypoxia on the platform. I might not be remembering things clearly. Do you see any traces of… interstellar dark matter? In him?"
The droid's processing lights flutter as it checks its records. "No foreign bodies have been found in Flight Officer Roderick. However, I have discovered several minor and moderate wounds in his mouth and GI tract. The bacta is disinfecting and stimulating the healing process now.
"Good. Is there any damage to the central nervous system?"
"Very minor scoring in the limbic system, and what appears to be light friction burns on the occipital lobes. This is the area of the human brain that is responsible for processing vision signals and mapping them to spatial representation. All very correctable. Kell Roderick may return to active duty in five to seven days. After passing a battery of physical and vision examinations, of course."
Slake's heart swells. She got him out. He'll be okay.
Most memories of what happened on the platform faded after she escaped with Kell's body crammed over her lap in her Interceptor. She knows that Nixus had possessed Kell, and somehow, she got it out of him, but she has no recollection of what precisely she did. Slake also knows that Nixus took hold of her momentarily, but it could not stay.
Because she was stronger.
The whole thing feels like a half-remembered nightmare. She wracks her brain trying to find some detail she can use. Something that can get every Imperial resource out of this system forever.
A tap at the door snaps Slake to attention. It's Exel. He wears a formal robe, he's slicked back his hair, and the skin on his jawline is irritated from a recent reintroduction to a razor.
"Hey," Exel says softly. "Is it okay if I come in?"
"It's your ship."
Exel gives a small, guilty smirk and steps inside. He looks to the medical droid, "Leave us."
"Very well, Master Exel." The med droid takes slow prodding steps through the doorway. Exel inspects Roderick in the tank. "How is your friend?"
"Do you care? Or are you just here because you thought I might be vulnerable?" While the details are hazy, Slake knows she just fought a monster and won. What can a puddle like Exel do to her?
Exel looks around furtively and peers out the door. "Admin. Seal the room and sweep for bugs."
The medbay door whooshes closed and the overhead lights shift to a pulsing violet. After a few seconds, the room returns to its sterile white glow. An AI voice speaks over the room's sound system. "No surveillance measures have been detected. The room is sealed, and countermeasures activated."
"Thanks," Exel says to the disembodied voice. "Look, Amara. I think you have me wrong. You should know that I care about you a great deal. You're not just some… object to me."
"Hm. I wonder how I got that impression." They can demote her, ground her, bounce her to a labor camp. That's fine. What won't be fine is Slake ever humoring this soft, pink wad of hubris again.
"I will admit that I used my station to… take advantage of you. What I did was wrong. What Tav did was wrong. Unforgiveable, really. I wouldn't blame you if you hated me forever."
Slake says nothing. There's a "but" coming.
"But, we're in real danger here. And I need you. In a total professional capacity. I need a Baroness of the Empire in her Interceptor, protecting what I think is the difference between winning this war and losing it."
"I can tell you're new to flattery. This feels rehearsed."
"That thing out there? Nixus. I know it's alive. And I know it's a threat."
Slake checks Exel's eyes. There's real sincerity there. "You know about the black hole?"
"I do. It's spoken to me."
Slake's parents were junkies, notoriously the best liars in the galaxy. But every liar has a tell. Too much eye contact or not enough. Shaking hands, tapping feet, changes in breathing cadence. She sees none of these tells in Exel. Nevertheless, she makes up her mind not to fully believe him. At least not yet.
"What did it tell you?"
"It said that it would not kill me. So long as I agreed to bring it back to the galaxy."
A memory opens to Slake. She knows that Nixus offered her the same. She declined. Just before she exploded it.
"So that's why you're making the fuel. To bring it home." She laughs derisively. "Does the fuel even work?"
Exel chuckles. "Oh, believe me. That fuel works. But here's the thing – that monster, Nixus – it can't 'live,' I guess that's the right word, without a host body. To my understanding, it finds the darkness inside someone, a weakeness or a need or whatever, then exploits it. That's how it gets in. But when we refine the fuel, it's all very clinical and sterile. We seal it in a container, and that process separates the dark matter from the black hole's consciousness. It's not some demon anymore. It's just highly efficient, powerful fuel. Fuel that will turn your TIE Fighters into endless reservoirs of energy. All upside."
"Mm." Great, thinks Slake, he's going full pitch mode.
"You're skeptical. I get it. I wouldn't believe me either," he smiles. "But believe this. I would not bring that shit out there back home. I've got too much to lose."
His words are honest because they spring from self-interest. Exel doesn't want to be the wealthiest, most powerful morsel on some dead god's dinner plate.
"Okay, let's assume you're correct. The fuel is separate from Nixus. You might not have a choice of whether or not you bring it back. Nixus could be inside you or me, right now and we don't even know it."
"In my experience, it's been pretty obvious. I mean, hell, look at Roderick."
Slake thinks of 300 indentures and a dozen stormtroopers lost right under Exel's nose. "Obvious. Like with Dismas. Right."
Exel's head tilts. He grins wide.
Slake's heart sinks. She gave away too much. He played her.
"Watched the Dismas video, did you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." Her words sound hollow. She didn't inherit her parents' capacity to lie.
"You know, for what it's worth, Pyre didn't give you up. And I did some nasty things to her. For a bleeding-heart rebel, she's actually quite tough. It must be the spy training."
Rebel spy? Slake's mind races, thinking through what must have happened while she was out on that platform. "Exel, I don't know what you're talking about. If she was a spy, I never would have collaborated with her. Never."
"The thing is, I believe you, Amara. You're as true-blue Imperial as they come." Then, as a whispered taunt, "Because you're so bloody stupid. You just accept every ounce of shit they shovel down your throat."
The medbay door opens, ad three stormtroopers step inside the ward, their carbines at the ready.
"Take a walk with me, Slake. I have something to show you."
As if in a dream, Slake follows Exel through the corridors of the Profundity. Two troopers flank her, and one walks behind. Standard prisoner-escort protocol. Her career is over. Likely her life, too.
She'll never fly again.
"Where are we going?" Slake asks, trying to put command into her voice.
Exel turns on his heels and they all stop in the middle of the hallway.
"I suppose I could tell you. But, to be honest, I'm enjoying watching you squirm. Like a little womprat caught in a trap. You've never been in trouble before, have you?"
Slake glares into this man's face. She's known more trouble than he could ever fathom, the pampered little prick.
"Come along now. I have a speech to deliver."
They walk to the turbolift and take it down to the MC90's belly. They're going to the hangar.
When the doors open, she sees every indenture, stormtrooper, and fixer from both the Profundity and the Ex-Factor lined up in columns. 900 plus souls. Officers, admins, and droids fill out the crowd, all standing at attention. The faces of the indentures show defeat. Some are blank behind their eyes, just putting themselves somewhere else in their mind. Whatever is about to happen, it will be horrible.
She looks, but she can't find Tav. He's not near the front. And if he's not near the front, he's not here.
Exel struts between the columns of workers and soldiers, shipmen and slaves. Slake follows behind, feeling eyes all over her. As they approach the main gate, glowing blue with barrier energy, Amara sees Pyre, flanked by Virta and the new sergeant-at-arms who replaced Dismas.
Pyre has been beaten black and blue, her blood having dried to a ruddy crust all over her mouth and chin. Her nose has been broken multiple times. She's been stripped down to her undergarments, soiled with excrement.
When Pyre breathes through her mouth, Slake sees that they've cut out her tongue.
Exel claps his hands and steps up on a stage made of cargo containers. He adjust the microphone on his lapel. "Attention! Attention everyone! Welcome to today's celebration!"
The stormtroopers bang their fists on their armor. Fixers and Imperials clap. The indentures remain silent.
"No applause, indentures? Really? Perhaps I should remind you of what this event is all about. We're celebrating the discovery of a Rebel operative within our project. Flight officer Lucinda Pyre is not who she claimed to be!"
Exel pauses for applause, but even his own fixers seem confused. They look around for a cue.
"Applaud you maggots!" Vice Admiral Virta's voice booms. He needs no microphone. The ship staff falls in line and claps as instructed. Still, only about a third of the slaves return the applause.
"Now that's the enthusiasm I'm looking for!" Exel says with his trademark smirk. "We wanted to bring everyone here today to have… a pep rally of sorts. You see, I'm not blind. I know you all harbor resentments for being brought here. But I'm certain that we have a great motivational program for you all today. We'll give everyone a little attitude adjustment. Sergeant, would you mind bringing Miss Pyre up here?"
The chrome plated stormtrooper hauls Lucinda up by her shoulders and throws her roughly to the ground at Exel's feet.
"Everyone, this is Lucinda, let's give her a big round of applause."
Exel begins clapping and slowly, the whole hangar joins him. "Lucinda, you know, we have to give her some credit for her courage. She came aboard my ships, my project, and tried to send information regarding a few bumps in the road to the terrorists in the Rebel Alliance. Isn't that right, darling?"
Exel kneels down to Lucinda and grabs her chin roughly, pulling her up to face him. She jerks away and he backhands her hard across the face. She collapses the floor. In Pyre, Slake sees someone who is done fighting. Whatever Exel did to her, it already killed her. Her heart just hasn't stopped beating yet.
"I didn't get all of her on that one. Put her back on her knees."
The sergeant follows Exel's order and pulls Pyre up by her greasy, blood-caked hair. Slake sees that her eyes are open, but pointing in different directions. Exel takes a few comical steps back, then steps forward hard, backhanding her again. Pyre begins to fall to the ground, but catches herself. Staggers, but doesn't fall.
"Fuggh you," she tells Exel in a spray of blood and spit.
"Would you look at that, ladies and gents? That's defiance. I wish half of you took your jobs this seriously. Then Nixus would already be drained and we'd be onto the next pitch black latrine." Exel jokes, but Slake sees the worry in his eyes. He wanted Pyre to go down for the count on that one. She found the strength to show him up one last time.
It makes him look like a bully. She's laying bare his insecurity, weakness.
Slake can feel the mood of the hangar turning. The fixers and stormtroopers keep looking back at the indentures. There are a lot of aliens in this hangar. And they don't like what they're seeing.
"I'm going to show ALL OF YOU what a lack of commitment brings. What duplicity brings. I want to show you the PRICE of resisting… my… WILL!" Then to the sergeant, "Bring out the droids."
Two imperial probe droids float forward over the hundreds of heads of the gathered audience. These octopoid machines have always given Slake the creeps: their cold intellect, their all-seeing, all-hearing sensors. Forget TIEs, Star Destroyers, the Imperial Crest – these are the true symbols of the Empire.
The droids drop toward Pyre. Slake locks eyes with her, and for a moment, she considers going for her blaster. She'd die and certainly so would Pyre, but maybe she could get Exel and Virta before she was cut down by a stormtrooper.
Pyre subtly shakes her head "no." Equal parts afraid, relieved, and ashamed of her relief, Slake puts the thought away. This isn't the moment.
The droids extend their claws as they approach Pyre and grab her under her bound arms. They lift her 10 meters in a flash, and she screams in pain from what's probably a dislocated shoulder. The droids ascend higher and higher, to the top of the hangar. For all to see.
"I want to be very clear," Exel says, amping the volume on the hangar's sound system. "This is easy for me. Keep dragging ass, keep rolling your eyes at me, and I'll do this to every last one of you. Indentures, fixers, stormtroopers. I don't give a fuck. And after I do it? I'll sleep great." He nods to Virta.
Virta smiles and signals to the droids.
The droids carry a whimpering Pyre to the hangar's gateway. When Pyre realizes what's happening, she shrieks in terror.
"No! Nooo!"
Slake closes her eyes.
The shrieking stops suddenly. Slake hears gasps from the indentures.
Slake opens her eyes. Just beyond the hangar's blue-tinged containment field, she sees Pyre frozen solid in the vacuum of space, her face wrenched in a horrified scream.
The hangar is quiet. Exel lets the silence hang. Thirty seconds, a minute. Feels like hours. "Bring her back in," says Exel.
The droids fly back in, holding Pyre's frozen corpse. Even from here, Slake can see the stretch marks on Pyre's belly.
"Drop her ass."
The droids drop Pyre from the top of the hangar, and her body shatters on the floor. Icy, bloody chunks skitter over the metal panels.
No one says a word.
"This meeting is now adjourned. Everyone get back to work." The troopers roughly usher the slaves back to their stations. Fixers, all with haunted looks on their faces, mindlessly begin to queue up for the transports back to the Ex-Factor.
Tears stream down Slake's face, as rage, fear, and sorrow course through her. She wants to rush to Exel, bury the barrel of her service pistol under his chin, and pull the trigger. But she can't make her body move. She's too afraid.
She stands stock-still as Virta and Exel approach her. Exel leans in close. "I know you're a particularly stupid whore, but I really hope this lesson sunk in."
Slake sobs. She can do nothing.
Virta steps forward, deep in Slake's personal space. "As senior officer in this system, I hereby revoke your title of 'Baroness of the Empire.' You are grounded. Permanently. Upon our return to civilized space, you will be court martialed for gross negligence and treason, allowing a Rebel spy in your ranks and then collaborating with her. For the remainder of your time on this project, you will join the indentures in the Mess Halls. You will wash dishes, you will clean refreshers, you will mop up the disgusting leavings of inferior races. And your first order in your new role is to clean up this fucking mess."
Virta gestures at what's left of Pyre.
Slake's hands shake. She can't speak.
"Right now, Slake. Don't keep me waiting."
"Yes sir."