by Jason Fry
Two datapads?
He hurried down the hall and turned right, hoping he remembered the way to Kallus’s office. As he approached, he heard the hiss of a door closing ahead.
Dev had somehow gotten into the office.
Zare forced himself to wait outside the door. He wondered what the mysterious cadet would do when he was discovered. Would he deny everything? Come up with some story? Or try to subdue or kill Zare and flee?
The door opened and there was Dev with his usual infuriating grin. He had his helmet tucked under his arm.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Zare asked, and smiled behind his faceplate when Dev started, his eyes widening.
Finally, something you didn’t see coming.
They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Zare heard a door open down the hall. He shoved Dev into Kallus’s office and shut the door behind them.
The office was empty, and appeared undisturbed. Zare glanced around it, puzzled. What had Dev been looking for? Then he noticed the moonlight gleaming on something inside the cadet’s helmet.
“Hey, get out of there,” Dev objected as Zare extracted a silver square—an Imperial-issue decoder.
He’s looking for the same thing I am, Zare thought. But what does that mean?
“I figured it would be something like this,” Zare said, hoping to startle Dev into revealing himself.
“It’s not what you think.”
“I think this device has a built-in sensor, which would trigger that,” Zare said, pointing above the door. “You try walking out with this thing, the whole facility goes on lockdown.”
Dev looked up at the security sensor and his jaw dropped. Then he peered at Zare uncertainly.
“Wait…are you trying to help me?”
Zare held up the decoder, eyebrows raised.
“You really want to discuss this? Here and now?”
“Hmmm,” said Dev, taking the decoder from Zare and sliding it back into its slot in Kallus’s network terminal. “Not so much.”
Once they were sure Jai and Oleg were asleep, Zare and Dev slipped out of the barracks and into a storeroom that Dev unlocked as deftly as he had Kallus’s office.
“What do you need that decoder for?” Zare asked.
“My friends need it to stop an Imperial shipment,” Dev said. “How’d you know about the sensors?”
“From my sister—Dhara,” Zare said, staring down the racks of identical stormtrooper helmets. “She was the star cadet in this place. She knew the entire Imperial complex backward and forward.”
“What happened to her?”
“They told us she ran off, but I don’t believe it.”
Part of Zare was amazed he’d revealed his secret—and to this mysterious infiltrator, of all people. But Zare felt oddly certain that Dev hated the Empire as much as Zare did. And he found himself relieved to finally speak the terrible truth about Dhara aloud.
But that still left the question of Dev and who he was.
“What were you doing breaking into Kallus’s office?” he asked. “That’s a great way to get shot.”
“It’s a long story, but I need that decoder.”
So do I, thought Zare.
“And I could use a partner that knows his way around,” Dev added.
“What’s in it for me?” Zare asked.
Dev’s eyes glittered.
“Do you really need a reason to mess with the Empire?” he asked, extending his hand.
Zare considered that. He still didn’t know the whole story about Dev and this mysterious Imperial shipment. But he’d committed himself the moment he’d pushed him back into Kallus’s office, instead of letting the alarm go off.
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
And he shook Dev’s hand.
“Good,” Dev said. “We have to finish in the top three tomorrow if we’re going to get back inside Imperial HQ.”
“Then let’s do it.”
He realized he’d been so preoccupied with his own anxieties that he’d barely said two words to Dev since his arrival. The other boy had probably forgotten his name.
“I’m Zare, by the way,” he said. “Zare Leonis. And you’re Dev, right?”
A flicker of emotion crossed Dev’s face.
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s me.”
Liar, Zare thought. But it wasn’t the time to investigate the mystery of Dev Morgan. Right then, he needed to strike some ground rules with his partner.
“I need to know what’s so important about that shipment,” Zare said. “And who these friends of yours are.”
“Like I said, it’s a long story.”
“We’ve got all night,” Zare said, crossing his arms over his chest.
Dev’s face turned hard, but then he threw up his arms.
“The people I’m working with…they aren’t friends of the Empire, let’s leave it at that.”
I know people like that myself, Zare thought, wincing at the memory of Beck Ollet’s doomed rebellion and arrest in the marketplace.
“Go on,” Zare said.
“The Empire’s transporting part of a weapon in that shipment. Something big. The travel coordinates are encrypted—we need the decoder to discover them and intercept the ship that’s carrying it.”
“And when’s this weapon of yours being transported?”
“Tomorrow,” Dev said grimly. “If I don’t get that decoder tomorrow, my mission fails.”
Zare nodded.
“Thank you for leveling with me…Dev,” he said, and suppressed a smile as the other cadet flinched at that name. “Now it’s my turn. I need the decoder too.”
“What for?”
“My sister, remember? My girlfriend’s a slicer—a really good one, too. She’s found files that contain the information about what the Empire did with Dhara. But she can’t read them without that decoder.”
Dev looked at the floor.
“If my friends don’t stop that ship from getting where it’s going, people will die.”
“If I don’t find my sister, she’ll die,” Zare said. “Everything I’ve done at the Academy has been about saving her.”
The two cadets stared at each other. Zare spread out his feet, ready to receive a charge from Dev—or to tackle him.
“Wait,” Dev said. “Maybe there’s a way we can both succeed. My associates have a droid inside the complex.”
Zare nodded. “An older-model astromech—I saw you signal to him.”
Dev looked crestfallen.
“So that’s where I messed up,” he muttered. “I’m supposed to pass the decoder to him. He’ll take it to my friends, outside the Academy. If your girlfriend can be in the same place, they can take turns.”
Zare shook his head. Were they actually talking about taking turns, like stealing Imperial military secrets was a children’s game?
“Who would go first?” he asked.
Dev dug in his pocket and held something up. It was Pandak’s chance cube, Zare saw.
“I found it in the barracks,” Dev said. “We can roll for who goes first.”
Zare hesitated, then got down on his knees.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said. “I roll, you call.”
He let the cube skitter across the floor.
“Blue,” Dev said, wiggling his fingers for luck.
The cube came up blue.
“You always win,” Zare said, but Dev just shrugged.
“Let’s make sure we both win.”
Morning found Units Aurek and Besh and three cadets from Cresh and Dorn at the bottom of the Well, with Aresko and Grint watching from their platform above. All the cadets had been told to report with their E-11 rifles.
“Today’s assessment will be a little more challenging,” Aresko warned. “You need to shoot the targets to activate the panels necessary to climb out.”
Zare noted that sections of the grid sported bubble-like targets. He hefted his E-11 and waited as Grint counted down to the start
of the exercise, then fired.
Direct hit! Blue sparks shot out of the target and a repulsorlift platform detached itself from the wall. Zare ran across the Well as shots lit up the confined space, blaster bolts ricocheting crazily around him, and sprang atop a platform. Oleg was right behind him.
Zare fired and leapt onto a platform as Oleg landed on the other end. Before Zare could react, Oleg slammed into him and sent him flying, to land on a passing platform below. Zare winced and forced himself upright. Dev, he saw, was already halfway up the Well, firing with his usual uncanny accuracy.
Zare leapt and dragged himself up a level. Oleg was standing on a platform in the middle of the Well, firing not at the targets but at his fellow cadets’ platforms. The impact made the platforms lurch, spilling cadets overboard.
Cheater, Zare thought. But it was an effective strategy—Dev and Jai were closest to the top of the Well, occupying a single platform. Then came Oleg, with Zare two levels below.
Zare saw Dev turn and look down—first at Oleg, and then at him.
“I’m not going to make it,” Zare said bitterly.
Dev frowned in response, then winced—and shoved Jai in the back. The cadet landed on a platform below Zare, staring up the Well in disbelief as the rest of Aurek climbed out to stand in front of Aresko and Grint.
“Cadets, follow Morgan’s example,” Aresko said. “There is no friendship in war. The only thing that matters is victory—victory at any cost. Tomorrow’s final trial will push all of you to your limits. The reward for success will be a training session aboard an Imperial walker.”
As Grint dismissed the cadets, Jai emerged from the Well and grabbed Dev by the arm.
“You sabotaged me!” he said.
“I did what I had to do,” Dev said as he walked away. Jai didn’t see the regret on his face. But Zare did.
A few hours later, Dev and Zare stood in Minister Tua’s office inside Imperial headquarters, staring up at the ceiling.
“I hope your girlfriend’s right about this,” Dev said doubtfully.
“I’ve trusted her with my life every day I’ve spent at the Academy,” Zare said. “If she says that vent leads to Kallus’s office and that decoder, it does.”
“Are you sure I can get it out through the vent without setting off the sensor?” Dev asked.
Merei had scoured the schematics and files for an answer to that question, without finding one.
“I’m…pretty sure,” Zare said. “How are you going to reach anything from up there?”
“Don’t worry,” Dev said. “I’ve been training to become a Jedi.”
“Yeah. Right. Who isn’t?”
“You’ll see,” Dev said, as he leapt up to the ceiling hatch, then vanished inside.
Zare watched him go, then pulled out his datapad. His list of tasks was empty.
He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. He’d crept over to Tua’s office and commed Merei in the middle of the night to tell her about his hasty alliance with the mysterious Dev Morgan, and to ask her if she could slice a requisition order he could take to Kallus in the morning. He’d seen the fright in her eyes. Kallus was a real ISB agent, not a teenager impersonating one on a network. But she’d promised to try—and to meet up with Dev’s mysterious allies outside the Academy that night.
That was almost as frightening—he imagined Merei being dragged off by stormtroopers, or shot in a misunderstanding upon encountering Dev’s fellow operatives.
He shook the thought away. If they didn’t get the decoder, there’d be no meeting. He had to focus on his own mission.
Zare exited Tua’s office just as a pair of stormtroopers walked by on patrol. He stood at attention, then made his way to Agent Kallus’s office. As he neared the door, his datapad beeped. There was a requisition order for Kallus.
Oh, Merei, I love you, he thought. Then he read the order she’d created.
You have got to be kidding me.
He pressed the indicator outside Kallus’s door and heard the ISB agent tell him to enter. Kallus was sitting at his desk, working with a grim expression on his face. Zare tried not to let his eyes linger on the network terminal with the decoder inside, or the hatch above his head.
“Sir, your podracer parts have been delivered,” Zare said. “If you just sign off here, I’ll bring them up.”
Kallus stared at him, then rose from behind his desk and strode across the room to stand in the doorway, staring down at Zare.
“Obviously there’s been a mistake,” he growled. “What would I want with podracer parts?”
“No mistake, sir,” Zare said. “It says right here—two crates of secondhand podracer parts for Agent Kallus. That’s you.”
The hatch above Kallus’s desk opened and Zare saw Dev’s gloved hand appear. The slot on Kallus’s network terminal popped open. Zare willed himself to keep looking at the ISB agent, which wasn’t easy—Kallus was staring at him like a Loth-wolf that had cornered an injured whellay.
“I enjoy a good podrace myself, sir,” Zare said as the decoder somehow rose from the desk and traced a path through the air toward Dev’s outstretched hand.
Kallus stared at him, both angry and baffled. Zare tried to will him not to turn, to keep looking at the cadet who’d arrived at his door with a preposterous errand and not at the laws of physics being violated behind him. The decoder hung in the air for a moment, then shot into Dev’s hand. The vent closed silently just as Kallus turned his back on Zare in disgust.
Zare’s shoulders slumped in relief.
“So…are you going to sign it?” he asked.
“Cadet, are you ignorant?” Kallus demanded in a low, poisonous voice. “I said this is a mistake.”
“Sir, yes, sir!” Zare said. “Sorry, sir!”
Zare expected Dev to take the decoder straight to his droid, but instead Dev said they had to talk—immediately. Which was fine with Zare—he had questions of his own. He followed the mysterious cadet to the storeroom, hands clenching into fists.
“How did you do that, back there?” he demanded before Dev could even remove his helmet. “What are you?”
Dev pulled off his helmet and Zare saw he was pale with fright.
“Like I said…” Dev began, but Zare grabbed him by the front of his uniform, teeth bared.
“No more jokes, Morgan. What are you?”
“Zare, listen!” Dev said, trying to get free of the other boy’s grip. “The Inquisitor is coming tomorrow night. For me and for Jai.”
“The Inquisitor? Who’s that?”
“An Imperial agent…one that makes Kallus look like a bantha calf.”
“Don’t tell me about Imperial agents,” Zare growled, shoving Dev away. “For the last time—what are you?”
Dev smoothed his rumpled uniform, eyes lowered.
“I’ll tell you. What do you know about the Force?”
“It was some kind of Jedi trickery,” Zare said. “They used it to read minds and make people do things, back before they tried to take over the Republic.”
“There’s so much wrong with that I don’t know where to start,” Dev said. “But the Force is real. That’s what let me levitate the decoder.”
Suddenly it was all clear to Zare.
“This Force of yours is how you’ve won all the assessments!”
Dev nodded. “I can sense things through the Force—and so can Jai.”
“And the chance cube roll?”
Dev looked embarrassed.
“Sorry about that. But don’t you see? The assessments aren’t just to train officers, but to find Force-sensitive cadets. Ones like me and Jai…and your sister, probably.”
“But Dhara doesn’t have powers like that,” Zare said. And then his eyes grew wide. Hadn’t Dhara always known where he was without looking? Hadn’t she been able to sense what he was thinking?
Dev put a hand on his shoulder.
“That’s why they took her,” Zare said, thunder-struck. “And it’s why they accept
ed me before any other cadet, and took me back even after I rejected them. My sister’s Force-sensitive, and they think I am, too.”
“Exactly,” Dev said.
“But I’m not,” Zare said. “I can’t do any of the stuff you can do. Or that my sister could do.”
“Right now that’s not something to be sad about,” Dev said. “I have to get the decoder to our droid. The original plan was that I’d escape with him, but now I’m staying. There’s no way I’m letting the Inquisitor get his hands on Jai.”
The stars were spilled across the sky as Merei crept through the narrow streets below the white towers of the Academy. She didn’t see the hulking, purple-skinned alien until he stepped out of an alley less than a meter from her.
“Call me Spectre-4,” he rumbled as a slim girl in riotously colored Mandalorian armor strode out of the shadows behind him.
“Uh, call me…Merei-1,” Merei said.
“This is the cadet’s slicer girlfriend?” the Mandalorian girl said doubtfully.
“That’s right,” Merei said. “And you are?”
“Nobody you want to know.”
“Now, now,” the massive Lasat chuckled. “You can call her Spectre-5. When our droid gets here, we get the decoder first. That’s the deal.”
“I know,” Merei said. “I just hope you know what you’re doing. We don’t have a lot of time.”
The Mandalorian girl jabbed a finger at Merei, but then held her hand to her ear.
“Spectre-3’s on his way,” she said, turning her gargoyle helmet to Merei. “Back off. This is our operation.”
“I need that decoder, too,” Merei said.
“Not till we’re done with it,” the girl said.
“Everybody relax,” the alien said. “Just give us a moment for a private conversation, girlie. We ain’t gonna run off on you—a deal’s a deal.”
Merei didn’t like it, but a glance at the alien’s rifle told her she didn’t have a choice. She walked into the alleyway and waited until the buzz of conversation had died away, then emerged to find the Mandalorian girl typing frantically at a datapad while the big alien stood watch and a battered astromech waited with ill-concealed impatience.
“Everything okay?” Merei asked.
“Well enough,” the alien growled. “Complication with Ezra—um, with our agent. He’s staying put for now.”
