“I…I wasn’t going to say that. I’m saying the scanners are wrong.”
“Since when?”
“Since…they say that there’s no one down there now, but I can see them with my own eyes, in the windows.”
“Where?”
They were flying in a circular holding pattern over the base, and on the next pass Bondo pointed.
It was obvious to Norrin now- there were easily seen silhouettes of people moving back and forth in the dimly lit windows of the base’s building.
“How did I miss that?” Norrin wondered.
“Sometimes,” Bondo said as the building sped below them, “we rely so much on scanners that we forget to use our own eyes.”
“But why did the scanners miss them? There’s no life signs being recorded down there.”
They were silent for a second. Then both of them looked up to the ceiling of the cockpit.
“Poot-te-woot,” whistled Rex, as innocently as a machine could sound.
“Rex,” mumbled Norrin, only halfway to himself, “Rex did it. He did it to save us from getting into trouble. No Rebels, no target, no trouble.”
“Woot,” said Rex.
#
Jada zipped the last of her few belongings into her satchel bag and straightened up. She’d never gotten to know her newest roommate well; she'd only moved in a day or two ago, after her last roomate had washed out and left without a word. Since there were so few girls in her class of pilots, many of them were from different flights, and their schedules hardly ever mixed as a result.
Still, she watched Jada with a mix of interest and boredom.
“Going somewhere?” she asked while lying on the bed, studying her datapad.
“I hope so,” Jada said. “I’m going right now to try and D.O.R. One of my flightmates said it’s a rule that doesn’t get invoked very often; you can get dismissed on your own request.”
“Sounds good to me. I never wanted to be a pilot much myself- I’m just from a military family, and it sounded better than marrying some stiff jerk in a grey uniform and playing house for the rest of my life. Still,” she said, standing up and stretching, “what is it you want? Do you really want to leave?”
“I want to find out the truth, and I won’t find it here. Thanks for being a good roomie, Nadda,” She said as the door swooshed open, and Jada stepped through before Nadda could say anything in reply.
Jada stalked down the hallway, not trying to look like she was going to try and leave illegally. She’d found over time that the surest way to get caught and busted for something was to look like you were trying t o hide something. The surest way to keep out of trouble was to look like you belonged there and was supposed to be doing what you were doing.
She’d gotten down three floors with the stairs rather thn the elevator, and had just started towards the hangar when she saw them.
Dav, Slak, Bondo and Norrin had lined up in the entranceway, blocking her exit.
None of them were smiling. Dav had his arms crossed.
“What?” she said. Her hand tensed up slightly as it gripped the strap on her satchel.
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“You know just what, Jada,” Dav said. “Are you going to try and go AWOL?”
“I’ve got some shore leave coming we all do. We’ve been on this tub for six months, and I’m ready to feel grass, maybe even sand at my feet again.”
“Jada,” said Slak, “we know you’re planning on leaving. Your roomie called us before you’d gotten a dozen steps out the door.”
Jada tensed further.
“Jada,” Dav said, “Did you know that if you did leave and didn’t come back, the whole flight, us especially, would get in trouble? Haven’t we been good friends to you?”
“You’re not my family,” Jada said, sticking out her chin.
“No, you’re right. We not,” said Bondo. “But we.. we are friends, and we do care. Even if we didn’t, we don’t want trouble. Not the kind you’d bring.”
“We’d have to try and stop you, Jada. For your own good, even if it wasn’t for ours. We care about you, and ourselves.”
“Jada,” said Slak, moving in and putting his arm around her shoulder, “look, training is only a few weeks from being done. After that, the only person you’re going to affect is you. If you go now, after we’ve seen you, you risk us getting shot. Or spaced. Or worse.”
Slak was good at what he did, Jada realized. They were already moving as a group down the hall, and she’d never realized until now that they were even walking.
Slak kept talking, verbally greasing the way for Jada emotionally to comply with his wishes. Somehow, Jada just felt tired. So tired, in fact, that she didn’t feel it’d be worth it to try and out talk Slak, outthink Norrin, overpower Bondo or influence the whole group over the wishes of Dav, whom they’d been following ever since Gaab had gone rogue.
“Fine,” Jada whispered, “for now.”
“Jada,” Dav said, his hand on her other shoulder as he eased Slak away, “you’ve been through a lot. More than any of us this trip. We didn’t know about your family until Rex played the vid for us on the bombing run. We all know now: Not everyone in the Empire are good guys. Maybe some of the rebels have the right idea. But for now, the safest thing is to get through school, and then figure out our next moves, together. Alright? We’re a team, and a team does stuff together.”
Jada nodded her head. She felt like she was going to cry again. Somehow, magically, they’d gotten her back to the door of her room. She turned to it and the door swished open. She walked in without any more words as it swished shut behind her.
The four young men looked at each other, unsure of what to do next. “Should we wait here?” Bondo asked.
“No,” said Dav, “let’s go eat, then it’ll be time for sports. I’ve got attendance duty today, and it looks to me like she just got a medical discharge for the day.”
There was no disagreement. More and more, when Dav had made a decision, it had turned out to be the right call. So far, following Dav made for the least trouble. And that quality had been invaluable to soldiers of every military throughout history.
#
#
And on the security camera, Solo took a lusty slurp of his Arrakeen spice coffee and thought for a few seconds.
“Interesting how things work out, don’t you think?” said Hublin, holding a cup of tea in his hand.
“All I know is that neither of us are dead, and I’m sitting right here in this room, spying on my cadets because some grizzled veteran suddenly decided not to report me.”
“It’s obvious why he didn’t, you know. Men who’ve been at this as long as those fellows have don’t like inconveniences. Investigations are inconvenient, and agreeing with the scanner meant no investigations. No investigations means we don’t visit the Grey room, or the wrong side of an airlock. Even better, the way things turned out, not dropping that bomb made us look good for preserving evidence of rebellion activity. I understand the vids of that are going all over the empire propaganda channels now.”
“Hooray,” said Solo sarcastically. After a second he leaned in closer to look at the security cam mounted in the hallway. “Makes me wonder, though, where this batch will be in a year or two.”
“Drifting in space, floating with the wreckage of their ships. Either due to their own muck-ups or a rebel’s laser blast. You know what they told us in officer’s school before we took on this job, Han. Don’t get emotionally attached to your charges; most of them will be dead before their fifth mission into dangerous territory.”
“Yeah,” Solo said, leaning back and sipping his spice coffee. “Hard, though. Especially with a batch like this one turned out to be.”
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TO BE CONTINUED....