The Last Jedi

Thirty-One


Pol Haus watched the forensics team work their way over the blast area, picking up and bagging bits of debris, sweeping the twisted wreckage of the train car with sensitive scanners. Certain that the team was focused on the task at hand, Haus turned and walked down the tunnel, firing up a small, wide-area hand lamp as soon as he got out of sight.

Ostensibly, he was heading to see if any debris had been flung farther from the bomb blast. His real intent was to discover where Tuden Sal had hidden the rest of the Whiplash hovertrain. It was probably a vain hope that he had secreted it anywhere near the site of his parting shot of sabotage, but then Sal had a perverse way of doing the unexpected.

The durasteel surface of the old subway was still relatively smooth, though it was dull in places from the lack of maintenance. As he went, Haus tried to walk through Sal’s thought process on where to hide the train. He might have chosen to put it within walking distance of any of the abandoned terminals they used, or even hide it close to the old freighter landing pad that was part of the larger Whiplash Underground Mag-Lev escape system they used to get people offworld.

He might have done that, but it made more sense to the prefect—in a twisted sort of way—for the Sakiyan to have hidden the cars where most authorities would be least likely to look for them. And that might just be near the scene of a police investigation.

He had walked for perhaps two hundred meters and was considering turning around and going back when he noticed that the beam of his lamp was reflecting strangely off the curving wall of the tube—there was a definite, if diffuse, bright spot just where the right-hand wall curved out of sight, as if the light were reflecting off a surface other than the left-hand wall.

Haus took a deep breath and moved forward again. For a moment, he thought he heard another set of footsteps behind him in the tunnel. He halted to listen.

Nothing. The tube breathed, the chill air moving listlessly. That was normal. Beyond that, all Haus could hear was the faint, intermittent hum of the forensics team’s voices far behind him.

He shook off the tingle of paranoia and moved forward again, clamping down on his imagination. Who’d follow him down here without calling for him? Refocusing on the tunnel ahead, he rounded the curve.

Powered down, the hovertrain lay cradled in the floor of the tube; no light peeped from the horizontal slits that served as windows on the outside world. Haus approached it carefully nonetheless, drawing his blaster. Theoretically, any Whiplash members who might be hiding here were his allies. But he knew how often theories failed.

He rounded the premier car, raising a hand to its sleek surface. There was no hint of vibration—the train’s power was off.

At the door, he hesitated. Was this yet another booby trap? He returned his blaster to its holster and pulled out a scanner. If the train was generating even the tiniest amount of electric or electromagnetic signal, the scanner would detect it … theoretically.

It detected nothing.

With a wry grin, Pol Haus moved to the forward portal, pocketed the scanner, and got out a device that was—to the police and emergency services personnel among whom it was a closely guarded secret—a literal lifesaver. Casually known as “the hostage’s best friend,” the electromagnetic manipulator and phantom power unit allowed defunct mechanisms—such as dead doors—to be operated even if their power supply was completely drained or had been destroyed. It virtually eliminated the need to blow doors in with firepower, or force them open manually.

Naturally, the units were greatly in demand on the black market by people who made their living at the dubious art of breaking and entering.

Haus pressed the palm-sized device to the side of the train car just to the left of the irising portal, activated its sensors, and moved it slowly around the perimeter. It vibrated gently when it found the locking mechanism. He activated the magnetic clamp, pressed the activation button to start the power flow, and turned the device clockwise. Then he leapt aside, hunkering down low on the train’s curving flank.

The door’s lock vibrated in response, and the iris opened.

No big bang.

“So far, so good,” Haus muttered, and swept his lamp’s golden beam into the darkness of the car.

Nothing twitched. He swapped the EM unit for his blaster and stepped up into the train. He scanned the interior for life-forms and found none. He swept it visually, as well—one could only trust machines so far.

Assured that no one was hiding in the first car, he made his way to the car in which the Whiplash leadership had held council. It was spooky and more than a little sad.

Haus shook his head. He had only just been accepted into the group, and it was now effectively dead. Sure, there were still cells of resistance—still souls dedicated to helping asylum-seekers offworld. But there was no one directing traffic. No one to keep the avenues of escape open.

Directing traffic. He smiled grimly. Sounded like a good detail for a police prefect.

He found himself standing at the communications console and wondered what it would take to power it up. There would be a redundant power supply, of course; it was just a question of activating it. And if he did—what then?

The big boom?

No. This was Sal’s backup plan. His bolt-hole. He’d expected to return to it. But wouldn’t he have left someone on the train, just in case?

A stealthy sound from the next car made Haus’s hair stand on end. That was not his imagination.

Shielding his lamp in the pocket of his coat, he glided to the intersecting door between the two cars. The doorway was open into darkness. He paused in the short transitional corridor to listen again. From there he could see that the door to Tuden Sal’s quarters was also open.

He moved with all the stealth he could muster, cursing—not for the first time—the long-coat that swirled around his legs. He really ought to consider giving up that affectation. One of these days it was going to get him killed.

He made the entrance to Sal’s quarters and paused to listen again.

Complete silence.

No … not complete. He could hear someone breathing, and he was convinced whoever it was knew he was there. A frisson of unease hit him as he detected a new sound—a stealthy sound—from the conference room in the car he’d just left. He turned, pressing his back against the bulkhead, and palmed his lamp. He focused all his senses on the cabin and thrust the lamp into the empty doorway so that it illuminated the room beyond.

“Out where I can see you!” he commanded.

“Well, well. The traitor returns to the scene of his treachery.” Tuden Sal’s voice came from a corner of the room to Haus’s left.

The prefect could only vaguely make out a form that might have been the Sakiyan. “I’m no traitor, Sal. I don’t know who was, only that it wasn’t me.”

“Of course you’d say that. You want me to come out where you can shoot me.”

Haus lowered his blaster. “I’m not going to shoot you, Sal.”

“I don’t suppose it matters, really, does it? I should have died with the others.”

“I thought you had.”

The Sakiyan uttered a dry laugh. “No, no. A general doesn’t go into battle with the troops. I sent them on a suicide mission and watched from a safe distance. Watched it all go wrong. Watched them die.”

“I tried to warn you, Sal.”

A beat. “You did, didn’t you?”

Tuden Sal came out of hiding then. He was armed—a small hold-out blaster that was barely visible in his hand. He made no move to use it.

Haus kept his own weapon lowered.

“I should have listened,” Sal told him. “If I had, none of this would have happened.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I told the others it was because you might be a traitor to the cause or that you were a coward.” He shook his head. “It was because I knew you’d do whatever you could to stop me. The Empire took my life away from me, Pol. My business. My family. I only saw one way to get it back: kill Palpatine.”

“So in the end, you used Whiplash for your personal vendetta.”

“I did.” Sal’s face worked, and for a moment, Haus thought the Sakiyan might weep. Instead he simply said, “I did worse than that.”

“What do you mean?” Haus asked, then stiffened at a minute sound from the corridor behind him.

He turned. His Bothan lieutenant, Kalibar Droosh, was framed in the doorway, his blaster leveled at his prefect’s midsection.

“A very revealing conversation, sir,” the lieutenant said in his hissing, oddly accented Basic. “One I’m sure the Imperial Security Bureau would be most interested in hearing.”

“And you’re going to relay it to them?” Haus asked.

“Of course. I’m sure there will be great rewards for the man who captures … or kills … the remaining members of Whiplash.”

“He’s not a member of Whiplash,” Tuden Sal said acidly. “He was merely a hanger-on.”

The lieutenant shrugged. “Close enough. And there was that woman, too, the so-called informant you brought here before. I assume you’ve got some way to contact her, sir?”

Haus felt bile rising in his throat. Sheel. This sorry specimen would go after her next.

“Why do you want to do this, Lieutenant? What love do you have for the Empire?”

“They pay me. Good credits for faithful service. More, if I can give them items of interest. I’ve been watching you for a while, Prefect Haus. Since I transferred into your prefecture. I was taken with how unusual your friends are. I expect you’ll generate quite a bit of interest among my superiors. Maybe enough to get me assigned permanently to the ISB.”

Haus sighed and started to turn his blaster butt-first so he could hand it to Droosh.

“Oh, no, sir. You keep that. It’s important for this to look—”

There was a ragged scream from Tuden Sal as he flung himself out from behind Haus, firing as he moved.

Haus extinguished the hand lamp and dived to his left. Two more blaster bolts ripped through the darkness in swift succession—one from the doorway and one from the center of the cabin.

Eyes dazzled, Haus lay still and listened, his own blaster up and leveled at the door. He heard the hiss of tortured breathing to his right. Nothing from the outer corridor. The hot stench of burnt flesh, hair, and fabric hinted at what he’d see when he turned on his lamp and blinked his eyes.

Through the slashes of afterimage, Haus saw Tuden Sal lying against the rear wall of the cabin. He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t likely to live long, either. Droosh’s blaster had caught him in the ribs, leaving a charred hole.

Of Droosh, he could see only the man’s boots. He got carefully to his feet, light and blaster aimed at the fallen officer. From the center of the cabin it was clear Droosh was never going to get up again. Sal’s shot had caught him right between the eyes.

Haus knelt next to Sal. “You didn’t have to do that,” he said.

“Oh, you would have?” Sal grunted. “You’d’ve let him shoot you. This called for another suicide mission. Mine … payback.”

“Sal …”

The Sakiyan raised a trembling hand to Haus’s sleeve. “Hide … the train. The data …”

“I’ll take care of it. Sheel and I will take care of it.”

Sal drew a shuddering breath, his eyes losing their focus. “Stupid … so many mistakes.”

He was gone before Haus could ask him what mistakes he was referring to, and if they might impact his own continued existence.

Haus sat in the darkness for a long moment, trying to herd his thoughts into some semblance of order. When the chaos had settled and logic reasserted itself, he stood and considered the grim task ahead of him—disposing of the bodies.

After that … well, how hard could it be to hide a train?