***
Aaricia stared at the thug as he was lying on the ground,
unconscious. The girl put the pistol, that she had just taken
from him, in one of the pockets of her black hooded cloak. With the same
hand she took a little device from her left pocket.
“Sir it's done."
"About 700 meter from the Fallen Star, approaching from the hotel. So.. euh" She repressed the dizziness and disorientation that was coming up again "North."
“Are you alright?“
She bit her lip.
“I'll manage.”
“Roger.. over and out."
She kept walking, looking over her shoulder, clamping the
slave collar with her right hand, her face in a fearful expression. What she had just
done had been extremely risky.
She put a hand on her forehead and begged the pain to stop,
feeling even more disoriented she leaned with her back against a wall.
"Are you alright?" A voice asked.
Aaricia relaxed a bit, though her heart beat very fast. "Yes, I'm a bit tired but soon I'll be moving on."
The man, looking middle aged, had a serious glance, though he seemed to be pretty much minding his own business.
"Does your owner live close by?"
"Yeah, only two corners away. I'm almost back home."
"Ok. Well, then it seems allright. Need a hand to get up?"
"Yes please." She smiled, genuinely. Of course she wouldn't be able to share that was going on in her mind with him, though there still was some contact.
He helped her up, then gave her a small bottle of water.
"I have to move on. Have a drink then go home. Have some rest, you and your owner would both be happy with that."
Aaricia took a sip from the water. "Thanks."
But the man had already turned his back to her and was walking away.
Even though everybody had his or own life to live, and his or her own problems,
in the core they were all together in this.
This realisation gave Aaricia more hope, and she started walking again, despite
the blurring in her vision that had returned.
The Empire seemed to be retaliating something again on the citizens of Mos Entha.
And now Aaricia was in the middle of that, and she had rebelled and they had gone
brutal on her. Though, they still didn't seem to know who she actually was. So
Aaricia only needed to wait and be patient
and trust, though they already tried to check her DNA some days ago. She
and Iara had found an excuse, and then the Imperials had put their attention to
something else again for a short while. But now they had come again and there
wasn't any excuse any more. Despite Iara's time and effort, she hadn't managed to create
something to put in Aaricia's blood so that it would look like someone else's.
Since she had been a slave, to let her keep her new cover, the Alliance had decided
it'd be better letting Aaricia stay in the medcentre. Now and then one of them had
paid the centre a brief visit to check her status, acting as if he had some nasty cold
that seemed to be pretty hard to cure. The doctors had one time become pretty alarmed and
almost put him in quarantaine, remembering the last virus outbreak some months ago.
After that someone else had taken over his role.
And it was this, next to the fact that she was with Nora, Lalamalani and Iara, that
helped Aaricia getting through this period. It was a hard time and she had really felt
stuck, and she was beaten up once before about one and a half week ago, when she'd refused
to bow for one of the troopers. And they had prolonged her time of slavery, and after this
she had acted differently and they had put their attention elsewhere.
But yesterday night, Aaricia, or better said the slave Salmia Lanark, had been one of the
targets of the Garrison's paranoia teasings again.
Nora and she had been returning from a party and at this very moment they'd
entered the building. They'd immediately pointed at Nora and her, asking where
they'd come from. So they told them that they had been at a party. They kept
repeating that they didn't believe this, and she and Nora had to tell the same
story again and again. One of the troopers had taken the control device
of the collar Aaricia was wearing, and given her such big shocks that it'd wiped
her unconscious. And they'd cut out Nora the droid with an ion gun. But just before
this they'd told them to stay in the medcentre from now on.
And this time they would be checking Salmia's DNA, doctor Remair had told her
the morning after.
So she had to get out of there as soon as possible.
It could be any moment that she would be forced to let her DNA be checked and then they would find
out who she really was!
And she'd found an excuse to leave the place, surpassing Nora in the black hooded cloak that she'd taken
from the hall-stand, not even knowing whose it had been, and avoiding any Imperial troops outside of the
medcentre. But she saw none. The streets were quiet at this hot hour of the day. And she'd entered the little cafe, where
noone paid any attention to her and there in the corner she'd logged on, on the old second hand looking
terminal. The first thing was to contact the Alliance. This had not been hard, as everybody had an alias
personality and email just like her. She chatted with Gou-geo and made an appointment
at the Fallen Star to gather and talk about what to do next. It might be that they wanted to take Aaricia
out of this situation altogether. It had felt like a big relief to even being able
to chat with one of them, even though it was brief and only for a couple of minutes. She hadn't been able
to use the Holonet for some weeks.
Then she'd moved on to the next thing on her little agenda, with
sweat on her forehead, and it had gone not as good as before because she'd still felt nauseous and also
a little dizzy, almost certainly because of yesterday. The first time she'd tried to slice in the
Garrison's network she had noticed the alarm and with sweating hands she had immediately broken the connection,
leaving the terminal and the cafe altogether to search for another. She felt sorry for this for the cafe
owner, who she'd liked. She had been eating some junk food now and then in the times when her disguise was
freelancer and having-all-kinds-of-jobs 'Mathilda Moonshine'.
She'd made her way to the library, the small one where it was quiet most of the time and everyone
paying attention to his or her business. And so also this time she could just walk in with a 'hi'. They
mostly paid attention to the books that someone was borrowing. They scanned them and kept a database
with names and who'd borrowed which books and when, and kept a line of communication with Imperial intelligence
that was situated in Bestine. But Aaricia was only there to use the terminal, and she knew that also here
was a little hole in the Imperial's 'umbrella of trying-to-know-everything-from-everyone': she only had to pay
a few credits. And one of the terminals was out of sight of the cameras. Nothing worth noticing had happened
in this small library.
This time it had gone better. She'd managed to get into that state of calmness that was necessary to
be able to succeed, and she'd succeeded in breaking in. Before this she'd downloaded the little file that had
fortunately still been on one of the servers that she'd kept her (coded and alias named etc.) files on, her
DNA 'footprint'. And she'd downloaded Salmia's, quickly replacing it with Aaricia's, and put her own data in
the file of Salmia Lanark.
Salmia Lanark was alive again, and Aaricia now kept the DNA 'footprint' of a dead person.
There had been no alarm.
"I have to move on. Have a drink then go home. Have some rest, you and your owner
would both be happy with that."
Aaricia took a sip from the water. "Thanks."
But the man had already turned his back to her and was walking away.
A bit more reassured and feeling better because of the water, she got back to her feet.
Her friends would be on their way to her. It was time to move on.
As she walked, she noticed Gou-geo approaching from the distance. Her heart jumped, delighted.
She knew it was Gou, even though he was still about eighty meters afar from her. She
was about to run. Her arm was ready to wildly wave, when she heard a voice behind her.
“Halt, you're under arrest.”
Her feet felt like making roots in the ground. She knew it was the Garrison, aiming at her.
Nailed on the ground she stared with big eyes into Gou-geo's face. Shocked he
looked back, his mouth made some silent movements, as if he was trying to say something to
her in a silent way.
She felt like caught between the two sides.
And being taken away by the Imperial side.
Aaricia thought about the poor blue Mon Calamari she'd met at the party yesterday.
Torture.. Empire.. traitors..
torture.. Imperials..
She didn't shout anymore, she even didn't speak any word. Her fists clenched, she reassured herself, they could cut off all her fingers, they would maybe drug her to death and tear her apart, but she would never, ever, never tell them anything anymore. Never again.
And she would die with honor.