8

Corran knew that once again being in the cockpit of a fighter should have made him happy, but it did not. He could find no fault with the fighter nor with being given a patrol mission. He’d done enough of those to expect boredom, and yet even that wasn’t giving him a problem. Just to be flying again was enough to override boredom.

The fact was, he realized, that he was unhappy. Something was gnawing away at him inside. Something was wrong, and there was no way he could ignore it. It created an anxiety in him that was out of all proportion with what he was doing. It felt as if he weren’t involved in a patrol at all, but in some other mission with a hidden agenda he knew nothing about.

“Nemesis One, report.”

“One is clear, Control.”

The voice coming through the comm unit betrayed no hint of deception or urgency, but Corran couldn’t shake the sickening feeling that he was being manipulated. He had a natural aversion to being used, and he could feel unseen hands all over himself, pointing him in a certain direction, for reasons he could not fathom. He was surprised to find himself less resentful of their agenda—whatever it was—than of being manipulated.

I’m reasonable. I don’t shy away from difficult tasks. I do what I am asked to do, within reason. Didn’t I do that …? His thoughts dead-ended as he realized he couldn’t summon up specific memories to back up his argument. He knew he had performed many dangerous missions, but he couldn’t pinpoint them. His inability to do so wouldn’t have concerned him, and in fact almost did not, except that he kept feeling like a hologram being processed by someone else’s computer.

“Nemesis One, we have two contacts on the heading of 270 degrees. They are ten kilometers distant. They are hostile. You are free to engage and terminate them.”

“As ordered.” Corran punched up the data on the incoming ships and displayed it over his monitor. Two TIEs. The starfighters inspired no fear in him, and he would have viewed them with utter detachment except that a random thought shot off through his brain.

Two TIEs aren’t nearly as deadly as a single Tycho. The connection seemed entirely logical to Corran: the similar sounds created a link. The fact that Tycho Celchu had been an Imperial pilot who flew TIEs reinforced it. Corran knew Tycho had betrayed Rogue Squadron, and Corran had been determined to see him pay. If I weren’t here, I’d be there, taking care of Tycho.

Before he could begin to wonder where there was, Control’s voice came through the comlink again. “We have additional information on the incoming ships. Transmitting now.”

The image on the monitor shifted from a TIE starfighter to an X-wing. An additional line of data beneath the fighter’s image informed Corran the ship was flown by Captain T. Celchu. A jolt of adrenaline pulsed through his body, then slammed into his brain. He couldn’t believe his luck—the coincidence of being able to fly against Tycho and avenge Rogue Squadron was incredible. And I will make the most of it.

Corran inverted the TIE Interceptor he flew and dove. The X-wings started to come after him, vectoring in on his belly, so he inverted again, then pulled through a climbing loop to starboard. He soared as the X-wings dove, neither side wasting laser energy when the chances of hitting were so small. Corran kept tightening the loop into a spiral that emphasized the squint’s greater maneuverability, then streaked away to underscore its superior speed as well.

A light flicked on within the head’s-up display, indicating one of the X-wings was trying for a proton torpedo target lock, but a quick climb, roll, and twisting dive broke the lock and brought Corran out on a vector toward Tycho’s X-wing. Corran sideslipped the Interceptor to starboard, then rolled up on the left wing and climbed in toward Tycho. He flipped his lasers from quad- to dual-fire, assuming he’d have to use multiple shots in multiple passes to bring Tycho down. He led the X-wing, anticipating Tycho’s break, then hastily snapped off a shot that splashed energy over Tycho’s shields as the Interceptor overshot its target.

No reaction. That isn’t like Tycho at all. Corran rolled up on the right stabilizer, climbed into a loop, then rolled over and out to port. Another inversion took him into a dive, but his scanners showed the X-wings hadn’t stayed with him past the first maneuver, much less through the second.

Corran shivered. They’re handling like TIE starfighters, not like X-wings, and the pilot flying that first one isn’t Tycho. He switched his targeting computer over to the second ship and saw that X-wing was listed as being flown by Kirtan Loor. An immediate desire to vape that ship filled him, but it did not deflect him from thinking. In fact, the vehemence of his feelings about Loor swept him past the fact that Loor and Tycho had been in collusion on Coruscant.

It carried him far enough that he recalled Loor didn’t know how to fly any space ships at all, much less starfighters.

Loor can’t be there. The chance that Tycho and Loor would show up where I could attack and kill them is unbelievable. Whereas before he had taken great delight in the coincidence, now it became evidence that he was being manipulated. The link between a TIE and Tycho had been made in his mind before Tycho showed up as a pilot. While he knew inferring causality from that relationship was not strictly logical, his being manipulated meant it was more than possible.

Tycho is an enemy, so he was placed in one fighter. Another enemy was plucked from a list of my enemies and placed in the second fighter. More anger flared through Corran and battered aside the blockages in his brain that had kept him thinking of nothing outside the cockpit. The apparent insertion of personal enemies into his situation told Corran two things. First off, I’m in a simulator, and second, someone knows enough about me to know who my enemies are. Pitting me against my enemies gives me some wish fulfillment, which is a good thing. It rewards behavior, but I have to ask myself, is flying an interceptor against X-wings behavior for which I want to be rewarded?

His stomach shrank and hardened into a rock that threatened to explode volcanically. I’m flying an Imp ship against Rebels. I don’t want to do that. Corran immediately realized that only his enemies—the remnants of the Empire—would want him to feel good about attacking Rebels, yet few Imps would take the time or make the effort to manipulate him that way. Some would imprison him and the rest would just kill him.

Except one.

Ysanne Isard.

Injecting her into the jumble of thoughts bouncing around his brain immediately started to impose order on his mind. She was known and feared for her ability to warp Rebels and turn them against friends and family. She had been successful with Tycho Celchu, and he was not the only success story to come out of her Lusankya prison. Her altered agents had wrought havoc among the Emperor’s enemies, and his death had done nothing to cause Iceheart to curtail her operations.

The fog in Corran’s brain began to evaporate. He remembered having met Isard after his capture. She’d vowed to transform him into a tool of the Emperor’s vengeance. This simulator run—and the one before it—clearly was designed to get him to attack Rebel symbols. Subsequent sessions would further crush his resistance, training him to greater and greater levels of efficiency while turning him against everyone he knew, loved, and respected.

She would make me over into the human equivalent of the plague she unleashed on Coruscant.

Corran shook his head, then raised his hands from the simulator’s steering yoke and yanked his helmet off. Electrodes taped to his head pulled away rather abruptly, taking some hair with them, but he ignored the pain. The electrodes fed my brain wave patterns to a computer. The patterns were compared to data gathered from interrogations, so the computer could recognize what I was thinking about and project the proper clues into the simufotion. Very good.

He pulled the respiration mask from his face and let it dangle against his chest. “This is Nemesis One. The game is over. I won’t betray my people.”

The star field on the screen in front of Corran vanished. In its place he saw Ysanne Isard’s head and shoulders. Her mismatched eyes, the left one a fiery red and the right one an ice blue, added venom to the woman’s steely expression. Her sharp, slender features might have made her seem beautiful to some, but the fear her anger stabbed into his heart made her more than ugly to Corran. Her long black hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, yet she had let her white temple-locks remain unbound as if that girlish affectation would somehow soften her image.

“You are under the impression, Corran Horn, that this little victory is significant and hampers my efforts in some way. It does not.” An eyebrow arched over her arctic eye. “You worked with the Corellian Security Force, so you can understand how powerful certain interrogation techniques can be. What you have endured so far is little more than testing.”

“And I passed.”

“From your perspective that might seem true.” Her eyes sharpened. “From mine it merely means you have reclassified yourself. You will require more time than others I have worked with in the past, but here at Lusankya, time is abundant.”

Corran shrugged. “Good, then I’ll have abundant time to plan my escape.”

“I doubt it.” She sighed as if what she was about to say hurt her in some way. “Were you easy to train, you would find your stay here pleasant. As you are difficult, the next step is for me to determine if you know anything I consider valuable. Unfortunately this means sifting through a lot of things I don’t want to know. I hope your life has been interesting, because my technicians have been known to resort to cruelty when they are bored.”

“They’ll learn nothing from me.”

Isard frowned. “Please, Horn, skip the bluster. We will start with a level four narco-interrogation and work our way down to level one if we must. You know you’ll tell us whatever we want to know.”

Sheer terror froze the lump in Corran’s stomach solid. With a level four interrogation session he’d be remembering things his mother had forgotten while she was carrying him in her womb. I will have no secrets. Hundreds of images flitted through his mind as he sorted valuable memories from the casual ones.

This process, while agonizing, also brought a smile to his face. Gil Bastra, the man who had created a series of identities for Corran to use after he fled from Corellia, had made sure the identities took Corran out into the outlier worlds. From Loor they know everything about my days with CorSec. Thanks to Gil there’s very little valuable information I can give her. I was out of circulation until I joined Rogue Squadron, and I don’t know enough about the Rebellion to hurt it.

“I see your smile, Horn. You may feel bold enough to smile now, but things will change.” Isard herself smiled, and Corran found it a most forbidding thing. “When we are finished with you, smiles will be but a memory, and a painful one at that.”