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“You look lost, gendarme,” a voice calls out of the darkness.
It’s late and the smoking section of the patio is almost deserted, the relative quiet broken only by the wail of far-off sirens, the hum of airspace traffic and the muffled chatter of the cantina. Lt. Setton looks up from the cigarra he can’t find a light for so sharply he nearly drops it; he hadn’t heard any footsteps nor seen anything approach. The neat little cylinder dangles precariously from his fingertips, nearly glowing in the light of the security luma outside this grimy dive.
It’s a newer model, its light harsh and cold and faintly green with efficiency. It doesn’t buzz or fade into brilliance the way Setton remembers streetlumas did in his childhood almost twenty years ago. This is a different world. He’s spent his entire adult life helping to build it.
This cantina isn’t one he frequents but he can’t risk bumping into a colleague just now. His patience won’t survive it. The workload has been heavy these past few days. He deserves a break and deserves a smoke without a mouse droid chirping at him.
A man saunters out of the alleyway, handsome and sure of himself, and Setton forgets all about his wariness. He sets himself up a little straighter, makes his posture a little more imposing. The uniform does most of his work for him, as crisp and white as the unlit filthy habit he has pinched between two fingers. He knows a come-on when he hears one.
There’s a glint of eyeshine as the man steps fully into the light that strikes Setton as odd. This man doesn’t look mixed, but it’s a wide galaxy and there are those who aren’t interested in keeping their species pure. One cannot always tell a mongrel just by looking.
“I’m hardly lost,” Setton calls back, voice warm but superior. He must be one of the working boys from the brothel he saw on the way, although he’s out of his range if that’s the case. No matter. Setton has enough in his pockets for a thing like him. He’s not above a little fun with the locals, but a whore is a whore and must know its place. It certainly won’t be Setton on his knees in a few minutes.
“Mm, lost and lonely,” the man smiles. He has dark hair that falls in messy waves around his ears and into his pretty eyes as they sparkle under the electric diode’s glow. “I can help with that.”
The man’s accent is delicious; Mid Rim and unrefined and not quite suited to the local dialect he had been using earlier. Setton makes his accent posher by a few degrees just to savor the contrast. The man smiles and its utterly disarming, roguish and dimpled under his beard. He produces a lighter—expensive, probably lifted from a client—and opens the current at the end of Setton’s cigarra with a neat flick. It buzzes and crackles faintly, the four prongs making a violet cross and Setton inhales to get the ember to catch. It glows bright orange in the space between them. It shines in the man’s dark eyes and Setton throws his lungful of smoke over his shoulder just so he can look away from the intensity. He’ll have to break this one down a little.
“And how do you intend to do that,” Setton asks. He keeps his voice even and bored. Let him work for those credits, he thinks. He savors the man's need for him and his money like fine liquor.
Somewhere in his gut there’s the dull throb of warning but he ignores it. He’s an ISB agent and this man is nobody. He’d be beyond stupid to try something. Propositioning him alone is risky and Setton gives him full marks for bravery. The man plucks the cigarra out of his hand where it’s resting on the rail beneath him and takes a deep inhale, daring Setton to stop him with his eyes.
Cheeky, Setton thinks. He wishes he had more time. He wants to send him back to the brothel he calls home bruised and humbled. He even holds the cigarra incorrectly, between his calloused thumb and forefinger. Unrefined, just as Setton suspected. The city glows above them, changing colors lazily and glittering with steady movement. It feels alive, like a beast laying in wait.
The streetwalker exhales, head turned, and Setton gets a beautiful view of his throat. Neon from the cantina’s window shines on his skin and hair. He holds the cigarra to Setton’s lips and keeps it there. Setton makes a point to take it back before sucking in another cloud of smoke.
“I have my ways,” the man says lightly, playfully. He has a little scar on his cheekbone and long eyelashes. He steps back and Setton stands before he can escape. He drops the barely smoked cigarra onto the ferrocrete and leaves it to smolder. He lets the man lead him back into the darkness of the alley and the tingle of intuition is utterly drowned by the lust rising like full-tide in Setton’s blood.
The man reaches for him as soon as they cross the threshold. Setton grips him by his threadbare clothes before he can get his dirty hands on his uniform and shoves him against the graffiti next to the trash compactor. He won’t kiss him; he doesn’t know who else rented him tonight. An alarm starts to blare in the distance, shrill and sustained like the engine of a TIE fighter. An advertisement swims past them and fills the space of the alleyway with a scarlet too bright to see in. All the shadows deepen into pitch as it passes over them; all light is subsumed by sanguine incandescence.
Then he feels it, too late to do anything and too slow to stop it: the cold, insistent press of a blaster barrel under his jaw. Those pretty eyes are hard now, the glare of his eyeshine flashing halogen white where they aren't washed black by the bloody glow. Setton’s hands jump upwards as he tries to step back.
“Wait—” he gasps but its too late. There’s the sharp burst of blasterfire simultaneous to a bright burst of light, and then nothing else.
--
The air stinks of clorocarbon, the acrid smell that clings to medical centers and data storage that comes with over conditioning the air. It’s artificially cold and the breeze in Luthen’s hair is as synthetic as it is constant. The gravel crunches under his boots as he walks alone between reenforced ferrocrete pillars. The glowrods are cold and industrial, buzzing and flickering faintly. Everything has a layer of grime over it; the constant circulation of dry air has made the moss and algae into a fine powder sticking to nearly every surface.
There’s blaster marks on the walls, too uniform in height to be from target practice. There’s the rumble of machinery as a cargo hauler flies overhead and then the muffled concussion of it engaging secondary engines to break the planet’s atmosphere. No one on the outside can hear a thing said or done within this compound. Luthen appreciates the caution but finds it redundant. Deals like this aren’t loud unless something goes awry and Luthen is too experienced to have been followed. Nobody’s listening.
Sate Ghyron waits for him just ahead, crates of armament stacked neatly to one side and something else under a tarp, guarded by sentry droids. There’s a few human guards as well. This much muscle just for him almost makes him laugh. Ghyron hasn’t been in the game long enough to be truly intimidating yet.
“Good morning, Ghyron,” Luthen calls genially. “Congratulations on your career change. I hope the transition hasn’t been too difficult for you.”
Ghyron waves and smiles back.
“Thank you, Rael,” he replies. “It’s been an adjustment but anything can be endured with a little grit.”
His tone is light and measured. Luthen recognizes the cadence of middle rank imperial officers, the ones that rarely if ever see combat or anything beyond board rooms and meetings. He keeps his distaste from his face. He needs the blasters and the detonators. He doesn’t need an ally.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Luthen replies. He turns to the crates. “Are those my blasters?”
“Yes,” Ghyron smiles and then snaps at the guards next to him. He doesn’t ask to see the money first. Luthen wonders how many times he’s done this.
His guards open the crates mechanically. Something about their body language and mannerisms strikes Luthen as eerie. The one closest to him doesn’t seem to be actually looking at what they’re doing, staring at nothing as though in a trance. They might be visually impaired—no, their eyes flick to Ghyron as he approaches and their entire body stills. They can see, they’re just hiding.
Slaves? Luthen thinks. Maybe, but it’s unlikely. Even motely crews like those under Saw are galvanized against the empire; there are legions of volunteers ready to fight and die to make the Empire bleed. Perhaps this one is traumatized by Imperial cruelty. That could explain one individual’s demeanor and hypervigilance, but it wouldn’t explain the rest of them acting like that or why Ghyron would take his most shellshocked soldiers to meet someone of Luthen’s reputation. Especially if he already has security droids. A show of force, certainly, but not much of a force if his muscle is literally shaking in their boots. Luthen watches them open the crates and display the insides to him so he knows he won’t be swindled and wonders idly if Ghyron ever did field operations at all.
“It’s all there,” Ghyron says triumphantly. Luthen is reminded of a child showing off a drawing and feels an emotion adjacent to embarrassment. He’ll take advantage of Ghyron trying to impress him if nothing else.
“Yes, I see that,” Luthen says indulgently and digs out his credits. The chips are glossy in the sickly light, their shine almost liquid. It’s not enough for all this artillery, even for backroom deals and back-alley meetings.
Ghyron graciously takes them and then checks the amounts.
“And the starpath?” He asks. Luthen smiles subtly and hands over a folded slip of flimsy.
“Those are the coordinates. You’d better get it before the Empire does.”
“I’m not worried about them,” Ghyron says dismissively.
He snaps his fingers again and a similarly dead-eyed soldier takes them from him and holds them in their trembling hands. The droids adjust themselves and the mechanical whirring of their gears is loud; they desperately need to be serviced and defragmented.
“I have something extra for you too, Luthen, since you were kind enough to come all the way out here to my hideaway,” Ghyron continues.
I was the only one desperate enough, Luthen gripes internally. Everyone turned this deal down because it sounded like a set up. It might still be a set up. There’s a nonzero chance Ghyron decides he’d rather keep the blasters and the credits. With the seige of the garrison on Aldhani postponed once again and an ever growing list of mouths to feed, Luthen cannot afford to be picky.
Ghyron snaps his fingers at his men again and they repackage the weapons. It grates on Luthen’s nerves. He doesn’t even look at his men or bother communicating verbally. Ghyron comes closer, hands clasped behind his back, a small smile on his lips like he and Luthen were chatting at a gala rather than under the earth on a backwater planet favored by thieves and pirates.
“Do you know what an Emperor’s Hand is, Rael?” Ghyron starts. His red hair looks strange in the dim, greenish light.
“I’ve heard rumors,” Luthen answers.
Campfire stories mostly, of impossibly strong agents of the Empire moving like wraiths and leaving destruction in their wakes. Stories of their supposed exploits reach fantastical levels. Some say they need no food or water, that they can stay awake for over a week without tiring, that they cannot be killed by anything less than military grade blasters or detonators at close range. That they could fight ten men at once, that they were immune to every kind of torture and every kind of poison. A utility tool of espionage for whatever the Emperor himself might turn his attention towards.
Impossible, all of it. Luthen has seen combat (stars, has he seen combat) and he knows the limits of what a person, human or otherwise, can endure. There’s some variant between species, but the Empire overwhelmingly favors humans. It’s easier. No need for accommodation if no one different is included in the first place. A holdover from the Clone Wars, he supposes.
“You don’t believe those rumors,” Ghyron states. He keeps coming closer. Luthen refuses to step back. He dips his head coyly and Luthen feels a burst of annoyance. Ghyron straightens up.
“I’ll have my men bring your weapons to your ship, but in the meantime come with me,” he gestures with his head for Luthen to follow and he does, curiosity tugging at him. He should be going with the henchmen so they don’t put his contraband in the wrong compartment. He should be refusing politely and being on his way as quick as possible.
“I don’t blame you for not believing the whispers about Emperor’s Hands—most of them are entirely made up with no basis in reality whatsoever,” Ghyron continues blithely.
The object under the tarp hums softly, some kind of fan running in its depths. It reminds Luthen of a freezer reaching temperature and his intuition sits up in his stomach. He eyes it carefully and then glances over at Ghyron as he carries on.
“I mean, going eight days without sleep? Total fabrication, ridiculous,” he smiles and then his eyes do something sharp and cunning, and Luthen knows suddenly why his men tremble when he looks at them. “Five days. Five days is the limit. Well, at least for humans. After that the hallucinations become unbearable and their body just sort of…stops. You can pump them full of every simulant you have—you can make them bulge with it, but it doesn’t do anything.”
“How do you know that?” Luthen asks lowly. His voice is as rough as the stones under his feet, volcanic and dark and jagged. Ghyron stands next to the box like he’s giving a presentation.
“They aren’t rumors,” he says. His face is suddenly serious and Luthen knows he needs to leave as soon as possible. “I helped make a few of them over my tenure with the Empire.”
He rests his hands on the casket sized object. The fan reaches a rhythm and the air circulation kicks on its compressor somewhere. The glowsticks buzz. Ghyron runs his fingers gingerly over the tarp.
“Granted, I didn’t have all the equipment I’m used to and of course there are some parts of the process I didn’t have clearance for, but it was all simple enough to reverse engineer. Mind you,” he turns sharply back to Luthen, “the process is incredibly hard on the individual subjects, even if they volunteer. But it’s worth it.”
“Worth it how?” Luthen asks despite himself. Disgust makes his lip twitch. He feels his body start to lean away but he holds it in place until he needs it to move. An officer is one thing. A butcher is another.
“Worth it to give the Rebellion its own Hand—or even Hands! Think of what we could do with a legion of unstoppable soldiers,” Ghyron exclaims. “Ten men fighting like one hundred. The Empire wouldn’t know what hit them.”
There’s sincerity under all that scientific carelessness. Luthen trusts that he believes what he’s saying but he knows what unchecked power does to men who think they own nature. How long has he been here, in his own little kingdom?
“You still aren’t convinced,” Ghyron observes. His smile tilts and Luthen can see annoyance glint in his deep blue eyes. They look like glass in this light. He finishes his thought before Luthen can answer.
“Tell you what,” he grips the edge of the tarp. He sounds equal parts smug and irritated. “I’ll give you this one as a sample. Try it out, see how it does and then if you want more—!”
Ghyron rips the tarp off and raises the chamber, the cryochamber, to its upright position. It rises slowly, its hydraulics groaning. Inside is a man, sleeping in the frost. The usual wires and tubes that should be taped to his face and chest and up his nose to keep him healthy while he sleeps are notably absent.
“—You know where to find me.”
It’s Andor. The man in the chamber is Andor. The thief that stole the starpath and stars know what else right out from under the Empire’s arrogant noses. Luthen tried to recruit him for Aldhani, but he refused.
“I’ll take the drop off.”
He disappeared and now Luthen knows why. He takes a breath and looks again at Andor frozen in the chamber, the blue lumas shining on his skin giving him an unnaturally pale cast. Horror starts to walk its cold fingers up Luthen’s spine but he gets ahold of it before it can cloud his judgement.
“Well, what do you say Rael? It’s one of a kind, perfectly trained and conditioned for the cause.”
Conditioned. Luthen can feel disgust starting to rise in him again, feels it in his gaze and in the tilt of his voice when he speaks. Compassion knives him when he looks at Andor. The thief's cheeks look gaunt under the beard and there’s deep circles under his eyes.
“I’ll take him,” he grunts.
It’s foolish. Andor is a liability at this point. He should leave him behind. He knows he cannot leave him behind. Ghyron grins.
“Wonderful, I’ll have it placed in your ship. It answers to Ex-Nine, but you can program any name you wish into it.”
Program, as though he were a droid or a datapad or a navcom.
“Oh, and take this,” Ghyron hands him a little remote the size of Luthen’s thumb and a little slip of flimsy. “It makes it easier to manage in the day-to-day and regular maintenance much more convenient.”
He doesn’t know what that means and he doesn’t want to.
Luthen pockets the remote and flimsy, puts that mystery aside along with all his righteous anger and his bleeding heart, thanks Ghyron for his business and then walks out. The guards put the crates where he tells them and they leave the cryochamber in the corridor. It hums dully, and Luthen turns in his chair to look at it once he’s safely out of atmo, the planet blue and glowing against the vast, velvet backdrop of open space.
“Set a course for Segra Milo,” Luthen tells his ship without looking away from the ghostly glow of Andor’s face in the darkness. The planet tilts behind them. The sooner he gets rid of this contraband, the better.
“Setting course for Segra Milo,” the droid mod confirms, its voice metallic and crisp. “Calculating best route.”
There’s a beat of silence. Then:
“Hyperspace route found.”
With practiced ease, Luthen sends the haulcraft into hyperspace, barely feeling the impact of the modified hyperdrive after all these years of flying. The blue swirl opens before him, mesmerizing and infinite and completely mundane. He stands, his attention once more fixed on the chamber behind him as he walks towards it. There’s a wariness in him, the same that haunts him each time he leaps without looking. The soft center of him is impulsive as it is powerful; he has spent much of his life learning how to work around its demands. Care got him into this fight but care will not facilitate his continued participation. Compassion and war are not bedfellows, however practical the compassion and however asymmetric the warfare. He made a choice.
The cryochamber is cold to the touch as Luthen runs his fingers over the panel on its side, a dozen or so small buttons in neat rows and three dials with texture for ease of turning. The internal lights are constant, though he supposes Andor wouldn't be bothered by that while frozen.
“It is not recommended to open a deep sleep cryochamber without a medical team present,” the droid mod chirps at him. He can hear its eyes rotating as it tries to get a better look at their passenger. “Physical side effects of cryosleep can include: nausea, muscle aches, hypothermia, headaches, tremors and disrupted sleep.”
Luthen finds the opening sequence and turns the dial until the screen displays RELEASE instead of CONTAIN. The readout shows Andor’s vitals hover at the lowest his body can sustain without dying and then kick up as the warmup sequence gets him ready for ejection.
“Psychological side effects can include: anxiety, panic, confusion, disorientation, memory disruption and difficulty communicating.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Luthen answers as he watches the chamber’s output screen flash and Andor’s vitals reach normal levels as the chamber warms.
Vapor hisses out of the vents and the dials blink in rotating cycles. Then the hinges of the visor open with a plastoid crack! and a rush of that same vapor pours out into the cabin before disappearing almost immediately. It has that same packaged air smell that the bunker had. The doors open like a casket, split down the middle. The seal makes a tearing sound as it separates and the musical ting-ting-ting! of metal cooling after prolonged exertion can barely be heard over the dull roar of hyperspace.
Andor is coughing before he can even open his eyes, his body lurching forwards and unable to keep him upright. Luthen catches him before he can collapse onto the deck. He’s shockingly cold in his arms, Luthen can feel it even through all his layers. Andor looks up at him in blurry confusion. His grip is weak on Luthen's coat. He coughs again, shuddering and Luthen lets him bend over his arm in case he needs to be sick. He’d prefer he didn’t, but it's not Andor’s fault he opened the chamber and he decides not to hold it against him if he makes a mess of his floor. He forgave him the first time, even if blood is easier to deal with than vomit.
“Our passenger is hyperventilating,” the droid mod states, almost smug.
“I hadn’t noticed,” Luthen gripes and leans Andor’s body against the bulkhead as he tries to remember how to breathe. His eyes are sparked with a terror that Luthen has only ever seen in civilian prisoners of war—beings crushed under the ferrocrete understanding of the horror that awaits them and their total inability to escape it.
“Easy,” Luthen addresses him. Andor flinches away from his voice and his face loses all emotion. Luthen blinks, hands still holding him upright. Andor’s shoulders are high and his arms are tucked close to his body, his head down and his gaze fixed firmly on their boots. His face is blank. His breath is shallow and fast. His eyes are glass; dull and unfocused.
“Andor,” Luthen tries again. His voice is rough as he forces his volume low. “Breathe. You’re going to pass out on my floor.”
He doesn’t react to his name. He shakily tries to get his breathing under control but Luthen can see him struggle, and the struggling seems to distress him more.
Take your time, Luthen thinks. He catalogs new scars without meaning to. Even minor injures have carved tiny grooves and pits into what skin Luthen can see. Its like he hasn't had access to batca at all. Andor takes a full breath, holds it, and then exhales it like smoke. Luthen gives him a minute before he questions him again. He can feel him start to tremble in his hold and Luthen looks around for a blanket. The black thermals don't seem to be doing much for him despite covering everything but his head, neck and hands. They look like they're meant to be worn under armor. He can see the spikes of his bones through the fabric at his shoulders.
“Here,” he says and wraps the blanket around Andor's frame. His bony hands, split at the knuckles and barely healed, grasp the hem so hard Luthen can see his tendons. Andor shakes from cold and probably fatigue. He must be horrifically sore and stiff from being forced into one position for so long.
“Do you know who I am?” Luthen asks. He has to duck his head to meet Andor’s gaze. It’s like catching a lightfly; one moment he has it, the next it’s gone.
“No, sir,” Andor whispers. His voice is so raspy for a moment Luthen wonders if he’s ill.
Strange. He should know him. Perhaps this is the disorientation the droid mod was telling him about.
“Not at all?” Luthen confirms and something complicated flashes over Andor’s face, like a captive who realizes too late that they’ve said too much.
“No, sir,” Andor repeats. His voice is brittle. He’s staring over Luthen’s shoulder. His eyes flick to exits and cockpit controls and then come to rest on the rumple in Luthen’s collar.
“I’m Luthen Rael. You’re working with me now.”
“Yes, sir.”
He’s totally compliant, without a single follow up question or objection. It’s so deeply unlike the man Luthen researched, observed and then briefly knew—a man who was all questions and objections and absolutely no compliance. That eerie feeling comes back to Luthen’s stomach. The cryochamber bleeps and then closes itself, its cycle completed and its captive released. Andor eyes it like a torture implement on a tray.
“Come, sit down,” Luthen says as he sets him on the passenger bench near the first aid and storage. It takes no effort to move him. Andor makes himself as small as possible. His hair is a dark mop on his head, a little damp from the steam.
He needs something warm. All Luthen has is instant kaff. It’ll do, he thinks as he gets it out of the cabinet and then tugs the string in the base until he hears a snap! and the low rumble of heating water.
“How do you take your kaff?” he asks, gruffer than he intends. Regret is trying to get his attention but he ignores it. He made his choice. Kleya is going to argue with him but she won’t be able to say anything he hasn’t already thought himself.
“Sir?” It’s so soft he almost doesn’t hear it.
Andor is looking at him, actually looking at him for the first time since the chamber opened, dark eyes wide. The blanket has been drawn up higher and his body shifts backwards minutely.
“Your kaff, how do you take it?” Luthen repeats, louder but without exasperation. Something’s wrong. This isn’t just cryosickness or confusion. Andor’s muscles twitch in microscopic jerks as he drops his head to stare at the floor again. His hands flex. He swallows. Anxiety rattles through him but he remains deathly still.
“Don’t look at me,” Luthen imagines him saying. He ducks his head again as he approaches but can’t catch Andor’s eyes.
“It’s not a test. You aren’t in trouble.”
He doesn’t know why he added that—Andor is a grown man, he can’t be in trouble—but the anxiety doesn’t diminish in his passenger.
Stars help me, he thinks tiredly. He doesn't have time for this, none of them do. Andor swallows and then whispers:
“With sweetener. Please.”
He’s still not looking at him; his body is still tense with anticipation.
“So do I,” Luthen lies. Kaff is a means to an end for him; he has no preference in how he consumes it. Andor relaxes visibly.
“Here,” Luthen says and hands him the cup. Andor takes it in two shaky hands and then sips it carefully even though Luthen knows it’s far too hot for his mouth.
“Thank you,” Andor murmurs. Luthen regards him and then walks back to the cockpit, his boots clumping on the metal floor.
“Don’t spill it,” he orders over his shoulder as he sits in the pilots chair and ignores the quiet yes, sir he gets in response.