Servants of the Empire

by Jason Fry

  “So have I,” Zare said. He looked away for a moment, then wiped at his cheeks, blinking. Merei realized tears were running down her own face.

  Then Zare began to laugh.

  “I got a commendation,” he said. “For saving the Academy.”

  Merei just stared at him. And then she began to laugh, too.

  Zare finally stopped and pressed his palms against his eyes. He sat with his head bowed for a moment, and when he looked up again his face was grave. But there was something else there, too.

  It was hope.

  “Dhara’s alive,” he said.

  “I know,” Merei said. “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you.”

  Zare’s eyes widened.

  “So tell me.”

  Merei’s father was calling her from downstairs. Her mother had been working late, and they’d held dinner for her. She must have just come home.

  “I’ll be right down!” Merei yelled, then turned back to Zare. “It’s called Project Harvester. Dhara was removed from the Academy after meeting the program’s special criteria.”

  “Meaning they found out she could use the Force,” Zare said.

  “The Force?” Merei asked.

  “I’ll explain later,” Zare said. “Do you know where they took her?”

  “Yes. Project Harvester is run from a secret installation on the planet Arkanis, one connected to Imperial headquarters there—and the Arkanis Academy.”

  “Then that’s where I need to go,” Zare said. “You’re an agent of the Imperial Security Bureau—I don’t suppose you could arrange a midyear transfer for me? Talk in the mess hall is that’s been done on occasion, for exceptional cadets.”

  “No,” Merei said. “The Empire would realize almost immediately that it wasn’t legitimate, and start investigating how it happened.”

  Zare nodded. Gandr was calling more insistently now.

  “In a minute, Dad!” Merei yelled.

  “I’ll have to get to Arkanis on my own then,” Zare said. “By being the best cadet on Lothal. The goal has changed, but the mission’s the same.”

  “I know,” Merei said. “We’ll make it happen. Be patient, Zare. Now, you need to sleep more than any person I’ve ever seen.”

  Zare nodded and broke the connection, smiling at her as he did so. Merei sat staring at the blank screen for a moment, then hurried downstairs.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said, and then realized something: her snoopers had erased themselves from the Imperial network nearly an hour ago. Tomorrow’s sweeps would find nothing. She sighed and let her shoulders relax, smiling at her parents. She had found the information Zare had needed, and how to read it, and now all traces of how she’d done it had disappeared.

  “And how was your day, Mom?” Merei asked.

  Jessa glanced over at Gandr and shrugged.

  “We were just talking about that,” she said. “That intrusion case at the Transportation Ministry turned out to be more interesting than I thought. We located the programs the attacker installed this afternoon—they were set to transmit data to an outside account.”

  Merei held her breath.

  “We started figuring out how to isolate the programs, but either they were primed to detect that or were set to delete themselves on some kind of timer,” Jessa said. “I have to admit, it was clever work.”

  Merei nodded, trying not to smile. It had been close, but she had escaped.

  “But sometimes you need to be lucky as well as clever,” her mother said. “Two of the programs deleted themselves before my team could isolate them, but the third was loaded onto a network terminal with a faulty chronometer. So its timer never went off, and we were able to freeze it and preserve the code. Once we trace where it was sending its transmissions, we’ll be able to search accounts there—first the active ones, and then the ones that were deleted.”

  “I didn’t know you could do that,” Merei said in a small voice.

  “Not many security experts could, Mer Bear—but luckily your mother’s one of them,” Gandr said.

  “Yes, I am,” Jessa said. “I don’t know who these intruders are, but we’re on their trail. We’ll find them. And when we do, they’ll find out what it means to face the wrath of the Empire.”

  Jason Fry is the author of The Jupiter Pirates young-adult space-fantasy series and has written or co-written some two dozen novels, short stories, and other works set in the galaxy far, far away, including The Essential Atlas and The Clone Wars Episode Guide. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, son, and about a metric ton of Star Wars stuff.