Tucked into a remote corner of the Tion Star Cluster, the planet Orion IV distilled the pure essence of Outer Rim unexceptionality. Remote without being hidden, arid but not inhospitable, it hosted a light population of plain-minded, modest sentients scrabbling through life, trying to make a living, occasionally glancing up from their labors to voice a perfunctory grumble against the great and powerful who reigned over the stars above. It was more a planet for prospectors and miners than farmers, and the rich violet sky was harsh to the eyes of offworlders. Still, to a man like Kyle Katarn, it would have been a decent enough place to settle down for a quiet life, had that path still been open to him.
In the early years of the war, Orion IV had been host to a hidden base which headquartered Rebel operations across the Tion Cluster and beyond, but it was destroyed by the Empire shortly before Yavin. In some ways, the battle had been a brutal rehearsal for Hoth. A brief Star Destroyer bombardment was enough to collapse the planetary shield, allowing the ground force to attack with air support from assault gunboat squadrons. Between the walkers, the gunboats, and the blockade, the Rebel base was decimated, with not a single transport successfully evacuating.
As was so often the case, when faced with an enemy that has superior numbers and firepower, the only sure defense would have been to never get found by them in the first place.
The silver lining in that sad episode was that the Empire didn't stay long on Orion IV. The system was inconvenient to reach. The infrastructure necessary to support an extended occupation and Imperialization was not in place, and this dusty, lethargic world—barely roused from its slumber by an Imperial blitzkrieg—did not possess any resources that the Empire was interested in. As a result, the Alliance was able to return just a few years later, establishing a new (but much smaller) Orion Base among the ruins of the old one. Its overseer, Rear Admiral Xero Krane, was a decorated commander in the Rebel Alliance. Best known for masterminding the infiltration and sabotage of the Empire's Phantom TIE Project, he had his sights set on continuing to undermine the Imperial war machine on this side of the Rim. As such, the newly reborn Orion Base benefited from the best communication and espionage resources available to the Rebellion (for whatever that was worth).
And it was on this same planet that the man called Shaparo, a former captain in Alliance Intelligence, had chosen to establish the headquarters of the Bryar Force. Faced with an enemy which worked in secret, appropriating the Alliance's resources for its own dark ends, Shaparo recognized that his personal crusade needed to employ similar tactics. In fact, for this enemy within the Rebellion, this phantom menace which Shaparo hunted—for as much as they relied on secrecy and concealment, the Bryar Force itself relied on them even more. Whoever the enemy was, its members were highly placed, and accessing Alliance assets was apparently a trivial matter for them.
For Shaparo's organization (cut off by its nature from any institutional support), funding and resources were sparing and hard to come by. Their most valuable resource was intimate inside knowledge of the Rebel Alliance's protocols, organization, personnel, and communication systems—as well as the natural talent and grit of its few members. So it was that the Bryar Force had nested itself in an abandoned survey station a few dozen klicks away from Orion Base. Christened as Searchlight Station, it passed itself off as a legitimate and unremarkable civilian operation—local meteorological research and the like. Naturally the Alliance knew it was there; X-wing patrols passed Searchlight on a regular basis. Unknown to them, Searchlight's location allowed Shaparo and his colleagues to tap into Orion Base's hyperwave mainframe, granting them access to the Alliance's FleetNet and other major communication networks.
For just under a standard year the Bryar Force had been here on Orion IV, hiding in plain sight: groping, sifting, searching through the deep shadows of the Rebel Alliance, and now its light had finally found something.
The hangar bay of Searchlight Station could have belonged to any one of the thousands of small Rebel bases scattered across the galaxy: grimy and ramshackle, everything cobbled together and kept running by sheer tenacity, because neither high-quality parts nor a good supply of them were coming in any time soon.
Kyle descended the Moldy Crow's ramp with Wade at his shoulder. Jan brought up the rear, guiding a forlorn Zak Arranda. The boy, to his credit, had managed to quiet down for the remainder of the trip, but his haunted, downcast eyes were impossible to ignore, just as his panicked outburst after they'd left Nar Shaddaa was impossible to forget. Kyle hadn't been trying to humor him; they were going to deal with Utric Sandov soon. That the Bothan pervert had Zak Arranda's sister in his clutches made it all the more urgent.
The Crow was nested in among several personal starships and small shuttles, all belonging to what Shaparo called the "inside men and women" of his operation: formal or semi-formal members of the Rebel Alliance who, like Kyle and Jan, were entrusted with gathering information for him while simultaneously carrying out their "public" missions against the Empire. They were his eyes and ears inside the Rebellion, the proverbial akk dogs he sent to sniff out the branch leopards, while Shaparo himself and his "inner circle" had to remain hidden here at Searchlight.
Only two ships remained permanently at the headquarters. Both had been "borrowed" from an Alliance salvage dump, and one of them was literally in pieces for the time being. A standard Lambda-class shuttle, it lay twenty meters ahead of the Crow's landing spot. With its major engine components piled in a tangled mess and its lateral wings detached, it looked like a broken toy that a child had lost interest in. Quagga, the hulking Wookiee who had been put in charge of reassembling the shuttle, was loudly disputing with one of his colleagues, while several others continued working. Sparks fountained out of the dissected hull as fusioncutters roared, only occasionally drowning out the shaggy foreman's bellows. One of the workers, a Pantoran woman named Natalie Darr, paused to give Kyle and his party a thumbs up. Kyle answered with a half-hearted wave.
Looming to the side like a beached whaladon was Searchlight's other ship, a blessedly intact KonGar Shipworks assault transport. Prized by the Imperial and Rebel navies alike, it was a 45-meter brick of durasteel armor and turbolaser blisters, with a frontal command module whose bluntly angled shape, like the terrestrial AT-AT walker, recalled the ponderous but formidable form of a Zaloriis dune cow. Its fins were striped a proud red and its name, appropriately, was Bloodshark.
"Commander Katarn! Commander Katarn, hello!"
Kyle turned away from the spectacle about the shuttle in time to spot the Ruurian hastening to meet them. Scurrying about on two dozen insectoid legs, covered in bands of multicolored fur, he somewhat resembled a massively overgrown Dagobian caterpillar. As well as his natural covering, he wore a six-sleeved labcoat. Drawing near, he raised his front half, which brought his head level with Kyle Katarn's square jaw, though the kinked, wavering feather-like antennae gave him a greater sense of height. One of his rear appendages was clamped to the handle of a first-aid kit, which dragged noisily on the metal.
"Commander Katarn," he said yet again, somewhat breathlessly, "your transmission was a relief, but I ask your forgiveness that you did not find me here already. Tell me: the young human, is he indeed... well?"
"He survived the trip here, if that's what you mean."
Kyle and Wade stepped apart, allowing Zak Arranda to timidly come forward. The boy showed neither surprise nor even interest as he looked the Ruurian up and down.
"Zak," Kyle began, "this is Doctor, um..."
He fumbled, grimacing. He'd only met the Ruurian once before, but they had just spoken on the com—yet Kyle had already forgotten the name.
The alien smoothly took over, his form undulating in a bow. "Dr. Ktrame Zaposug, at your service. Though you may address me as Dr. Z, if you so choose."
If anything, Zak looked bored. "Oh. Okay."
"I ask you to accompany me, young Master Arranda. I have been informed of your recent ordeals, and the, ah, director of this operation... You see, he would like you to be given a proper medical examination before he appraises you of the current situation." Dr. Zaposug's many eyes formed a dark constellation, brownish black glimmering as they caught the many light sources in the hangar.
"I guess that's fine."
Kyle edged forward and lowered his voice a bit. "Listen, Doc, there's something else. I got this hypopen off of Demarakesh. When you're done looking at Zak, I'd like you to analyze it. See if you can find out what was in it, any other kind of clues."
Gingerly, Dr. Zaposug took the offered hypopen and deposited it in a clear plastisynth bag that he produced from his own pocket. "I will do my utmost, Commander Katarn. You have my utmost thanks." His antennae flicked and wove through the air. "We should go now, young Master Arranda. I promise you, the examination will not take very long."
"And how about I go with you, Zak?" Jan put in, touching his shoulder lightly.
The boy grunted, but followed Dr. Zaposug without protest as he and Jan threaded between the landed ships, making for one of the exits. Kyle Katarn stood motionless, watching them go, wondering if any sentient could comprehend the depth of damage that was inflicted by creatures like Utric Sandov and Deena Demarakesh, and if it was possible to ever repair. Beside him, Wade Vox paced aimlessly, hands in the pockets of his longcoat.
Kyle was just about to speak when a new voice broke through the noise of the hangar. "Katarn! Vox!"
They turned in unison to meet another human, striding toward them from another exit. He was a slick man with a wiry frame, dark hair, and a face so clean-shaven that it looked like raw meat. He wore the khakis of an Alliance Intelligence operative though, like the rest of Shaparo's inner circle, he was considered a deserter and a wanted man.
Kyle regarded him stiffly. "Troomis."
"You boys are missing a package. Where's the other one?"
"He's dead," said Wade.
"Demarakesh is dead?"
Kyle gave Wade a frown as Troomis looked between them. Why was this guy even talking about the Bothan patsy? He wasn't the one who had chased him down and...
"Yeah, he is. I tried to take him alive, but... Well, it didn't work out."
"Hrm... Too bad. That'll make it harder for us to sort all this out." Troomis ran a hand through his short hair; usually slick and well-combed, it was bit frazzled today. Pits of shadow hung from his eyes. He reeked of cigarette smoke, too, but Kyle remembered that from the last time he'd been to this place.
"Well, have you got anything else for me?" Troomis asked.
"Yeah. Yeah, I've got something," Kyle mumbled, reaching into his pockets. They didn't really need Demarakesh, he told himself. We'll handle this fine without questioning him. This'll make up for it.
"I've got his datapad, wallet, comlink, few other things." He handed them over to Troomis, who stuffed them into his pant pockets—minus the datapad, which was too big. "There's a hypopen too, but I gave that to the doc. Figured he should examine it."
"That's fine. We'll check with him later, see what he says."
"There's one other thing. That kid, Zak Arranda—he says he's got a sister, and she's still on the Hospital Platform. Sandov's got her."
Troomis raised an eyebrow, briefly glancing up from the confiscated datapad. "Well, that's another complication. We'll take care of it. Is that it?"
"Yeah, I need to talk to Shaparo," said Kyle, taking a step toward him. The other man was already turning away.
"Both of us do," added Wade. "We need to have a debriefing or something."
"The boss is busy. We're all busy up there," Troomis said over his shoulder.
Kyle's eyes narrowed. Utric Sandov was still at large, and there was no telling how much time they had before he realized his patsy had disappeared. "With what?"
"What do you want from me, a progress report?" Troomis snapped. "Something important. We've been working on it since yesterday morning. Nobody's slept."
"There are still children on that platform," growled Kyle Katarn. "Children who are in danger right now."
"You think we don't know that? It won't be long now, anyway. When Shaparo's ready to see you, we'll call you on the comlink." Troomis's squarish, yellowing teeth bore themselves in a snarl. "Now piss off, Rimmers. Go take a nap. Some of us don't get time off."
He stormed away without another word.
"That guy's not all human," Wade hissed, glaring. "Pull up his ancestry datafile, I'll bet you anything you'll find a womp weasel in there."
Kyle only shook his head. If this guy expected their relationship to warm up over mutual disdain for Troomis, he had another think coming. Desperate to clear his head, to get away, to simply move, he left the hangar just as quickly as Troomis had.
Besides the disk-shaped docking bay, the Searchlight Station consisted mainly in a cluster of weathered prefabricated shelters constructed mostly of ferrocrete and carbon duraplast. Slender metallic rods sprang up from the corners and walls of these structures, hosting various components of the old survey station's sophisticated sensor array, as well as the newer communication systems. Red and yellow lights lazily blinked on and off at regular intervals, as though marking the circulation of blood from the subterranean power core which was the facility's heart.
Many of the rooms were sealed off on account of disuse, but Searchlight still had plenty of space for a man to get lost in, if he wanted to, and Kyle Katarn was one such man. Nearly a hundred beings had worked on the original survey team here, but the Bryar Force was a much smaller operation, and likely to stay that way. Kyle's shock boots echoed in every corridor, and he often left footprints on the dusty floors.
Walking simply to walk, he half-consciously made his way to a storage room that had been converted into a firing range. Normally a place like this would be comfortable for him (he fondly remembered the training rooms aboard the cruiser Independence), but that was impossible here.
It was impossible because the range was already filled—not just by a single being, improbably enough, but one with barely half the mass of a typical humanoid. Coming up behind him through the entrance, Kyle practically froze midstep. He didn't know what species this person was... Some kind of lagomorph, with the long vertical ears and white fur, but the tight face, beedy eyes, and disturbingly wide mouth told that he definitely wasn't a Lepi. He clutched a blaster pistol in each hand and leaped from side to side, discharging a spread of green energy bolts at the targets painted on the far wall. Besides hogging the shooting area, he was constantly letting out a shrieking sort of laugh that sent chills up Kyle's spine.
Staring from the doorway, Kyle tried to dispel the absurdity of the scene with a mundane consideration: he couldn't quite remember this guy's name. Max... Maxis... Something or other.
He gave the hopping, gunslinging lagomorphic mental patient a few seconds to notice him. When it didn't happen, he turned on his heel and resumed his wanderings.
Kyle and Jan had only been to Searchlight once before, to lend a hand to Shaparo and the others with getting the place operational. The layout was, at best, only half-familiar, and the same went for most of the faces Kyle saw as he went. He passed them in corridors and lobbies, control rooms and lookouts, the lounge, the commissary, giving them nothing more than a nod or a terse greeting. When he came across an unfamiliar Nautolan in a random hallway, kneeling like a meditating monk before an expansive viewport, lidless eyes fixed on the purple sky (where Orion's primary star still blazed full-force), Kyle made his way past as quietly as he could.
Moments later he stumbled into the lounge. It wasn't much, wasn't enough big enough to accomodate the entirety of the Bryar Force, let alone the original survey station's staff. Old posters of local jizz band festivals hung from one wall beside a holodart board, and the eviscerated husk of a Spin-and-Win machine occupied a far corner. A ceiling fan kept up a lethargic circuit, swirling dust motes large enough to taste.
The men at the table in the room's center looked up when Kyle appeared. They were in the middle of a sabacc game, the holo-overlay of the cards emitting soft, multicolored glows. "Kyle... Katarn?" one of them hazarded.
"Yeah, that would be me," Kyle said. "Uh, I haven't been here in a while, so I don't really remember who everyone is."
The table's denizens duly introduced themselves. The human who had greeted him was instantly recognizable as a seasoned soldier: grizzled and hard-nosed, his dark hair cut short as brush-mouse's fur and fast turning that color as well; and though his eyes had the unmistakable sharpness of a killer, he seemed relaxed and easygoing. His name was Able, and he sat beside another man with an almost identical face (albeit with the addition of a goatee), who he introduced as his brother Mort. The latter man neither spoke nor smiled, simply nodded; if the sharpness in Able's eyes was enough to score composite armor, Mort's would cut through like a glazion energy torch through bantha butter. The cybernetic left arm might have had something to do with it. The two other men, also human, went by Hantor Loftus and Cody Darklighter.
"Why don't we deal you in, Kyle? I promise we won't clean you out."
Able's grin practically shone, and Kyle knew that it was the manifestation of something that had grown increasingly scarce in the galaxy, and therefore increasingly precious: a straightforward, masculine offer of belonging, without any ulterior motives.
Yet Kyle was already halfway out the door, though his steps faltered as he realized that there actually was something of importance he could do while waiting to hear from Shaparo. "Sorry, not this time. I really gotta go and—"
He stopped short, and his pulse shot up like a phospho-magnetic firework.
In the hallway in front of him, standing close enough to feel her body heat, was a Twi'lek woman with coppery orange skin. Long, black prosthetics which replaced natural lekku draped down to her bare waist. Uniformly, her clothing—what clothing there was—was black leather which hugged every curve on her body, of which there were a good many. She stood as tall as Kyle Katarn, and the curve of her mouth, the shine in her green eyes... Being looked at by her was something you physically felt, like stepping through an energy field. Fluidly, as though there was no movement more natural in the universe, she leaned against the wall by one outstretched arm, which would oblige Kyle to duck if he meant to pass by.
"Kyle Katarn. Small galaxy."
Her voice hit his brain faster than a double-shot of Sacorrian grain whiskey. "Rianna Saren," he murmured, jerking back a step.
A devilish grin showed a pristine set of teeth. "The one and only."
Kyle knew this Twi'lek by reputation well before the formation of the Bryar Force. Like him, Saren was a mercenary who enjoyed the perks of a nominal membership in Alliance Special Operations, and aside from her many successful field missions, her name occupied the top place in the training simulator scoreboard aboard the Calamari Cruiser Independence. According to what Kyle heard, she had tangled with Black Sun as well as the Empire, survived on an inhospitable lava planet, escaped captivity multiple times...
I've heard a lot about you, he'd said when first meeting her those months ago.
It's all true, every bit of it, she'd answered.
"Jan and me got back from Nar Shaddaa. With Wade Vox." Kyle mentally kicked himself as soon as the words were out. He was babbling, talking just to fill the air.
"Yeah, we heard about that." Rianna's voice was smug, as if it was some carefully guarded secret that she had effortlessly unraveled. "Guess you're back then, huh? Mission successful?"
Zak Arranda's face, numb with all the confusion and pain of a childhood's innocence shredded forever, flashed before the mind's eye of Kyle Katarn like the incoming beam of a disruptor rifle.
He said, "You could say that. Right now I'm waiting to hear from Shaparo, see what he'll have me doing next."
"Uh-huh. Well, hey..." Rianna tipped her head toward the doorway. Her cyber-lekku swayed gracefully. "I just got back from the refresher. Why don't you join us?"
Kyle's eyes wandered downward in a zigzagging pattern before he seized and wrangled them back under control. Waves of heat swam through him. "At sabacc?" he asked stupidly. "Uh, I don't think that I, uh..."
He was baffled to notice the Twi'lek's smile widening; his dubiously voluntary attention was anything but unwelcome. "Oh, come on, Kyle. We'll have fun. I promise."
Kyle coughed into the sleeve of his jacket, and somehow that simple action pulled him back down to the planet's surface. Morgan Katarn had raised him better than this. For his entire boyhood he'd been taught to respect women... but it wasn't so easy when it came to women who didn't respect themselves.
Twi'leks, he decided, were really something else. Admittedly, maybe it was just his quaint, "sheltered" upbringing in a quiet corner of the Outer Rim, the son of a farmer. There hadn't been any girls like this on Sulon, not in the outback or even in Barons Hed, where sentients were as rowdy and randy as they ever got on that moon. There had been only three or four women in the Imperial Academy, but they had been stuffed so tightly into their uniforms that it was a wonder they hadn't asphyxiated before graduation (though, come to think of it, only one had made it that far before dropping out).
Out in the wider galaxy, Kyle Katarn had been often puzzled and occasionally even shocked by what sorts of behaviors turned out to be considered common among female sentients, but female Twi'leks were on a different level entirely. Nearly every single one he saw, no matter the place or context, they all did this for some reason—dressed as members of that profession which is most diplomatically euphemized as "entertainers". He had provoked extraordinarily spirited responses whenever he spoke up about this; even in the Rebel Alliance itself, they got away with this. It was truly flummoxing.
Then Kyle remembered the other men playing sabacc in the next room. Maybe the reason they looked so happy, the real reason, was standing right in front of him.
"No, listen," he said, "I actually have someplace to be."
Spinning on his heel, he marched back into the lounge. "Hey, Able. Any chance you could tell me where the workshop is?"
Ten standard minutes later he was stepping cautiously into a spacious room that reeked of scorched metal, spilled lubricant, and something like raw burra fish. Lighting was irregular, cast down in beams of varied intensity from mismatched glowlamps and arc panels. Tables, benches, shelves were on every side of him, covered with grimy old tools, gadgets, and pieces of machinery. Deactivated and half-dismembered droids were propped up against walls like exhumed metallic mummies. The room was divided up into sections by various makeshift partitions, usually either hanging tarpaulins or slabs of plastisteel. Though the workshop was quiet, soft clicks and clangs testified to one or two occupants, but with the echoes it was hard to tell where they were coming from.
Kyle picked his way through, wary of tripping over something. The being he was looking for, he recalled, was named Payvees, and he had agreed to work on something for Kyle. He was reluctant to call out, though; the relative silence and solitude was a relief.
On some level, he supposed he was being a bit unfair to the other members of the Bryar Force. Wade Vox was the only one who had actually and personally gotten under his skin, and even he wasn't anywhere near as colorful as Maxis seemed to be. At first glance, though Rianna Saren's presence was a potential hydrospanner in the works, the rest of them seemed normal enough.
But Kyle Katarn simply was not in a mood for anything close to socializing. In fact, he rarely was, these days. By default, he was inclined to keep other sentients at arm's length—at first, anyway, until he knew they were steady and reliable. Since the Madine scandal and its aftermath, though, he found that even making friends and acquaintances was less appealing than ever before.
Right now the only person he really needed to talk to was Shaparo, and even then that wasn't for anything other than duty. As for who he wanted to talk to, the only sentient in that category was Jan Ors. She was the only one in this galaxy who enjoyed Kyle Katarn's complete and unconditional trust, his only true partner. All these other people were... extraneous. Unknowns, like starships or blasters or other pieces of equipment that he did not understand and therefore had little use for.
As he wandered through the workshop, however, occasionally kicking dropped components out of the way with his shock boots, it dawned on him that he was going to be seeing a lot more of not only Wade Vox, but the rest of these people, for the foreseeable future. For several standard months, he and Jan had been occupied with a series of critical Alliance missions in the Airam and Elrood sectors. Even though they'd needed to watch each other's backs the whole time, and not just because of Imperials, they'd been able to get lost in the work, to occasionally feel like it was back to business as usual: the lucrative work of hurting the Empire for profit. It had felt like old times, even though those "old times" had not been very long ago. Now, though...
There was no avoiding it: Kyle and Jan had turned a corner when they answered Shaparo's message and went to rendezvous with Wade on Nar Shaddaa. All that had happened there on the Smuggler's Moon, the death of Deena Demarakesh and the rescue of Zak Arranda, had altered their course, steered them hard away from what they thought of as normality... it was doubtful whether they might ever return.
There must be no illusions about what you're getting yourself into, Shaparo had told them severely, the last time they'd been here at Searchlight. When the time comes for us to make our move, it's more than likely going to demand the sacrifice of your careers. You will join me in the shadows of the Rebellion. Do you understand?
They had. They'd been skeptical at first, especially Jan. Kyle always had been able to count on her when he got too far in over his head... but the scandal and mysterious death of Crix Madine had opened their eyes, and now they were edging their way into those shadows, where a secret war had to be waged to save the Rebellion. For the first time since Madine's death, they had made contact with the enemy within, and the true war had begun.
Without encountering a soul, Kyle made his way to the far end of the workshop, where he found two deactivated droids propped up on separate benches, surrounded by welding and programming equipment. One was a looming, cumbersome-looking brute, with its central processor and other critical components packed into a thickly armored shell, vaguely resembling the carapace of a Neimoidian harvester beetle. Lacking arms, it instead lugged a pair of missile launchers built into his shoulders.
The other unit was more humanoid, looking at first glance like a protocol droid with the outer coverings stripped. But its purplish gray frame was spindly and lithe, its shape suggesting considerable agility.
Surrounded by those two droids, tables and other machinery, and partial partitions on multiple sides, Kyle turned about slowly. He could have sworn he heard somebody here just a minute ago...
"Ba-doba bashuda!"
The words were Huttese, braying and aggressive, translating roughly to something like See you in Hell, gocksucker. It was a famed taunt among Gran mercenaries, which Kyle Katarn had contended with many, many times over the years, on Nar Shaddaa and other worlds which were even more dangerous and shudderingly memorable.
But it was not the invitation to death and eternal perdition which set Kyle's heart thundering and flooded him with adrenaline like the old irrigation channels on Sulon after a rainstorm.
It was the telltale beep of a primed thermal detonator that did that.
Ripping his bryar pistol free, Kyle Katarn whirled in time to glimpse a stocky, leathery-skinned, three-stalk-eyed Gran ducking behind one of the partitions... and the detonator coming toward him in a high arc, a dark sphere carrying a blinking red light, the harbinger of imminent doom.
The explosive clanked hard as it hit the bench directly in front of him, bounced, and ricocheted off his armored vest. Flailing, Kyle threw himself to the side, only to trip over the large droid's outstretched legs. Catching himself with one hand, he scrambled on all fours like a Corellian scavenge rat, jostling equipment as he darted under and between racks of shelving. Behind him, the detonator continued to bounce ominously. From its size and the cadence of its impact, he had instantaneously recognized as a Class-A model, manufactured by Merr-Sonn Munitions incorporated. Its baradium-thermite core gave it a blast radius of twenty meters—meaning anything within twenty meters would be reduced to atoms, while any organic composite in the next five to ten would be turned into a blinded, limbless, blackened parody of life, croaking in petition for the death which it had unluckily avoided.
Clearing yet another bench, Kyle leaped up, only to find plasteel partitions blocking his way; he had cornered himself in this unfamiliar environment. Behind him, the final detonation tone of the deadly sphere shrieked out—
And nothing happened.
Finding himself in a vacuum of silence, Kyle turned, his half-raised blaster weighing something like twenty kilos, and stared at the suspiciously inert explosive eight meters away.
Wait a minute, he thought, though he could scarcely hear his own thoughts through the blood pumping in his head.
"Kodaba busheeda nibakadda, Katarn! Good afternoon to you!"
Numbly replacing his blaster, Kyle stared, goggle-eyed, as a chunky male Gran in a grease-stained work suit clomped into view, the tools on his belt jangling like a jailer's keys, and bent over to retrieve the dud thermal detonator.
"Payvees!" The name left Kyle's mouth in a heave of exhausted relief. With legs that felt rubbery as the energy drained from them, he fumbled his way back around the bench. "What in the galaxy do you think you're doing, you kriffing bantha-broggling, cherfa-brained son of a mynock?!"
The chief demolitions specialist, tinkerer, droidsmith, machinist, and repairman of Searchlight Station sauntered to meet him, innocently tossing the detonator to himself. "Why, nothing. I simply wanted to welcome you. I heard that you had come back to Searchlight, and I remembered you... so I thought I would greet you in a way you expected: in the language and common expression of my people." He smiled with schadenfreudian satisfaction, baring a mouthful of boxy teeth.
Kyle's face flushed with embarrassment as the memory of their first meeting rushed back to him. "Payvees, I— I thought we were past that. I already apologized to you, and—"
With a backward over-the-shoulder throw, Payvees relieved himself of the detonator, which knocked over a stack of magnetic fasteners with a crash. "What do you mean? You had nothing to apologize for. Everyone knows that's the universal greeting of the Gran species."
"Would you calm down already? I said I was sorry. Hell, I even bought you some drinks, in case you forgot."
"Oh... Oh, you're right. I did forget about that," said the Gran, faltering.
Kyle went on, his mouth running desperately. Keeping his temper down while trying to be conciliatory was a challenge. "Yeah, so— I've had hundreds of Gran try to kill me in my line of work, and I can be jumpy at times, but I know that's no excuse. So I'll tell you I'm sorry, again. Are we good now?"
The alien hung his head slightly. "Well, yes, but... Did I really startle you that bad, just now?"
"You kriffing did, Payvees. I thought that was a— It looked and sounded just like the real thing. I thought I was gonna be disintegrated. I hope you don't play pranks like that all the time. You're not gonna make friends that way."
Payvees' head snapped up, his eye-stalks lengthening with focus. "Friends? Are you saying Gran can't make friends with other species? Think we're all just a bunch of thermal det-chucking, cantina-brawling thugs, huh? Why, I oughta..."
His Basic mixed with Huttese in a staggered string of belligerent utterances as he pushed Kyle back a step, then began flinging his meaty fists in a lazy form of shadow-boxing. Kyle stared, his arms half-raised, but soon found he had to slap Payvee's blows away.
"You haven't seen where I grew up, Kyle! Jurappa baniggaba! It's not easy, bein' a scared Gran youngling in a Rodian neighborhood—"
"FOR KRIFF'S SAKE, PAYVEES, WILL YOU CUT IT OUT?!" Kyle bellowed finally, his words echoing across the workshop.
He was ready to deck Payvees in the next standard time part. Luckily for the two of them, though, the Gran instantly backed off, chortling fiendishly. "Oh, all right, fine, fine! Don't get a mynock all tangled up in your power cables, Katarn. I was only messing around. When I heard you were back, I got the idea, and I couldn't resist, so... Well, anyway, what can I do for you?"
Kyle sighed roughly and wiped sweat from his forehead. Even he had not expected his return to Searchlight to be this aggravating. "That personal shield generator of mine. How's it coming along?"
"Shield generator... Oh, that."
"Yes, that. Is it ready or what?"
"Afraid not. I haven't had time to look at it in weeks." Kyle's frown brought the Gran's own irritation to the surface, and he gestured about the room. "Hey, don't blame me. There's a lot going on here, pal. That shield of yours is a stolen Imperial prototype. I had a hell of a time just figuring how it works, let alone finding what parts I'll need to fix it. There's stuff all over this facility that needs fixing, and everyone else who can tell a hydrospanner from a haali is tied up with putting that shuttle back together..." He scowled. "Even then, that Wookiee keeps yanking me out there to help them. And on top of that, Shaparo just told me that he wants those two fully operational this week. Top priority."
Kyle followed Payvees gesture to the two half-assembled droids, the towering missile-carrier and the sleaker protocol-looking one. We're already stretched to the limit, he thought.
When he said nothing, the Gran spread his hands and actually sounded considerate for the first time. "Look, I'm sorry. I'll try to squeeze in some time for that shield of yours, but I'm making no promises."
"Fine, that's fine," Kyle said, waving a hand. "I'll just leave you to whatever you were doing, then."
The news in itself was a bit of a disappointment, but understandable. The Bryar Force was seriously strapped for manpower as well as resources. That personal shield generator was a huge asset, and it had saved Kyle's life many times, especially during his missions to take down Genral Mohc and his dark troopers. But Kyle had adjusted well enough after it was broken, and he already knew how to live without it.
Excusing himself, he walked off in a random direction, threading between the makeshift walls and the junk, not sure where the nearest exit was, and accidentally poked his head into a cubicle in the corner. It was a small work area with only a bench and a small shelf for tools.
Seated at the bench was none other than Wade Vox. Small tools and bits of machinery were strewn on the surface before him, surrounding a battered, half-disassembled metal cylinder with a rubber grip on one end.
Wade looked up at Kyle, his mouth ajar with embarrassment, like he'd been walked in on while in the middle of changing clothes.
Petrified in the cubicle's entry, Kyle stared, not at the man but at the device which lay before him. Memories stirred of another bench in another workshop on a far-flung moon, where another metal cylinder had once lay, though that one had gleamed and looked deeply intriguing to a famer's boy of seven years.
What is that thing? the boy had asked.
It's a fusioncutter, Kyle told himself. Wade was just tuning up a portable fusioncutter, like the other man had been all those years ago. It was nothing special.
Nothing special at all.
Before Wade could say a word, Kyle marched away, fumbling back across the workshop, wondering if there was any place he could get away except the inside of the Moldy Crow.
Four standard hours later, they called for him on the comlink.
Kyle went to the central building, then took a turbolift up four floors to the control center of Searchlight. The place loosely resembled the command room of many an Alliance capital ship and military base. There were no windows, but the overhanging flatscreen arrays along two walls could tap into the exterior security cam feed if need be. Some of the computer consoles were leftover from the station's original owners, but several new ones had been added—more stuff to possibly trip over. There was a constant, low crackle from the audio links of communications equipment, punctuated by the regular beeps and warbles of sensor monitors and data-splicing tumblers. Sheets of flimsiplast hummed as they were disgorged from old-fashioned laser printers, then crinkled in the grips of weary hands. Desks were strewn with documents, datapads, and the occasional personal effect. Every surface was stamped with at least one ring of dried brown residue, left by a half-finished caf mug.
A dome-headed red-and-white astromech droid designated R2-Q8 gave a coo of greeting as Kyle stepped into the room. Slumped at the desks and computers or else drifting sleepily between them were Troomis, another human named Vewin, Bertos Goodner (a Twi'lek who, being male, thankfully did not dress like an "entertainer"), and a Sullustan named Garek. A few of them glanced up at the new arrival, but otherwise paid him no attention.
This small collection of beings was Shaparo's "inner circle", the brain and nerve center of the Bryar Force. Like him, they were former members of Alliance Intelligence, now testing their skills and knowledge against that same Alliance, or rather the invisible enemy which had infiltrated it. The previous year, these same people had briefly abducted Kyle aboard the cruiser Independence and subjected him to an intensely disturbing "interrogation" which had turned out to be Shaparo's way of vetting him for recruitment. Kyle had since decided to overlook the extremism of their methods, but he shared no warm feelings with any of these beings.
Originally Garek had been the only one who smoked, but now all of them did except for R2-Q8, and the gray clouds that twisted through the air carried silver and cerulean tints from various holographic and flatscreen displays.
Across the room, a door lay cracked open beside a window with shut blinds. The air inside the small office there was clean, stirred lazily by a ceiling fan. The entire left wall was covered in squares of a thin substance called paper—pulped organic material with symbols or images inked on, as a countermeasure against theft by electronic means. Portraits and stills from security cam footage, lists of names and organizational charts, covered with handscrawled additions and splotches of highlighting, many items linked by strings in different colors. Though ostensibly a map, a tool to organize known facts and key individuals, connections and conjectures, Kyle couldn't keep his eyes on it for more than a few standard seconds before his brain matter started to tie itself in knots.
Standing before this web of intrigue was Shaparo, hands clasped at the small of his back, still as a spider. His dirty blonde hair well kempt but not remarkable, and like the others, he wore the uniform of Alliance Intelligence sans the rank badge. Only when the door latch clicked did he regard his visitor.
"Katarn," he said, "welcome back. I'm sorry our appointment was delayed, but there was no other choice. We had just finished securing full access to Orion Base's communications mainframe, and it was necessary to cover our tracks, lest we be discovered. A very delicate operation, but we now have access to the Imperial HoloNet, as well as all the networks used by the Alliance."
Kyle had the good sense to bury his frustration over being forced to wait. "I'm sure that'll come in handy."
"Indeed it will. Please take a seat."
They mirrored each other across a beaten old desk of borl wood, strewn with datapads and caf-stained paper documents, and Kyle recounted everything that had happened on Nar Shaddaa. Shaparo listened with fingers steepled before his lips, not moving so much as a muscle except for the occasional raising of an eyebrow or the twitch of a cheek. His human face was plainly proportioned, and down to nearly every detail he was totally forgettable in appearance. Only his steely blue-gray eyes, wide and alert, gave him away. Bearing the man's full attention as he gave his report, Kyle felt as though he sat inside a ring of full-spectrum holocams and biological center, every one of them centered on him. Rarely blinking and never wandering, Shaparo's eyes were like portals into a vast and unreachable alien sky, swallowing and digesting every syllable. It was easy to believe that this was the man who had cracked Moff Rebus, the infamous Imperial weapon designer whom Kyle had extracted from the sewers of Anoat.
Kyle was not a man who minced words, but even if he had been, there would be no point trying when it came to Shaparo. So when the time came, he gave his unvarnished assessment of Wade Vox's character and professional qualities. A good shot, a decent pilot, sure. But he was a loose blaster cannon, possibly delusional, and bringing him on board had been a mistake. He had put Kyle and Zak Arranda's lives at risk by shooting first in the Imperial Palace, and he had carelessly lost his ship on the Smuggler's Moon.
"That is a serious concern," Shaparo agreed, slowly drawing out his words. "The countermeasures on his ship will likely be enough to cover our tracks. Nevertheless, I will not overlook this. The Bryar Force is not prepared to deal with a security breach. If Searchlight is ever discovered by our enemies..."
He did not go on, but Kyle supplied the rest of it mentally: Then we're all kriffed up the exhaust port. They didn't have the capabilities to relocate all the equipment and data they had scrounged together here, certainly not with any speed. In the event of an attack, the best they would be able to manage is to evacuate the Bryar Force's membership... and start over from scratch with a new headquarters, which they didn't have the resources to establish.
Shaparo went on. "My next appointment is with Wade Vox. I will make sure to discuss this matter very seriously with him and ensure that his conduct remains up to standard from now on."
"So you're keeping him with us?" Kyle asked, dismayed. "You just said you wouldn't overlook this."
"I will deal with the situation, Katarn. Our numbers are few. I did not reach out to Vox on a whim, and I will not dismiss him over a few mistakes. Besides, losing track of an inside man runs the risk of another potential security breach." Shaparo's tone had hardened to match Kyle's own, but now he relaxed somewhat. "Like you, he has skills that we need, and perhaps... perhaps even a gift which we could not replace if we lost it."
Kyle gritted his teeth, knowing that he should drop it, but also knowing that he couldn't. "A gift? You mean his superstition? His mystical delusions?"
Shaparo thoughtfully rested his steepled fingers against the side of his jaw. "I would not dismiss the aid of the Force if I were you, Katarn... considering how little we have at our disposal."
Of course. Kyle remembered now, ruefully. Though certainly not obnoxious about it like Wade, Shaparo was also a believer. A believer in whispered old stories about robed knights and acolytes, champions of peace and justice, defending the innocent with glowing swords and spiritual powers beyond the ken of mere technology. Those stories were big in the Rebellion, and Kyle had heard them many times. He had also heard rumors, just as numerous, that Luke Skywalker—their top ace pilot, foremost of the Heroes of Yavin—was a carrier of this ancient legacy.
On the wall to the left, in the center of the mass of papers, a square which denoted Searchlight Station was linked by a white string to another one out on the edge. The latter was a print of Skywalker's face, peering out with a sheepish smile and earnest eyes that seemed to be fixed on you, no matter where you stood in the cramped office. His hair was a cleaner blonde than Shaparo's, but styled in the same stupid cut that Wade Vox had emulated. Scribbled beneath him were the words, Potential Asset: Priority 1, then a date from the previous week followed by, Out of range.
Just looking at it was irritating. One man, the hero of the entire Rebellion... and apparently, in Shaparo's mind, no less mythologically important. The rumors all said that it was some Jedi power that had enabled Skywalker to destroy the Empire's Death Star superweapon.
But Kyle Katarn, who had stolen the plans to that superweapon, knew better. "I'd rather rely on a good blaster, something I can hold in my hand. Or a person that I know I can trust. Not some comforting tall tales for kids and greenhorn recruits."
"You didn't seem so jaded when I first met you, or when we last spoke," Shaparo said at length.
Kyle's mind flashed to several places in rapid succession—first to the workshop hours before, where Wade Vox was tinkering with a portable fusioncutter that looked troublingly familiar... Then to the Smuggler's Moon, to the railless catwalk running over the dark abyss, to the twist in his gut that made him decide to throw himself prone, to the garbage hauler that he had not seen or heard coming, sailing away into the moggy night after nearly taking his head off... and there were other times too, like on Danuta...
He shook his head, dismissing the memories. "Things change."
Shaparo nodded. "Indeed they do. Why don't you continue, then?"
Kyle did and, just like he didn't mince words, he also didn't cover up his own mistakes, and again there was no way he could when Shaparo was asking the questions. So he told him about chasing Deena Demarakesh. About the half-constructed starscraper, the balcony of thin girders and thinner transparisteel. About the datapad with the pictures, pictures of Demarakesh and Utric Sandov and those children, the black, screaming, gut-tearing injustice and the need to punish...
"That was a serious mistake," Shaparo said quietly.
"Yeah."
Kyle's eyes, usually under his rigid control, drifted back to the wall of paper, to a portrait centered at the top: a smartly bearded, calm-looking human man in the center of a spiration of red strings: Major General Crix Madine, the man whose horrifying predations on the children under his protection at Kolaador Base had led to such a firestorm of scandal and intrigue last year, the man who was, in a sense, the beginning of all this madness.
With the indispensable help of Jan and her contacts in Alliance Intelligence, Kyle had discovered where the disgraced Madine was being held, awaiting a proper trial for his molestations. Though it tested his skills, Kyle had made it through the inhospitable jungles of Dathomir, infiltrated the Rebel prison, and made his way to the maximum security cell block... only to find Madine hanging in his cell from a bedsheet, bloated and hideous in death... simultaneous with the speedy arrival and departure of a mysterious escort shuttle whose passengers Kyle had failed even to glimpse.
Officially ruled a suicide by the Alliance leadership, the death of Crix Madine had seemed the end of Kyle's personal quest to unearth the truth of his actions. The truth of who had helped the pedophile carry out his unspeakable deeds, whether anyone else in the Rebel Alliance was involved in such things... and why the upper echelons of Alliance leadership, up to and including Advisory Council, the Chief of State, and the Chief of Intelligence, had seemed bent on doing everything they could to bury the scandal and silence anyone who persisted in asking these questions.
The faces of those figures gazed out from the left wall, stately and official-looking and, for those reasons, all the more ominous: Mon Mothma, Airen Cracken, Carlist Rieekan, Juno Eclipse, Gial Ackbar... Nearly every Alliance leader featured on the board had an attached note that read Compromised or Likely Compromised. Only two or three, like Xero Krane, who commanded the nearby Orion Base, were labeled Potential Asset.
As it had turned out, Madine's death was not the end of things. But if he had lived, if Kyle had managed to get him off Dathomir and actually interrogate him, things might be very, very different. He could have named his enablers, conspirators, handlers—whatever they were, whatever they were really up to, and why. But because Kyle had failed—so very narrowly—Shaparo and his Bryar Force had spent the past year essentially scorching hyperfuel for nothing. For all their hard work, they had accomplished nothing besides getting Searchlight operational and recruiting operatives. There had been no leads until Zak Arranda's desperate plea had appeared on FleetNet. Utric Sandov had been abusing children aboard the Rebel Hospital Platform for months, possibly years... and maybe Crix Madine had known. Maybe, if Kyle had extracted him successfully, they could have stopped it that much sooner. And who knew what else they might have learned?
The death of Deena Demarakesh represented a loss of critical information, comparable in magnitude... the difference, of course, being that Madine had been silenced by somebody else, while this Bothan pervert had been killed by the very man who was meant to bring him in alive. And they would never, ever recover whatever advantage had been lost.
When Kyle was finally finished telling the story, Shaparo laid his hands down on the desk. As eerily calm as ever, he said, "I suggest you be more forgiving of your teammates' mistakes, going forward."
Kyle only grunted. He wasn't petulant enough to defend what he'd done, but putting himself on a level with Wade was too far for him.
"Rage is a perfectly natural response to the things we uncover, as is despair—but both must be kept in check. I myself was... blinded by these things, and it cost me dearly. More than I dared to imagine."
He had no need to elaborate. Shaparo's only son had been at Kolaador Base along with the children of various other Alliance personnel and had, consequently, become one of Crix Madine's victims. What exactly Shaparo had done after that and before he and his inner circle had first sought out Kyle and Jan, Kyle was not certain (and part of him was afraid to ask). By the end of it, though, Shaparo's son had disappeared, and Shaparo himself—already a widower since the start of the war—truly had nothing left to lose in launching his crusade against Madine and his kind.
Shaparo's voice grew a deadly edge as he refocused. New energy flowed into his face, defying the bags and lines of fatigue accumulated by sleepless work. "But now... Utric Sandov. For the first time, we finally have a lead. A name. A member of the conspiracy. We can finally strike our first blow against the enemy."
"The Rebel Hospital Platform," Kyle breathed, sitting up straighter.
Shaparo nodded. "Once I've spoken with Zak Arranda and have a team prepared, we'll make our move. And you'll be leading the mission."
Ambivalence flickered in Kyle's thoughts—again, he was not keen on going in the field with other members of the Bryar Force, apart from Jan.
Either it showed on his face or Shaparo read his mind. "You have been in this since the beginning, Katarn. You know as well as I do what dark forces we are up against. Whatever the nature of this conspiracy, it threatens the very heart of the Rebel Alliance. Unless we tear it out, root and branch, it will not matter whether we win the war against the Empire. As such, there will be no room for mistakes going forward. The members of Bryar Force will work as a team to balance each other out—because the Force knows we need balancing."
Kyle thought of Jan, the only being in the galaxy he actually trusted to do that for him. As long as they stayed together, he supposed could swallow what Shaparo was saying. "I understand."
"You know what's at stake. You've been under fire, and you've left a former life behind in the past—much as I have. It's more than likely that your career with the Rebel Alliance is about to end." Shaparo leaned forward, his steely eyes shining and terrible. "I need to be assured of your total commitment, no matter what comes."
Kyle Katarn stared back across the desk at Shaparo—at this broken, soft-spoken, and terrifically ferocious man—and knew he had come to a moment of reconciliation and commencement. He had helped, but he had also made a mistake, had shown imperfect commitment. That was why Shaparo was asking the same thing he had the last time Kyle was here. It was a second chance: a chance to fully commit to this secret war, to join the Bryar Force in the shadows of the Rebellion, to step into that darkness without looking back.
We've already turned the corner, Jan and me, thought Kyle Katarn. Like they always say in SpecOps, there's no way out but through.
He looked Shaparo straight in the eye and said, "I'm all in."
CHAPTER COMPLETE
PASSWORD: IMDAAR