Jyn prowled onto the command deck, not sparing Tassie so much as a glance. The others joined, trailing behind him.
“I’m sorry, Jyn,” Tassie started when he entered. “I know I should have listened, but we needed to leave.” He didn’t reply, pacing about in an agitated manner instead. “I did my best,” she continued, “but there was no time to wait around.”
Jyn whirled around to face her. “Useless! That’s what you are,” he spat venomously with a look of contempt on his face. The room paused at the accusation. Tassie flinched and stared at him wide-eyed. “I gave you simple orders to stay put and you couldn’t even follow them.”
“Jyn!” Rann exclaimed, breaking the silence. “That was uncalled for,” she rebuked. “I get that you miss Reya, but that was crossing a line. Tassie saved our lives by leaving when she did. If it weren’t for her quick thinking, we’d probably all be dead.”
“If it wasn’t for her quick thinking,” he quoted sarcastically, “then maybe we might have gotten to Reya before she died!” he exclaimed.
“You know that’s not true, Jyn. We didn’t even know where she was. Do you think we would’ve been able to find her while being chased?” Rann shot back. “Because I sure as hell don’t. We’d have been blown to smithereens and joined Reya.”
“Babe, calm down,” Beor said, tugging on Rann’s arm. “Tassie ignored a direct order from her superior. Jyn has every right to be upset. We should have stayed and fought.”
“No, I will not calm down! Of course you think staying and fighting is the best option. You always do. That order was unreasonable and endangered all our lives needlessly! Jyn had no right issuing it in the first place, and you know it!”
“It’s still disobeying a direct superior, babe. It doesn’t change the fact that she should have listened.”
“You mean like you did?” Rann replied hotly. “Do you think our job is to just blindly follow orders? We have the right to refuse an order that sends us directly to our deaths when there’s clearly a better alternative. This is not Tassie’s fault. She made the call that Jyn should have, and it saved our lives.”
“And now Reya’s dead!” Jyn roared back. “We could have done something. Anything! Instead, we turned tails and fled, leaving her behind to die. We don’t abandon our own.”
“By the gods, Jyn, wake up. You were wrong! Accept that and move on. You’re tearing the team apart to satisfy your petty ego.”
“Fine by me! I don’t want a team member like her that leaves part of her squad behind. How can I trust her with my life knowing she might leave me to die instead?”
Tassie couldn’t take it anymore. She fled to her room, her ears pounding loudly in shame as she missed Rann’s retort. She collapsed onto her bed and stared mutely at the ceiling with wet eyes for some time before deciding to move again.
She got up and sat at her holo-terminal, the screen lighting up as she did so. A standard welcome message greeted her. Tassie didn’t return the sentiment and mechanically entered her password. She loaded up the chat application and called Irric.
Tassie thought back to Jyn’s accusations while she waited for Irric to answer. Their truthfulness stung and thoughts of Reya haunted her. She would never again see her smiling face. Never again eat lunch with her in the mess hall. Never again go on a mission together. Never again. The thought echoed loudly in her mind. All because of her.
Irric’s face appeared on the monitor and like a dam breaking, the floodgates opened, and she began to cry.
“Irric!” Tassie sobbed as he picked up her call. “She’s gone.” She continued crying uncontrollably.
“Tassie, calm down” Irric said, flustered. “What happened?”
“Reya’s gone,” she wailed, tears flowing freely down her face. “We went down to the planet,” she sniffled, her words punctured by sobs and laboured breathing, “and investigated. Reya didn’t make it back.”
A soft look of concern and understanding crossed Irric’s features. “What else happened?”
“I don’t know. We lost contact with her comms, and she didn’t report back to the ship when we had to retreat. I left her behind, Irric. Jyn wanted to wait for her, but I ignored him and left anyway. They were shooting at us. We weren’t going to last, so I left. Then her vitals dropped. She’s dead! She’s dead and I left her to die so that we could live!” Tassie covered her face in her hands, trying to hide a look of complete shame and guilt.
“Tassie,” Irric said gently, his voice falling on deaf ears. “Tassie, look at me.” Tassie’s eyes reluctantly lifted and met his. “It’s not your fault. You did the best you could with the information you had. It sounds to me like you saved the rest of your team by leaving when you did. If you hadn’t, you might all be dead.”
“We could’ve stayed. We could’ve fought back. We could’ve—”
“You could’ve died,” Irric said, cutting her off. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but Jyn’s the one who gave an unreasonable order to stay and fight. I know what your ship’s capable of and heavy combat isn’t it. You made the right call.”
“It doesn’t feel that way,” Tassie said quietly.
“I know it doesn’t. And it might never. But you saved the lives of the rest of your team. Without your call, there’s a good chance you’d all be dead, rather than just Reya.”
Tassie sniffed. “Thanks, Irric.”
“Any time, Tassie. Now, tell me about the rest of the mission.”
Tassie recounted their adventures on the barren planet, explaining that there was activity of some kind, but that they were unable to confirm the specifics. “And that brings us to now. We’re hanging around the next planet over, trying to figure out our next course of action. So far I haven’t noticed us being followed.”
“I see,” Irric said with a pensive expression. “I’m going to have to tell the General about this. She’ll want to know about unknown elements setting up shop so close to home. Give me ten minutes so that I can relay to her what you’ve just told me. I’ll call you back after.” Tassie bid him farewell and he hung up.
Fifteen minutes later, an incoming call appeared on her screen. She answered, expecting to see Irric’s face. Instead, she saw General Nessah on the other side of the screen. Tassie scrambled to salute her, thrown off by her sudden appearance.
“At ease, soldier,” General Nessah said. “I’ve heard about what happened. I’m sorry for your loss,” she said gravely. “I’d like for your team to return back to base. I want you to drop out of hyperspace every three days to confer with Irric and monitor any activity happening on the planet you just left. Drop some sensors in the system before you go so that our observations can be close to real-time. Make sure they won’t be discovered by whoever’s occupying that planet.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tassie responded crisply, all traces of her earlier outburst replaced by a smooth mask of professionalism.
“Good. That’s all for now, soldier. You have your orders. Dismissed,” General Nessah said, abruptly terminating the call. Tassie stared at the screen, debating what to do next. The others needed to know their new orders, but she was reluctant to interact with them after the blow-up that had occurred. She chewed her lip, trying to decide. Knowing it was inevitable, she bit the bullet and opened up a communication channel.
“Jyn,” Tassie said hesitantly over her comms in a small voice, “I know you don’t want to hear from me right now, but we have new orders. Directly from the General herself. I’m forwarding you a recording of our conversation so that you can verify them. I’m going to begin working on the part of the orders that were directed at me.” No response came from the other side of the line. Her shoulders drooped as she sent Jyn their orders. She hoped they would be on speaking terms again soon.
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Reya sat in the harshly lit room, exhaustion set in her face like stone. The gru’ul were gone for now, but they’d be back. They always came back. Every time they returned, it was more of the same. Two would enter, with one holding a translator and a gun. The silvery bobble in its hand allowed for them to converse with Reya, ensuring she understood their questions. The other one was the problem.
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Whenever Reya failed to answer a question, it would take the inside of one of its razor-sharp claws and cut a deep gash into her flesh. With her hands bound, she was unable to resist as they carved into her, one slice at a time. They let her bleed freely at first but soon feared that she would bleed out.
They injected her with a substance derived from the results of another experiment that would heal her wounds rapidly, seeking to administer it before she expired without answering their questions. But not before one last try at wrenching an answer out of her.
Carefully, the alien that cut her would withdraw several droplets of an orange substance held in a pitch-black vial. It would then place the dropper above her bleeding wound and let the droplets fall freely onto it. An immensely painful searing sensation lit up her nerves, making her shriek in agony. They repeated this process every time, for every cut.
Running across the outside of her arms was a series of deep, thick scars. Some of the lines were longer than others with the ones right after them far shorter, telling a story of threats made well on with sweet promises of less pain the next time around.
“If only you listened,” they’d told her.
If only she listened. If only she told them how she had learned of the research facility. If only she explained why a soldier was at their facility or what her mission was. If she listened, the pain would stop.
“All you need to do is listen,” they’d chanted as they sliced a long line slowly across her forearm, her blood spilling out of the wound. They were already halfway up her second arm, a trail of thick, measured lines running across the outside of her forearm from the wrist up. The first arm was similarly patterned all the way up to the shoulder.
“Just listen,” they’d whispered as they doused her wounds in orange liquid fire, only to inject her with that horrid yellow substance that healed her right back up before she bled out. But not without a scar. An ugly, permanent reminder always remained afterwards, a testament to her body’s suffering.
Her blood coated the ground and table in front of her. They spread their sessions out, going longer and longer between each one. She was given water on occasion but denied food. Reya slowly starved as she staunchly refused to divulge any information about her purpose on the planet. She tried to sleep but was only granted short allotments of time to rest every so often. The lights would turn off periodically and after what felt like not even a minute had passed, they’d turn back on.
Fourteen days of misery and torture passed as the gru’ul tried to extort information from her. They sporadically returned in-between sessions to inject her with a plethora of substances she had no way of identifying. Each one caused pain to a varying degree. Most often was a silvery-pink substance that made her shriek in agony for hours, feeling eaten alive from the inside. The pain was just as bad, if not worse, than what they doused her cuts in.
They finally fed her and promised her more food if she answered their questions, all while punishing her when she didn’t. Somehow that hurt too. They’d long since run out of room on her arms and had started on her legs, cutting away her armour to access them. The few lines on her left leg were far longer than the ones on her arms.
It was on that day the gru’ul made a vital mistake. They left her alone after their most recent session. Without paralyzing her. Reya seized the opportunity and made her move. She raised one leg and placed it on the table, reaching over and snagging her discarded body armour with her heel. She dragged it close to her hands and picked up a bundle of the fabric, frantically sorting through the outfit. She located the emergency badge nestled in the outside of her suit and activated it when she spoke her entry code. The centre of the badge lit up across a regal design of what looked like a two-tailed mix between a cat and a fox.
She folded the badge back into the uniform and raised her leg back to where it was, kicking it away from her and back to its original spot. She hoped the gru’ul wouldn’t notice the difference. A sound came from beside her as the wall began to open. Reya quickly put her leg back down to the floor and trained a resentful glare on the grotesque alien that entered the room.
It didn’t notice the change in the bunched-up armour on the table. Reya thanked the gods. Her distress signal continued broadcasting. She could only hope that someone would pick it up back on base and send someone to rescue her. Assuming they got the message at all, that is.
Distress signals like hers were so rare that they were more of a formality in this day and age. They’d been used more back during the Great Wars, when soldiers actively fought against enemy nations. There hadn’t been a war since the signing of the Accords, a tenuous armistice between its participants. Peace was found within the known galaxy, but it was rocky at best. Skirmishes and petty disputes broke out on occasion, but it was a far cry from the total war that had raged before.
The second alien entered, holding its standard gun and translator combo in its hands. It was time for another session, and it looked like there was no water this time. Whoever received that message needed to hurry.
She didn’t know how much longer she could last.
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Irric returned to his desk with a steaming mug of tea. Finding good tea was hard on a military base, most soldiers preferring cold, fizzy energy drinks rather than hot, calming tea. He sat down in his chair and skimmed over the latest data readings.
He’d been working extensively with Tassie over the last few weeks on analyzing movements within the Arvis sector. Thus far, apart from the planet of interest, no activity of note had been found. That didn’t keep them from looking. Irric glanced at the calendar on the wall beside his desk. Tassie and her crew were due to drop out of hyperspace tomorrow to report in. He would probably spend a couple of hours working with her before they re-entered hyperspace.
It was a shame that they hadn’t found a way to communicate directly with ships that were travelling in hyperspace, he thought. They’d cracked instant communication across impossibly vast distances, but not that. If they had, maybe he’d get to spend more time working with Tassie, he lamented.
Thus far, Tassie had proven to be an invaluable co-worker. Together, they rapidly searched large swaths of space for signs of activity. He fully understood now what Commander Cyrix had meant when he’d said that she was competent.
He began compiling his readings from the past three days so that Tassie could review them when an incoming signal stole his attention. Irric frowned. He didn’t recognize it.
“What?” he muttered under his breath before taking a closer look. He stared at the associated signal code and called up a chart. He went through it line by line, until he finally found the code he was looking for.
It’s a distress signal, he realized. He jolted into action and immediately began tracing where the signal came from. “It’s coming from the Arvis sector,” he said to himself. “But that’s impossible. The others are weeks away from there. Unless . . .” he trailed off.
Quickly, he brought up a screen that displayed each team member’s status. Normally he ignored this screen as it didn’t pertain to his job and there was nothing he could do from the base with the information it gave him. He stared at the flashing red icon next to Reya’s name.
“By the gods,” he said, slack-jawed. “Reya’s alive. Holy hells, she’s still alive!” he exclaimed. Irric stopped short. It had been weeks since she was presumed dead. He didn’t understand how she could survive alone on a barren planet. This could be a trap, for all he knew.
He thought back to how hard Tassie had taken Reya’s death. If he could provide some form of hope for her so that she knew Reya might still be alive, then perhaps she would stop blaming herself for the outcome of their mission.
He shook his head. Regardless of his reasoning for it, the General needed to know that one of their soldiers was potentially still alive, marooned on a deserted planet. It would be up to her to decide what to do next with the information.
He called up a secure connection directly to the General. After twenty seconds, she picked up.
“Yes, Irric? Have you found something important relating to your mission?” she inquired. “I assume you have, otherwise you wouldn’t be contacting me so urgently.”
Irric gulped. He hoped this met her definition of urgent. “I think I have, ma’am. I just received a distress signal from the soldier that supposedly perished on the mission during the team’s reconnaissance run.”
General Nessah’s eyes immediately sharpened upon hearing the news. “Tell me more,” she said seriously. “How long ago did you find out?”
“Just moments ago. The signal came in and I looked up its code. It corresponds with the proper distress code and appears to be coming directly from the soldier’s suit. How is that possible?”
“The distress beacon has its own power source and is independent of the suit. Even if the suit were destroyed, the badge could still be used to call for help if it remained intact,” Nessah replied. “Tell me, Irric, do you believe the signal to be a trap?”
“I honestly don’t know. It seems unlikely that Reya was able to survive on such a barren planet with no food, but it’s not impossible. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is why she waited for so long before contacting us.”
“Perhaps she was unable to. What if she was captured?” Nessah offered. “She might possibly have access to food and water through her captors.”
“If that’s the case, then we need to rescue her. We can’t leave her behind to die when we know that she’s alive.”
“We don’t even know if she’s alive,” the General pointed out. “Sending an extraction team might endanger the lives of even more soldiers. Is she worth it?”
“Every life is worth it,” Irric said unflinchingly. “If she’s been captured by enemy forces, then there’s a good chance she’s learned valuable information. She might be able to tell us more about who occupies the planet as well as their motives. This information could prove to be invaluable.”
“And if the whole thing is a trap? Isn’t that all the more of a reason not to send a team back?”
“I’m not sure about that, General. Whoever this is went through great lengths to hide any traces of their activity on the planet. I highly doubt they’d activate a distress beacon that contacts our home base and attract even more attention to themselves.”
General Nessah leaned back in her chair, mulling over Irric’s points. “What do you suggest?”
“I say we inform Reya’s team and let them decide what to do with the information. They deserve to know, since they’re the ones who were forced to abandon her in the first place. They’re also the closest available team that can rescue Reya.”
“When’s the soonest that you can contact her team?”
“Tomorrow, when they drop out of hyperspace.”
“We’ll do as you say because this is your call as the expert in your field. I’m trusting your judgement on this one, officer. I expect excellent results.”
Irric brightened at the opportunity being given. “Of course, ma’am!” he said enthusiastically. “I won’t let you down.”
“I look forward to your results, soldier. Dismissed.”
The call ended and Irric checked the timer on his screen. Only thirteen hours until Tassie dropped out of hyperspace. He hoped Reya would be able to survive long enough for them to go save her.