Trapped (6 page)

But once Ferus was gone, Div grew disgusted by his own company. He started back toward the Rebel camp. Midway, Luke appeared, his little astromech droid in tow.

Luke waved, grinning. “Glad I found you!”

“You were looking for me?” Div asked, instantly cautious. The Rebels seemed to have lost interest in locking him up now that they had all the information they needed on this X-7. But Div hadn't forgotten that before that day, he'd been a prisoner on this moon.

And he suspected that Luke hadn't forgotten that Div had once tried to kill him.

Luke drew his lightsaber and activated the beam.

Div tensed, ready to leap out of the way. He'd seen Luke handle the weapon. His efforts were clumsy, hesitant. Div could disarm him. Probably.

“I come out here to practice sometimes,” Luke said. “More privacy, you know?”

“Uh, yeah.” Div felt like a fool.

“Back on Kamino, you saved my life with this thing,” Luke said, lifting the lightsaber. “Like you'd been using it your whole life.”

Div shrugged. “Like I say, just something I picked up.”

“Well, I was kind of hoping...” Luke reddened. “You think you could teach me some moves?”

“What?”

“It's no big deal,” Luke said quickly. “I just figured...I don't really have anyone else who can show me how to use this thing.”

That's what you think,
Div thought. He didn't understand why Ferus was so determined not to tell Luke the truth. Why not start training him as a Jedi
now,
before it was too late?

Like it's too late for me.

“Sounds great,” Div said. “I could use the exercise.”

It wasn't exercise he needed. It was distraction. Pushing himself to the point of exhaustion, and past it. This was perfect.

“Think of the lightsaber as an extension of your body,” he said, repeating the advice he'd been given by the Jedi Ry-Gaul and Garen Muln. “Always be aware of its position, but never watch your blade—you watch your
enemy.
Your focus has to be narrow and wide, all at once.”

Div showed him Shii-Cho, the first of the seven Jedi fighting forms. He taught Luke the basics, thrust and parry, lunge and deflect. Div cringed as Luke ran through his velocity drills looking like a child waving a stick. But he would learn. Form III, Soresu, was more advanced, but Luke had already figured out many of the basic laserblast-deflection techniques. His movements were still too loose and ranging, making him a wide target for incoming blasts.

Every time Div used the lightsaber to demonstrate, it was more difficult to hand it back. His body remembered all the moves, effortlessly falling into old habits. But it wasn't just the fighting techniques, or the deadly efficiency of the blade.

A lightsaber wasn't just another weapon. Using it, even for practice, meant connecting with the Force. There was no other way to achieve the balance, the necessary equilibrium of stillness and motion. Wielding the lightsaber meant opening himself up to everything he'd shut out these last several years. It meant unlocking a door in his mind that he'd thought was sealed forever.

It was tempting to believe that it wasn't. Ferus seemed to believe that Luke could begin his training even as an adult—contrary to everything Div knew about Jedi traditions. So why couldn't Div return to his training, reclaim the skills of his youth, fulfill the destiny everyone had foreseen for him?

Even if he'd wanted it, Div felt sure it wouldn't work. Being a Jedi meant opening oneself up to the Force. It meant having trust. It required a degree of blind faith, of innocence, that Div had long since lost the capability to feel. He wasn't willing to let that vulnerability—that
weakness
—back into himself.

“Like this?” Luke asked, executing a perfect riposte-counterparry combination. He spun around, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, slashing the lightsaber across a bough of the nearest Massassi tree with startling accuracy. Not that Div was about to reveal that he was impressed.

“That's great...as long as your enemy moves no faster than a tree,” Div said. “Again!”

Luke swept through the training exercise again, and again, blade flashing, eyes lit with determination. Div couldn't help remembering his own training, many years ago. Hiding out on an asteroid with all those proud warriors, so eager for the day when he would be big enough to fight by their side. They had died for him, all of them. Gave him their one escape pod. Watched him disappear into space and waited to die. Safe in his pod, Div had watched as the Imperials had aimed their terrible weapon at the asteroid and erased it from existence.

All those people, giving up their lives so that Div could escape—so that the galaxy's “only hope” would survive.

All that, and it wasn't me after all,
Div thought as Luke slashed and leapt and spun, striving for perfection.
But what if it's him?

B
elazura was a sewer.

According to the records, the planet had once been a popular vacation spot, its long stretches of white sandy beaches calling tourists from all over the Inner Rim. X-7 had scanned the holopics in disgust. All that land, wasted on useless pursuits. Pale bodies stretching out under the three suns. Children splashing in the surf. And behind them, acres of lush green hills, cluttered with roaming herds of wilter-beasts and hairy bronaks.

The inefficiency of it was criminal—or should have been, at least.

X-7 climbed out of his Howlrunner and looked around with satisfaction. It was an open-air spaceport, left over from the old days, when it would have afforded views of the sparkling coastlines and blooming hills. Those were all gone now, thanks to the Empire. The hills had been stripped as 11-17 miner droids probed the earth beneath for valuable varmigio and mutonium. Derricks and power generators dotted the water as far as the eye could see. The water itself had turned nearly black with runoff from the factories lining the coast; the three suns were barely visible through the thick haze of brown smog. X-7 took a deep, appreciative breath. That foul stench was the perfume of civilization.

The people of Belazura had plenty to thank the Empire for. Before the Imperials arrived, Belazurans had been useless fools whose skills were limited to serving tropical drinks and pulling flailing Phindians out of the surf. But the Empire had put them to work in the mines and the factories, turned them into productive galactic citizens.

Though none of them looked very happy about it.

Except for periodic convoys of Imperial troop carriers, the narrow streets of Belazura's capital city were nearly deserted. Small wonder, as every able-bodied man and woman was either at work or asleep. But those who couldn't work—the aged, the infirm, the very young—shuffled down the sidewalks, heads down, shoulders hunched. X-7 had no hope that anyone here would recognize him from his past; Project Omega had rebuilt his facial structure. But even if he'd worn the same face as this Trever Flume, there seemed little chance that any of these Belazurans would even dare look at him.

X-7 had followed the trail of information as far as it would take him. It had taken him here. Soresh's codes had provided access to an encrypted Imperial network that had revealed all he could ever want to know about Project Omega. How its unwilling recruits were culled from prisoners whose families thought they were dead. How their brains were wiped. How they were molded into slaves of the Empire, convinced that they had been volunteers. How the records of their past were wiped from the system.

But information wasn't nearly as easy to erase as most people thought. It had been well buried, but X-7 had found it—little more than a name, Trever Flume. Captured on Belazura at age eighteen, shipped off to Project Omega, where he became its most successful graduate. Code name: X-7.

That was it, the dead end. So X-7 had stolen himself a Howlrunner and flown to Belazura. He wasn't leaving until he'd found some answers.

The simplest way to track down information would have been to report to the Imperial liaison at the spaceport. But X-7 needed to stay off the Imperial radar. And likely some kind of fail-safe trigger in the system existed, designed to red-flag anyone who came looking for answers about Trever Flume.

Instead, he decided to begin his search for the past in a more obvious place: Trever Flume's home.

My home?
he wondered, staring at the decrepit, crumbling structure that had been Flume's last known address. The two-story house was falling apart: peeling paint, rusted siding, broken generator. Its windows were boarded up, Rebel graffiti scrawled across them in fading reds and blues. It was abandoned; that was clear.

X-7 closed his eyes, trying to force a memory. But the flashbacks always came when he least expected and least desired them. When he was
trying
to remember, his mind stayed blank.

“You don't belong around here.”

X-7 whirled around, furious with himself that he hadn't heard the Arconan approaching. By instinct, his hand flashed toward his blaster—but he stopped himself. The Arconan's anvil-shaped head was shriveled with age, his marble-like eyes milky and unfocused. Despite his hostile glare, there was no chance he'd be a threat.
Let it play out,
X-7 thought.
I can always kill him later.

He adopted a mild, harmless expression. Project Omega might have stripped him of the ability to
experience
human emotion, but he was remarkably good at imitating it. “I'm looking for the family that used to live here,” he said. “They're old friends of mine, and since I'm passing through town, I thought I'd catch up.”

The Arconan looked around at the crumbling buildings and cratered street. “No one just
passes through
this part of town.”

Patience,
X-7 cautioned himself, itching for his blaster. He'd make this being talk, one way or another. But it would be smartest to do so without attracting unwanted attention. The street might be empty, but he could see plenty of windows with a perfect view. Anyone could be lurking behind the transparisteel.

“I'm in Belazura on business, and—”

“Imperial business?” the Arconan said, now even more suspicious. “Haven't you people done enough? What now? You want to torture their ghosts?”

“Does that mean you knew them?” X-7 asked eagerly. “The Flumes?”

“What's it to you?”

“I told you, I'm an old friend.”

The Arconan sneered. “Right. An old friend who came by to say hello after all these years. Except I tell you they're dead and you don't even blink. So how about you tell me what you
really
want?”

“Money,” X-7 said without hesitation. “What else does anyone want?”

“They owe you?” the Arconan asked.

“Big-time.”

The Arconan made a strange sound, like a dianoga choking on a lump of sewage. X-7 suddenly realized he was laughing. “Good luck getting them to pay you back now!” he chortled. But quickly, he sobered up. “You want some help tracking down what's left of Flume's people? It's going to cost you.”

Again, X-7 swallowed his irritation. This Arconan didn't know how close he was to death. “How much?”

“Fifty.”

“Twenty,” X-7 countered.

“Fifty.”

“Thirty,” X-7 offered.

“Fifty.”

He was too impatient to negotiate. Money was nothing to him. He threw a handful of it at the alien. “That's half. Give me the address, and I'll hand over the other half.”

The Arconan complied, giving him an address on the fringes of town.

“If this information is inaccurate, I'll be back for you,” X-7 said coolly. Now he finally withdrew the blaster from its holster.

“Oh, it's accurate,” the alien said, laughing again. “You'll find what's left of them, for all the good it will do you.”

X-7 wasn't looking to do himself good. He was looking for answers. After that, who knew? Maybe he would reclaim his old identity and learn to be human again, weak and pathetic.

Or maybe he would track down every last Flume, kill them all, and be done with this mess forever.

The rest of them,
X-7 thought sourly.
Perfect.

The Arconan hadn't lied. Not technically, at least. Presumably whatever was left of Trever Flume's family was here—underground. Beneath the crooked tombstones. At the edge of an old graveyard, weeds spouting between the mounds of dirt.

Trever Flume.

Clive Flax.

Astri Divinian.

They didn't share a name, but the epitaphs—
loving brother, loving mother, loving father
—made it clear they were a family.
Love.
It put a bad taste in his mouth.

There was something about the last name
Divinian.
Something familiar. Could it mean he was on the right track? X-7 stared at the graves, trying to feel something. “My parents,” he said aloud, testing the phrase on his tongue. It felt wrong.

“Trever,” he tried next. “My name is Trever.”

Each of the three graves had
“Gone never. Here forever,”
the standard Belazuran mourning cry, etched across the top.

Each was marked by a bouquet of nahtival flowers. The flowers were fresh;
someone
was tending to these graves.

X-7 paced quickly to the entrance of the graveyard, where a hunched Belazuran had been hacking at the ground with a rusty shovel. He was still there, now sliding a tombstone into the shallow hole.

“Who's been here today?” X-7 asked harshly.

The weary Belazuran looked at him blankly.

“Today!” X-7 shouted. “Someone put fresh flowers on those graves.” He gestured toward the Divinian plots. “Who was it?”

The man nodded slowly. “That's right, he did come by today. Didn't expect him.”

X-7 grabbed the man's shoulders and gave him a brutal shake. “Him
who,
you mudcrutch?”

“The boy,” the man said in a dreamy voice. “Of course, he's not a boy anymore, is he? Time's passing, it is. Slow, fast, it just keeps going. Yesterday we're a republic, today we're an empire, tomorrow—”

“The boy,” X-7 growled.

“A man now,” the Belazuran said. “Thought I wouldn't recognize him, but I did, didn't I? Looks just like his mother. Astri was a beauty, that one.”

So Trever had a brother. There had been a suspicious lack of information about Trever's family in the files, as if it had been purposefully blotted out. But this was better than a file; this was a living relative, in the flesh. In reach.
If
the man could focus long enough to spill the details.
He'll tell me what I need,
X-7 thought with determination.
Even if I have to cut it out of him.

“Lucky boy,” the old man said. “Don't know why he doesn't spend more time in that house. Not many lucky enough to have an ocean view, not these days.”

“I was just at Flume's house,” X-7 snapped. “No one's living there. It's falling apart.”

“Falling apart?” The man shook his head. “It was fine yesterday, in perfect condition. Perfect condition the day before. Walk past it every day on my way home, I do. Don't know why they kept it as a summerhouse. If it were my house, I'd live in it year-round, day in, day out, I would. But not them. Two months a year, in and out. Never made much sense to me.”

“Where is it?” X-7 asked harshly. “Where's this summerhouse?”

The grave tender narrowed his eyes, suddenly suspicious. “Why do
you
want to know?”

X-7 sighed. Of course the senile Belazuran chose
now
to come out of his daze. X-7 didn't have the patience for deception or persuasion. He lashed out with lightning speed, grabbing the man by the neck. Then he squeezed. “Tell me where the house is. Or die.”

The man gasped, trying desperately to draw in breath. His hands hammered at X-7's arm, but the blows were as negligible as tesfli piercer bites. “Time's running out,” X-7 said. “I'm sure I can obtain the information somewhere else—but I won't be very happy about it.” He squeezed tighter.

The man's eyes bulged. He wheezed something inaudible.

“What's that?” X-7 relaxed his grip very slightly.

“The Fallows, beyond the city, along the water. The blue house, you can't miss it,” he gasped. “Please. Please don't kill me.”

It would take minimal effort to squeeze just a bit tighter, to cut off the man's air entirely. That way he wouldn't be able to tell anyone about the strange man who'd come around asking questions; he wouldn't be able to warn the brother. It made sense. That was the rule: When in doubt, kill.

But he didn't do it. Something strange stilled his hand.
Mercy?

The thought repulsed him. Enraged, he slammed a fist into the grave tender's head, hard enough to guarantee he wouldn't be warning anyone anytime soon. The grave tender crumpled to the ground. And X-7 set off in search of his past.

He scaled the exterior of the house and perched on a ledge beside a large picture window. The ledge was only a few centimeters wide, but he was in no danger of losing his balance. The fogged transparisteel offered an imperfect view of the living room. But he could make out the figure puttering around inside. He could have just knocked on the door. But he was no fool. If this was a trap, he wasn't about to walk straight into it. Recon first, then action.

The man kept his face away from the window.

Turn around,
X-7 ordered him silently.
Show me who you are.

As if in reaction to the silent command, the man turned. X-7 stiffened in surprise. He'd seen that face before. Not in a half-remembered flash of childhood. Less than a month before, on an arid moon, accepting a mission to kill Luke Skywalker. The man was a mercenary pilot, one of the best, by the name of Lune—