The trouble arose because of Mattis and Klimo’s assignment. They were put in charge of food. That actually hadn’t been one of Poe Dameron’s requests—he reasoned, smartly, that it would be too difficult to prepare anything special on the base. They had access to what was in the mess, and that was all. But Jo, wanting to impress the older pilot, insisted. And because he didn’t himself know what to do, he put Mattis and Klimo in charge of “preparing something special” for Snap, Karé, and their guests.
“They got something special, all right,” Mattis said, remembering. “They’re definitely not going to forget the food.”
“Or what the food did to everyone,” Jo agreed.
Mattis was handy in the kitchen. Growing up at the orphan farm on Durkteel, he’d learned to prepare foods with meager supplies for the younger kids. Oddy Muva of Black Squadron gained Mattis access to the mess hall, and Mattis and Klimo got to work. Mattis mixed up some crackling pudding from crackling pods and canned bantha milk. He wished he’d kept an eye on his concoction, though, because he later learned that, when he wasn’t looking, Klimo took the opportunity to throw in a dash of anilam, the powdered flavoring harvested from izy-leaves. Mattis didn’t know where Klimo found izy-leaves. Later, they were all laughing and farting too hard to figure it out.
As the host, Jo had the not-so-bright idea that all the attending wedding guests—which included almost everyone on the base, except for the leadership—should eat Mattis’s pudding before the ceremony. Which meant that everyone was happy and full during the dewy-eyed procession and heartfelt vows.
Poe himself officiated the wedding of his friends. If he felt the same rumbling in his guts that everyone else did as the ceremony proceeded, he was too cool a customer to show it. But he must have, for when it came time for him to ask if Snap Wexley took Karé Kun to be his wife, he only got as far as, “Do you, Snap Wexley, take Karé Kun to be your—” before his insides erupted in the most atmosphere-ripping flatulence the galaxy ever heard. Everyone laughed, because they sympathized. Their insides were doing somersaults as well.
But Poe Dameron was always cool, and he began again, asking, “Do you, Snap Wexley, take Karé Kun to be your wife?” managing to get the whole sentence out that time.
Snap was not so lucky. “I—” he began, and what followed was a four-alarm fart that lasted longer than the ceremony itself had thus far.
A wave of laughter washed over the crowd. And then again when Karé, in disbelief, yelled at her soon-to-be husband and then let out a deep, meteoric toot herself. She slapped both hands over her face, completely embarrassed, as Snap, Poe, and everyone else just let laughter reign.
Because soon, everyone who’d eaten the crackling pudding was sounding off like firecrackers, tooting and honking and letting loose with all kinds of gassy exclamations. It was mortifying and uproarious all at once. Mattis stood beside Jo, who emitted a high-pitched wheeeeeet! that was unlike anything anyone had ever heard. After it happened, Jo glared at Mattis as if to say, This is your fault. His anger was undercut, however, by another flatulent bellow and then peals of laughter that he just couldn’t help.
None of them could.
Amid the squeals of laughter and clamor of gut-ripping gas, Snap and Karé were married, AG, Oddy, and some of the others struck up a happy musical beat, and everyone on the Resistance base laughed and danced and farted late into the night.
Jo didn’t punish J-Squadron because, as he said, no one would ever mention the event again but in hushed whispers, but Mattis knew Jo had other reasons. It was because he’d had fun. It had been wild and silly, and there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for that in the Resistance. Fighting against the forces of evil was serious business, as it should be, but sometimes it was helpful to let loose and laugh. Mattis suspected Jo knew that, and that was why he didn’t exact any punishment.
“So, thanks,” Mattis said now, in their cell on Vodran. And as if to punctuate his point, Mattis released a prolonged monotone fart.
“Oh, Mattis, come on!” Lorica yelled, waving her hand in front of her face.
“You know you had fun, too,” Mattis scolded her. “Admit it. You like us.”
“Leave me out of your love fest,” Lorica said. For someone with a strong connection to emotions, she really tried to keep herself away from them.
“Lorica, you report for this love fest straightaway, soldier!” Jo ordered with a laugh.
“Not funny,” she told him.
“I think someone needs a hug.”
“I don’t need a hug.” Lorica scowled.
“You’re getting a hug,” Mattis said, and helped Jo to his feet.
The two of them wrapped themselves around her and, though she remained stiff and guarded, she laughed and said, “Okay, okay, I’ll miss you when you get thrown in a First Order cell.”
“I’m already in a First Order cell,” Jo pointed out, releasing Lorica and returning to the bunk with no small amount of hurt.
“But maybe not for long,” Mattis said. He was resolved, especially after that trip down memory lane, that Jo wouldn’t be taken from them. “There’s still the hole. If we work together, we can—”
“No!” Cost bolted upright in her upper bunk so forcefully she nearly hit her head on the ceiling. “Don’t say it! Don’t talk about it!”
“Cost,” Lorica said in that calming way she had.
Cost put her hands over her ears and shook her head, as if she could resist Lorica’s emotional sway. “No, no, no, no,” she repeated. “Don’t say it. The walls talk! The walls talk!”
“That’s just Gherd,” Mattis told Cost, lightly grabbing her wrist and pulling it from her head. “He’s a friend. And he can help us, too. He knows the tunnels in here. He can dig out with us. All together, Cost.”
“No, I am the ears of the wall!” Cost wailed.
Cost had crawled back into her confused mind, Mattis figured. He was worried about her, but she was just another plate on the buffet of worries he presently had. And he didn’t have time to decipher her ramblings. He had to work on his tunnel, he had to protect Jo, and he had to make sure that Lorica wasn’t slipping into true emotions for Ingo. His bounty of anxiety-inducing tasks was overflowing.
“She’s been spying,” Lorica said, as realization dawned on her.
“What? Cost? No.” Mattis waved away the idea. How could Cost spy on them? She barely knew what was real. She had no memory; the thing with the tentacles had taken it from her.
“Yes,” Lorica said, turning on Cost. “She was the only other one in the cell when Jo came to tell me he was working on an escape plan.”
Cost’s eyes were like two moons, pale and welling with liquid. She nodded limply. “I told,” she sobbed.
Jo was halfway out of the bunk before the pain hit him and he had to stop. “You got me roughed up,” he said angrily. “They could have killed me.”
Cost sobbed some more.
“She didn’t know,” Mattis explained. He knew that was true. Cost would never have willfully sent any of them to harm. After the things she had told Mattis about her own travails, he couldn’t imagine she’d ever try to hurt someone else.
“They talk and talk,” Cost pleaded with Jo, trying to make him understand her. “Confused Cost.”
“See?” Mattis said.
“Why are you defending her?” Jo barked.
“Jo, don’t get upset,” Lorica said calmly.
“I’m upset!”
“Stop yelling!” Cost covered her ears, trying to retreat from them.
“You doomed us.” Jo pointed harshly at Cost. “You doomed us all. I could have gotten us out of here. All of us.”
“Do you really think you’re smarter than I am, Jerjerrod?” A new voice joined them from the other side of the bars. It was Ingo, drawn by their arguing. “Are everyone’s secrets coming out to play? See, that’s what we do. We make you fight each other, so you don’t fight us. We give you secrets or we take them away. Isn’t that right, Lorica? Do
you want to tell the group the secrets we have?”
Lorica shook her head. The color had drained from her face. Mattis could see that she didn’t want to tell her secret, whatever it was. And Mattis was certain, whatever it was, he didn’t want to hear it.
IT WAS DARK throughout the bunker, and Dec and Sari walked with their hands out in front of them, feeling their way along the wall, hoping they’d find another door and that door would lead to freedom. Groping their way through shadows wasn’t Dec’s idea of a fast or clean getaway, but he’d take it. Anything to get out of there.
They made turn after turn, but they seemed stuck in the black box of the bunker. Dec’s outstretched fingers pressed against something damp and spongy.
“Is that you?” he asked Sari.
“Is what me?”
He squeezed the clammy, porous meat a couple of times. “That,” he said. “Is that you?”
“Dec, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A laugh came from the dark; Dec felt the flesh jiggle with the shallow chuckle. He snatched his hand away. “Who’s there?”
An immense shape moved in front of them. It laughed again. Then, in a voice that was like hundreds of pebbles rolling downhill, it said, “You aren’t droids. I don’t think you’re droids. Who are you?”
“Don’t worry about us. We were just leaving.” Dec recognized the shape of the creature in front of him. It was a Hutt. Dec did not want to spend more time than was necessary with a Hutt.
“No,” said the Hutt. “I don’t think you—hey!”
Suddenly, they were surrounded. The droids emerged from the shadows, their lenses and sensors lighting the area so that Dec could make out the purplish hue of the sweaty Hutt’s skin and the way she stuck out her warty tongue in surprise.
Knowing the reputation of Hutts, Dec expected anger at the interruption. He expected violence of some sort, or at least a scolding. What he didn’t expect was what happened. The Hutt backed away as the droids approached, lowering her sluggish mass as well as she could, supplicating herself with a series of head-bobbing motions. Her thick tail swept the floor as if it were searching for something.
“You’re out of your chamber,” J-9A announced.
“We didn’t—” Dec began to formulate an explanation that would be an elaborate if believable lie. But the nav droid had turned to the Hutt.
“Harra the Hutt,” she said, “we’ve told you. It’s dangerous outside of your chamber.”
“I’m sorry, Jay-Nine-Ay,” the Hutt responded. “You told me, and I’m sorry.”
“You get lonely,” J-9A said. Some of the droids surrounding them beeped and booped in sympathy.
Harra the Hutt nodded sadly.
“But you recall the dangers, don’t you?” J-9A asked the Hutt, as if speaking to a child.
The Hutt looked away dolefully, remembering. “The First Order came. They took my pets away.”
“But they let you live, Harra the Hutt,” J-9A said. “They sent you away with us, your loyal droids, programmed to serve you, to minister to all of your needs, and above all else, to protect.”
All the droids, through their vocalizers and punctuated by dings and bleeps, repeated: “To protect.”
“My faithful droids,” Harra the Hutt said.
“And you.” J-9A turned to Dec and Sari. “Was there somewhere you wished to visit?” She had a bossy attitude usually reserved for protocol droids and it irked Dec.
“Bein’ honest?” he said. “There’s a possibility our friends are down on Vodran, and we’d like to go and bring ’em home. So if you wouldn’t mind lending us a ship…” Dec had an unpretentious way of saying things that made a person want to do what he asked. Unfortunately, he wasn’t dealing with people at the moment.
“Vodran!” J-9A exclaimed. The other droids tittered and fretted. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. Too dangerous, much too dangerous.”
“Vodran…” Harra the Hutt heaved out a huge sob. “They took them away.”
Sari cut in. “The First Order took your palace, right?”
J-9A spun to face Sari. “Mistress Harra gave those First Order persecutors her wonderful palace. It was a gift, so generous is Mistress Harra. So honorable. So large-hearted—”
“They took it, yes.” Harra the Hutt heaved a sad sigh.
“You collected those creatures,” Sari said. She wasn’t angry, even though much of Harra the Hutt’s menagerie had tried to eat, crush, or kill her.
“My pets,” Harra affirmed wistfully.
“Mistress, we’ve spoken of this,” J-9A scolded. “Thinking of your pets upsets you. We live on Kufs now, the ghost moon. Be here. Be only here.”
“You knew about this moon? When the First Order evacuated you from the palace, you knew to come here?” Sari asked, as if she were doing an academic study. She wasn’t afraid anymore, only curious.
“I am a navigation droid,” J-9A said condescendingly. “I was a part of Mistress Harra the Hutt’s initial coterie when she was merely a junior Hutt with exceptional potential. She chose me above all others to be her attendant. Such honor. Naturally, I was excused from my navigational duties to aid Harra the Hutt. When the Hutt families decided to push into this section near the Outer Rim, I advised Mistress Harra to claim Vodran as her own. I knew of its ghost moon and always considered Kufs to be a suitable fallback position should her majesty’s primary palace be threatened. Which it was.”
“More than threatened,” Dec pointed out. Both J-9A and Harra the Hutt ruffled.
Sari shot him a warning look. “Why doesn’t the moon appear on scans?” she asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s fascinating.”
“Isn’t it, though?” J-9A was pleased someone had shown an interest in anything vaguely navigation related. Plus, J-9A liked to talk. “It’s really quite extraordinary. Beneath the surface of the moon of Kufs is a slowly churning estuary of liquefied nykkalt.”
Nykkalt was a rare, highly vibrative precious metal that reflected any light, air, or even hyper-spectrum frequency; Sari hadn’t realized it existed in a liquid form, but now this moon’s properties made sense. “So if the nykkalt flows beneath the moon’s surface, it reflects back a ship’s scans,” she said, excited. It was the stuff of fiction and theories she’d only ever passingly considered. “Ultra-high-frequency scans, light, anything. The moon is essentially invisible to anything but the naked eye.”
“It’s really rather remarkable,” J-9A agreed.
“Yeah, remarkable. You should write a book about it,” Dec chimed in. “Can we get a ship?”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” J-9A told him. “You’re here to stay.”
“WELL?” INGO ASKED. “Do you want to tell your friends or shall I?” He cocked his head at Lorica and wore a faint smug smile.
“Tell us what?” Mattis asked.
Ingo looked again at Lorica. She wandered in a casual way to the cell door. “We don’t need to talk,” Lorica said. Mattis knew she was putting the emotional whammy on Ingo. Whatever it was Ingo was hinting at, Lorica didn’t want it discussed. The problem, though, was that as Lorica manipulated Ingo’s emotions, that foggy feeling pushed its way into the cell. She amplified Mattis’s own anger and frustration and jealousy, but that didn’t make the feelings less real. He couldn’t help himself. He broke her spell.
“Tell us what you mean,” Mattis demanded of Ingo and Lorica.
Ingo shook his head, coming out of his daze.
Lorica looked sternly to Mattis. “We’re the prisoners here, Mattis,” she reminded him. “We don’t give the orders. Ingo does.”
“No, that’s okay,” Ingo said warmly. “Mattis is curious and, I think, threatened.” He looked Mattis up and down, appraising his prisoner’s worth. Mattis scowled back. “You’re about to be disappointed, Mattis,” Ingo said. “I’m telling you this because I don’t think you’re a bad person. I don’t think any of you are.”
Jo managed to stand up, leaning against the
bunk for support. “Open these bars and I’ll show you what kind of a person I am,” Jo snarled.
“Your fan club has really come out to protect you today,” Ingo told Lorica.
“Stop,” she warned him. Mattis could again feel the emotional fog she gave off. She was trying to quiet Ingo, but it appeared he was too worked up.
“No,” he said. “It’s time they knew. Lorica and I have enjoyed many conversations together. We’ve had a lively exchange of ideas. She…opened my eyes to many notions.”
Lorica glanced over to Mattis. Her face was drawn, but she held his gaze. Mattis felt a flash of hope. Had Lorica indeed opened Ingo’s eyes? Had she convinced him of the evils of the First Order and the righteousness of the Resistance? Was he about to free them?
“And of course,” Ingo continued, “I opened her eyes as well. That’s why she’ll be joining me in the First Order.”
“No!” Mattis shouted. His throat burned and his voice was hoarse. “She’d never!”
“Mattis, stop!” Lorica scolded him.
“Lorica would never.” He felt his face grow hot and he clutched the metal of his bunk to keep himself from throwing his body against the cell’s bars.
“I’m going with Ingo,” Lorica said evenly. Then, to Mattis, she added pointedly, “It’s what I have to do.”
He was unable to help himself, again. The emotions were too strong in him. Even as he knew he was ruining everything, he continued. To Mattis, everything was already ruined. “Jo’s being taken away, and we’ll probably never see him again. Dec and Sari are dead. Aygee is as good as dead. Ingo, she’s not going with you. I can’t lose Lorica, too.”
Escape from Vodran Page 14
