Moving Target

Disclaimer: This story was written for the love and enjoyment of Star Wars. The characters you know belong to George Lucas and to Mike Stackpole; the ones you don't belong to this author. No copyright infringement or harm is intended, and I am making no profit from this story, beyond the joy of visiting the Star Wars galaxy.
I'm only borrowing the boys, & will return them when I'm done playing.

Please do not post this story anywhere without permission from the authoFeedFeedback is welcomed, with the review function of this site, or by emailing the author at: jennet_2@yahoo.com


* denotes emphasis, as if italicized in Word.doc ; // indicates thoughts or inner dialog.

Rating: Starts out PG-13, with the intention of reaching R.

Author's note: This story takes place in the period of time between the X-wing comic Mandatory Retirement and X-wing book Rogue Squadron. I kept waiting for the story of Tycho's capture, imprisonment & escape to be written by the pro authors, and since it hasn't, the gears in my brain started spinning. This is the result.

Moving Target

by Jenn


What finally woke him up was the security cam.

The model number stencilled on the side of the grey metal box containing the cam workings, actually.

It was sheer chance he saw it. Chance that he raised his eyes from their usual position fixed on the ground a meter in front of his feet; chance that he was by that particular building when he did; and chance that no guards were standing nearby to give him a punch in the back or kick to the leg to move him along when he stopped and stared.

Someone with more faith might have called it something else. But faith was in short supply in Imperial Prison Camp number 8625, and the prisoner didn't have any memory of knowing about the Force anyway.

He had been shuffling across the yard for a water break to replace the sweat pouring down his body when Galin grabbed his arm. And when he didn't pause his mechanical, dragging steps, Galin gave him a little shake.

Galin had appointed himself his caretaker; he herded the prisoner from line to line, sat him at the mess house tables and prompted him to eat, made him lie down at night and get up in the morning. He kept him out of the way of the bullies and the rapists and the guards who would beat a man just for the fun of it. Galin was only a boy-- he hadn't even reached age of majority on some worlds-- but he had decided for some reason known only to himself to watch over the broken prisoner.

And part of his efforts included trying to get the prisoner to take an interest in life.

"Look; look up, Gabs. Up, in the sky. C'mon, look!"

And for some reason, he did; he dragged his eyes up to the clear blue above and focused where Galin's finger was pointing.

Sea-going avians-- three of them-- soaring overhead in an arrowhead-shaped group. Their huge wings, two meters in breadth, were outspread to catch the updrafts rising from the baking earth, and their heads and broad-feathered tails thrust out straight ahead and behind. They weren't a common sight above the prison, but had been known to glide past occasionally.

"Look at them; doesn't that look fine? To lift off the ground an' feel the wind under your wings, an' just fly far, far away?" Galin's voice was filled with aching longing. He shaded his eyes and turned slowly to keep the birds in sight.

The prisoner turned, too, because the boy at his elbow did and most of the time it was just easier to follow his lead, even if he was but a scrawny, dirty kid. The sun dazzled his eyes, and tipping his head back in the unfamiliar position left him suddenly lightheaded. Against the flat blue expanse, the birds were cross-shaped silhouettes, leader and two...

//...wingmen?//

The thought hurt. Thinking about crosses in the sky and soaring in flight drove a sliver of pain deep into his mind and behind his eyes. The prisoner lowered his gaze, back to the dull ordinariness of brown dirt, grey duracrete-block buildings, durasteel boundary walls. To distance himself from the pain triggered by his drifting thought, he focused on the wall and let his mind empty of all but the present.

Heavy-duty power lines ran through those walls. The slightest touch turned any inmate foolish enough to approach into charred, smoking flesh. Sometimes a prisoner, pushed beyond endurance, ran purposely into the wall.

The prisoner could understand that, in the wordless place that had replaced his thoughts. Sometimes the faint humming of high voltage, just under conscious audible level, called to him.

One big, bright flash, and this endless, grinding existance would be over.

The prisoner erased the memory of the birds and turned with single-minded purpose to his original destination.

//Water.//

Yes, he supposed water would be... what? Pleasant, refreshing, delicious, were all words that no longer held any meaning for him. Reviving, maybe-- enabling him to go back and stand in the smothering heat for the required hours.

As he turned and slid his gaze downward to its usual position, his eyes passed over the security cam mounted on the corner of the structure he'd just left, Building 3. //N-U-L/3,// his mind noted dully, like the automaton he had become.

Before he could take another step, a light blazed on in the prisoner's brain. N-U-L/3. Not N-O-L/3, for Night Owl 3 Security Devices, holocam, audio sensor, and motion detector all in one convenient, easy-to-install package, as some virtually forgotten promotional literature had promised. But N-U-L/3.

For null. Fake.

A dummy security cam, that looked like the real thing to nervous, fearful prisoners who saw nearly identical, *working* ones every hour of their lives. It even had the same glowing red diode on the front to show it was activated.

Except it wasn't.

Probably even the guards weren't aware that there were fake security cams placed in the camp. Only the director of the prison and the security chief and monitoring crew would be privileged to share that information. The prisoner didn't know how he knew this; the slightest push to find out caused that dagger to prick at his brain again. For the moment, it was enough to know that somehow, *he knew*. He had once been in some kind of position to learn Imperial security tricks.

"Hey, Gabs, you all right? You look kinda frozen."

He looked into Galin's blue eyes, shadowed with concern, and came back to the present with a jolt. Prison. Slave labor. One short water break before resuming backbreaking work. As his eyes focused, he saw the boy sigh in relief.

"Hey, don't do that, huh? Don't go off into the land of the living dead like that. C'mon, you been doin' good lately, you don't wanna turn back into a breathing corpse. Let's go get a drink before we lose our turn."

Hand on the older man's elbow, the boy guided him to the pump house and into the shuffling line of inmates working its way to the metal faucet sticking out of the wall. An Imperial guard, armored in stormtrooper white, stood sentry, blast rifle held alertly to punch down onto the back of any man taking too long a drink. The line moved forward in a slow, steady stream.

Step forward, bend, mouth to bitter metallic pipe, suck and swallow as quickly as one could, a quick downward dip to splash the face, and then bumped from behind so the next man could take his place. The prisoner stood up, letting the water run down his face and neck, cool rivulets through the sweat and dust. This time, on his walk back to his assigned work station, he studied the building with newly awakened senses.

Heat rolled off it in visible waves, making the air dance with ripples. There were no operable windows, but vents in the roof released jets of hot air, and every time the door opened, heat poured out in a flood, stirring the trampled dust, setting the air in motion. The mix of super-heated indoor air and relatively cooler outdoor air sent constant eddies of dried weeds and leaves swirling around the outer walls.

Installing a functional motion detector on such a building would be an alarm monitor's nightmare.

The prisoner noted all the air movements with new awareness. He also noted something that was so constant he didn't hear it anymore-- the roar of the blast furnace. That noise would wreck havoc on the audio components of the security system, he realized.

Another reason for the false holocams to be installed here.

Galin was scratching at the scanty brown whiskers covering his throat and chin and sending more worried looks his way. The prisoner had to stop and think for a moment-- what was he meant to do next? Oh, yes, back to his station. Body moving on autopilot

//...autopilot? no. hurts...//

on automatic, he moved to his place at the conveyor belt. Galin's expression eased again, and the boy took his own place at arms length from the older man. With a clank from a lever thrown by an unseen guard, the machinery started up again.

"Gloves, Gabs. Put your gloves on."

The prisoner heard the boy's voice, high with renewed anxiety, and looked down, slipped his hands into the hot raw leather. Sweat and long use molded them to the shape of his hands

//...gloves. of fine supple hide, molded to hands that gripped... no! pain, sunburst, eye-piercing...//

and he extended them out over the river of moving glass, plucking from the flow any color other than clear-- green, and brown, and blue, and once in a long while, yellow.

His hands moved surely, mindlessly, as he waited for the pain to fade again. It was numbing work. His arms, once wasted and bone-thin, were lean and sinewy now; muscles shifted smoothly in his shoulders once more. Usually his mind remained switched off, filled with a comforting white drone, with only a single connection between optic nerves and brain firing. The most fundamental functionality, like a very simple droid.

Anything else was chancing the kind of pain that had turned him into 'breathing dead' in the first place.

Sweat ran down his bare legs and stuck his flimsy tunic to his chest and back. His eyes stung and his hair matted and his beard dripped. The sensations were maddeningly uncomfortable; earlier, the discomforts had been just part of the background drone his body operated in. But now his mind was connected again and he could feel his body's distress.

For perhaps the first time, the prisoner raised his eyes from the pieces of glass pouring past and looked around the vast, ear-numbing chamber. For the rest of the shift, between quick glances at the conveyor belt to keep track of what his hands were doing, his eyes roamed the walls, ceiling, machines, and doors within the duracrete-block building.

The unfamiliar sensation of thoughts moving through his mind, however sluggishly, made the inside of his skull feel as if it were being scoured by the glass he handled so mechanically. Somehow, he knew the dead greyness he'd been living in was not normal; he couldn't say how he knew, but he did, just as he knew that he had once been someone... else. Not the breathinrpserpse who lay motionless on a bunk, or the half-dead man they called Gabs, who followed Galin around and sorted broken glass for recycling.

It had something to do with the security cam with the wrong model number. And with the fact that once wakened, histinstincts cried to form a plan.

Whoever he had been before Imperial Prison 8625, he had been someone to whom tactical planning was as instinctive as breathing.

When the conveyor belt stopped moving, the prisoner was surprised. Following the meandering trails opening up in his mind had passed the time almost as painlessly as the hard-shelled greyness had. At Galin's urging, he took off his gloves, hung them on a soft plastene hook, and followed the boy out of Building 3. Already he was forming a rough diagram of it in his brain.

Dinner was a rude shock; more lines, to get in the mess building, to get a thin metal tray from a vast stack, to have a turn at the food dispenser. The prisoner found himself uncertain, now that he was no longer cruising

//cruising-- no. that hurts, too...//

moving on automatic, on what to do. He stood behind Galin and watched thy. y. Galin received his food and stepped ahead, and the prisoner took his place and held out his tray to the dispenser in the same way.

A quivering, grey-brown slab hit the tray with a moist 'slap'. The prisoner froze and stared at it with an emotion he later recognized as horror.

This was food? He was expected to *eat* this?

Not even during the worst, darkest days of the

//no! pain-- blazing, searing, stomach-churning hurt don't touch there close that door hard tight fast...//

A hard poke drilled his kidney. "Galin! Get your gabby friend moving before I move him for you!"

The boy swung around and caught his forearm. "Come on, Gabs. Keep moving. Get your water container. Come find a seat. C'mon, keep moving."

Docy, sy, stunned by the bolt of pain, he followed the boy to a table, climbed over the bench, sat. Stared at the thick, shining, disgusting mess in front of him. What *was* this? Small wonder that he'd been walking dead if this was reality.

"Hey, Gabs? Whatsa matter? You seein' visions in your compost loaf?"

The sneering question came from a thin, rough-faced man seated opposite him. The men to either side snickered appreciatively. Galin's face flushed.

"Shaddup. Leave 'im alone, he ain't botherin' you." He nudged the prisoner's side. "Eat, Gabs. It ain't spoiled, just all mushed up an' steamed. Break off a chunk an' swallow it down."

"He's regressin', Galin. You're gonna have to start over with him."

"You gonna feed 'im by hand, like a momma pitta-hen?"

The boy ignored the taunts. He gave the prisoner's limp hand a brisk shake. "Eat, Gabs. C'mon, you've seen this slop a hunnert times before."

That was when he received his second shock. He opened his mouth to answer-- Have I? What is it? How long have I been here eating it?

And no words came out.

He tried again. What did you call this? But nothing happened. His mouth opened, air pushed out of his lungs, but his throat was paralyzed, his tongue useless.

He couldn't speak.

He stared helplessly at Galin. He didn't know why he assumed automatically that he could talk; he had no memory of ever doing so before. In fact, the thought of speaking

//...to whom? fleeting image of shadowy figure above him... flat on his back?... burning eyes... don't talk, don't!//

stirred awake the brain-piercing hurt.

The boy misinterpreted his look of dismay. "Look here, Gabs, it's food. It ain't good, but it ain't harmful, y'know? You gotta eat. It's just protein an' starch an' veg all mixed an' squashed into a loaf. Gulp it down, it's all you're gonna get till morning. Water'll wash it down."

To the boy's low, constant chatter, the prisoner ate. He broke the slab into chunks with his fingers

//no utensils. possible weapons, or tools.//

and swallowed them with draughts of water. It lay in his stomach in a heavy lump, but didn't try to come back up.

Feet scuffed on the floor, and benches scraped. The prisoners were rising, forming another line to turn in trays and file out. Galin stayed at his shoulder, muttering directions nervously.

So he was mute. That explained his name, why it didn't *feel* right. He couldn't tell them his name, so they'd given him one. Gabs. For gabby. The perverse humor of incarcerated men. Gallows humor.

He followed Galin to latrine and then barracks. The sky was darkening as they d ind inside and the boy showed him his bunk. One of the ever-present guards bellowed, "Thirty standard to lights out!" and was met with grumbles, albeit low-voiced ones. The prisoner climbed into his bunk in the second tier and stared at the one above him.

How de kne know a phrase like 'gallows humor'?

Security forces used that phrase, didn't they? And investigators, of homicides and accidents? And the...

//pain-- bad! no, close that door, lock it down tight...//

Sweat was rolling off his body; he was shaking, breathing hard. All right, then, no past. Stay in the present, keep that blinding pain in check.

And the present was pretty unpleasant, so that meant he had to find a way out. He was in prison, it appeared, Imperial prison, although he had only the vaguest ideas of what that meant. And there were only three ways out of a prison that he (somehow) knew.

Parole. Unlikely. He knew, somehow, that this was not a place where paroles happened.

Body bag. Unacceptable. He didn't know who he was, who he had been, but to whoever that man had been, death had been something to fight, not embrace.

So. That left...

Escape.

~~to be continued...