Phase 1: There (Discovery)
Part 3
Commander Marek Andarin of Starfighter Command, leader of Stingray Squadron, pressed a button and the holomessage played yet again. He needed to be certain of what he had just heard before he acted. He didn’t always err so far on the side of caution, but these were special circumstances.
The recording had lost some integrity, bouncing so far across space through all kinds of interference, but the core of it was intact. Gil Alston’s face materialized above the holoplayer. Andarin leaned forward, watching and listening intently. There was intermittent static, and the image fuzzed or blinked out several times, but the message was the same: Gil was alive, and Airis might be too.
There were unanswered questions, to be sure. How had he escaped? Who had captured them? How had he made it back to his X-wing? Where had they been the past three weeks? Andarin shrugged these aside as details. Answers could come later. The matter at hand was getting his people back in one piece, a mission objective he had begun to think was out of reach.
Now they had a planet. Coordinates. Solid intel that he could take to Command and request resources. General Cracken had promised him whatever he needed as soon as he had any hard data to support it, and that’s exactly what they had now. Andarin pulled out his commlink and summoned Lieutenant Bata, his executive officer.
Then, remembering a promise he had made, he lifted his comm again and requested Lieutenant Acker of Nightshade Squadron to report to his office.
***
Despite the pain that rolled through her body in waves, Airis couldn’t help but smile, however faintly. Gil had gotten out. She had managed to keep her eyes on him until he disappeared through the door, and then had put up enough of a fight that no one thought to chase after him until it was too late. Her head bounced limply as she was again carried through the dark corridors, slung across the shoulders of one of the hissing beings.
“He will not be pleassed,” one voice seethed. “We needed five sstinger.”
“He will sstill get what he wantss,” the one who carried her replied. “The ansswerss of her will ssuffice.”
Airis was having difficulty holding on to the words. She knew the conversation was unsettling, but she could not pin down why. The world swirled and spun around her as pain flared first in her head, then her ribs, her spine, and her head again. The voices continued to hiss back and forth, but she could no longer pull any meaning from them.
It wasn’t until after they had deposited her in a new cell, complete with the absolute darkness, that her head ceased to spin and a horrifying realization began to spread.
“Five stinger,” she whispered to herself, trying to push back the silence that hummed in the room. Dread knotted itself into the base of her gut. Stinger Five.
One last thought clawed its way to the surface before a fresh wave of unconsciousness claimed her.
They know our call signs.