Tales From the New Republic

by Peter Schweighofer

  "I agree, but I was hoping this trip wouldn't be - - was

  "Excuse me, folks?" somebody said. Tru'eb and Platt turned around;

  standing behind Platt was a green eyed starport official in a light green

  uniform, holding a datapad.

  "I've got the-right here, here's the-was He held out the datapad.

  "Oh, right, you're the guy I talked to earlier," said Platt.

  "Yes... about the information you requested? First of all, I'm sorry that

  took so long."

  "Don't worry about it. Although I wouldn't have thought skiff rentals

  would be that hard to track down," said Platt.

  "Well, we've had security problems before.. there was a shipjacking about

  four years ago, and some crime lords got involved...

  "What did you find?" asked Tru'eb.

  The man swallowed and held his datapad close to his chest. "I don't know

  how to tell you this," he said.

  Platt and Tru'eb exchanged glances.

  "What?" said Platt. "The skiff blew up? What?"

  "No, but there's been a...."

  "A what? Tell us!"

  "A-a mistake. On the readout."

  Platt visibly restrained herself from striking the man.

  "What do you mean?" asked Tru'eb, reaching up and putting a hand on

  Platt's shoulder.

  "Well, it says here that the gentleman you're looking for rented a

  spaceport skiff that he took out past the badlands... all the way north, into

  the mountains."

  "So what?" said Platt.

  "It's impossible. Nobody goes out there. Ever."

  "Why not?"

  He hesitated. After looking over his shoulder a couple of times, he drew

  himself in close toward Platt and Tru'eb, who drew in close toward him. Their

  heads were almost touching.

  "There," he said in a low voice, "is where the dead can walk."

  A week earlier, Jai had been sitting in the communications tent at a

  flimsy metal table, with the comm unit placed in front of her, when her C.O.

  "ness voice came over the channel.

  "Raventhorn?" he said. "We're in Sector Three now. Looks like there's a

  couple of scout troopers guarding a bunker."

  Jai put down her protein stick and swallowed. "Well, whatever you do,

  sir, don't-was

  "Moving in to attack."

  She put a hand over her face. Her C.O. was a Rodian lieutenant who had

  somehow slipped past Officer's Candidate School during the New Republic's

  post-Endor barrage of promotions. The rest of her teammates had little or no

  field experience-just training. Great. Three hundred and twenty-seven combat

  missions, and I never got a splinter. I move to Intel and these idiots are

  going to get me killed on the first day. "Sir, negative! You shouldn't

  compromise your position, is that clear? It's probably an-was

  A shout came over the comm channel, but it wasn't directed at Jai. "This

  one's for Mon Mothma, guys!"

  There were faint rallying shouts from the other team members. Jai could

  actually hear the blasterfire, quick little shots being fired off somewhere

  off in the distance. Then there was a louder shot, followed by an explosion.

  After that, the exploding never stopped; within minutes, the Imperials

  had moved in and surrounded the command post.

  Jai ran outside into the cold, wet mountain air. A flickering glow lit up

  the sky in the distance. - comambush.

  Seconds later a massive blaster bolt, artillery grade, slammed into the

  tent where Jai's remaining team members were sleeping. The whole thing was

  immediately swept into flames and took the munitions tent with it.

  Jai didn't hear the explosion. She just felt herself rising up in the

  air, and then a numb sensation shot through her body. She never remembered

  hitting the ground, but suddenly she was lying on her stomach, blinking

  furiously and spitting out dirt. When she looked up again, there was a bright,

  artificial light shining into her streaming eyes.

  "Get up."

  A gray shape stood over her. His voice was muffled, and the rest of what

  he said was lost to the ringing in Jai's ears. She could feel an unbearable

  heat coming from the burning tents, but the gray-clad person stayed where he

  was. Several moments later there were about twenty of him all around her. She

  was jerked to her feet.

  "Hands over your head. Do it now."

  Jai had never been cornered before. She should have lunged for somebody,

  should have made them kill her right then and there-because if there was one

  cardinal rule about being an Infiltrator, if there was one thing you made

  absolutely sure that you did, it was to die before you got taken into custody.

  But a face flashed into her memory, and she hesitated. Before she had a

  chance to register who she was thinking of, or to change her mind, one of her

  captors took a fast step toward her, the butt of his blaster rifle swinging at

  her face.

  Suddenly Harkness shouted her name, and she started.

  "What?" she cried. "What is it?"

  "Are you still there?" Harkness said.

  "Where would I go, idiot?" she said, annoyed.

  "I've been calling your name for twenty minutes here!"

  "Really?"

  "Yes! What happened to you?"

  "I was just thinking."

  "Well, you could have answered me!" Harkness sounded almost furious.

  "Hey, look, I didn't do it to spite you! I just got to thinking. I'm

  trying to remember stuff."

  Harkness backed off. "Well... but... I was just-was He floundered for a

  second. "Okay. As long as you're not dying of shock over there."

  "Only when you yell real loud like that."

  "What were you thinking about?" Harkness asked.

  "Just stuff," said Jai. "Did it get warmer in here?"

  "No," he said. "Listen-mind if I ask you something?"

  "Yeah?"

  "You don't care about your team. You don't seem to care about the

  Rebellion anymore."

  "I do care about the Rebellion. It's the New Republic I hate."

  "And you say you can't remember if you have any family."

  "Are you taking notes or something?"

  "I'm just curious; what made you resist interrogation?"

  "Look, just because I don't like what happened to the Alliance doesn't

  mean I'm willing to turn on it."

  "That's not what I mean," he said. "What did you focus on?"

  "I focused on not telling anybody anything."

  Harkness gave a terse sigh. "Sarge-was

  "What is your problem?"

  "You are not listening to me." Harkness slowed his voice down. "In that

  moment... in the interrogation room... when the drugs had worn off... and you

  tried to feel sorry for your interrogators... and you tried to hyper ventilate

  yourself into a trance... and you realized that it didn't matter what you did,

  because those Imperials were living out their life-long dream of making an

  Infiltrator scream, and they were having so much fun they might never stop..."

  Jai stared at where she thought Harkness's face probably was.

  "Yeah," she said.

  "What was it that you focused on? What image came to your mind?"

  "I don't know."

  "Then think! Come on! Was it a person?"

  "Yeah, it..." Jai stopped herself. "Yeah!" she said. "It was my little

  siste
r."

  Harkness shifted around. "You're somebody's older sister?"

  "You sound like you think that's funny."

  "No, no. I can just imagine you ordering some six year-old around."

  "Well, she's a little older than that. She's a major in Special Ops."

  "So she gets to order you around."

  "She wouldn't dare."

  "Major Raventhorn," said Harkness. "That name sounds familiar."

  "'Course it does," she said.

  "When's the last time you saw her?"

  "I don't know." Jai's brain clouded up as easily as it had cleared, and

  she felt a throbbing tightness all the way from her shoulders up into the back

  of her head. "I thought I hadn't seen her since she was about twelve. But I

  can see her with an adult's face... I thought I just talked to her a few

  months ago... or last week...."

  "Keep thinking," said Harkness.

  "What about you?"

  "Me?"

  "No, the other beat-up mere across the room. How come you didn't talk?"

  "I don't know."

  "Keep thinking," Jai said, with more than a trace of sarcasm.

  "No, really, I can't... but I feel like I knew a minute ago...."

  "I'd love to know what they did with our heads," Jai said irritably. She

  found that she could lift her arms now, and kept trying to massage the tension

  out of her shoulders with one hand. After a while she began to notice that the

  pain wasn't just in the muscles but in the skin, and her hand came away wet.

  She forgot all about the tension and felt the burning all across her shoulders

  and her back.

  Suddenly Harkness yelled, "Dirk!"

  Jai felt her whole body tighten. If she could have sprung to her feet,

  she would have. "Who? What? Who?"

  "Dirk! That's my first name!"

  Jai's body relaxed, and her limbs shook from the tension release. "Will

  you quit screaming out like that?"

  "Dirk Harkness," he said. "I'm Dirk Harkness."

  "Dirk Harkness?" Jai finally said, primarily to get him to stop chanting

  it. "What kind of name is that? You don't sound like a Dirk."

  "So don't call me Dirk." He made some shuffling noises again; Jai

  imagined that he was lying on his side now.

  "Fine, Harkness," she said. "If you remember your first name, then tell

  me what kept you from talking."

  Dirk was silent.

  "Well?"

  "I think," he said, "it has something to do with this humming in my head.

  "

  "Well, well, well," Platt said, peering over the ridge. "Our boy Harkness

  certainly knows how to sniff out Imperials."

  "How many?" Tru'eb asked. He was a short distance below her in the gully.

  Platt slid down the steep rock wall and handed him the macrobinoculars.

  "Look for yourself. I make it about two, maybe three. See them?"

  Tru'eb got a foothold in the crags and hoisted himself up into the thick,

  tufted grass on top of the ridge. "I can't see anything," he said. "The fog is

  even worse over there."

  "The yellow switch polarizes the lenses. See the hill directly across

  from us? It runs into t cliff, you can't miss it. Now look at the a ledge

  sticking out of the cliff, out over the hill. You see the Imperials?"

  "No... just trees and plants..."

  "They're sitting in a dugout under a camouflaged lean-to."

  "Ah, yes," Tru'eb said after a moment. "Army scouts. But I don't see a

  garrison."

  "I don't even see any valley," Platt said.

  Nonetheless, Platt's chrono indicated they were some 1,200 meters above

  sea level. This neck of the mountains was permeated by rocky ground and sheer

  cliffs topped with conifer trees. The Bare Forest, the locals called it. Or at

  least that was what their guide had called it before he had bolted with the

  repulsorlift a day earlier. At least he had left them some supplies and a one-

  person emergency inflation shelter, the latter of which had been an awfully

  tight fit last night.

  Still, Harkness had left a trail of blaster-charred trees and discarded

  rations. Those clues led Platt and Tru'eb straight into the remains of the

  Rebel camp-a flat, razed area with scattered ashes, melted tent frames, and

  smashed comm equipment. The trees were bent and broken, probably crushed by

  AT-AT'S. Platt was hard pressed to imagine where one of those would have come

  from. All around was the acrid smell of burned flesh and spent blaster packs;

  Platt had to avert her eyes from the scattered bodies. Most of them had been

  shot in the back, Tru'eb told her. The rest were charred beyond recognition.

  "Those scouts have an E-web, did you notice?" Tru'eb said, adjusting the

  sights. "But there are, let's see, one hundred-thirty meters between us and

  them. I doubt they would be able to see us from there."

  "They wouldn't, if I weren't wearing red. Duck back down."

  "You really ought to rethink your wardrobe one of these days, Platt,"

  Tru'eb said dryly.

  Platt grinned. "I thought you appreciated my keen fashion sense."

  "I do. It's my whole reason for living."

  Platt took back the macros. Then she looked up at the murky sky. "Say,

  Tru'eb..."

  "Yes?"

  "Did everything around here just go really quiet, or is it me?"

  They listened, and looked at each other. All morning there had been a

  constant chattering and hissing of birds, which had suddenly stopped. Platt

  pulled out her blaster.

  "Did our Green Boys notice us?" she whispered.

  "Let me have a look-"

  Something came crashing through the underbrush behind them. Platt and

  Tru'eb spun around, but when the thing came out of the mist, they just stood

  where they were, frozen.

  It was a Sullustan in New Republic military fatigues. But something about

  him was not quite right, and horribly surreal: his eyes were a milky gray and

  his head tilted at a grotesque angle. His arms hung at his sides, waving

  around slightly at each step as the head jarred and bobbed.

  "Walking Dead!" Tru'eb hissed, backing away from the Sullustan, who

  seemed to be headed purposefully toward him.

  Platt fired a blue stunbolt into the Sullustan's chest. He gave a wild

  spasm and then flopped to the ground.

  Silence. Platt and Tru'eb looked at each other.

  "Was that real?" she whispered, and looked at the ground again. The

  Sullustan still lay there with his face in a mud puddle. In his back was a

  week-old blaster wound.

  Platt scrambled up the ridge again. One of the guards was situated at the

  front of the dugout, leisurely wiping down the barrel of the E-web; the other

  sat off to the side, staring into space, waggling his foot. Occasionally he

  would lean out and look up at the gray afternoon sky.

  "Doesn't look like they heard," Platt said.

  Tru'eb gingerly approached the Sullustan. He fumbled for a pulse, and

  then stepped back.

  "Come look at this, Platt. It's incredible."

  Platt gave the guards a final look before sliding back down.

  "What?" she asked.

  "Look," he said, pointing.

  The Sullustan lay twitching, but not breathing. On closer inspection he

  turned out to be completely immobile; the appearance of twitching was caused

  by the
presence of hundreds of tiny wormlike creatures swarming around the

  hole in his back.

  Platt felt her gorge rise. She backed away, but there was no escaping the

  stench of the body or the memory of the worms; she leaned against a tree and

  vomited.

  Then she stood up and coughed a couple of times. "Thank you, Tru'eb.

  Thank you for sharing that with me. I'm just going to go far away from you

  right now."

  She ventured a little ways into the woods, until the smell dissipated

  somewhat. Tru'eb followed her. "But don't you see?" he said. "This is the

  source of the Walking Dead illusion. Some parasites can release enzymes which