Star Wars - Gathering Shadows - The Origin of the Black Curs - Unpublished

For the first time in years, Harkness couldn’t stand the silence.

He had two options: he could lie with his good eye open and think, or he could lie with his good eye shut and think. It didn’t matter either way, because the cell was pitch black and the only indication that he wasn’t having a strange dream was the smell of something dead or dying in the same room.

Maybe it was him. All during the interrogation, Harkness had kept his focus away from the pain and the questions, and where he had put his focus he could not remember, but he wasn’t required to do it anymore. It hurt to breathe; it hurt to be wearing clothes; it hurt to swallow. The nicest thing the Imperials had done for him was not to put his boots back on his stinging feet.

Moreover, there was a humming sound in his head. It could have been something to do with where he had placed his focus, or it could have been an after-effect of the drugs. Which brought to mind the image of the round, black interrogator droid that had administered them. Which, in turn, had left him with a vision of sickly colors, distorted sounds, and a sensation similar to that of having needles in his brain and his eyes and the whole inside of his head. That thought, coupled with the humming sound, sent him into a near panic, and he decided to drown both elements out entirely.

“Hey!” he said. His voice was hoarse and thick, but it echoed and that made him feel better. At least he wasn’t floating in some infinite vacuum. “Hey, yeah. This is great. Way to be, Harkness.”

He thought about all the stories he had heard about prisoners who had been locked up alone for decades and gone insane. He had expected that any time in solitary confinement would be paradise, but now he could see himself in two years, drooling, talking to himself all the time. People would look at him funny and whisper about him. On the other hand, wasn’t that their normal practice anyway? Harkness decided he would probably be fine as long as he never answered himself.

“Well,” he said. “Maybe it could be worse.”

“I doubt it.”

Harkness froze. He had been answered by a female voice a short distance away.

“Hello?” he said tentatively.

“Yeah?” said the woman. Her voice was raw, and its thick, nasal quality suggested that she had a broken nose; but her tone was steady. The sound of a person in the comfortable situation of things not being able to become worse.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

She slurred her words together, and It took a moment for Harkness to extrapolate what she had actually said: “Master Sergeant Jai Raventhorn, Alliance Infiltrators.”

Harkness absorbed that. “I thought High Command dissolved the Infiltrators,” he said.

“Rub it in, why don’t you,” said the woman.

“Hah!” said Harkness. It wasn’t a real laugh, but it was the only positive response he could come up with. Raventhorn’s voice carried the depth of the numbness, the pain, the humiliation, and the relief that was in Harkness right then, and he dismissed the automatic assumption that she was some COMPNOR agent planted in the cell to get him to talk casually.

It also sounded as though she were shivering, as Harkness was. Most likely she had been done exactly the same way he had, and that made him furious. But he didn’t want to tell her that because she might think he was being patronizing.

“So what do you do now instead, Sergeant Raventhorn?” he asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“Harkness.”

“Harkness what?”

It suddenly occurred to him that he couldn’t recall his first name. If he had one at all.

“Harkness what?” Jai asked again.

“I…think it’s just Harkness,” he said. More enthusiastically, he added, “I’m a mercenary.”

“A merc. Really. I don’t think that’s what I am.”

“Try to remember. We’re just experiencing the after-effects of the mind-probe.”

This was just a guess on Harkness’ part. But it made him feel better, and Jai evidently believed it because she took a few moments to think. Finally she said, “Oh, wait—I work in Intel now.”

“lntel? Were you with Red Team Five?”

“l think so. Yeah, I was,” she said, and there was no trace of pride in her voice on admitting that. But then came a sudden spark of interest. “Are you one of the mercs who tipped us off about this place?”

“No, but guess what?”

“What?”

“I think there might be an Imperial garrison here on Zelos.”

She gave a half-amused snort. “You think?”

“Is the rest of your team around here?”

“They’re dead,” said Jai.

“Oh,” Harkness said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” She gave a heavy sigh. “I don’t suppose you told them anything.”

“Who?” asked Harkness. He was feeling confused. His lips had started to feel numb.

“The Imperials.”

“No,” said Harkness, and then he was struck anew. “Hey—”

“What?”

“I didn’t tell them anything!” He had completely shut it out of his mind, but his interrogators had realized that mind-probing him was useless and therefore the Interrogation was a failure, and they had tortured him just to make themselves feel better. Suddenly Harkness felt positively warm inside. It was the ultimate test and he had passed it. He could actually feel himself grinning. There was not a lower place that could possibly exist, and his situation could only improve if they had him killed now. He didn’t remember ever feeling so secure in his life.

“Yeah,” said Raventhorn, “I heard you the first time.”

“How about you?” he asked. “You tell them anything?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Good for you.”

“Yeah, good for me,” she said unenthusiastically.

“Doesn’t that make you feel great?”

“Not especially.”

“You know how many people can’t make it through interrogations like that? If they don’t talk, they usually just die from the physical punishment.”

“I know.”

“My point is, the Imperials could have done worse things. They could have run a catheter straight up your nasal cavity into your brain. If you didn’t die you’d be jelly.”

“You’re a lot of fun to have around,” said Jai.

“I’m serious!” Harkness said, although he didn’t know what exactly he was feeling. It was almost giddiness. “Listen, you can go back home and tell everyone you didn’t crack, and they’ll give you a medal or something.”

“Yeah, they would,” Jai said in complete disgust. “That’s what’s wrong with the New Republic.”

“What is?”

“Medals. Glory. You know. These days they give stuff out if you remember not to wipe your nose on your sleeve in front of General Madine.”

Jai’s voice was fading and Harkness’ vision seemed to narrow to a pinhole. There was a sensation of a cool, gray fog beginning to permeate his body from underneath him.

“I can’t feel my hands,” said Jai.

“Me neither,” said Harkness. He didn’t want to talk anymore, but he knew the silence would seep into the fog, into his body. And the humming! Why wouldn’t it stop? “Do you know him?” Harkness asked.

“Who?”

“General Madine?”

“Do I?” asked Jai.

“I don’t know,” said Harkness.

It got quiet again. Harkness was finding himself less panic-stricken about it. He was cold all over, but he was getting comfortable. He knew he should have tried to stay awake, but he hadn’t been so relaxed in a very, very long time. He felt free. He wanted to savor it, even if it meant dying. Especially if it meant dying.

In fact, he would have let himself drift off entirely, except that Jai said, “I wish they would have.”

Her voice seemed to ring, not off the walls but all through Harkness’ head. “Would…what?” he asked.

“I wish they would have turned my brain to jelly.”

Silence. Harkness’ mind immediately cleared itself out.

“Wait a second. What’s that mean?” he asked “I just have this feeling.” Jai said.

“Like what?”

“Like there’s nobody waiting for me to come back.”

“What is up with this place?” said Platt for what was about the third time in fifteen minutes.

Tru’eb glanced up from the information console. “I said I don’t know,” he told her irritably, although he could understand what Platt was talking about. Passengers and flight crews were roaming throughout the starport, checking their cargo specs at public maintenance terminals, slumped in chairs still waiting for their ships to pass muster, rushing to catch the next shuttle. Perfectly normal. But the locals—the maintenance people, the desk personnel, and the green-eyed humans—all had a raw, shaky look about them. Tru’eb usually associated expressions like those, and the scent they gave off, with sheer terror barely held in check.

“I mean we’ve been waiting for four hours now and nobody knows anything. Dirk could be dead somewhere.”

“Harkness strikes me as rather resilient,” said Tru’eb. “I doubt he ran into any serious opposition.”

“Like what? That Imperial garrison nobody knows anything about?”

Tru’eb didn’t answer. The whole point of the mission had been relatively simple; there was a stash of Imperial-issue weapons being transported in, disguised as ship parts. Platt, Tru’eb, and Harkness had planned on liberating the weapons for their own personal use. Platt had a couple of smuggler friends who were only too happy to provide a distraction. At a place like this, with the starport personnel totally clouded over by fear or whatever, nobody saw Tru’eb and his friends take custody of the alleged ship parts. Or nobody cared.