Extreme Ways

[Byl Laprovik]

It seemed he slept for weeks. Maybe he did. The first thing he heard was the hiss of the air recycler.

*Gaaaaasp!*

The sudden intake of air at the emergence into conciousness, followed by the crippling sense of disorientation nearly sent him into a panic. Where was he? What was he doing in a ship so small it could barely size up against an escape pod?

His fingers moved over the keypad with muscle memory that was clearer than the rest of him. Within a moment, he triangulated his position to the Berac system. Two life-sustaining worlds, one populated. He'd never heard of the place.

What was he doing out here? This was a particularly sparse section of the Outer Rim. He blinked the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes, tapping on a diagnostic screen that showed his ship on minimal power reserves. Whatever the reason, he was nearly out of power. If he slept any longer, he could have lost engines, and then life support.

He made a break for the populated planet, biding his time by going over the ship's log before touching down.

Except, the log was empty.

He checked again, and again. No entries. No flight plan. No data at all regarding where he'd been and what he'd been doing. And it wasn't the computer either. He tried to think back. There was simply nothing there.

He couldn't even remember his own name.

[James Prent]

His commlink buzzed. After a few minutes it buzzed again.

[Byl Laprovik]

The din of the comm buzzer sounded like a bomb going off in the dead silence preceeding it. A natural paranoia caused him to actively ping the nearby coordinates for any sign of a ship or anyone who might be watching him. The empty Rim responded with a great deafening nothing.

The second time the comm chimed, he was ready, and switched it on.

"Hello?"

[James Prent]

"Hi... Byl?" She was nervous calling him up, but he'd left her his private comm number in case of an emergency.

At this point, she just wanted to hear a familiar voice. "It's James. I know you said emergencies only, but this is sort of an emergency, and anyway, I figured it would be okay. How... How are you?"

[Byl Laprovik]

Paranoia causes everything to exist in a duality of opposing forces. Constantly weighing pro and con, zero and one, good and evil. Always hoping for one and preparing for the other.

He wet his lips, which were painfully chapped from the low humidity air on the ship.

Don't respond to the name. Is that even his name? It could be a trap. Keep her talking.

"Where are you?"

He focused an intensified scan on the planet's surface as he entered the atmosphere. Communications were sparse, and he couldn't source the feed to the planet. So, the answer was somewhere else.

[James Prent]

"Cloud City. I haven't gone anywhere since you dropped me off here." James smiled at her reflection in the tiny mirror in her apartment. "Got my own place, finally."

She sighed, not noticing the silence on the other side of the conversation. "I'm just... I dunno. So alone."

[Byl Laprovik]

He knew Bespin. A quick crunch of coordinates put him less than a dozen light years from the system. A short stroll.

"I'm just... I dunno. So alone."

The voice on the line hit him with a heavy weight of sincerity. He wanted to believe her. No, he had to. He was desperate enough to take the risk.

"Me too, James. Me too."

[James Prent]

She blinked at the bleakness in his voice, immediately concerned. "If you're not too busy, y'know, with th' Alliance," she whispered the word, "Maybe you can come visit?"

She'd waited around for weeks alone after sending the Layla away without her. Again. But she couldn't stay with them. Not with what she'd seen. "I could use a friend right now."

[Byl Laprovik]

His own ship was touching down in a place he wasn't sure about. The landscape below him was obviously settled, but run down and a little filthy. It looked uninviting.

"I'd love to. Fortunately I'm in the neighborhood as well."

[James Prent]

"Great!" Her face brightened and James smiled. "I'll meet you at the... or you could come to my apartment when you get here..."

She fumbled with the commlink, setting it down on the counter in front of her. "Here, you can call me when you arrive." She rattled off her comm number, in case he didn't already have it (duh, she'd just called him, frell she was such a nit) and awkwardly ended the conversation.

James sat back, flushed and feeling a little sweaty. Dammit. She was such a kid when it came to talking to boys.

[Byl Laprovik]

The commline went dead. He exhaled raggedly. She'd said something that had stuck with him.

"If you're not too busy, y'know, with th' Alliance,"

Did she mean the Rebellion? Or something else entirely? She didn't give any more hints. The more he tried to think back, and to remember something, the more it began to dismay him. No name, no memory of past events, no friends, family, anything.

He opened the hatch of his craft and stepped out, weak-kneed. Gathering himself, he pitched the seat forward and began to rummage in the ship's small utility locker. A few flares, some rations, and a blaster.

He looked about to see who might be milling around the landing site. Nobody seen. With a motion that seemed to imply he had done it a million times, he discarded the blaster power supply and disassembled the weapon, stuffing the parts into a sickness bag, which was promply thrown in the rubbish bin as he strolled away as casually as he could feign. The notion that he was intimately familiar with how to use a weapon and fly a ship weren't lost on him, but likewise weren't helping him figure anything out.

For now, he knew what he needed, a power charge for his ship. From there, it was Bespin. To find James, and hopefully, answers.

[Jane Starborn]

"Don't tell me you can't find him, tell me something I don't know already!" Jane massaged her left temple with her fingertips, trying to ward off another migraine. She forced a smile. "Agent Laprovik has been off the grid for over six standard days and missed his rendezvous with Admiral Reshmar's fleet thirty-six hours ago."

The squints under her 'command' nodded. One shuffled his pile of thin datapads, searching for something. Jane continued, "His last known mission was a snatch and grab on Coruscant, in which he recovered one Colonel Karrnage," someone snorted at the name and she frowned sternly. "In which he recovered the Colonel along with the Jedi Loklorien s'Ilancy and Captain Thals."

"After which, the Colonel was remanded into the custody of General Dan, who proceeded to retire from the Alliance." The tech raised her eyebrow. "And then he, that is, the General, returned to the Dauntless a day ago with Jedi s'Ilancy."

"Which," added the third squint, Trian, "Was in Wild Space along with the Jedi Vymes, who left the ship, and did not return."

"And," Jane crossed to the room controls and lowered the brightness of the overhead lights, "The Colonel is nowhere to be heard from either. But the General reports that the Jedi got what they wanted from the Imperial and he is in custody still." She waved her hand, as though she could clear away the useless facts and lay bare the important ones.

"Perhaps Laprovik is with the Colonel...?" Trian frowned, looking down at his datapads. "He did leave the fleet with General Dan and the prisoner..."

"Unfortunately Agent Laprovik has a history of going off the grid for weeks at a time. And he is certainly not with the Dauntless, which is headed back to the Outer Rim as we speak." Jane frowned, her fingertips returning to her temples. Of everything that was in her head, nothing seemed relevant to Byl Laprovik.

Gia spoke up, "What is it, exactly, that makes Command think this isn't just his usual behavior? You nailed it when you said Laprovik has a history of disappearing."

Jane tied her shoulder length brown hair back in a pony tail. "He left a cryptic message at an Intel drop point. He was going after a traitor among us. He did not report back, and the message stated that he would." She sat down at the table with Gia, Trian, and Carm. "And when we find him, we will find this traitor."

If we find him. Jane Starborn didn't say what the three squints were surely thinking. And if they found him at this point it would probably just be a body that they recovered. Still, there may be clues left behind as to the identity of the person Agent Laprovik had been suspicious of.

Closing her eyes lightly, she ran through her memories, going over everything she'd read and everything she'd been told of Laprovik and his last days on record. Starting with the last people he'd been in touch with, namely General Dan and the Jedi Loklorien s'Ilancy. While her squints went over the datacards and crunched the probabilities, she would meet up with the Dauntless and interview the General.

[Byl Laprovik]

"Landing pad rent is fifty credits a day."

It was the first major hurdle for him. He had no money. Not a credit to his name.

"Don't suppose you can do me a solid. I got robbed y'see."

The rental agent glowered at him, and expectorated at his feet.

"Twelve hours to get rent. If you don't, I'm impounding your ship. Get out of my face."

It was enough for once. Now, he just had to find a way to make money. Tugging his jacket around his midsection to protect against a chilly bluster, he headed into town.

He blew on his hands as he walked past a row of shops. Each inquiry for work was met with the same answer. No work to be had.

[Jane Starborn]

If she had been an agent of ImpIntel, no doubt she would have a Lambda-class shuttle and a pilot to take her from point-A to point-B. As an agent of Alliance Intelligence, however, Jane had been lucky to get a refurbished X-Wing fighter to take on her errand to the Dauntless. The heavy cruiser was due to refuel at Ryloth, at a station that the Empire had kindly installed over eight years ago. Using slave labor, of course, drawn from the local population.

Twi'lek Prime was unofficially friendly to the Alliance to Restore the Republic. The Empire's blatant xenophobia and racism had only worsened the slavery problem that was running rampant in the galaxy, and it seemed that the Twi'lek's and their leggy and limber females bore the worst of it. Jane shifted in the cockpit, leaning back as much as possible and watching the swirling colors of hyperspace through the clear transparisteel canopy. She closed her eyes, lines of text and facts running through her mind.

It had been Mon Mothma who had written the final draft of the Declaration of Rebellion during the Corellian System Meetings. Jane couldn't stop remembering the list of grievances the infant Alliance had protested.

The history of the present Galactic Empire is of repeated injuries upon its members, with the direct objective of establishing you, Emperor Palpatine, as absolute tyrant over the Galaxy:

You have disbanded the Senate, the voice of the people;

You have instituted a policy of blatant racism and genocide against the nonhuman peoples of the Galaxy;

You have overthrown the chosen leaders of planets, replacing them with Moffs and Governors of your choice...

...We, the Rebel Alliance, do therefore in the name—and by the authority—of the free beings of the Galaxy, solemnly publish and declare our intentions:

To fight and oppose you and your forces, by any and all means at our disposal;

To refuse any Imperial law contrary to the rights of free beings;

To bring about your destruction and the destruction of the Galactic Empire;

To make forever free all beings in the galaxy.

To these ends, we pledge our property, our honor, and our lives.

Now nearly all those early Rebels were dead. Claimed by the war they had started, or by old age. Bail Organa and his adopted daughter, the Princess Leia Organa. Mon Mothma herself. Admiral Ackbar, though the Mon Calamari were still staunch supporters of the Alliance, their planet the only one in the whole galaxy that the Rebels could actually call 'theirs.'

Mon Razien was a solid leader, keeping the Alliance on track while the Empire's attention lessened as it licked its wounds from the Battle of Endor. Unfortunately the Rebels had to regroup as well, with most of their leaders taken out at the same time. Two years was a long time, however, and the new leaders of the Alliance were optimistic and sure they were headed in the right direction.

But the Empire had just appointed a Tarkin as Emperor... Empress... Jane frowned. The tide that had been slowly flowing towards the Alliance was beginning to turn. The possibility of a traitor in their midst was untenable. If such a person existed, they would be rooted out and thrown on the fire.

Byl Laprovik knew something, and Jane was going to find out what it was. And her first stop was the Dauntless and General Dan.

The X-wing cockpit was small, but she managed to squirm into a semi-comfortable position and took a nap as the fighter continued through hyperspace. With any luck she would arrive in the Ryloth system shortly after the Dauntless.

----

Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Jane hailed the heavy cruiser, transmitting her clearance codes and requesting permission to dock. The voice at the other end sounded bored, but she got her clearance. Pulling on the steering yoke, she entered a landing bay, the shimmering blue of the force field washing over the X-wing. The Dauntless. Length, 1,440 meters; crew, 33,290. It held four thousand Alliance troopers when it was fully stocked, and fifty-eight thousand tons of cargo - as well as enough consumables to last for up to three standard years.

Unbuckling her helmet, Jane popped the canopy and crawled out of the cockpit, the bright orange of her flightsuit blending in among the pilots and techs on the flight deck. To most of the crew she was just another pilot. To a few, with clearance, she was Recall. The intelligence agent with the eidetic memory.

Jane stretched, relishing the space around her. "I have orders to report to General Dan for debriefing," she said to a tech, and was pointed in the direction of the General's wherabouts. He was on the bridge.

[General Dan]

"Agent Starborn from Intel to see you, General."

Dan looked up from a report at the ensign who had spoken. Nodding, he initialed a few items on the datapad and passed it off, rising from his seat.

"I'll meet her in my office. See that she's escorted here."

He knew enough about Intel to know that it was a good idea to go ahead and deal with their needs sooner rather than later.

[Jane Starborn]

It felt so good to stretch out her legs and walk after a cramped half-day in the X-wing. Jane had left the helmet in the cockpit, but she still wore the flightsuit as an ensign showed her into the general's office.

"General," she said, snapping off a sharp salute. "Thank you for meeting with me on such short notice."

[General Dan]

"A salute?"

Dan gave a warm smile, rising from his desk to shake her hand.

"I'm impressed. Don't get those too often from Intel. Maybe I'm just colored by my own past experiences. How can I help you Miss Starborn?"

[Jane Starborn]

After shaking his hand, she stood easy, hands behind her back. "If it isn't too much trouble, I'd like to talk to you about Captain Laprovik. Its my understanding that you worked with him during the Lacrimosa mission."

The general nodded slowly, waiting for her to get to her point. "Laprovik's disappeared, sir, and I was hoping you could shed some light on his whereabouts."

[General Dan]

A frown crossed Dan's face.

"Disappeared. We've got a problem then."

He appeared hesitant on how much to explain outright to Starborn.

"During mine and Master s'Ilancy's recent personal leave, he tracked me down and confronted me. I think that he was trying to approach me away from prying eyes back at fleet. The entire encounter was suspicious, but you have to understand that I'm reluctant to speak on it."

[Jane Starborn]

"I understand that you might be reluctant, but it is of utmost importance that I locate the captain." Jane hesitated, then added, "He's facing some disciplinary actions at the home office, and I'd like to see that the charges don't get any worse."

Byl confronted the general? Curious. By all accounts Dan was one of the most loyal commanders the fleet had. So what had their conversation been about? "Anything you could tell me might help. I'd consider it a personal favor."