Tassie stared at the screen in front of her in disbelief. They had just dropped out of hyperspace only to be hailed immediately by Irric. “This better not be some kind of joke, Irric,” she said with a glare. “Because if it is then that’s just sick.”
“It’s not a joke, Tassie. Reya’s distress signal on her suit went off yesterday. The odds are slim, but there’s a chance she may still be alive,” came Irric’s voice.
“That’s impossible; her vitals dropped, and her comms went down. The only way for her to not be dead is if she were outside of her suit, which makes no sense. What possible reason could she have to take off her suit in the middle of a mission?”
“The suit could have been damaged beyond repair, making it appear as if her vitals were cut off,” Irric argued. “You mentioned that there were people there. What if she got caught and they damaged her armour on purpose?”
“Then explain the badge!” she said. “How’s her distress signal working if the suit’s dead?”
“Because the badge has its own power supply. It’s more than just a fancy piece of metal. I can’t go into the specifics, but the badge was designed to work independently of the suit in case of emergency.”
“So this is for real?” Tassie asked.
“For the last time, yes. I’m serious, Tassie.”
“By the gods, the others need to know. Oh unholy hell, this is absurd,” she said with a distressed laugh. “And I left her there.” She breathed deeply. “Jyn was right, we should have stayed.” Her head hung low, ashamed.
“You had every reason to believe she was dead. It’s hard to fathom why she waited over fifteen days to use her distress signal, which only functions after speaking a valid code into it. It’s used exclusively by military personnel and the codes are very hard to guess. There must have been a reason she waited so long. If she was captured, it all adds up.”
Tassie narrowed her eyes. “That’s a lot of ‘what ifs’ hidden in there. The odds of that happening seem pretty slim.”
“Not really, when you think about it. You already met hostile resistance. Is it so hard to believe that there were others you may have missed?”
“Are you saying it’s my fault that Reya got captured? Because I couldn’t give her a warning about her captors?” Tassie said, aghast.
“What? No! I’m referring to how the ship’s scanners weren’t able to detect them before Jyn and the others were discovered. There may have been other enemies that weren’t detected before you recalibrated the sensors. The fact that you were able to do that at all is incredible. How did you come to that conclusion?”
“Because that’s my job, Irric!” she shouted at him, her voice trembling. “It’s my job to know these things. It’s my job to make sure everybody knows where the enemies are. And I couldn’t do that for her when she needed it the most.” Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “I couldn’t do that,” she trailed off, pausing for a moment before continuing. “Now look at her. We thought she was dead, but it turns out she might be alive. And we’re so far away because I made the decision to leave. She might not survive another fifteen days and it’s all because of me,” she said, her voice laden with guilt.
“Tassie, you’re being hard on yourself. You made the best call you could at the time. There’s nothing wrong with that. You probably saved the lives of all of your teammates by leaving when you did. Now, are you going to tell the others or not?”
Tassie jolted in her chair. “Oh, shit,” she said. “How could I forget? Irric, stay on the line while I call them over to the command bridge. They’re going to want confirmation from you for this.” Tassie immediately changed screens and sent out an emergency alert signal to the others on the ship.
“I need you all to come to the command bridge, like, now. No danger or anything, but please hurry,” she said over the intercom system. “It’s pretty damn important,” she added, hanging up.
Tassie continued talking to Irric while they waited for the others to come. Eimir was the first to arrive. He wiped a few beads of sweat from his forehead and looked over to Tassie.
“What’s the emergency?” he panted.
“Eimir, you didn’t need to run all the way here,” she exclaimed. “I said no danger.”
“This isn’t because I ran here. I was in the engine room before coming and it gets pretty hot down there.”
“Oh,” she said lamely. Irric snickered on the other side of the screen. “Hush, you,” she turned around and said, before training her attention back on Eimir. “We have some important news to share. It’s best if we wait for everyone to get here.” Several seconds later, she heard a pair of voices echo down the hallway leading the to bridge.
“We’ll finish this later,” Rann said curtly as they appeared within view. Beor was beside her, sporting an unhappy expression. “So, what’s the deal?” she asked, shifting her attention to Tassie.
“I’ll tell you when everybody’s here.”
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“Great, we got interrupted for nothing,” Beor muttered. Tassie winced slightly at that. It looked like she’d intruded on something personal.
Kell was the next to arrive, followed by Jyn. Tassie tensed when he entered the room and glanced at her, his cold eyes making her shudder. Irric noticed while the others didn’t. “Thank you all for coming so quickly,” Tassie said nervously. “Irric and I have news.” Eimir got up off his chair and joined the others around Tassie.
“What is it?” Jyn said impatiently.
“Reya’s distress signal went off. We think she may still be alive,” Irric summarized bluntly.
A shocked silence spread throughout the room as they heard the news. “Ok, that’s pretty big,” Beor said finally, breaking the silence.
Kell stared at Tassie, wide-eyed. “What do we do?” he asked, voicing the question everybody had.
“What do you mean? We go save her, of course,” Rann said immediately.
“I agree,” Eimir said. “We need to at least try.”
Beor nodded at the statement. “Same.”
“Isn’t that going to be dangerous?” Kell said.
“Who cares?” Rann countered. “She needs our help!”
“I’m worried this might be a trap,” Jyn pointed out. “Do we really want to commit?”
“Who cares if it’s a trap? There’s a chance, however small, that Reya’s alive down there and needs us. I thought you said we didn’t leave our own behind. Where’s that attitude now?” Tassie said.
“Now that I’m the cautious one, you all want to just blindly charge in there?”
“That’s not the point, Jyn.”
“Then what is the point, Tassie? This is the second time you refuse to listen to what I have to say.”
“That was different, and you know it. We’re not disobeying orders by voicing our opinion on what our next course of action should be.”
“The military works by majority vote now?”
“I thought you’d be the most on board with this given your feelings for Reya.”
“Don’t you dare bring that up here.”
“And why not? It’s clearly clouded your judgement before.”
Rann and Eimir exchanged worried looks. The situation was growing out of hand again. Kell looked uncomfortable and Beor fidgeted where he stood.
“I’m not saying that we shouldn’t go check it out,” Jyn said, huffing. “I’m saying that it might be a trap and we need to be prepared. The whole reason we left her behind in the first place was because you didn’t think our weapon systems would be enough to protect us. What’s going to happen when we storm the compound to find Reya? You think they’ll just welcome us with open arms and say ‘here, come search our super-secret base to find your friend?’ No! They’re going to fire on us and this time they’ll be waiting for us. We won’t have the element of surprise on our side.”
“There is one thing we could do,” Beor piped up. “We could rush them, shoot down the door and storm them, not giving them a chance to prepare for our arrival. We could take them by surprise that way.”
The room paused at his suggestion.
“Babe, for once your propensity for half-assed violence is useful,” Rann said. Beor shot her a withering glare and she winced. She knew she was going to pay for that comment later.
“We don’t know for sure if the distress signal we received was even sent by Reya to begin with,” Irric interjected. Kell gave him a grateful glance for changing the topic. “All we know is that her distress signal was activated. The General and I have decided that you deserved to know, given that she’s your teammate. We’ve also decided to leave the final decision about what to do to you. I won’t sit here and pretend I know what you’re all going through. A part of me feels responsible that any of this even happened to begin with. You went there because of my findings, after all.”
“Irric, there’s no way this is your fault. You couldn’t possibly have known that this would happen,” Tassie replied. “If anything, it’s my fault for leaving her behind,” she said bitterly. Jyn nodded.
“No, it’s not. What happened was nobody’s fault. It simply happened. Now, you need to decide what to do, and you need to decide fast. Every second counts at this point if you intend to save her.”
Jyn looked around the room. “I think it’s pretty obvious what our decision is. We’ll go save her. It’s a risk – a really big one. A lot could go wrong. We may lose more people. But if this is what everyone wants, then I say we do it. We owe it to Reya. We left her behind and now she needs us. It’s time to go get her.”
“It still doesn’t change the fact that our ship isn’t made for combat,” Kell said. “We need to find a way to work around that.”
“Actually, I have an idea,” Irric said. “Your ship may not be designed to fight, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have powerful weapons. If I can increase the power of the ship’s main weapon, you might be able to blow the door down and bring the fight to the inside, where you do have proper weapons suited for close-quarter combat.”
“How would you do that?” Jyn asked.
“By writing a program that will let you override the main weapon’s safety measures and increase the output. The weapon will most likely take heavy damage, but it should help you get to Reya.”
“I could also look into making the shields more powerful on the way back to the planet. Two weeks is a lot of time to work with,” Tassie added.
“Alright. We’ve got our next course of action. Tassie, turn the ship around,” Jyn ordered. “We’ve got a planet to get to. We’ll work out the details on how best to storm them later. Irric, are you sure you can increase our firepower?”
“Positive. I have access to your ship’s schematics. That includes the weapons. I should be able to have something ready by the time you drop out of hyperspace.”
“Alright, I’ll trust you on this one. Get us a way to have better weapons, even if they break.”
Irric nodded, confident he’d be able to deliver on his promise. His mind was already thinking of ways to accomplish his task. “If that’s the case, I’ll leave you guys here and go get started. Have a good trip and contact me when you pull out of hyperspace. I’ll be waiting.” He hung up the call, the screen fading away shortly after.
“Let’s get ready to go,” Jyn said, addressing the group. “We’ve got a mission to prepare for.”
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Reya sat there covered in excrement and blood, contemplating the meaning of life. She’d finally been fed more, but the purple bread made her insides feel like they were being ripped to shreds. In a way, she was glad they were starving her so that she didn’t have to eat the food very often.
Her tormentors had refused to let up in their quest for information. They’d run out of room on her legs and were landed at her back. Long, horizontal lines started from the base of her spine and worked their way up to her just below her mid-back. They’d continued to douse her wounds with that horrid substance and Reya swore the pain was getting worse each time. She was far thinner than she used to be, her ribs showing.
She sat there, alone. A new tactic of theirs. She estimated that it had been eight hours since they’d left her by herself, but it was hard to tell. She no longer had the strength to resist, and they knew it. She was finally at her limit.
Reya heard the familiar hiss as two of them entered the room. It was time for another session.