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“Well, I guess this is getting us nowhere,” he said loudly to somebody else. Jai lifted her head enough to see the reflections of several gray-suited people across the polished floor. The room wasn’t very big; there was a massive desk against the far wall, and most of the rest of the space was taken up by computer terminals. The lighting was soft, almost relaxing. An atmosphere of both utility and comfort. Somebody’s office.
    The interrogator pushed her head back down with his boot and stood there for a moment. “I am taking my blaster out and setting it on ‘kill,’” he announced. “Now I am aiming it at your head, Sergeant Raventhorn.”
    A moment or two passed.
    “I said I’m aiming this blaster set on ‘kill’ at your head.”
    Another moment passed.
    “Here it goes!”
    Pause.
    “It’s on ‘kill!’”
    “I heard,” Jai said.
    He lifted his boot from her head. “Okay, I’ve decided not to kill you,” he said in a tight voice. “But I will when I feel like it.”
    Another moment passed.
    “Oh, get on with the interrogation,” said another, exasperated voice. A woman’s voice. “I haven’t got my whole life to spend watching you annoy her into submission.”
    “This is how you conduct an interrogation, Major. You show them who’s got the power.”
    “Currently it doesn’t appear to be you,” the major said. “Interrogation takes control and skill. Which means you’re hopeless for starters.”
    “Oh, aren’t you hilarious. Look. I don’t care if this is your garrison—interrogations are my forte. Why are we even doing this in here? I say we take her downstairs and do this properly.”
    Footsteps across the floor, coming closer to Jai. “This isn’t the same as before,” the major said. “I’ve got a different plan. Did you not read the mind-probe data results?”
    “Who needed to? Take one look at her! She doesn’t care about anything!” the interrogator said. “You could set her on fire and she wouldn’t care!”
    “Of course she wouldn’t care, idiot. You could set her planet on fire, you could blow up the New Republic and she wouldn’t care.”

    Jai was curled up in the fetal position. The voices of the Imperials disappeared into a loud ringing, which Jai thought was in her head: but then there was a deep, tinny voice in the room announcing a fire in one of the docking bays, and she recognized the sound of a fire alarm.
    After a few moments, the alarm died down. The major was finishing off a sentence.
    “…See what happens when we bring her mercenary friend in.”
    Jai focused on the floor again. There were a few drops of blood near her head, a couple more now, a blemish on the spotless Imperial war machine. It made Jai’s head clear out a little bit. In fact, she suddenly felt lucid.
    Bring her mercenary friend in.
    Jai looked up, past the face of the interrogator and into the face of the major. Their eyes locked for a second, and Jai saw the major’s face register that a fatal mistake had been made. In that instant, it was no longer a question of whether Jai was going to talk. It was now a question of who was going to reach the major’s blaster first.

    At that moment, Dirk’s world was the mezzanine across from him and the ground floor eight stories below him, the view divided by vertical black metal bars. One of the Imperials was trying to bang Dirk’s head on the rails in a vain attempt to get him to keep still. Apparently Jai’s indifference had led the guards to believe that her cellmate would be just as easy to drag to the interrogation chamber; as a result, several blasters lay scattered across the corridor, two officers lay unconscious by the cell block door, and somebody was screaming for reinforcements over his comlink. Harkness wasn’t sure how many there had been to start with or how many were left. He just knew that he couldn’t manage to get hold of anybody’s blaster, not with his burning, slippery feet sliding out from underneath him