“Ahsoka!” The cry came from behind her. It was Miara, her voice thin with worry and tears and no small amount of resentment for having to talk to Ahsoka in the first place.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s Kaeden,” Miara gasped, winded from crawling through the tunnel. She must have done it in a hurry. “She stalked off after yelling at you, and I thought she’d gone back to the medical area to sit with Neera, but she didn’t. The door guard said he let her out, and she hasn’t come back.”
Ahsoka whipped around, staring out at the grassy hills between the caves and town. It was too dark to see anything, and there were too many people concentrated close together for Ahsoka to get an accurate read through the Force.
“If she goes to town, will they catch her?” Miara asked.
“She wasn’t wearing a mask, and you can see her injury as soon as you look at her face,” Ahsoka said. “They know what she looks like. They’ll catch her for sure.”
She didn’t add that the Imperials would torture Kaeden, too. They would assume she knew where the rest of the insurgents were hiding; they would assume she knew where Ahsoka was, and they would really, really want to catch Ahsoka.
“What are we going to do?” Miara asked.
“You are going to stay here with Neera,” Ahsoka said. “She is going to need a friend very badly when she wakes up, and you’re the only one she’s got right now.”
Miara swallowed hard, but nodded.
“You’re going to go?” she asked. “Even though Kaeden was so angry at you?”
“Yeah,” Ahsoka said. “I’m going to go.”
She didn’t look but assumed that Miara followed her through the tunnel to the main cave. She stopped only long enough to pick up the cache of tech pieces from where they were hidden, in case she wasn’t able to return for them, and to reclaim the Imperial blaster she’d stolen during the battle. No one tried to stop her, and she disappeared into the dark.
Kaeden realized her mistake almost as soon as she stepped back into town. Of course there would be more patrols, given that night’s two-pronged attack. Of course they would be actually searching now, not just showing off their presence and letting fear do the rest. Of course they would know what she looked like. At least she had stolen Miara’s hood to cover the wound on her forehead. It throbbed, but the bleeding had stopped, and the medic-trained insurgent who’d sewn her up said she probably didn’t have a concussion. Anyway, it was too late to turn back now.
She didn’t go home. She went to Vartan’s, but he wasn’t there. He must have stayed with Selda, waiting for news. She didn’t want to try to make it to them until it was daylight. At least once curfew was over it would be easier to move around. She had just finished disarming the lock on Vartan’s door when eight stormtroopers rounded the corner at a trot. They were clearly on their way to Vartan’s house, and they were just as clearly surprised to find her instead of him, but they were not about to let the opportunity pass them by.
“Take her,” said the one with the pauldron.
Kaeden thought about fighting, but eight to one was not good odds. She put up a bit of resistance, but not enough that they did more than knock the wind out of her.
“Careful with this one,” said the troop leader. “They’ll have a few questions for her back at base.”
The way he said it made Kaeden’s blood run cold. Ahsoka, she thought, wondering if Jedi really could read minds, Ahsoka, I’m sorry. Then the commander hit her again and everything went black.
Chapter 15
AHSOKA WATCHED. Ahsoka waited. Ahsoka was not afraid.
Kaeden had heard stories all her life of the cruel things men did for power. Orphaned on a remote world, and with next to nothing to her name, she’d seen more than a few of those stories play out in real life. She knew of spouses who hit. She’d seen bruises on her playmates’ eyes. One time, one of the overseers had tried to set up a food-rationing sideline, controlling everything his laborers had access to. It had fallen apart quickly — Vartan had been the one to break the overseer’s fingers — but Kaeden remembered those few days of watching her every move, and Miara’s, too, to keep out of the line of fire.
After she was captured and thrown in a cell, they left her alone for what felt like hours. She knew it couldn’t have been more than four, because there was a window in her cell and it was still dark outside. But it was more than long enough for her to relive every terrible story she’d ever heard and for her imagination to work her mind into a frenzy. She didn’t bother hiding her tears. She knew the Imperials would see them — and more — eventually.
The first interrogator didn’t ask her any questions. She pressed a machine to Kaeden’s chest, and when it was activated, all Kaeden could do was scream from the pain. She would have said anything, given up anyone, to make the pain stop, but the woman didn’t ask, and she never let up long enough for Kaeden to talk. When she finally removed the apparatus, Kaeden fell sideways onto the floor, her throat too raw from screaming to say anything at all.
The second set of interrogators asked, of all things, about her health. They wanted to know if she had heart problems and if she was fully human, or if she had some genetic quirk. Kaeden’s voice was slow to return, so she mostly nodded or shook her head in reply, and when they were satisfied with her answers, they strapped her to the chair, palms up. Kaeden realized that this exposed all the veins in her arms. One of the interrogators went into the corridor for the medical tray and wasted no opportunity for drama in showing Kaeden the needles and vials they were about to use on her. After all the injections, Kaeden felt too cold and too hot at the same time, and she had trouble holding her head upright.
“Give her a few minutes,” she heard one of them say to someone who stood in the hallway. “We might have underguessed her weight. They’re all a bit scrawny in the Outer Rim. It makes them hard to medicate.”
Kaeden blinked stupidly and wished very hard for a glass of water. Then she laughed out loud. Water! Why not wish for free arms and a clear head and a ship that would carry her to safety. What she really wished for, more than anything, was that the first interrogator and her terrible machine would never come back into her cell.
The door opened again. Kaeden tried to look up, but her head was still too heavy for her neck. A very bright light came on, and something hummed loudly, uncomfortably close to her ear. She turned slightly and saw the round black interrogator droid hovering there, bright needles protruding from it. The threat was clear: talk or pain. Kaeden honestly wasn’t sure yet which one she was going to choose.
Another chair scraped against the floor, and a figure sat down across from her. He was dressed in Imperial gray, and his hat was pulled down over his eyes. Kaeden couldn’t decipher his rank, but he carried himself like someone who was used to being obeyed.
“Kaeden Larte,” he said. She was a little surprised he knew her name but tried not to show it. She failed. “Human female, legal adult, caretaker of Miara Larte, a sister. You were not born here, but you were orphaned here, you have never been indentured, and your work record is spotless. Your crew lead thought you might actually replace him, when he got around to retiring.”