Reading Room
StarWars FanFiction
POV: Freedom's End (IV)
By Daniel "Drake" Sutherland Copyright © Daniel Sutherland 2000-2001.
Download PDF	Printable version

IV

[Commanding Officer's office, Imperial Detention Facility ORS1178]

Lieutenant Colonel Trell of the Imperial Army didn't look up from his desk as the door chimed.

"Enter," he called, continuing with his work. He could hear the precise clicks as polished boots hit the floor, and then the silence as his visitor waited for him to look up and acknowledge him. This the lieutenant colonel eventually did, glancing up and nodding. His visitor braced to attention.

"Captain Targ reporting as ordered, sir," the young man said stiffly, with a crisp salute. The colonel braced in his chair and returned the salute, then nodded again.

"At ease, Captain, then let's have your report." The junior officer obediently stood at ease, hands clasped behind his back, and began his report.

"Sir, I was on duty at post 38 Alpha this morning when I heard the sound of a large piece of rock falling. I rushed to investigate and found that a prisoner was climbing a rope which seemed to be fashioned from torn sheets, with a crude but effective grapnel hook at one end. The hook had been made by bending an eating utensil, a knife, sharpening one end and putting a hole in the other. The hook was fastened to an overhang near the ceiling in the cavern, and the prisoner was nearly to the top of the rope when I arrived. I immediately opened fire with two of the men, killing the would-be escapee - prisoner 5831 - outright, but also causing a rockslide. A significant portion of the cave wall crumbled, burying several prisoners and two of my men who had rushed forward to investigate. The men, assisted by the prisoners, cleared the rubble. Prisoner 5831 and another, 5620, were both dead, but everyone else caught under the landslide was alive. I had our men evacuated and taken to the infirmary, and I then disposed of the other prisoners."

Lieutenant Colonel Trell's face hardened.

"Why?"

If Captain Targ felt any emotion at all when asked this question, then he didn't show it. He stared straight ahead as he spoke.

"Sir, those prisoners were obviously aiding 5831 in his escape attempt. They were all clustered around him when it occurred. None of them raised the alarm. And they could not have failed to notice the equipment he was carrying to facilitate his pathetic attempt-"

"An attempt that nearly succeeded, if he was nearly at the top of the rope before anyone heard him," Trell's voice broke in harshly. Targ swallowed slowly, and he controlled himself, but anger caused the corners of his eyes to bunch up, Trell saw.

"Yes, sir."

The lieutenant colonel nodded.

"So you shot them, as prisoners aiding another to escape." Again, the slight twitch that betrayed the junior officer's anger.

"That is correct, sir."

His commanding officer took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

"Very well, Captain. File your incident report and return to your duties. How are the men in the infirmary?" The captain seemed to relax.

"I've just come from there, sir. Both are resting comfortably - at least as comfortable as is possible in a bacta tank - and are expected to make a full recovery."

"Very good, Captain. Dismissed."

"Sir." Captain Targ saluted crisply, then marched out of his CO's office. As the door slid shut behind him, Lieutenant Colonel Trell let out a noisy sigh. He did not particularly like Targ, especially not his bloodthirsty nature, but he could not afford to second guess his own officers without hard evidence. What Targ had said was all true, according to other troops he had interviewed, and the tunnel that the prisoner 5831 had been trying to reach had been found and blocked up. Second guessing one's own officers was never a good thing, Trell reflected, although he was perfectly prepared to do so if he thought that they were in the wrong. But in this case he had no real reason to believe that it was so, and besides, undermining his subordinates' authority in a place like this was doubly dangerous. He would not do so without proper proof.

And anyway, he thought grimly to himself, blaster shots were cheaper and easier to provide than bacta baths. And the convoy that was supposed to be arriving within the next few days wouldn't bring enough bacta for his liking. It never did.

[Prisoners' Mess Hall, Imperial Detention Facility]

"Jock? Are you allright?" The voice came from one of the very few women that was being held prisoner here. The prisoner's head remained down, staring at his meagre lunch but focussed on nothing.

"Jock?"

The grey head slowly inclined itself slightly, the normally piercing blue eyes seeming somehow dull and vacant.

"Yeah," the prisoner, known to his fellow detainees simply as "Jock", answered her at length. "I'm okay." But he wasn't okay, and both knew it.

"There was nothing you - or any of us - could have done, Jock," the woman continued. Slowly, Jock shook his head.

"No," he said at last. "And that's the whole point. There's nothing any of us can do here, except work, and wait to die." This statement was made with an air of terrible finality, and the woman's face fell as she resumed her meal, her companion clearly not in the mood for talking. I can't believe this has happened to Jock, of all people, she thought sadly. All the fight's just gone out of him.

[Wolfshead Squadron Briefing Room, aboard the Wolf's Lair]

Vyper watched as his pilots filed silently into the room. The noise level, for once, was low, and the mood subdued. Wolfshead Squadron's CO smiled faintly as he glanced around the room, noting that a good number of the squadron's members seemed to be suffering from headaches - or worse - this morning. He waited as the last people entered and the door shut, then began.

"Good morning," he said, fancying that he could hear the suppressed groans from a number of his audience, "the captain has asked me to fill you all in on what occurred last night.

"If you haven't already heard, we picked up an unknown convoy that jumped into the system, and we scrambled our Ready Five fighters to investigate. This they did, seeing nothing unusual. However, Granite discovered a discrepancy that he thought was a computer glitch, but which was actually a malfunction in an Imperial IFF transponder which had been modified to transmit neutral codes. His targeting computer kept re-classifying the contact as Imperial, then neutral, and back again.

"At this stage he took a closer look, discovering some design modifications to the freighters. Just as his B-wing pronounced itself healthy, eight TIEs launched from the freighters themselves - two a piece - and the eight transports escorting the cargo ships broke formation and attacked. Well done to Hawk, Firestorm and Granite who managed to take out all TIEs and transports and disable the freighters without any trouble.

"We then dispatched boarding transports to seize the cargo and crew of the freighters, and we were instructed to put six fighters on Ready Alert status." Vyper paused, giving each of those six pilots a grateful look.

"The boarding went off without a hitch - no Imperial reinforcements or any other ships of any kind arrived. We seized a whole lot of cargo, along with twelve crew members who are currently our guests down in the brig.

"After receiving direction from Sector Command, we put our own transport pilots on board those freighters early this morning, after getting them operational again. They'll be flown to a secure location where we can examine them in more detail - Command is particularly interested in the IFF ruse and how they pulled it off, even if it wasn't entirely successful. They hope we might be able to use something similar to our advantage.

"Lynx are due to rejoin us tomorrow morning after conducting training exercises, so we're only without transport capabilities for a day or so," Vyper continued, carefully explaining as much information as he knew. "In any case, as we're only on a standard patrol anyway, we have some mission flexibility, which the captain and myself intend to exploit. The Wolf's Lair will stick to her present patrol pattern, but will slow down a little, to give us more time to try and find out where that convoy was going.

"The convoy was carrying nothing out of the ordinary - food, bacta, medical supplies, clothes, power cells - but all the cargo points toward it being a resupply detail for some sort of base. The problem is," Vyper continued, and here he arched his eyebrows and spread his hands, "that there aren't supposed to be any Imperial bases around here. At least, none that the Republic know about. So, we're going to try and find out where that convoy was headed, as it seems clear that they were ferrying supplies to an Imperial installation somewhere in this general area. Their fuel supplies were low, too, which helps us a little bit, limiting our search area into a manageable size."

At this point Vyper paused, and before long a hand in the audience shot up. Wolfshead's CO nodded.

"Hardrive?"

"Uh, yeah," one of the squadron's younger members, First Lieutenant Nik "Hardrive" McKay, ventured. "Vyper, I'm wondering why it's so hard to find where these Imps were off to. I mean, we should just be able to download their nav logs and data and follow the trail to its end." Vyper shook his head ruefully.

"Unfortunately, it's not that simple, but- I think I'll let Arachnoid explain." He nodded and stepped aside as Captain Diego "Arachnoid" Sommariva, the squadron's Intelligence Officer, took the podium.

"If the Imperials do have a base hidden somewhere around here, then they're wanting to keep it very quiet," he said evenly. "To that end, they're paranoid about security, to the point that even the convoy freighter pilots themselves don't know where they were heading. Or," he added darkly, "at least they say they don't." A loud snort greeted this remark, and Arachnoid searched the room to find it. He thought that it came from somewhere near where the regular X-wing pilots sat in a group, although he couldn't be sure.

"In any case, their claim is that they have no access to their nav computer whatsoever," Arachnoid went on, unperturbed at the interruption. "They say that they simply pilot the ship in realspace between nav buoys and let the computer take over when they jump into hyperspace. And the navcomp automatically destroys all record of the journey when it's completed.

"This is, at best, only partially true, though," he added with a frown. "When our teams went over the freighters, they found that all the nav logs had been wiped, and the journey was clearly far from over. Also, the erasure hadn't been done as thoroughly as it might have, indicating that it was done in a hurry. Add it all up, and you get the crews trying to delete all their data before they were boarded - which shows that they had some access to the information, at least," Arachnoid noted, his gaze travelling slowly around the room. "Even if it was only the ability to delete it. The good news is, that because of their somewhat sloppy work, it'll be easier for us to eventually (hopefully) pull the information out of there. To that end, we've 'borrowed' the nav computer data core from the lead freighter, the Bountiful, and Boradelis and Hanniuska are tinkering with it now, along with a couple of our slicing capable personnel on board.

"So, hopefully we'll know just where to look soon," he concluded, stepping aside again as Vyper took his position.

"That's where we are, then," he said firmly. "I want everyone to be ready to launch within half an hour of getting the word, which will happen when we get some information from the data core. However, until that time," he continued, his voice softening a little, "your time is your own. Some of you certainly look like you need some more sleep." A few weak laughs met this remark, and Vyper smiled.

"Any more questions in the meantime? No? Dismissed, then." And with that, the squadron stood and began to slowly file out of the room.

Drake came last, and put his hand on Vyper's shoulder as the latter was about to leave.

"Drake! What can I do for you? Apart from drag you along to sickbay for some aspirin?" Vyper asked cheerfully. The young man groaned and gently put a hand to his head.

"Try talking a little softer," he said with a grimace. "But also, can I speak to the prisoners from the convoy?" Vyper did a double take at the strange request.

"Speak to them? What for?" Drake considered a little before answering.

"I might be able to get something new out of them," he said at last. "I don't know who's debriefing them, but I've had a fair amount of experience in that sort of thing. I wouldn't mind a shot at it. It's obvious they're not telling us everything they know." Vyper stared at Drake long and hard.

"You know, we're supposed to let the Intel types on board handle this," he said, some disapproval evident in his voice. "If anyone from the squadron would have access, it would be Arachnoid, not you, or even me."

"Yeah, Vyper, I know all that," Drake said patiently. "But Arachnoid, good as he is at his job, doesn't really have any professional intel background, and that Dey'jeaa bloke might be good too, but he's a Bothan, and he does everything the Bothan way. I'm telling you, I've got a different angle on this, and who knows? It just might work." Vyper stared at the young man again as he considered it. He was forced, for once, to evaluate just how well he knew one of his pilots. He had first met Drake when the latter had just joined White Squadron, fresh from escaping from his home planet and the employment of the Arrebnac Security Organisation. It was odd, Vyper thought, that no one seemed to ask Drake much about his past with that organisation, and the Arrebnacian, for his part, didn't seem to talk much about it, either. The young man seemed to fit so well into the squadron, and, Vyper admitted to himself, was a good enough pilot, that no one seemed to question his past much. The same was true of many of the pilots - Raiven, Drake's partner-in-crime since the ex-Imperial had joined the squadron, was another good example. Although in Raiven's case, Vyper reflected, his past was somewhat well known anyway.

But what, Vyper wondered, just exactly what had Drake done back when he was a Security Officer? Surely he would've conducted interrogations at some stage. What methods did he use? Was he the sort of person who might employ violence to get information?

They were questions that Vyper had always subconsciously assumed he knew the answers to, but now, he had to consciously admit to himself that he wasn't sure. Well, time to put friendship and trust to the test, he thought with a mental shrug. I've trusted Drake with my life enough times, I should be able to trust him in this.

"Okay," he said at last, letting out a sigh. "But be careful, be discreet, and don't damage the prisoners, okay? Believe it or not, they're valuable."

Drake shot his commanding officer an odd look.

"Don't worry, Michael, I'm not that kind of an interrogator," he said, a slight edge creeping into his voice despite his best efforts to keep it out. "And if I come up blank, then I come up blank and we'll figure things out another way." Vyper nodded, feeling relieved.

"Okay. Make sure that you let Dario and I know if you find anything." Drake grinned.

"Will do, boss."