“Your place or mine?” Vi asks, hoping to goad him into moving aside.
But the man in red is silent, the gun always rammed into some soft place on her body and the spherical droid floating by his side. Her leather jacket has built-in armor plating, but it wouldn’t do much to stop a fatal shot at this distance. Thing is, she knows he’s not going to shoot her. But she has to play along. When she slowly begins to take her hands down, he clicks his tongue at her.
“Tsk. Hands on head. You know how this works, scum.”
The blaster shoves into her kidney, and her hands go right back up. “Look, I’m not scum. I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m just a trader. Maybe I smuggle a little, but who doesn’t? And wouldn’t that be the New Republic’s jurisdiction, anyway? Did I travel back in time? Shouldn’t I be in a cell, waiting to speak to some cadaverous bureaucrat in a jaunty hat?”
The lift door slides open, and he shoves her out into a hall that’s downright dungeonous. They didn’t see anyone farther up, and Vi is willing to bet that’s due to a combination of this trooper’s knowledge of the ship’s rigorous schedule and his droid’s meddling, as it sometimes pushed ahead to lead. But down here—well, it’s clear nobody goes down here. Except people doing things they shouldn’t be doing.
The lighting is dim and flickering, and there’s something dripping, maybe runoff from the vent system. They’re deep in the bowels of the Star Destroyer, then, in an area that’s generally off-limits or beneath notice. And that’s not good for Vi. Even the First Order has rules, and the red trooper is breaking them. If this guy kills her, he won’t even have to do datawork. She’ll just be another load of garbage sliding down toward the incinerator.
Great. The Resistance doesn’t know much about the enemy they’re facing, and the New Republic doesn’t consider them a threat, which means Vi hasn’t been briefed on the protocol these people generally follow. She doesn’t know what to expect. She’s been trained to resist interrogation, but she also doesn’t know what new toys this guy in red might have. A chill trickles down her spine. She might be in over her head.
“They put you in the penthouse, huh, Emergency Brake?” she says, because she always babbles when truly worried. “Top-notch accommodations. Can we get room service?”
The blaster doesn’t leave her spine. Her captor gives her directions—turn here, turn there—but doesn’t respond to her taunting. Finally, he presses a long code into a control panel on the wall, and a door slides open far less smoothly than Vi would expect in what’s obviously a new ship. The room inside is colder than it should be and smells of moisture, metal, and, no point in denying it, blood. The spherical droid hurries inside first and turns off the cams, one by one. Vi pauses on the threshold, but the trooper finally touches her, shoving her hard with a gloved hand so that she stumbles to her knees, her fingers curling into a rusty grate set in the floor.
“Get up.”
“You really know how to treat a girl right.”
He reaches into her jacket’s collar and hauls her to her feet, spinning her around. She staggers into the wall, putting her back against the cold metal. The room isn’t large, maybe three meters by four, and it clearly has only one use: interrogation. Well, two uses, if you count torture. Three, if you include the inevitable death promised by the fact that she’s not going to give up any intel on the Resistance. The space is dominated by an interrogation chair, and the only other furnishings are a simple table and two rickety metal chairs, a place for the bad guys to sit down with a cup of caf and go over their notes while their victim bleeds out, probably.
“I hope the linens are clean.”
He shakes his head like he’s disappointed, grabs her jacket lapels, and drags her to the interrogation chair. They call it a chair, but it’s actually like a gurney standing on end with metal pincers to restrain her head, chest, and wrists as she stands on the metal lip. As part of her training, Vi was shown dozens of images of such machines ranging back from the days of the Empire’s Inquisitors to more sophisticated units currently being manufactured for Hutts and other thugs with too much money and a need to get information while keeping their slimy hands clean. This unit, she’s sad to notice, has life-support capabilities and a mind probe, which means her captor can bypass discussion and go straight to her brain. Vi has been trained to withstand fists and weapons, but no one has yet found a way to evade direct attacks on the nervous system. She contemplates the poison tooth implanted in the back of her jaw for the first time, running her tongue over it as her captor snaps the metal manacles closed around her arms and torso.
She won’t bite down yet. There’s still a way out of here. There has to be. With everything she knows now, surviving will mean major strides for the Resistance. They’ll have a better idea of what they’re truly fighting, in numbers, technology, and enemy mindset. But that means she’s got to find a way to live through this interrogation with her mind and body intact. And that means she’s got to stop focusing on her own predicament and start paying attention to her enemy and what makes him tick.
Luckily, she knows a lot more about him than he knows about her.
After strapping her in, he checks the panel monitoring her vital signs, flicking it with a finger.
“Your heart rate is up,” he notes.
“Yeah, well, I’m strapped into a torture chair, standing on somebody else’s dried blood. Seems like a natural response.”
“You’ve got something to hide.”
“Who doesn’t?”
His red helmet tips, just a fraction, conceding the point. As she watches him, he moves around the edges of the room, double-checking the cam feeds his droid already shut off, as well as what she’d guess is the comm system. The droid hovers ominously beside his shoulder, and he makes the rounds slowly, as if giving a warning.
This is not official.
This is off the record.
No one else is watching.
There will be no interruptions, no reprieves.
This is not how the First Order does things.
“So this is personal,” Vi notes.
“We shall see. It’s up to you. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
Vi wiggles, testing the strength of her bonds. “Letting me go would be really, really easy. Besides, you can search me all you want, but I don’t have anything useful. Let your boys tear my ship apart, deconstruct my droid, unravel my sweater, poke around in my brain all day. Whoever you think I am, you’re wrong. I’m just a harmless passerby.”
He stands before her now, legs spread and arms crossed. His blaster is clipped on his hip, red and gleaming. His red-gloved fingers tap against it, another reminder. It’s just the two of them and his droid. Anything could happen.
“You are Vi Moradi, code name Starling, known Resistance spy. And you have the very intel I need.”
“And you’re the Big Red Button. What happens if I poke you in the chest? Does a light turn on somewhere? Does something explode?”
“You don’t deny it?”
She would shrug if she weren’t manacled and strapped down. “You’re the one running the torture, so you’re the one who gets to decide what’s true and what’s not.”
“You were on Parnassos.”
Vi is too well trained to grin.
“Was I? And what’s so important about Parnassos?”
Her captor considers her. “Nothing. That’s the point. Now tell me what you know about Captain Phasma.”
VI MORADI IS GOOD AT HER job, so she cocks her head, her brow wrinkling.
“Who?”
Her captor says nothing to betray his annoyance, but he does move around behind her and adjust her bonds. Something slides over her head, brushing the tops of her ears. She’s about to say something clever when the smallest electric shock zaps her, raising every hair on her body. Instead of dissipating, it runs down her spine, fizzing out through her nerves to burn in the tips of her fingers and toes. Her teeth clench together painfully, and for
a long moment she’s unable to pull them apart.
“That’s not the highest setting,” he says, coming back around to face her. “Not by a long shot. That’s barely a taste.” He has a remote in his big, gloved hands, and she can’t see what sorts of controls it might feature, but she doesn’t really want to know. Pain is easier when you don’t know what’s coming.
“It tickled a little.” The words come out slurred, her jaw still clenched.
He cranks up the juice, and every muscle in Vi’s body goes rigid. It feels like her bones are on fire, and her eyes roll back in her head, showing her a personal galaxy of exploding stars that in no way resembles the comfortable safety of hyperspace.
When the jolt is over, Vi lifts her head to look at him, her jaw shivering with the struggle of prying her teeth apart. The place where the metal band rested against her forehead feels like it’s burned. The words come singly at first as sensation and control slowly return.
“I don’t know anything. About anything.”
Her captor says nothing, just gives her another jolt, turning the power up a little bit. She has no way of knowing how high it goes, of when it will start to do real, lasting damage to her body. When the electricity comes, it comes on strong, and it’s all she can do to ride it out. Stars, pain, heat, shaking, an ache in her jaw and another behind her eyes. When her vision returns, she watches her captor through her eyelashes. Despite his calm, there’s something desperate about him. He doesn’t seem like the interrogating type, like he does this sort of thing frequently. Perhaps he’s never done it before. He hasn’t tried to use the brain probe, after all, and if his droid were programmed for interrogation, there’s no way they’d pass up that hack.
Back in the Empire days, Vi knows, the Imperial Security Bureau could get anything out of anyone who wasn’t trained in the Force. But this guy? He doesn’t know what he’s doing. And that means he could kill her before he even knew she was dying.
“Tell me about Captain Phasma,” he barks again. “I know you’ve been to Parnassos, and I know that’s where she’s from. I know you were sent to gather intel on her. And now I want to know everything you know about her. So start talking!”
Yeah, like just yelling at her will force her to spill. Interrogation goes both ways.
Especially now that she knows he’s onto her. She has to tell him something or he’s going to break her, and soon.
Two more jolts, and he pulls up her hanging head by her hair. She spits blood on his boots from her bitten tongue and stares at the splotch on the flawless plastoid. The blood and the boot are not the same red, much as Brendol Hux might’ve liked them to be.
“Phasma,” he warns. “Tell me about her, or it’s going to get a lot worse.”
Vi looks up at him through a haze of red. Her brain feels scrambled, like she’s beyond drunk. Maybe that brain-stem jack is working, after all. Or maybe pain this intense really does loosen things up, with or without the fancy tech.
“You wanna know about Phasma? I can tell you about Phasma. Oh, the stories I’ve heard.”
Her captor sits back on one of the chairs, arms crossed.
“So tell me one, and we’ll work from there.”
Vi smiles, just a little.
“Fine. One story. I’ll tell it to you exactly as it was told to me by a woman named Siv. My brain isn’t working so good right now, but I have a very good memory. That’s why I’m such a good spy.”
He places the remote on the table.
And Vi starts talking.
THE STORY BEGINS WITH A TEEN girl named Siv. She was part of a band of about fifty loosely related people who lived in a territory on Parnassos they called the Scyre. Although the Scyre folk knew that their planet had once been rich with life and flourishing with technology, they also knew that some great cataclysm had befallen it, leaving them with an increasingly uninhabitable environment. The Scyre was ruled by the swiftly encroaching sea on one side and an unknown wasteland of jagged stone spires on the other. For Siv and her people, the only ground was rock, and food and water were always scarce. They ate mostly dried sea vegetables and meat, salty creatures from tide pools or dead things washed up against the rocks or, sometimes, the screeching birds that cleverly hid their roosts and eggs. Every now and then, some remnant of civilization would wash up against the pitted black cliffs, an old datapad or a bit of recyclamesh that they hoarded. But they had lost written language, and so all they could do was save what they could and hope that they would one day find the peace and comfort their ancestors had known.
Siv said their greatest boon was an ancient cave. The Nautilus, which had once been dry and safe but was now flooded by the sea most of the time. Once every few days, the tide would go out, and the Scyre folk could find succor in their cavern, resting and holding rituals and tending to their accumulated collection of broken tech, weapons, and human remains carefully stowed in hidden tunnels. The Nautilus was the reason the Scyre folk so fiercely defended their territory, for all that the cruel sea and neighboring bands encroached on their home. In a dangerous world, the Nautilus felt safe. And then one night, something terrible happened.
It started with a cry, and Siv jerked awake, ready to fight. She was young then, around sixteen, and already considered a deadly warrior. Leaping to her feet with a blade in her hand, eyes adjusting to the darkness, she scanned the cave for threats. Their entire band had been sleeping peacefully on pallets around a fire in the center of the cave, just under the hole in the ceiling that led back out to the cliffs. As a young, healthy person, Siv’s sleeping place was far from the fire’s warmth and light, but she easily found the source of the scream.
Their leader, Egil, lay closest to the fire, gasping for breath. A younger man, Porr, loomed over the graying warrior. Porr’s blade dripped blood, and his well-armed friends stood by him, grinning with menace.
“Egil is dead,” Porr shouted, hefting his blade, a crude thing made from a rusty saw. “He was too old to rule and growing slower by the day. I will lead you now. Siv, bring the detraxors and extract his essence so that even in death, he will protect our people.”
Siv looked down at the bag she carried with her always before glancing around the room to see how the rest of her band felt about the power shift. She immediately understood the situation, saw that her friends were moving into position, and knew she had to buy time.
“Egil is not dead. I will only use the detraxors when there is no more hope. You know that.”
“He will be dead shortly. Come here and prepare them. Or, better yet, teach me to use them. As the new leader, I will take over the ritual.”
At that, Siv picked up her second blade and went into a crouch. She wasn’t a large woman, but she was known for being a good, quick fighter with her two curved scythes made from old, sharpened agricultural implements. The well-kept silver flashed in the low light of the fire, and she bared her teeth.
“Detraxing is a holy ritual passed down through my mother, as I will one day pass it down to my daughter,” she told Porr. “You can’t simply use the machines on a body and move on. You must care for them, oil them, and offer the proper prayers as you withdraw the essence and craft the oracle salve. Without the detraxors, without the salve to protect our skin and heal our wounds, our entire band will die. A good leader understands such things.”
Porr sneered and took a step toward her. He’d always been a bully, and Siv would die before giving up the detraxors to him. Fortunately, she wouldn’t have to choose. The plan she’d seen beginning was coming to fruition, and a young man named Keldo spoke out from the crowd.
“Porr, this is not our way. Killing the leader is forbidden unless both parties agree to combat.”
Everyone turned to look down at the speaker. Most of the band stood now, but Keldo remained on the ground. He’d lost the lower part of one of his legs as a child, and although he was tough enough to survive in the Scyre, he was now known for his wise counsel and clever ideas.
Porr laughed mockingl
y. “Oh, and you’re going to stop me?”
In the silence that followed, a strong voice filled the Nautilus. But it wasn’t Keldo.
“I will stop you.”
A tall figure in full battle regalia stepped before the murdering usurper.
It was Keldo’s sister, Phasma.
Over two meters tall, Phasma drew every eye. She wore her war mask, a rust-red terror of hardened pinniped-skin painted with black slashes and surrounded by scavenged feathers and fur. The eyeholes were covered in fine mesh salvaged from a wreck, making Phasma seem less like a human and more like a nightmare monster. Climbing claws tipped her gloves and boots to help her navigate the rocks and spires outside or fight any rival war bands. And now she faced Porr in her heavily wrapped leathers, mask, and spikes while he wore only sleeping clothes. He had planned his raid for the time when Phasma was outside on guard duty, but he had made a fatal miscalculation. Beside her, Porr looked small and weak.
“Stay out of this, Phasma. Your brother is worth nothing to the group, and you know it. Now that I rule, you will be my deputy, but you must submit to me first.”
Phasma shook her head. “You will never rule me.”
As if in agreement, a circle of warriors stepped forward to join her. Even in their sleeping clothes, they had a lethal edge. These young fighters were loyal to Phasma and ready to mete out justice as she commanded.
Siv was among them, and she first nudged her detraxor bag toward Keldo with a grateful smile, knowing he would keep the vital equipment safe. As she moved into position, the light of the fire flashed off her dark skin, and she was glad she’d tied back her long dreadlocks with a piece of leather so that she could fight more nimbly.
Nearest Siv was Torben, a big man with a bushy brown mane and beard, tan skin, and light-green eyes. He was good-natured and smiling even with his spiked club and huge ax in hand, the tallest and broadest man among the Scyre and always ready for a fight. His best friend, Carr, stood beside him, a lanky, quick-witted man with golden skin, sunbleached hair, and freckles. Carr had the best aim when throwing blades and was always ready with a joke, but for now he was serious and held two knives by their tips, his eyes scanning the room for anyone who might stand against Phasma. On Siv’s other side was Gosta, an agile, quick girl who could dart in to disembowel an enemy and dance out of range before her victim began to fall. Stocky but all muscle, with medium-brown skin and curly black hair, she was just a few years younger than Phasma and looked up to her like she was a goddess reborn.