Too Many Secrets

by CPT Beef

          “General?”

          “Yes, Ensign, what is it?”

          “I have the report on our attack, sir.”

          “Excellent.” The general stretched out his hand, “Give it to me.”

          The ensign complied, “As you can see, sir, the structure was leveled; no survivors were found. However...the target’s body was not among the dead.”

          A trace of a frown momentarily creased the general’s dark features. It quickly vanished, “This was not completely unexpected. We will simply initiate plan B.” Scanning over the report, a second frown appeared on the general’s face; this one more profound. “The facility’s total population including guards was 454. Subtract the missing target, and there should only be 453 bodies. Why does it still report the body count at 454?”

          “There was a New Republic pilot found as well. Broken neck.”

          “One of ours? Where is his ship?”

          “It wasn’t found, sir.”

          The general swore under his breath. The target was on the dead pilot’s ship, not one of the craft the New Republic had assigned to the colony. Which meant he was not flying with a homing beacon. Nevertheless, the alternative plan would hold up adequately.

          “Has the Chief of State been notified of this atrocious act done by the nefarious Imperials?” asked the general with no lack of sarcasm.

          “No, sir.”

          “Good. I can tell her myself.”

A couple of days later:

          “Mmm...you recognize me,” Rivash said, “Took long enough, didn’t it?”

          Emon didn’t have anything to say. He couldn’t have said anything if he’d wanted to. Seeing his old comrade who he thought to be dead standing in front of him was more than enough to leave Emon speechless.

          Rivash smiled, “I know you are wondering where I have been for these past years, but that tale will have to wait.” Rivash stood up and walked to the back of the ship and lowered the exit ramp. “We had to stop here; there is something I need to get. Stay and guard the ship. If I fail to return in two hours, you must take off. It does not matter where you go; just get off of this planet.” With that, Rivash descended the ramp and into the woods.

          Emon managed to call out, “But, where are we?” but it was too late. Rivash did not hear (or pretended not to), and the exit ramp was already retracting.

          “Coruscant! We can’t go to Coruscant. In case you haven’t heard, it’s not exactly Imperial Center anymore.”

          “That is very true.” Rivash didn’t even look up from entering the navigation coordinates as he spoke. He had returned to the Secrets well under his two-hour time limit. Being as vague and mysterious as before, Rivash had brought a small brown box aboard and stuffed it into the compartment over his bunk. All of Emon’s questions were left unanswered, except for the one about their destination. Emon wasn’t too pleased with the response.

          The last traces of sapphire hue faded from the viewport as scout ship Too Many Secrets rushed from the outer layers of the planet’s atmosphere.

          “So...what? You’re going to fly this Kuat Drives model ship with your Imperial pilot’s license up to the planetary shield and ask Mon Mothma to let you in?”

          Rivash wordlessly reached up and flipped one of the overhead switches. The two triangular wings protruding in front of the cockpit slowly faded away to complete transparency.

          Emon whistled in awe; cloaking devices, quality ones such as this, were by no means bought at bargain prices. “Still won’t get you through the shield, though.”

          Rivash said nothing.

          “You enjoy keeping me in the dark, don’t you?”

          Rivash rolled his eyes. “Yes, it amuses me greatly. Please! Ask me more questions so that I may leave them unanswered.”

          “You think you’re funny too.”

          “No, I just wish you would stop asking stupid questions. I know how to get in. You don’t need to worry about it; you will find out soon enough. You should have figured it out by now anyway. You were a bounty hunter, and you cannot even devise a way to get from one planet to another?”

          “Coruscant isn’t just any planet.”

          Grasping one of the larger levers in the center of the cockpit and slowly sliding it forward, Rivash accelerated the tiny craft toward the speed of light. The stars stretched into white lines and streaked across the view before Secrets was suddenly surrounded by frosty blue maelstrom of hyperspace.

          “It is a long trip. I am going to get some rest,” Rivash announced as he exited his chair. He crawled into the port side bunk (a shelf with padding, really) and yanked the curtain closed, leaving Emon in the cockpit alone.

          Emon remained there for a time with his thoughts. Mostly about what to do with this situation. There he was minding his own business when this stranger came out of nowhere, stunned his friend, and then pushed him through a city full of people who were looking for him. This stranger turned out to be a “dead” team member and now he was dragging Emon across the galaxy to the capitol of the government that locked Emon in jail. There wasn’t much he could do. On the other hand, Emon did not just want to be a leaf on a river with no control of his destiny. Emon started poking around the controls of the ship in front of him. Not knowing what exactly he was planning on doing, just hoping he’d be able to do something to get back in control of his life, Emon started fiddling with the navigation controls. He received a rather painful electric shock for his efforts.

          Rivash’s voice sounded from the other side of the privacy curtain, “I trust you don’t need to try that again.”

          Emon muttered inwardly as he clutched his burnt and tingling hand; he thought Rivash had been asleep.

          “Yes, Madame President, it is curious how the Imperials found the prison in the first place.”

          “I trust you will be investigating this leak in security, General,” said Mon Mothma’s flickering holo image. “With this Zsinj character on the loose, we’ve got enough on our plate already.”

          “I have a team looking-”

          “Sir, sir!” The general’s comm officer had burst into the general’s office and was standing in the doorway.

          “Lieutenant! How dare you interrupt me.” The General feigned annoyance for Mon Mothma’s benefit. He knew his officers would not be so bold unless there was something extremely important, and he had a pretty good idea of what this was about.

          “I’m sorry, sir,” said the Lieutenant, understanding that the general was not actually upset, “but we’re picking up something you’ll find very interesting.”

          “Is there anything wrong?” Mon Mothma’s concern showed even through the holo transmission.

          “Nothing serious, Madame President,” the general reassured her, “just a small matter. I’m afraid you’ll have to forgive me, though, I must attend to it.”

          Mon Mothma nodded in understanding and cut the transmission. As soon as her hologram evaporated, the general ordered the Lieutenant to patch the incoming audio into his ear piece. He complied, and after he left the room, the general took a marble-sized microphone out of his desk and placed it in his ear. His grin increasingly widened as he alone heard what was coming from across the galaxy.

          Emon felt quite the fool as they hitched a ride through the opening in Coruscant’s defense shield. Too Many Secrets had some nifty electromagnets attached to the underside of her hull. All the pilot had to do was engage the cloak, fly up to one of the larger freighters that had been granted clearance to land, and activate the magnets. Once attached to the host ship, the combined efforts of the cloaking device, the disruptive magnetic fields, and the atmospheric disturbance made detection next to impossible. Wait for someone else to open the door and sneak in before it closed; Emon knew he should’ve thought of that.

          As soon as they had flown through the upper atmosphere, Rivash disengaged the electromagnets. Secrets free fell for a second before the engines powered up and the ship was able to fly on its own.

          Cradling his bandaged right hand, Emon asked, “Will it takes us long to meet up with whomever we came here for?”

          “Not long.” Rivash glided the cloaked scout ship as high over the planet-wide city as he could without losing sight of the various buildings to prevent any accidental collisions with any of the thousands of air speeders, freighters, and such swarming the skyways. After not too long, he had apparently found the site he was looking for, because he circled around it twice. After the second pass he said to Emon, “Hold on,” and before the words had registered in Emon’s brain, Rivash cut all power to the engines. Too Many Secrets plummeted out of the sky like a rock, firmly pressing its occupants deep into the padding of their seats.

          Emon let out a startled shout, “Are you insane!”

          The ship soon fell below the level of the highest roof tops. The walls of the kilometer high buildings rushed by in a blur. Crosswalks suspended between structures shot past mere meters from the hull. Deeper and deeper down the canyon. The sunlight began to fade; blocked by the immense height of the walls around them. A small platform suddenly became visible directly below them. They were not far enough off to the side to miss it. Rivash wasn’t slowing down. They were going to crash! A hundred meters from a fiery death, Rivash reached forward with his robotic left arm, and despite the tremendous G-forces was able to push the button on the console engaging the repulsorlifts. With a gut-wrenching deceleration, Too Many Secrets stopped to hover peacefully half a meter above the duracrete landing platform. If it wasn’t for Secret’s inertial compensator, the sudden change in velocity would have squished both Rivash and Emon into bloody pancakes smeared all over the inside of the cockpit. But that doesn’t mean the compensator made it a pleasant experience; Emon had to try extremely hard not to vomit.

          “Wh-Wh-What...?” Emon panted. He was out of breath.

          “Could not let the engines leave an ion trail,” Rivash managed after a long pause. Even he looked a little pale. After unbuckling his restraints, Rivash walked slowly to the back and opened the ramp. Emon vacated his seat too and stumbled down the ramp. This whole trip had better be important, he thought.

          “I don’t have time for this.”

          Warlord Zsinj shook his head as he surveyed the repair crews below through the window. They were working diligently, but ultimately too slowly. The New Republic was finally starting to notice his hit-and-run attacks. He had to be ready for his final assault. The damage Kaaren’s escort transport had caused to hangar two was putting him far behind schedule.

          “I do not have time for this,” he muttered again.

          The damage to his Super Star Destroyer would be tolerable if he had gotten Kaaren’s secret, but he had nothing, nothing!

          A junior officer marched up beside him, “Report from Tracking on Emon Kaaren, sir.”

          “Continue.”

          As soon as he had realized Kaaren had escaped in a run-down transport ship, Zsinj had ordered scouts to locate his whereabouts. He wanted Kaaren’s secret, but Kaaren was too dangerous. Zsinj would not make the same mistake twice; he had ordered Kaaren to be shot on sight.

          “Scouts have traced Kaaren to the planet Opsth. Reports confirmed by local spaceport: ‘TRN Relay 2 did arrive and has not yet departed.’ Two agents have been sent to locate and eliminate Kaaren. Opsth is in your territory, sir, so we expect no outside interference.”

          “Very good. Have the agents forward their reports directly to me.”

          Emon followed Rivash toward the building that the landing platform jutted out from. Being over one hundred stories from the next platform, Emon stayed as far away as he could from the sides.

          The door from the platform outside lead into a spacious darkened room. Letting the door close behind him, Emon took a step forward, squinting to see Rivash in front of him. Before Emon’s eyes could adjust to the dark, his arms were pinioned behind his back. A cloth was shoved over his mouth and nose. Emon caught a strong, sweet scent of chloroform, and was instantly unconscious.

          “What do you mean berthing information is confidential?”

          “Well, I could make it un-confidential...” The tall Duros behind the information desk held out her hand.

          Agent Quint was losing his patience. Trepeis Spaceport was under Zsinj rule. If this fool knew they were working for Zsinj, she would happily assist them for free. “Do you know who we-”

          Quint’s partner, Yets, grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the counter. “We can’t tell anyone,” he whispered, “Word we’re here might filter down to Kaaren. Just bribe her; Zsinj will pay it.”

          “I know that,” Quint whispered back. He took fifty Imperial credits and gave them to the Duros.

          She took the money and stuffed it in her pocket. “Transport Relay 2 is berthed in slot seventeen.”

          “Thank you,” said Yets politely, “Where is slot seventeen?”

          “Behind you, directly across the way.”

          Yets and Quint turned around to see the rusty old stormtrooper transport less than two hundred meters away, the words “Relay 2” painted in bright yellow gleaming in the sun. Quint glared at his partner.

          “You couldn’t just tell us we were standing right next to it?” Yets said to the Duros. “We want our fifty credits back.”

          She just smiled at them, “Next, please.”

          “Fifty credits to find a ship that’s already right under our nose and nobody’s even here.” Quint stretched out on one of the rows of seats in the back of Relay 2. “Hope you’re happy.”

          “Shut up, Quint. Just shut up.”

          They had managed to find a more friendly source of information, and they found out that the “owners” of Relay 2 hadn’t booked a room in a hotel. They had been waiting for Kaaren to return for several hours, and it was getting them nowhere.

          Yets was pacing the small confines of the ship. He guessed Kaaren was not coming back to the transport. He told Quint to wait in the ship in case Kaaren did return and that he was going to ask some careful questions to see what he could find out from the locals. Quint was all for staying with the ship, the lazy bum.

          Yets soon returned with a paper in his hand and a confused look on his face. “Some of the shop owners said that a day or so ago this ship landed carrying two people.”

          “Yeah, Kaaren and Masch,” Quint interrupted.

          “Right. They said that one of them (probably Kaaren) was wandering around on his own and was confronted by a third stranger. When Masch tried to rescue him, they say the stranger shot him with lightning from his fingers, then kidnapped Kaaren. The whole spaceport’s convinced it was a Jedi.”

          “Weird.”

          “That’s not what worries me.” Yets held up the paper he hand in his hand. It was a wanted poster for Emon Kaaren stating Warlord Zsinj would pay handsomely for him dead or alive.

          “I thought Zsinj wanted to keep this secret. What’s he doing plastering reward posters all over the place?”

          “We’d better get in contact with him.”

          Warlord Zsinj’s six-inch tall hologram stood on the general’s desk with arms folded tightly over its round chest.

          “Warlord Zsinj,” greeted the general.

          “What do you think you’re doing, Koplar?” roared the miniature Zsinj. “I told you I could handle Kaaren. You have no business putting words into my mouth in front of my citizens. I have not issued a bounty on Kaaren. It makes me look bad when a prisoner of mine escapes. I don’t need you spreading that embarrassing fact all over my realm! That’s not your job; I don’t need your help neutralizing him!”

          General Koplar leaned back in his chair, “I think you do. I had people tailing him before you knew he’d even been to Opsth.”

          “We would’ve caught up to him easily. Next time you have information like that, give it to me. I’m not paying you to make my decisions.”

          “My mistake, Warlord.”

          “And get your spies out of my space.”

          “Of course, Warlord.”

          “That reminds me, what are you going to do with Masch? If he’s still alive, I want him brought to me. He needs to be taught a lesson.”

          “Unfortunately, he did not survive long after we took him into custody,” lied General Koplar, “He was too badly injured while trying to escape.” Actually the question had caught him off guard. He did not know what had happened to Masch; his agents had not reported capturing him. Koplar swore inwardly. Zsinj thinks I have Masch, but I don’t. That means there must be loyal New Republic spies on Opsth, he thought. What will the Republic do with him? Is he their friend or foe? Koplar would have to review the recordings to see what he could find out.

          “A pity,” Zsinj said as he brushed his mustachios, “It’s just as well, I suppose. I’m running out of time anyway. At least he’s dead.” As an afterthought, he added, “I expect no more mistakes.” Zsinj terminated the communications link.

          “Soon the New Republic will find you and kill you,” Koplar said to the space on his desk where Zsinj’s holo had been. “Then I can run things properly.” But that was in the future. He would just leave Zsinj’s agents of Opsth alone; they wouldn’t catch Kaaren if someone super glued him to the hull of their ship. Someone very important was coming to Coruscant, and he had to be ready.

          “...Masch is already dead, and I want Kaaren to join him in 48 hours or less. Warlord Zsinj out.”

          Quint sighed as Zsinj’s hologram disappeared. Two days was not very long. He hoped they would be able to find Kaaren before then. If not, Zsinj would have their heads.

          He was still waiting in Relay 2. Yets had gone out again for more information. He would not be happy when Quint tells him about Zsinj’s time frame.

          Hearing the rear hatch open, Quint swiveled in the pilot’s chair towards the back of the ship. He came face to face with the Duros from the information desk. Grinning innocently, she leveled a blaster at Quint’s face. Behind her, Yets entered the ship with his hands on his head. Two humans in civilian dress shoved Yets forward with their blasters buried in his back.

          “In the name of the New Republic, we’re taking you into custody as prisoners of war,” stated the Duros.

          Quint slowly put his hands on his head and scowled at Yets. The fool didn’t know when he was saying too much. Now look where it got them; he’d given them both away to Rebel agents.

          “It’s not my fault!” Yets said.

          Emon woke up, sort of. It felt like his eye lids were glued shut, but he forced them open anyway. He tried to see where he was, but his vision was blurry. His whole body was numb. All he could tell was that he was lying flat on his back. Usually Emon could wake up and instantly be alert and ready for action. He must have been drugged. That thought, however, did not occur to Emon; thinking clearly was difficult now. Emon’s eyes closed themselves, and he fell back into unconsciousness.

          Again, awareness returned to Emon. It didn’t feel as if he had been asleep long. His eye lids still weighed several kilos. Heaving them open, Emon still found his vision foggy but not as much so as before. Blinking a couple of times helped...a little. He was still lying on his back, but now he could tell he was in a small bed. A hospital bed. There was a thin white blanket covering his body up to his chin, but Emon could not feel it. He tried to move his arms. When they failed to respond—his neck also—to his brain’s commands, he feared spinal cord injury. He was relieved when he managed to force his toes to wiggle slightly. He could not feel them, but when he saw the lump under the blanket at the foot of the bed move, he figured he must have been drugged.

          Without the ability to move his head around yet, Emon could not see where he was. He could only see the wall directly in front of his bed. That wall had a door right in the middle of it. The door stood ajar. Emon’s eyes would not focus on the objects in the room on the other side of the door; they were too far away. But his ears were working well enough.

          “...what I removed from his eardrum,” said a female voice.

          Emon recognized Rivash’s voice, “We have not seen that before.”

          “No, not yet.”

          “We won’t again either,” said Rivash, “He was more important than the others. At least they thought so.”

          “What is it?” asked a second female voice, this one sounded slightly older than the first.

          “It is a bug. Is it not?” queried Rivash.

          “Essentially, yes,” answered the first woman. “Though extremely advanced, even for Imperial technology. It was made to adhere to the eardrum and vibrate in tandem with it. The vibrations were measured and transmitted to the eavesdropper who would decode the vibrations into audible sound at his or her location. No microphone or recording device needed keeping the ‘bug’ smaller than usually possible. He may have some temporary hearing loss in the right ear, but it will return.”

          “Well, I suspected we would find something like this. Koplar is a clever man,” Rivash said.

          I hope whatever they’re talking about didn’t come out of my ear, thought Emon, And who is Koplar?

          Rivash’s voice asked, “What about the other device. I do not see it.”

          “I couldn’t remove it,” answered the first woman again, “not without causing serious brain damage, anyway.”

          Emon screamed in his mind, They were messing with my BRAIN?

          “The incision,” continued the woman (she must have been a doctor), “in the cerebral cortex would’ve had to have been much too large. Not every human’s brain is the same. Similar, but not exactly the same like the heart or lungs. His hippocampus is in a slightly different position than yours.”

          “When can we talk to him?”

          “Actually, he should’ve regained consciousness by now. The synthetic curare I gave him will still have him paralyzed, though. I just need to give him something to unblock his neurotransmitters, then I can disconnect the respirator.” Emon lowered his eyes as far as he could and saw a thick white tube protruding from his mouth. He hated the idea that the tube was stuffed all the way down his throat, but if he remembered correctly curare was a chemical that blocks all messages from the brain, even involuntary ones. Which meant if the tube wasn’t forcing his lungs to move, he wouldn’t be breathing at all. The doctor continued, “Or we can wait for the curare to wear off on its own.”

          “No, we do not have the time to wait.”

          “OK, but he will have to be unconscious again for a few minutes.”

          After a few seconds a woman came through the door. Emon would have thought her beautiful had she not been his captor.

          She noticed he was awake and smiled at him. “Don’t worry. We’ll have you feeling just like new in no time.” She walked beside the bed and out of Emon’s view. Emon heard some rustling of plastic and the humming of a machine and was yet again slipping out of consciousness.

          When Emon woke up again, he was instantly awake like usual, but his limbs were a little stiff. He was still in the hospital bed. The blanket was down to his waist and his bare chest was full of suction-cup sensors and wires leading to various machines that measured his vital life signs.

          The doctor woman was at his right side removing an IV needle from his arm. As soon as the needle was free from his skin, Emon ripped off the sensors from his chest and was about to fight his way out of wherever he was when a pair of strong arm grabbed his shoulders and held him down. Emon’s restraint was Rivash standing on his left.

          “Calm down,” he said. Emon started kicking his legs and wiggling as best he could, but he was no match for Rivash’s bionic arm. Another woman Emon hadn’t seen before was standing in the doorway and leveled a blaster at him. Emon stopped struggling. Rivash turned his head at the woman and said, “No, we have to earn his trust again.” Then to Emon he said in a calm but forceful voice, “You are all right. We are not you enemies. Let us explain.” He released Emon from his grip. The woman at the door had lowered her blaster to her side, but Emon dared not move.

          Rivash looked across the bed at the doctor on the other side, “Ellé, show him the holo.”

          The doctor, Ellé, handed Emon a holoprojector, asked him to sit up, and pointed an elaborate holorecorder at the side of his head. A colorless three-dimensional image of his skull sprang to life one centimeter above the tiny projector in Emon’s hand. “There were two foreign objects in your head,” Ellé explained. She held out her hand showing him the tiny speck of what must have been the transmitter they had pulled out of his ear. “I was able to removed this from your eardrum. It’s a-”

          “I heard you talking about it,” Emon interrupted, “I know what it is.”

          “Then you know why we had to use the chloroform and operate without your knowledge,” Rivash said.

          Emon nodded. Anything they told him when he had that transmitter in his ear, someone else was hearing too. The ones who implanted the device in Emon would have noticed the silence by now, but them not knowing that it was going to be removed ahead of time had bought the doctor some time.

          “I still didn’t appreciate being knocked out like that.” Emon wondered why he was not more angry or suspicious of these people. After all, they had practically kidnapped him, and then they started cutting up his head. He just had a gut feeling that these people were doing what they had to. Besides, Rivash wasn’t the kind of person to be traitor.

          Emon looked at the live X-ray he held in his hands. There was a small black box under his skull! Reaching with his hand up to the spot on his head corresponding to where the box was in the hologram, Emon found that his head had been shaved. He did not pay much attention to his new baldness, though; he was concerned with that little black box he saw through his skeletal fingers in the hologram as he rubbed his head.

          “Unfortunately, I couldn’t remove that,” Ellé said with true regret, “the technology is alien. I don’t even know how they put it in there in the first place. If I tried an operation like that, you’d be dead.”

          “What is it?”

          “It’s difficult to explain,” Ellé said. “A small part of your hippocampus (that’s the part of your brain the has to do with memory) was removed, and this device” (she pointed to the black box in the holo) “was implanted there instead. The device works similar to a holoprojector. Only instead of three-dimensional images, it projects memories into your brain. The memories are played over whatever you are truly perceiving at the time. Your brain literally ignores reality while the memories are first being played. After the memories have been played and your mind convinced it’s real, the holoprojector part of the device shuts down. Then it starts acting just like an organic part of the brain and handles all the functions of the part of the hippocampus that was removed. It even digitizes and stores a few new and real memories to help make the false ones blend with all your true ones. After the people who implanted this device sewed you back up or whatever it is they do, they sent you back home thinking you’d performed a heroic feat that saved the galaxy.”

          The woman in the doorway who had leveled the blaster at Emon when he was struggling spoke for the first time, “Your mission was an utter failure, and you don’t even know it.”

          In the next hour, Emon was hurried through a sort of recovery from his operation. Ellé apologized profusely that they had to use primitive operating tools and explained that they had no access to bacta while hiding in the vacant stories of lower Coruscant. Emon was fed some warm broth and told to move about to eliminate the stiffness in his limbs. During this time Emon was introduced to Rivash’s company.

          The woman who had aimed the blaster at Emon (he was told later she would have only stunned him) was named Sara. Taller than Emon and pleasantly thin, she was very attractive. Her chestnut hair was pulled back into a ponytail that fell down between her shoulder blades. Brandy brown eyes, crystal clear and strong, pierced Emon’s anytime he gazed at her. A belt was worn low on her round hips with a blaster holstered on the left thigh. Sara was about thirty-three or so, but she did not look that old (not that thirty-three is old, of course). Though friendly and full of smiles, she was reserved and did not speak often. Emon was surprised, not to mention disappointed and jealous, when he discovered Sara to be Rivash’s wife.

          Ellé was quite young, especially considering she was a brain surgeon, in her late twenties. That fact had made Emon nervous thinking that she had been poking around his head, but she proved herself a more than competent physician. She had straight blonde hair that stopped just above her shoulders and framed her pale face. She looked as though she did not get to see the sun very often, which is understandable since she was hiding “underground” in the enemy’s capitol. She was thin and slightly shorter than human average, and her eyes where dark green, exactly like Rivash’s natural eye. As it turned out, she was Rivash’s younger sister. Ellé was, by far, the most talkative person of the group.

          “So,” Emon asked, “If the thing in my head could only overwrite new memories, how come I can’t remember being captured and everything before they implanted it?”

          “You have a condition called retrograde amnesia,” Ellé answered, “It’s where your brain represses or loses memories leading up to a traumatic event. Athletes get it sometimes when they are injured. They won’t remember what the did to get hurt. Sometimes they don’t even remember starting the game.” Ellé took a sharp breath in and abruptly stopped talking; apparently she felt she was babbling. “Anyway, that’s what happened to you.”

           Emon was starting to feel better by the minute. He surveyed the hideout. Now he was in the main room, the one he first entered before his surgery. With the lights on he could see this room; it was good sized as far as rooms go. Rectangular and gray, this room was used as a living area. It had a table and some chairs on one side and a sort of cooking area on the other. The whole room was littered with high-tech equipment, mostly weapons from what Emon could see. One of the long sides of the room had three doors. Ellé told him those were the bedrooms, all as small as the one Emon woke up in. The one farthest from the main entrance was hers, the one in the middle was Rivash’s and Sara’s and the last one was the room Emon had been woken up in. There being no other rooms, that last one was assigned to Emon to sleep in. Emon found it interesting how new all the walls and flooring looked. Levels this close to Coruscant’s surface have been abandoned for decades if not centuries. The whole hideout, Ellé explained, they had built when the Empire fell. This level originally had no walls except for the outer walls of the building. They had walled off this small section of the level with half-meter-think metal they had scavenged from elsewhere to keep out the dangerous animals and sub-humans of the Coruscant underworld.

          The group—mostly Ellé—talked to Emon while he was gaining his strength. The two women seemed relaxed, but Rivash could not stop pacing the room. He constantly paused briefly to look at his chronometer before resuming his pacing.

          While watching Rivash pace restlessly, an idle thought came to Emon’s head. Obviously, Ellé and Sara were not these women’s real names. If they were in the same situation as Rivash, and Rivash was in so deep that he did not want Emon to use his name, then the names the women gave him must be aliases. Emon wondered why the females had chosen false names for themselves and Rivash insisted on being called “Commander.” Emon was answered by Sara who said with a grin, “Oh, you know how men are. Always obsessed with the power of their rank and position.” This brought a smile to Rivash’s face, but he continued to pace nevertheless.

          “Time to go,” Rivash said as he clipped a few more blaster packs onto his belt.

          “What time is it?” asked Emon.

          “A few hours before dawn,” answered Rivash, “The night shift will be tired and the next shift is still hours away.”

          “Where exactly are we going?”

          Rivash was standing at the outer door and answered, “As close to Imperial Palace as we can. We need information.”

          Sara handed Emon a blaster rifle, “Imperial Palace has the largest database anywhere in the galaxy. It also as the best security in the galaxy, so I can’t just slice into their computers from anywhere. I have to physically pull some wires out of the wall and make a circuit with my portable computer.”

          “Do not worry,” Rivash said as he held the door open for his wife. “We have done this before.”

          “Who’s worried?” ask Emon nervously.

          Rivash, Emon, and Sara stepped out onto the platform where Too Many Secrets was landed. They walked past the ship and across the catwalk to the skyscraper on the other side of the gorge. They stopped at the door leading into the building. It was still nighttime, and this far below the populated levels there were no lights. It was near total darkness; Emon’s eyes were slow to adjust. Rivash, his usually white artificial eye now glowing pale green, entered the building first. Sara followed and Emon brought up the rear, all three with weapons drawn. They had a long climb ahead of them.

          During their long trek through the rubble and abandoned rooms, Emon got to wondering some things and asked questions. Ellé had to stay behind because she was the only one who had legitimate connections to help them out if they got caught. What those connections those were exactly, Rivash, of course, would not say. Rivash also told Emon about the rogue New Republic General Koplar. The one who ordered the attack on Emon’s prison and the man Masch was supposedly searching for. It was also, most likely anyway, Koplar who had implanted the bug in Emon’s ear.

          While they were talking, Emon realized the genius of what Rivash had done during the flight from Opsth. He’d repeated Emon’s “secret” knowing that it was a false memory and that Koplar, who was listening, wouldn’t know it was not a true secret. Koplar had been fed a lie. The only problem was that Koplar also heard that they were coming to Coruscant. Hopefully he wasn’t planning on hunting Emon down anyway just to keep the “secret” from anybody else.

          Rivash held up his hand, signaling for silence. “The next floor up is the bottom-most floor of the palace,” he whispered. “That is where Sara can plug in and slice into their systems. Ready?”

          Sara and Emon nodded, and the trio ascended the final flight of stairs.

By FL/CPT Beef/Thunder 3-1/Wing X/ISD Challenge