“Scritching! Scratching!”
“Who else am I going to get mad at?”
“Yourself? Your boyfriend, Jo?”
“For the last time, Jo isn’t my boyfriend. And anyway, we wouldn’t even be on this stinkplanet if it weren’t for your boyfriend, Dec!”
“Dec isn’t my boyfriend!” Mattis didn’t even know what they were arguing about anymore.
“Of course not. If he cared about you at all, he’d have turned his shuttle around and come to find us. But he didn’t. He and that oaf Sari just took off.”
“Well at least—at least—”
“At least what?”
They were in each other’s faces, ready to come to blows. Mattis wouldn’t make the first move, and he hoped Lorica wouldn’t, either. She would definitely win a physical altercation against him. Heck, she’d nearly beaten that Gigoran.
“So loud in my ears! So loud in the walls!” Cost moaned and rocked in her corner.
“At least I’m a nice person!” Mattis finally yelled.
Lorica burst out laughing and gave him a shove. It wasn’t at her full strength, he was sure, but then neither of them were. Still, it wasn’t exactly a playful shove, and he fell back into his bunk, banging the back of his head on the overhead bar.
“Ow!”
“Just shut up already, Mr. Nice Person,” Lorica growled.
“Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop so loud,” Cost wailed.
“You shut up, too!” Lorica yelled into Cost’s corner, but Cost was back up again, pacing and running her thin fingers along the back wall.
“Quiet in there, prisoners!” AG’s voice, though mechanical and missing his characteristic drawl, was still unmistakable. He appeared a moment later, standing ramrod straight before their cell door.
“Aygee,” Mattis said, surprised. As he’d appeared in the Fold, AG seemed both himself and not himself. He was somehow more…mechanical. Over the course of knowing him, Mattis had come to think of AG-90 not just as a droid but as Dec’s brother. As a friend. Mattis had ceased seeing any difference between himself and his friend. AG could think and act, and just like Mattis, he wanted to fly.
“That’s me,” AG said flatly. “You prisoners ought to stop yelling. You’re liable to raise unwanted attention. You hear?”
Mattis nodded. He didn’t like this new AG-90. He missed his friend.
“If you’re not here to help us, then I don’t know why you’re here,” Mattis said. He hoped he conveyed the disappointment he felt. He hoped it sliced through AG’s programming.
The droid gave no indication that it had.
AG’s presence had done one thing, though, and that was to further agitate Cost. She threw herself against the cell bars and grasped them so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
“Stop the noise!” she shouted in AG’s faceplate. “It’s noisome and stop it, stop it, stop it!”
“Step back, prisoner,” AG ordered, but Cost went on barking and pleading for him to stop the noise, stop the scritching in the walls. “The scritching is in your brain, prisoner,” AG said dryly.
Cost persisted, banging her fists on the bars, trying to shake them but finding herself unable. The bars were too strong. She stopped only when Ingo Salik made his imperious presence known by clearing his throat. He touched Cost’s fingers where they held the bars, and she let go.
Cost turned to Lorica, standing beside her, and pointed. “She pet the Gigoran,” Cost said.
Ingo offered a small, good-natured smile. “From the report I received, I don’t think the Gigoran was too pleased by it.”
“She tried to eat me. The Gigoran, I mean,” Mattis told Ingo.
“Don’t be silly. Gigorans don’t eat people,” Ingo remarked, then added mockingly, “usually.”
“Could you blame her?” Lorica asked, stepping toward the bars, standing within a meter of Ingo. “It’s not like we get fed in this cage.”
Mattis didn’t think that challenging their jailer was a good way to curry favor, but Ingo’s features softened as Lorica locked eyes with him. There was something about Lorica, even when she was antagonistic, that made a person want to engage with her. Maybe even moreso when she was being antagonistic, which was her default manner anyway.
“Have you not been fed?” Ingo asked. The way he said it made them sound like chickens in a coop, which was probably his intention. “That’s our error, Miss Demaris.”
“So you know my name,” Lorica remarked.
Ingo only nodded and maintained his thin smile. It took Mattis a moment to get to where Lorica already stood. Ingo hadn’t known their names when last he visited them. Now he did. Which meant that Ingo, and his commander, Wanten, had received information from someone. Maybe AG, before he was reprogrammed, or more likely, Jo was reporting to the First Order. For now, as far as they knew, it was just their names. But what would come next? Mattis was sure AG didn’t know the location of the Resistance base, but Jo, as squadron leader, probably did. Lorica had implied as much, and that was dangerous knowledge to have under capture.
Lorica took a step forward. Any closer and her nose would poke through the bars. But now she was a breath away from Ingo. Mattis was so worried about this confrontation he felt as if his head were going to jump off his neck. His pulse reached a crescendo and, suddenly, everything stopped being so dire. It was as if Mattis had spent all of his worrying and had just completely run out of concern. Everything moved slowly and placidly, as if underwater. As Ingo reached into his jacket pocket, Mattis didn’t even tense. Everything was just so calm. Lorica remained nose to nose with Ingo, on opposite sides of the bars. Ingo removed a small rectangular foil-wrapped packet. Cost quieted to a soft humming.
Ingo lifted the packet to eye level and placed it on the bar between his and Lorica’s faces. He held on to one end of it. Languidly, Lorica raised her own hand and took the other end. They remained there for a moment, each touching one end of the silver packet, then Lorica grasped it tighter and snatched the whole packet into her hand. She took a step back from the bars, and whatever spell they’d fallen under was broken. The world moved at normal speed again. His head spinning, Mattis dropped back onto his bunk.
Ingo nodded, stepped back, turned on his boot heel, and exited the way he had come.
Lorica turned to Mattis, her eyes wide. She ripped open the silver packet to reveal six gelatinous cubes.
“Is that—” Mattis began, unable to believe his own eyes. His stomach finished the question for him.
Lorica nodded. She still seemed dazed from whatever hocus-pocus had just transpired, as if she could feel it, too, and why not? She was just as spent as Mattis was.
“It’s a ration pack,” she said. She broke off three of the cubes and tossed them to Mattis. “Eat,” she said.
Mattis gulped one down without even tasting it, which was probably for the best. The protein cubes that came in ration packs were notoriously sickly sweet, like eating sugar boiled in hawkey nectar. Which was to say cloyingly sweet. He felt the nutrients jolt him with energy before the cube was even all the way down his throat.
Lorica held her first cube on her tongue, clearly not minding the syrupy sweetness, savoring the rush of energy she got from finally consuming some food.
Mattis went to place a second cube in his mouth and then stopped. Cost rocked back and forth in the corner, one hand splayed up against the back wall, as if she could somehow keep it from falling in on her that way. She was drawn and skinny.
Mattis took one of his two remaining protein cubes and held it out to Cost. She only seemed to recognize what it was after a blink. Then she rose up unsteadily and Mattis placed the cube in her hand.
“Thanks a bucket,” she said. She slipped the cube into her mouth like she was taking back a secret.
Lorica watched the transaction take place, sighed, and offered Cost one of her cubes as well. Cost took it and put it into her mouth with the other cube, which hadn’t yet dissolved.
�
�Don’t choke on it,” Lorica said unhappily. Mattis could tell she’d wanted all three for herself. But she hadn’t taken them. Indeed, she’d first given half her bounty to Mattis and then a third to Cost. They were together in this.
“Thank you,” Mattis said to her. The words didn’t contain the galaxy of gratitude he actually felt.
“Mm hmm.” She nodded, the first cube still on her tongue.
“What did you—” Mattis began. He wasn’t sure how to ask. He wasn’t even sure what he was asking. “Did you do something to him?” It came out sounding accusatory and Mattis wished it hadn’t.
“No!” Lorica was defensive.
“I didn’t mean—I don’t know the words,” Mattis said. “But it’s like…do you have the Force?” Something in the question surprised and disappointed Mattis. A part of him thought that if Lorica possessed the Force, it would mean he didn’t. Of course, that was a ridiculous notion. In the days of the old stories, there were plenty of Force users.
“I don’t,” Lorica replied. “Because there’s no such thing.”
Mattis didn’t think this was the time to argue, as much as he wanted to convince her of the truth.
“Then how did—” he began, unsure again how the question should be asked.
She sighed and crooked her mouth, as if this were something she’d given a great deal of thought. Which she had. “I’ve been realizing this for a while,” Lorica said. “I think there’s something about…me.”
Mattis wanted to tell her that there were lots of things about her, things about which he’d given a great deal of thought, but for once, he thought it better to shut up and let her continue. This wasn’t easy for her to explain.
“There are…rumors? Legends? I don’t know. About my people, about Zeltron people. They say that we can sort of affect things, feelings, in others.”
“Like mind control?” Mattis asked.
“Brain-itching!” yelled Cost.
Mattis went to shush her, but Lorica stopped him with a hand held up. “It kind of is like brain-itching.”
“Brain-itching isn’t a thing that anyone’s heard of,” Mattis pointed out.
“No,” Lorica agreed. “I guess not. But it’s, like, emotion massaging, if that makes sense.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Mattis, don’t get angry with me. I’m trying to explain.”
Mattis apologized.
“They say that Zeltrons have these pheromones, like, we radiate something—a smell or a feeling that makes people like us. I mean, more than we’re already likable.” She smiled at her own joke. “It has a calming effect on people. And Gigorans, apparently.”
“That’s why you were petting Ymmoss,” Mattis said, understanding.
“Yeah,” Lorica replied. “Being that close to her, and soothing her as I was, I think it calmed her down.”
“A little bit, sure,” Mattis agreed.
“Hey,” Lorica snapped. “She’s a Gigoran, and I’m new at this. But I think if I were better at it, if I practiced, I could put her to sleep.”
“Is that what you did with Ingo?”
“Not exactly. I think…” She shook her head, though the notion didn’t embarrass her at all. “I think he likes me. So I sort of…used that.”
Mattis nodded. It made sense. Ingo hadn’t had his mind controlled by Lorica, but that haze he’d been in was real. He knew what he was doing, giving her the ration packet. Part of him wanted to give it to her. But Lorica’s ability had pushed him so that he didn’t mind actually doing it.
Mattis thought back to his own interactions with Lorica, from the time they’d met on the transport to the Resistance base. She hadn’t been nice to him, but he’d been drawn to her nonetheless. And over time, as they got to know each other, he’d seen beneath the thorny front she presented to the good person who was inside of her. She’d saved him, and Dec and AG and the others, many times. And every time she did—well, really, every time she did anything—Mattis liked her a little bit more. He saw where that affection was going; he’d felt the same for his pal Jinby back on Durkteel, though he’d resisted it and they’d remained just friends. It wouldn’t help to get a crush on someone who was his friend and, often, his sparring partner. But his feelings were as strong and undeniable as the Force itself.
This new information rankled him. If just being near her enhanced every feeling Mattis had, then were his feelings for her real? Were they even friends? Or was she just itching his brain to make her life easier? Did it make any difference that she’d only recently realized she had these abilities? And was it even true? Mattis didn’t want to explore those questions, and he pushed down any feelings that were simmering. After all, he didn’t need Lorica making them worse. He’d wait until they had some time to themselves, and then maybe he could figure out how he actually felt.
Of course, time to himself seemed unlikely in their cramped cell.
“You’re mad,” Lorica said to him.
“I’m not mad,” Mattis said, sounding very mad.
“I’m not mad, either!” Cost piped up.
“I don’t care if you’re mad,” Lorica told her.
“You should.” Cost hiccuped. “When I’m mad, I get angry.”
Lorica shook her head. Mattis could tell that she didn’t want to have the conversation, either. She was, as she often was, all business. He met her eye, if only for a moment. “We can use this, this ability I have, to escape.”
“How?” Mattis huffed.
“I got Ingo to give me the rations packet, didn’t I?” She cocked her head at him. He could tell that she needed him to listen and to understand the sense of what she was saying, but he was having trouble concentrating, as he usually did when she was around. With this new information, zeroing in on an idea was difficult. “Maybe I can get him to let us go,” Lorica continued.
Mattis stared at her through slitted eyes. “How are you going to make him want to let us go? Are you going to get him to fall in love with you?”
“No! I’ll get him to see me as a person, instead of as a prisoner,” Lorica barked.
“Okay. When?” He crossed his arms.
She shook her head at him. “I don’t know when,” she sighed. “I don’t even know if it’ll work. I can at least try. That’s more than you’re doing, sulking.”
They were fighting again. Mattis didn’t mind so much this time.
“I’m doing something, too.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’ve been thinking of a plan since I got here,” he said, omitting “or trying to” from the end of the statement.
“What have you got so far?”
And then, all at once and just at that moment, Mattis thought of a plan. He hoped it was due to having been trying to think of one since he got there. He would accept that maybe the Force had just then whispered a plan to his brain. He hoped it wasn’t Lorica itching an idea into his head.
“I’m collecting scraps.”
Lorica shot a question at him with a hard look.
“Like what we’re doing on Vodran in the first place, right? Maybe that’s my special ability: the ability to find garbage.”
“Mattis, what are you talking about?”
“They’ll put us to work outside at some point,” he said. “You saw some of the other prisoners out there, working on the fences and digging outside the Fold.”
“I saw them.”
“If we keep quiet, and if Aygee and Jo don’t tell them everything just yet—”
“Which they already may have,” Lorica pointed out.
“Maybe,” Mattis agreed. “But then why keep us around?”
Lorica nodded. “Assuming we still have information they want, and they keep us around.”
“They’ll put us to work. This detention center is only half-completed. Wanten, the guy in charge, told me that. I’m sure I can find some scraps to use to get through this wall. Or under it.”
“Can’t go under!” Cost burst out. Both Mat
tis and Lorica shushed her. She whispered, “Can’t go under. Gotta go through. Scritch-scratch!”
“Okay,” Mattis said, humoring her. “I will. But Lorica, seriously, I’m sure I can find something to dig through. There’s nothing on the other side of this wall but the open meadow that they caught us in.”
“And probably a whole mess of stormtroopers ready to blast us.”
“Maybe. But maybe we can outrun them. Maybe we can get a ship or a speeder bike or something and get out of here. It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”
Lorica was quiet for a moment. “It is,” she finally said. “Do it. Gather whatever you can find. Even if it’s no good for digging and scraping away at the wall, maybe we can use what you find for weapons, if we need. Meanwhile, I’ll work on my plan.”
A part of Mattis wasn’t eager to acknowledge that he recognized Lorica’s plan to get Ingo on their side was a good one. If anyone could pull it off, she could. She was the most capable, toughest person he knew. A louder, more persistent part of him hoped she failed. He didn’t want to see Ingo fall in love with her.
“I HAVE A REALLY LOUSY feeling here,” Dec told Sari as he brought their shuttle in for a landing by the gray bunker that sat in the middle of an expanse of deep dark green.
“You want to go back and face those First Order scouts? Or maybe go all the way back to Vodran and just hunt around for our friends until we get eaten by rancors or tawds or worse?” Sari responded, leaning over his shoulder to watch the ground grow closer beneath them.
“Nothing’s worse than a tawd,” Dec said, setting the shuttle down. He stood up. He was glad to be back on solid ground, anyway, even if they were facing the unknown. At the very least, maybe the bunker would have some fuel. They were low after all that evasive flying.
They packed some rations and hydration, as well as a stun rod they’d been given to ward off dianogas on Vodran, and walked down the boarding ramp into an eerie silence. Thick mist swirled around them, and they could barely make out the bunker in the near distance. There were no signs of life.
Escape from Vodran Page 6
