“Sir!” Ingo shouted, surprised.
“Yes, Salik. I’m here. Hi. Hi, everybody. Prisoners.”
Mattis and Lorica both suddenly found the floor an appealing place to study.
“I understand that you don’t want to say hello to me. That’s okay. You’re impolite. If you were polite, you’d be in my position. If you were polite, like Salik here, like your reprogrammed friend here, you’d work for the First Order and make something of yourselves.”
Wanten didn’t enter the cell. Mattis was glad. It was crowded in there already, and Mattis had once before been in close quarters with their captor. The acrid smell of sweat was overwhelming.
“You know who didn’t make something of himself?” Wanten asked, trying to catch first Mattis’s then Lorica’s eyes. When he couldn’t, Wanten found another way to get their attention. He threw Dec’s jacket onto the floor, where it landed with a flat whack.
“Your friend,” Wanten said. “Your friend turned out to be nothing.”
“We knew he was dead,” Mattis said through a clenched jaw.
Wanten smiled. His teeth were big and blocky. “Yes, but before, I wasn’t sure. I had your droid here”—Wanten said droid as if it tasted bad—“tell you that simply to break your spirit. Did it work? It worked, right?”
Mattis’s and Lorica’s eyes met, then both looked back to Dec’s jacket on the floor.
“It was a good plan. I have so many good plans. Your droid told you your friend is dead; you got sad; you stopped thinking about escaping.” He grinned. “But then, ah-ha! I find out that your friend really is dead! Up on some moon. I don’t know. I wasn’t listening, but he’s definitely dead. My pilot saw it happen.”
Wanten folded his hands in front of him. He was so calm. “So, I had a good plan, it turned out to be a good plan. So all of my plans are good plans. Want to hear another good plan?”
Neither Mattis nor Lorica reacted. AG said, “I do.”
“Bring in our new prisoner!” Wanten shouted. A stormtrooper—Patch, Mattis realized, once he came into view—brought in a broken, bloody prisoner whom Mattis didn’t at first recognize.
“Jo!” Lorica shouted. Mattis could see that she wanted to rush to Jo, to pick him up from where Patch had deposited him on the cell floor, but if she did so, her spell over Ingo would disappear.
Wanting to help her, Mattis shouted, “Don’t get upset, Lorica!”
Taking his hint, she threw her face skyward in anguish. She fell forward and let Ingo catch her. He held her up. Mattis, happy they’d communicated and were apparently on the same page, knelt down beside Jo. He knew this would relieve Lorica’s worries about him, that Jo might open his eyes to see a friend.
“You want to know what happened?” Wanten gloated.
“No,” Lorica seethed.
“Don’t listen to him,” Jo managed to utter. “He lies.”
“I lie?” Wanten was offended. “The hypocrisy in here is as thick as the humidity! I lie? You lie. You lie, Jerjerrod. You told me you were a friend of the First Order. A loyal servant. But you’re no friend. You’re no spy. You’re a Resistance loyalist through and through. You were going to help your friends here escape! Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” Wanten was yelling now. No one respected him. He pounded a wall. “This is my detention center! This is my palace! I know everything that happens here!”
They all stood in stunned silence while Wanten panted after his brief tantrum. He folded his hands over his belly again. “What’s going to happen,” he said, “is this. This boy will be sent to the First Order, where his parents and their commanders can decide what to do with him. I bet they’ll torture him. I would. But I don’t have to. I have you two.” He motioned to Mattis and Lorica. “I’m going to find out if you two know anything more of use. I’ll probably have an old friend torture you. That would be ironic, wouldn’t it? I bet you don’t know anything, but I’ll have your droid torture you anyway.”
He jerked his head for AG and Ingo to join him outside the cell. They did, and Wanten slammed the door closed. Wanten pushed his face against the bars, as if they wouldn’t be able to hear him if he didn’t. “Sending this kid to his parents? Torturing the two of you? They’ll promote me for sure. I’m going to be a hero of the First Order, as I was meant to be,” Wanten gloated. He clapped his hands. “So thanks for all of your help. I could not have accomplished any of this without you.”
As Wanten left down the corridor, flanked by Ingo and AG, Mattis heard him say, “Did you find that nanak? No? We should do that still, I think. Just check everything off…”
Mattis helped Jo onto his bunk. Jo reached up and grabbed Mattis’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he choked.
“You didn’t do anything,” Mattis assured him. “You were helping us.” He had been the whole time. Mattis should have trusted him. Jo had even helped Mattis smuggle that metal rod inside, and still Mattis hadn’t fully realized that Jo was working with them, for them. “I’m sorry,” he told Jo.
Jo shook his head weakly. “About Dec,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Mattis felt the world slip away from him. Darkness seeped in at the edges of his vision. Dec was dead. He was really dead. It was like his friend had died all over again, only this time there was no room for doubt. Dec was dead.
Mattis repeated it over and over in his mind. It was all he could do. It made it at once real and unreal. Dec was dead. Dec was dead. Dec was dead.
Dec was dead.
DEC WAS ALIVE. He wasn’t sure for how much longer, but for the moment, he was alive.
He didn’t know how long he and Sari had been guests of the droids; it could have been days or weeks. It felt like a lifetime. They were still in their filthy clothes, as droids weren’t terribly interested in hygiene. They’d been fed, though not much and not well. Sari was listless with hunger. Droids didn’t care about food, either.
They did seem to care about Dec and Sari. J-9A, the navigation droid who was apparently the leader, called Dec and Sari her guests. Sari had remarked, later, that J-9A gave it a sinister undertone, but Dec wasn’t sure. Yes, there was something abnormal about the droids. Partly, it was their pack behavior. Each droid had a distinct, somewhat broken-down personality, but they were united in purpose. As yet, Dec was unsure what that purpose was. Sari maintained that, though the nav droid was the leader, she and Dec were prisoners being held until the scary medical droids could experiment on them.
“Why would a droid experiment on a human?” Dec reasoned.
“I don’t know!” Sari cried. “Maybe they’ve already dismantled and rebuilt themselves and they’re looking for something new!”
That had been on what was probably the third day. They hadn’t been dismantled yet, so Dec considered them safe from that threat. The question remained: What did these droids want with them?
Earlier, J-9A had come into the small chamber in which they were being kept to let them know that the menace of the First Order was no longer upon them.
“What does that mean?” Dec asked.
J-9A took a weird sideways skittering step, something he noticed she did when challenged. These droids were broken.
“It means you are safe again,” she replied.
“Did you…kill them?” Dec asked.
“Did you take them apart to see how they tick?” Sari muttered.
Another sideways skitter. “People do not tick. People are filled with squishy bits and delicate meat chunks. We know how people work,” J-9A replied. She lifted then lowered her pneumatic shoulders in an odd shrug. “We possess a great deal of knowledge.” She cocked her head at Sari and her servos whirred. “Do you really think we’d need to dismantle a human to understand one?” J-9A laughed, a digital buzzing sound. “We have generations of knowledge in our permanent drives! We can access information about billions of subjects—”
An astromech beeped and booped atonally, interrupting J-9A. She responded, “I know they’re not interested. I am si
mply tired of being underestimated.” She moved to the door to leave with the astromech, saying, “Take a person apart, indeed. We allowed the shuttle pilot to escape back to Vodran. He believes you to be dead and will report as much to his commander. So, you see, you have nothing more to fear.” Before sliding closed the chamber door, she added, “From the First Order.”
Since that meeting, Dec and Sari had talked themselves weary trying to figure out what J-9A might have meant. Should they fear their captors? And if so, why had the droids helped them by getting the First Order off their tails? Or was there something else they should be afraid of, something even worse from which the droids were protecting them? The idea of that being true kept them from attempting an escape.
But maybe they were wrong. Either way, Dec reasoned, enough was enough. It was time to go.
“Sari, girl, we gotta get outta here.” Dec nudged her awake, and Sari pushed him away.
“I’m staying. I like droids.” She was just being difficult.
“Sari, even if there’s something out there, at least it’s out there. We can’t stay in here forever.”
“We don’t have a ship!” She lifted herself to a sitting position. “We’re stuck on this moon, which, to remind you, no one knows exists. So, I don’t see how getting out of here would make much difference, do you? We’d still be stuck.”
“Maybe I just want some fresh air,” Dec replied. “Think you can open this door?”
“Of course I can,” Sari scoffed. “I just don’t want to.”
“Sari, I’m serious.”
“You’re Dec Hansen. You’re never serious.”
“This time I am. There’s half a chance our friends are still alive down on that planet. Which means we gotta go get ’em.”
Sari shook her head. “I know,” she sighed. She managed to get to her feet. The lack of food and exercise had taken a greater toll on Sari than it had on Dec, and he worried for her. All the more reason to get out now.
Sari crossed the small chamber to the door. She was a hacking whiz. She’d hacked security doors all over the Resistance base for many of Dec’s mischievous pranks. The ramshackle security arrangement in this bunker shouldn’t present a challenge to Sari and her incredible skills. She searched the edge of the security door for a weak spot, found one, then dug her fingers underneath a wall panel and yanked it loose, exposing the wires and circuit board beneath. “Do you have any tools?” she asked.
“Why would I have tools?”
“Did you think I was just going to get this door opened with my mind?”
“I didn’t think about it,” Dec admitted.
She tossed the wall panel onto the floor then slumped down beside it. “Dec,” she grumbled.
“I thought you always had that kinda stuff on you!” he pleaded. “You’re like this super hacker person. All brains and know-how!”
“Yep,” Sari agreed. “But I’m not a sorcerer.”
Dec crossed his arms and stared at the security door. Finally, he said, “Okay,” as if he’d cracked the problem.
“What?”
“We do it the hard way.”
“What’s the—”
Before she could complete the question, Dec was jogging the short distance to the door and slamming himself into it. Hard. The wind knocked out of him, and he let out a loud “Oooomph!” Then he turned, walked back to where he’d been, and did it again. Smack! “Ooomph!”
“Dec,” Sari began.
He threw himself into the door again. It didn’t budge.
“Dec,” she repeated. He was going to knock himself unconscious if he wasn’t careful.
Smack! “Ooomph!”
“Dec!” she finally shouted. He held up a finger, panted a few times, and then again threw himself at the door. Smack! “Oomph!” Nothing.
Sari stood again, reached out a long arm, and held Dec back as he readied for another run. Anchoring him in place, she stepped forward and gave the door a mighty kick. Sari was big and strong and, while she didn’t always like to use her strength, she’d do pretty much anything for her friends, especially Dec. The door fell outward with a thunderous slam, and all of a sudden their freedom was before them.
“Thank you,” Dec said.
“You’re welcome.”
“Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Sari asked, peering into the dark beyond the door.
“I reckon we’ll find out.”
THEY SAT BY JO, tending to his wounds and nursing him back to something resembling good health. He was beaten up, but worse, his spirit was broken.
“We’re not going to let them take you to your parents,” Mattis told Jo.
Jo shook his head weakly. “You are. You can’t risk your own lives.”
“We can and we will.” That was Lorica, more resolute than Mattis had ever seen her. And he’d seen her really obstinate. “When Ingo returns, I’m going to make him open this cell and let us out. Maybe he’ll even come with us.”
“And if that fails, I have this hole,” Mattis said, leaving Jo’s side and dragging the bunk away from his barely dug tunnel.
“That’s a great hole, Mattis,” Jo said sarcastically. He winced with pain as he laughed.
“Hey! Don’t make fun of my hole.” Mattis was feeling very sensitive about his efforts. After all, his escape plan was going better than Jo’s, wasn’t it? Jo had been found out by the First Order, whereas no one yet knew about Mattis’s tunnel.
Lorica and Jo laughed at him some more. “Mattis,” Lorica said, “you’ve barely made any progress. Let me work on Ingo some more. I’m sure I can push him to free us before they come for Jo.”
Jo pushed himself up so he was leaning against the wall. “Forget your hole for a minute,” he told Mattis.
“I’ll never forget my hole. Someday that hole is going to be a tunnel.”
Jo shook his head in good humor. “Just for a minute.”
“Fine. But I don’t want to talk about Lorica using her woo-woo powers on Ingo anymore.”
“Are you threatened because my plan is going to work and your hole isn’t big enough for a space beetle?” Lorica scoffed.
“Forget Ingo, too,” Jo said.
“Huh?” Both Lorica and Mattis shot Jo questioning looks.
“Just—just for a minute,” Jo clarified. He sighed and offered them a pained smile. Smiling was unusual for Jo. It was even more unusual considering their circumstances. “I’m about to be punished by the First Order,” he reminded them.
“We know. That’s why we’re talking about getting you out of here,” Lorica countered. Then, to Mattis, she added, “I think he might have brain damage.”
“My brain is doing great,” Jo told her. “I just want to talk to you two.”
“We’re talking,” Mattis said. “These are words. I’m saying them. Words, words, words.”
Jo laughed dryly. “This is what I want,” he said. “I’m about to leave you guys forever. I don’t know what the First Order will do to me. I don’t think they’ll kill me; my parents aren’t that heartless. But I’ll never return to the Resistance.”
“Jo…” Mattis started to tell Jo that he was being silly. Surely he would return to them. But he couldn’t be his usual optimistic self. Not now. Jo was right. Once Wanten sent him away, Jo would be gone forever. Mattis was surprised to find himself depressed about this. He and Jo hadn’t gotten along very often, but after everything that had happened on Vodran, and the way Jo had stuck his neck out for them, he realized that they were friends after all.
Jo nodded, as if he’d read Mattis’s mind and was confirming their friendship. “I just want to remember something good,” he said.
“I want stories, too!” Cost chirped from her place in the bunk above Lorica. Mattis had almost forgotten she was there.
“Did anything good actually happen back on the base?” Lorica said snarkily.
“I met you guys,” Mattis said. It just fell out of his mouth.
“You mean, you met
Dec and Aygee,” Lorica said.
“No,” Jo corrected her. “He means us. Right, Mattis?”
“Yeah,” Mattis admitted. “I mean, I know we weren’t friends at first, but I looked up to you two. Even though you were so mean, Jo.”
“I wanted to make you a good pilot.”
“I know. You just didn’t count on having a bunch of recruits who didn’t follow the rules that you understood. Me, Dec, Aygee-Ninety, Klimo. The way you learned to train us isn’t the way we’re built to learn, I guess. I’m sorry about it.”
“You’re going to be a great pilot,” Jo told him sincerely.
“I hope I am,” Mattis replied. “And if I am, it’s partly because of both of you. You weren’t always so bad.”
“We weren’t? Darn. We tried to be,” Jo joked.
“What about Snap and Karé’s wedding?”
“There was no wedding between Snap Wexley and Karé Kun,” Jo said seriously, and they all laughed. Because, of course, there had been. It was the worst-kept secret on the Resistance base. Somehow, J-Squadron had wound up right in the middle of it.
Snap Wexley, Karé Kun, and the rest of Black Squadron were all idolized by the new recruits. They, under the command of Poe Dameron, got to go on all the cool missions. And they, under the orders of Poe Dameron, were tasked with carrying out the secret wedding. Like everything J-Squadron had a hand in, though, it had been a disaster. Fortunately, Snap and Karé’s wedding was a hilarious disaster.
Poe had instructed Jo that the Resistance leaders should not find out about the wedding; General Leia and Admiral Ackbar and the others already had enough on their plates without worrying about the love story between a couple of their best pilots. He asked Jo if J-Squadron could help. So Jo gathered J-Squadron and dictated to each of them their duties for the secret wedding. Naturally, Jo didn’t consider anyone’s strengths or interests before handing out orders. He simply had a list of what had to be accomplished and tasked his recruits with each item.
That was how AG-90 wound up in charge of music, which turned out to be a happy accident. AG did a bit of fiddling with his vocoder and was able to turn his usually tuneless warbling into a sweet, melodic quaver that trilled like some pastoral bird or a relative of an axton-tarsier, those big-eyed, floppy-eared furry pets native to Ques. It was a lovely, if unrecognizable, tune to accompany Karé down the makeshift aisle that Sari had created. Sari outdid herself, scrounging for materials and then foraging in the nearby woods for decorative flowers and branches and the like. She transformed the little corner of the tarmac where the ceremony was held into a woodland hideaway.
Escape from Vodran Page 13
