Samica had taken a stroll around a small park before heading back to the hotel. She was not bothered too much by the cold, and the opportunity to spend time not cooped up in a ship or another room was too good to be wasted. She had never cared much for open spaces—on Imperial Centre, you could spend your whole life in the giant building complexes without ever having to face the rain and cold outside—but she’d felt like it that night.

The park covered only a small space between two blocks of flats, but she always enjoyed grass and trees, at least as long as it crossed her path in a civilised fashion, not like the jungle on Yavin 4. There were lamps all around the area, and the bright windows from the adjacent houses gave her the feeling of cosiness she’d felt too rarely after going to the Imperial Academy, really.

‘Excuse me, Miss, how old are you?’

Samica turned around in surprise and saw two people, a man and a woman, in the uniform of the city militia. It was the man that had addressed her.

‘Pardon?’ she said.

‘Sorry for the inconvenience, Miss, but we have to check this area after nineteen hundred hours. How old are you?’

‘Nineteen.’

‘Can I see your identification, please?’

‘Uh—sure,’ Samica replied and produced the card from her pocket.

‘You see, this park is a frequent haunt for all kinds of juvenile delinquents,’ the officer went on as she handed him the card. ‘So it’s been closed for everyone underage after nineteen hundred. You’re not from Garon II?’

‘No, from Balmorra.’ That, at least, was what her ID said.

‘Right. Just a sec, Miss . . .’ he put the card into the slot of his reader, hesitated, then slid it through again.

‘It can’t read it,’ he said.

‘Try mine,’ his colleague offered, and she tried the same procedure with her device, but it, too, insisted the card was unreadable.

Samica felt her stomach go cold. Her ID had worked at the spaceport—or had it? Had the disinterested customs officer really checked all of them? Now that she thought about it, she didn’t think he had.

‘That’s odd,’ she said, feigning surprise. ‘It certainly worked this afternoon at the holocinema. The man there wanted to see my ID as well. Do I really look that young?’ If this wasn’t so damn dangerous, it would almost be a laugh, she thought as she watched the female officer try again. She’d thought of herself as an officer for more than a year, first as a member of the galaxy’s finest Navy (the Imperial), then as one of the better pilots in another Navy that was finer than she’d thought (the Rebels). She was very unlikely to forget her age, but it had never really mattered in the past fourteen months.

‘Well, Miss, I’m afraid we’ll have to check this.’ The officer suddenly looked a lot less polite than he had a minute ago, and Samica noticed that his colleague had her hand on her blaster. It would have to be her to find the only dutiful officer on all Garon II. They knew her ID was a fake, and Stars only knew what would happen next. For an instant, she considered bolting, but that was not a good idea. There was no cover in a hundred metres, and it was dark, and she was in a place she didn’t know.

She could only try to come up with a good story and try to talk her way out of it.

Blast, talking her way out of anything didn’t really sound like Samica Trey.

Samica had realised things were going Really Bad when they took her up to the garrison in an enclosed militia speeder.

She hadn’t dared ask what was wrong with her ID, but somehow they must have figured out she was not a ‘juvenile delinquent.’ They’d taken her comlink as well as the fake ID, so there was nothing she could do to contact Rhun or Dyson, and there was no thinking about bolting now. The two militia officers had handed her over to an Imperial Army trooper when they reached the garrison, and she was unarmed. All things considered, being unarmed was probably the best thing that could have happened to her tonight, for if they’d found a weapon on her, she’d have been in even greater trouble—which didn’t mean she wasn’t already in up to her ears.

She now sat in a cell in the garrison complex, and according to her chrono, she had been for over an hour, alone with her fears and what-ifs. Yes, of course she should have gone straight back to the hotel, yes, she could have handled the ID control more easily and thus got away, but she hadn’t, and the worst thing about it was that Rhun and Dyson were now in danger of being discovered as well, and she had no way of letting them know. Had Rhun felt this way before he was interrogated aboard Resolve? If he had, she apologised silently, even if it had not been her fault that he had ended up there in the detention level—or had it?

Her thoughts went round in circles, and there was only one thing she told herself again and again: she would not, no matter what, betray Rhun or the Alliance. Samica tried not to think about how many Rebels awaiting interrogation had told themselves that.

When the door opened, a captain in an ISB uniform entered, and Samica’s heart sank even further. She’d always despised the ISB and even looked down on them while she was in the Imperial Navy, but from this side of the story, she couldn’t have come off worse. The Imperial Security Bureau was not known for its delicacy in handling Intelligence matters, which made it the Armed Services’ laughing stock, but it was feared by Rebels—for a good reason.

Behind the ISB officer, two stormtroopers entered the room, and behind them, she heard a familiar whirring and bit her lip when she saw the round, shiny black orb of an interrogator droid.

The ISB captain remained standing before her, forcing her to look up to him, which she didn’t.

‘Well, look at what an ID check in a park can get you,’ he said. ‘Such a miserably forged ID. Did you botch that yourself or did your Rebel friends manage that?’

She didn’t answer.

‘You want to make it interesting? Fine with me, we can take all night if you insist. Or all week, until you’ve told me what you want to know. What’s your name? Your real name?’

She finally did look at him. ‘Lou Ryder.’ That was the name her fake ID had given.

He shook his head. ‘Such obstinacy. Let’s jog your memory a bit, shall we?’ He turned to the interrogator droid. ‘OV600.’

The droid whirred towards her, and she closed her eyes. She remembered that Rhun had talked under the influence of the truth drug, remembered how hard he’d struggled and how little it had availed him. Still, the thought of him helped her focus. She would not tell them he was here. There was a stinging sensation in the side of her neck, then the black sphere retreated from her field of vision. She waited for the dizziness she thought must accompany the truth serum—she’d seen its effects on Rhun and on Blissex—and was surprised when she felt none.

‘Now,’ the captain went on after he’d waited for the drug to take effect; at least so Samica supposed, because she still felt nothing out of the ordinary. ‘Let’s try again, shall we? What’s your name?’

‘I’ve already told you, Lou Ry—’ She broke off in a gasp of pain as fire exploded along the skin of her neck, and she doubled over, panting with pain.

‘Well, didn’t your mother tell you that you mustn’t lie?’ she heard the officer’s voice as if through a red haze.

Samica made no reply, her hands gripping the hand rests on the bench she sat on, forcing herself to clamp down on it. She found that she could, if only by force, and made herself clench her teeth against the pain. It seemed to ease off slightly.

There was a new kind of pain as the interrogator gripped her face and forced her to look into his eyes. ‘Your name,’ he demanded.

‘Trey,’ she mouthed.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,’ was the answer.

‘Trey,’ she repeated, gasping as he let go of her face.

He leaned back, crossing his arms comfortably. ‘See, Lieutenant Trey, that wasn’t so difficult, now was it? All you have to do is tell me, and it won’t hurt. Oh, by the way—’ he stopped to inspect his fingernails, ‘you may have noticed we do know a bit about you already. So save yourself and us the time to lengthen this conversation unnecessarily. I’m sure that’s in your best interest as well.’

Commander Gilles Tonkin tiredly drew a hand over his face and pushed away another stack of datacards that went to his ‘done’ pile without ever having been as much as looked at. Twenty-one hundred hours. Well, the day was still young then.

When he’d been transferred here, he had thought the posting was as good as a funeral, all expenses paid, at that. Not too bad an outlook for a dead man, but a rather bleak perspective for a bright young officer who had just made commander, in the known galaxy’s best navy, at that.

Well, so he had been a bit less than the bright young officer presented by the recruitment machinery, and he’d once or twice made a bad impression with what the examination board had referred to as insubordination. Stranded on Garon II, he’d had two options: do what the Navy expected him to do, which was play dead, or make the most of it. So he’d stayed here . . . the only one who had stayed for longer than two years, longer than ten years. There seemed to be two ways off Garon II: make your peace with the Navy, and be promoted, or blow it completely, and be stationed on an ice rock in the Outer Rim. Tonkin had managed to tread the middle path, staying out of trouble without ever excelling at his job, and they’d left him in command of the TIE squadron at the base. Officially. Unofficially, he practically controlled the whole garrison—Army General Infesen asked his advice on everything that was concerned with actual leadership, and Tonkin supposed that the pale-looking grounddog was very much content with the situation. Infesen had about as much charisma as a Jawa under a general anaesthetic.

And during all this time, Tonkin had been cooking his own little soup, as the Garonic saying went. As most other officers never lasted very long on Garon II—whatever path they took afterwards—he had little trouble controlling them, and Garon II was unimportant enough that they let him. He did not resent the Empire. He left it in peace, and it left him in peace, and right now, that was a situation that worked very well for all concerned. There had been a few problems in the past, especially four weeks ago, when there had been a pro-Rebel demonstration in Gerion. The idiots had actually believed in that propaganda rubbish that Grand Moff Tarkin had blown up Alderaan and then been blasted out of the sky by a single X-wing starfighter. It should be mentioned that Grand Moff Tarkin was supposed to have been aboard a battle station as large as a moon at the time.

The ISB hadn’t been able to find out how the insurgents had been able to call such a demonstration into being without their knowledge (although Tonkin had a few ideas in that regard), and it had been a while until he had the situation safely in his grasp again.

There were rather profitable lines of business to get into in this system, and even if Tonkin had never got exactly rich, he was well content with what he had made out of a position that had looked so hopeless in the beginning. The problem with that was that they left you with an awful lot of paperwork that he could trust very few people with.

An admittance bell chimed, and Tonkin looked up in surprise. He hadn’t thought there was anyone but him still working in the garrison.

‘Come in,’ he said, and Captain Tore Eriksson entered the office. Now here was a bright young officer if ever there was one. Eriksson was one of the pilots that had to have landed here by accident, but Tonkin was glad to have him. An excellent pilot, efficient, loyal, but with a mind of his own, exactly the type of leadership potential Tonkin liked in an officer. He wouldn’t dream about drawing the young man into his own affairs—there were limitations to everything, after all—but as his exec, he was about everything he could have hoped for.

‘I didn’t realise there was someone else working overtime tonight,’ he greeted the captain.

Eriksson made a face. ‘We’re not the only ones, Commander. The Army idiots down there have made a prisoner.’

‘Oh?’

‘You remember Flight Officer—I mean, Lieutenant Trey, sir?’

Tonkin nodded. He remembered the kid—straight from the Academy, with the typical fuzz on her head from hair that was allowed to grow again after graduation, all knees and hardly any breasts, but a very good pilot, and already with the markings of an excellent officer. It hadn’t really come as a surprise to Tonkin to hear, some time after she’d left, that she had defected to the Rebellion. Any sane woman would, if he was honest, and he had known Trey to be a very sane young woman. The way she had stood up against COMPNOR Captain Lockhart had been impressive, but it had also told Tonkin that Trey was someone not to be taken lightly.

Lockhart had been on Garon II not quite a year ago, sent by the sector Moff for a routine loyalty check. Tonkin remembered the little snoop—Lockhart had sure given him a run for his credits; satisfying him had been more difficult than with most others. Once, the captain had caught Trey coming from a patrol and had thought it might be a good laugh to intimidate a very young female flight officer. When he had begun to get pushy, she’d slapped him across the face. Tonkin really couldn’t fault her, not as a man, because the old goat had positively been begging to be slapped (since the day he’d been born, most likely), but as her commanding officer, he’d found himself pestered by Lockhart to punish her, insisting that she’d tried to seduce him (the very idea of Flight Officer Trey seducing anyone was downright ridiculous).

He’d tried to talk her into seeing reason. Tonkin was not above an inquiry from COMPNOR, and Lockhart threatened to inform his superiors about certain other things he’d seen here in the garrison. She’d finally backed off—Lockhart got his way, and she got an entry into her file about insubordination and indecency. He would have liked to keep her on Garon II, primarily because he wanted to protect her; but after her encounter with Lockhart, she’d insisted on going, thinking that Imperial officers behaved more honourably elsewhere. And look where that belief had got her.

He couldn’t think of anything that might bring her back to Garon II, much less as a Rebel.

‘What the hell’s she doing here?’

‘I can’t say, sir, but the ISB’s got a tough time in finding out.’

‘ISB?’

‘Yes, sir. Baridan’s been on the lookout, it seems.’

Commander Tonkin carefully eyed his exec. He, too, had served with Trey. ‘So why exactly are you telling me this, Tore?’

‘Well . . . just thought I’d let you know, sir.’ The red-haired, muscular captain saluted and left.

Tonkin scratched his chin. Damn, corruption and smuggling was one charge, high treason was another. The first two might get him off with a dishonourable discharge; the second would get him nothing short of execution. Blast, he had liked Trey, but if she was a Rebel, she had to be kept in check. Again, corruption that everyone knew about was one thing . . . anarchy that would plunge the galaxy into chaos was the other.

Then again, nobody would have to know. He’d be able to pull this one off, he knew, and nobody over at Sector Command would ever know. And what was most important of all—he’d clashed with Baridan before, and he couldn’t risk his position being questioned.

But still, if he helped her, that was high treason, and he was not sure whether he could live with that.

Heck, he’d lived with other things.

And nobody, not even a Rebel, deserved being interrogated by an ISB twit.

The detention block was empty apart from some MSE droids hurrying along the corridors, scurrying out of the commander’s path as he went to Trey’s cell. He thought he could hear her screams through the durasteel walls.

Tonkin inserted his code cylinder into the slot in the door and keyed in his code. The door slid open, and he put his hand on his hips as he looked inside.

Captain Baridan turned at the sound of the door, and his angry expression changed to one of surprise when he saw who had entered. Trey sat on the bench, slumped against the wall, the left side of her face from her hairline down to her shoulder a swollen, angry red mess.

‘Just what do you think you’re doing here, Captain Baridan?’ Commander Tonkin demanded, and the ISB officer turned to him grudgingly. Trey didn’t move.

‘With all due respect, sir, this is an ISB affair, and you have no business here.’

‘I do have business here every time one of you idiots endangers the New Order through your own stupidity,’ Tonkin spat. ‘Come out of there!’

Baridan stuck out his chin. ‘You’re aware I answer only to COMPNOR, sir, not the Imperial Armed Forces.’

‘The hell I am,’ Tonkin replied. ‘Move your butt out here!’

The captain hesitated, but he came out onto the corridor. The commander closed the door behind him. ‘Now, can you tell me what you’re using that stupid OV600 for?’ he demanded.

‘I don’t have to account to you for anything like that,’ Baridan replied stubbornly.

Tonkin snorted. ‘Tell me, Captain, what have you got out of her so far?’

The ISB captain glared. ‘I’m working on it.’

Tonkin crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. ‘She’s not talking at all, is she? That’s the problem with OV600. As soon as the victim realises that lying will cause her pain, she can simply try to keep quiet, right?’

‘There are ways around that. By morning we’ll have all the information she can give us.’

Tonkin shook his head. ‘You seem to forget that the point in this little game is information, not your personal fun. —Oh, that wasn’t meant to be an insult,’ he added, wondering how far he could push the little slime. ‘And the best thing we could get out of her is the location of the Rebel hideout, isn’t it?

‘I suppose.’

‘Accordingly, we’d have to make her betray the Rebellion. You still with me?’

The captain nodded, his eyes blazing.

‘So you really think she’s going to do that? Listen, Captain, if you want her to betray the Rebellion, you have to be a bit more clever than that.’

Baridan crossed his arms as well and looked up at the taller commander. ‘So what do you suggest we do?’ he asked, sounding as if the words were ground out of him.

Tonkin produced an injector from his pocket. ‘Set her free—with a homing device that’ll tell us where she is.’

Suspicion began to show on the ISB man’s face. ‘Where did you get that?’

Tonkin snorted a laugh. ‘I’ve been in touch with every branch here on Garon II, Army and Navy, Intel and COMPNOR. One thing a good commanding officer should do: know his resources. She won’t have any idea, and she’ll lead us right to them.’ He leaned over to the younger man and added, ‘That might be my ticket off this world—and yours.’

‘You would tell them it was my idea?’ Baridan asked dubiously. These ISB jerks were so easy to twist around your finger.

Tonkin shrugged. ‘I get the fame, you get a promotion, and I could put in a good word for you with COMPNOR. That looks a bit more promising than your approach, doesn’t it? If you torture her to death, she won’t be of any more use to us.’

‘But she’s not here on her own,’ Baridan objected. ‘She’s been trying to tell me she is, but she’s lying.’

Tonkin grunted. ‘No doubt. But even if she is, and there are other Rebels here, what do you think will be worth more in the eyes of COMPNOR? A handful of lowly Rebels or a full base of them?’

The captain was not convinced yet. ‘A hawk-bat in hand is worth two on a skyhook.’

Tonkin nodded. ‘Yes, but worth less than several hundred on a skyhook—and they’re a relatively safe catch as well.’ He decided to play his last trump card. Sometimes you had to sink to their level to make a point. ‘And think of it—that way, we’d make her betray the Rebellion after all, even if she doesn’t know.’

He was rewarded by a rare grin of Baridan’s, one that made his stomach churn. ‘You should join the ISB, Commander.’

‘Maybe next time, Captain,’ Tonkin answered.

Samica never knew how she made it back. She knew even less why they’d let her go in the first place, only that it was still dark outside when her head cleared enough for her to become aware of her surroundings again, to find she was lying on the ground in some side street, shivering with cold and pain from her face. It took her three attempts to get up, and several minutes, leaning against the wall, before she thought she could walk. Her knees were shaking so much that she had to lean against the walls for support, and hopelessness gripped her again when she realised she had no idea where she was, or how she could get back to the hotel. It was almost morning, and the thought that someone might find her and, with the best of intentions, call the police, scared her.

She sat down for a few more minutes, trying to calm down, but it was hard to calm down when you had absolutely no idea what had happened. She couldn’t imagine how she had got here, and what the Imps were trying to achieve. She glanced around, but as far as she could tell, there was nobody following her. Which didn’t necessarily mean anything.

She was not even sure what she had told them. She was pretty certain that she had tried to protect Rhun, but the last few hours were little more than a haze. Somewhere in between, she thought she had heard Commander Tonkin’s voice, but she doubted her brain was up to wondering about that as well, so she forced herself to worry about the most immediate necessity: how to get away from here—wherever ‘here’ was.

Samica got up again, and staggered back into a direction that looked to her like the area where their hotel had been. She had to walk for a long time, but at least she was lucky in one respect; whenever she encountered anyone, they cast her just one glance and hurried to be somewhere else. She supposed they probably thought she was on drugs. Which wasn’t too far from the truth.

Somehow, after what seemed an eternity, she made it back to an area she recognised, and even found the hotel again. There was nobody at the reception yet, but after a few attempts, she finally managed to remember the code that opened the door, and she quietly let herself into their small apartment. She was normally very good with numbers.

In the darkness she could make out Rhun lying on the bed, fully dressed, which puzzled her, but she tried to tiptoe around the bed and let him sleep. No such luck. Her foot banged against the bedside locker, and the sound made him jerk upright.

‘Sam!’ he said. ‘You gave me a scare! Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking for you, but . . .’ He let his voice trail off when she didn’t answer and came over to her. ‘What’s happened?’

Samica still didn’t reply. It was dark, but he was sitting to her left, and he gasped as he saw her face.

‘Emperor’s black bones,’ he breathed, gently turning her head around to look at her, careful to touch only her right cheek.

‘Where have you been?’ he whispered again.

‘Ran into an ID control,’ she got out.

‘It didn’t hold,’ he guessed.

She just shook her head.

‘Who did this to you?’ he asked her gently.

‘ISB,’ she answered.

Rhun swallowed. ‘Sam . . . you’ve got to tell me what they did. I know you’d never tell them anything, but . . .’

‘They let me go,’ she whispered. ‘Rhun—I don’t know what happened, I can’t—’

He gently eased her down and stroked her forehead. ‘It’s okay,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve got a medpak here somewhere. Try to get some sleep. It’s all right. You can tell me later. Okay?’

She nodded shakily, and he kissed her temple. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he repeated. ‘We’ll get you checked out, don’t worry.’

He went to fetch the medpak and gave her a painkiller, then searched her clothes for bugs, even scanned her with the bioscanner in the ’pak to hunt for microchips that might have been injected. It didn’t yield any result other than the drug that was wearing off, which it classified as unknown, but Rhun knew that the result was not conclusive—the scanner would only find the more obvious things.

As Rhun sat beside the bed and watched her, asleep now, he wondered what they’d do about this. Samica getting picked up and tortured by the ISB only made things a lot more complicated than they were already, and a lot more dangerous.

He thought about the possibilities. It was possible, of course, but very unlikely, that Sam had returned to the Empire. Rhun couldn’t imagine she had. Which left only two other possible scenarios: they’d let her go, or she’d escaped. He could not really imagine her escaping in her present condition, especially without being able to tell, so that left only one thing: they’d let her go, and Rhun could think of many reasons why the ISB might do something like that. He didn’t like any of them. Most probably, they were either following her or tracking her with a device—his small mediscanner hadn’t found anything, but that didn’t mean there was nothing there. They’d have to get her to Eggshell and scan her more thoroughly there, or leave her behind—which Rhun was not going to do. He knew it was probably not worth the risk, but he just couldn’t leave her, and he was willing to go against prudence in this case and follow his inner voice telling him to sit this one out.

Rhun went over to the window, carefully peering out into the darkness, searching for signs anyone had followed Sam here. Outside, it was completely quiet, the sort of silence just before dawn, and it didn’t feel as if they were being watched. Still, when Rhun went back into the room, he took his blaster from his pack and laid it next to him. His feelings could usually be trusted, but it couldn’t hurt to be cautious.

He’d have to tell Dyson, and, eventually, Commander Willard, and he could only guess at the sorts of complications that would cause. He wasn’t even thinking about the implications of Imperials knowing she was here.

Rhun glanced at his chrono. Nearly six hundred. Dyson was not going to like it, but he’d understand being woken at this time, considering the circumstances.