A Flow'r, Once Fallen/Part 9

"Now is the time to talk, Captain Rotef."

Tirien sat on one side of a table, facing the Human shackled to a chair on the other. Rotef had been fitted with a medical clamp over the stump where Tirien had cut off his hand, and given just enough painkillers to dull the pain without dulling his senses. A drugged prisoner might be more open to mental persuasion, but he was also less likely to focus, and Tirien needed answers at once.

Narasi stood behind him with her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed. Tirien could feel her exhaustion and a welter of emotions—the stim-shot had cleared the stun effects, but it wasn't a miracle drug—but she let none of it past her stoic expression.

"Cap'n?" Rotef asked. "I dunno what ya—"

Tirien raised a hand. "Before you lie, know that all eight of your crew gave you up as the captain. They seemed to feel you'd been holding out on them—something about Jedi not being part of the bargain.  The ones missing limbs were particularly unhappy."

Rotef studied him in silence for a moment before his demeanor changed, cold confidence replacing the feigned pain and uncertainty on his face. "Fine then. I'm not telling you anything, Jedi."

"You cooperate now, you stay here on Alderaan for your trial, under Alderaanian law. Don't cooperate, we'll take you as a prisoner of the Republic and charge you with attempted kidnapping of a Republic head of state and attempted murder of a Jedi."

Rotef shrugged. "Alderaan, Coruscant…what's the difference?"

"Alderaan won't put you to death when you're convicted."

The Human smirked. "What can I say, Jedi? I'm a mercenary.  Death's not all that frightening to me.  Tell you the truth, a quick execution's a lot better fate than some people I know have gotten."

"Help yourself by telling us what you know, and you won't be executed at all."

Rotef feigned consideration, bobbing his head to one side, then the other, then snorted. "I don't think so. Can I have a window seat on the ride to Coruscant?"

Tirien could sense Narasi's impatience mirroring his own, and he took a deep breath. There is no passion, there is serenity. He needed to get the truth, but it would not come from hatred of Rotef or fear of the consequences of ignorance. When he was sure he was calm, he waved a hand and said, "You will tell me who hired you."

Rotef grimaced. "No, I don't think I will."

Tirien narrowed his eyes, bringing the Force to bear more strongly, pushing on Rotef's mind to comply, to obey. "You will tell me who hired you."

Rotef grunted, gritting his teeth as he struggled to resist. Tirien felt his mind shuddering under the intrusion. "Stop it! I'm not…telling you…anything!"

"You will tell me who hired you."

Jerking and twitching as much as his restraints allowed, Rotef hissed through his teeth, eyes squeezed shut. Narasi stepped forward, raising a hand, but Tirien waved her off. Rotef panted, then said, "All right, enough, enough! I'll…tell you…"

"Speak," Tirien commanded.

"It was the…the senator…Antilles."

Tirien felt Narasi's shock and startled reactions from the room beyond. "What?"

"Antilles…he connected us with…with Marsh…got us the clearances…"

Tirien focused hard on Rotef, reading him in the Force. The story added up, so many loose ends conveniently burned away…too conveniently. Pressing with his mind, feeling for them, Tirien could sense the fault lines in the story. "You're lying."

"I'm not…" Rotef gave him a grudging look. "You think I want more of your mind games, Jedi?"

Tirien laid his hands on the table and put fire in his voice. "Don't lie to me, Rotef. I'm a Jedi Knight—you know I know."

"I'm not lying!" Rotef insisted. "It was Antilles!"

"Tirien," a digitized voice came from the wall monitor. "A moment."

Rising from his chair, Tirien felt a glimmer of satisfaction in Rotef's mind, though he hid it well beneath the mental tremors. Narasi followed him into the observation room, where King Rosulus and Captain Zarrin Draulet, who had been breveted to command of the Alderaanian Royal Guard, stood watching with dark expressions.

"Jerex," the king said when the door had closed. "I can't believe it. How could it be Jerex?"

"It isn't," Tirien insisted. "He's lying. Trying to divert our attention away from whoever's really responsible."

"But you were using the Force," Captain Draulet pointed out. "You were making him tell you."

"I was trying to," Tirien corrected. "He has a disciplined mind, he's resisting my powers. That sort of compulsion doesn't work on everyone."

"What did you sense, Narasi?" Rosulus asked.

Narasi hesitated, looking at each of them. "I couldn't tell either way. He's hard to read.  Maybe the Sith put blocks in his mind?"

"No, I've sensed that before," Tirien said. "This isn't a barrier to the Force, he's just strong-willed. Strong enough to lie to a Jedi, but not enough to camouflage it."

"Still…" Rosulus said, rubbing his jaw. "If it is Jerex—"

"It isn't."

"If it is," the king said, "we need to take action at once."

"It makes no sense," Tirien said impatiently. "What possible reason—"

"There's always been contention for the throne," Rosulus said. "Since the civil war, probably before. The Antilleses are a major noble house on Alderaan.  There was some disagreement in my grandfather's generation about which line of descent should inherit; one of the contenders was Antilles on his mother's side, and House Antilles pressed hard for his ascension.  I had hoped that we had smoothed all that over…"

Captain Draulet fidgeted at that, and Tirien suddenly remembered Narasi asking Prince Taylo if he was the senator, and the young prince explaining away Antilles's appointment as Alderaanian politics. Trying to ignore this new and unpleasantly fitting motive, he said, "Fine, but if he was behind this, why last night? Princess Manae wasn't here, and Narasi and I were."

"Jerex didn't know Manae would be gone until I told him so yesterday," Rosulus pointed out. "A plan like this must have been weeks, even months in the making; it may have been too late to scrap."

"Master…"

Tirien saw Narasi wearing a conflicted look, but he waved a hand; if he was as right as he felt, he had nothing to fear from the truth. "Go ahead."

"It's just…we weren't here. We were hours away, and it wasn't exactly an easy trek.  If I hadn't gotten that vision…"

Tirien frowned. "Granted, but we're still Jedi; it would be an incredible risk."

"And yet they suggested the site to you," said the king, who was frowning too.

"Only after I refused the first site on the mainland," Tirien countered. "And only Marsh suggested that. Senator Antilles just said he'd been to the island site too."

"And if Captain Rotef is telling the truth, Nerritil and Jerex were in this together." The king pressed his fingertips to his temples. "I don't want to believe it either, but there's enough here that it fits. I'm not saying he should be publicly accused, or that anyone needs to know about this; I'm just saying prudence dictates that I take the cautious approach."

"I know he's lying," Tirien insisted. "I'm telling you, as a Jedi, I can sense that he's lying."

The king winced and shifted his feet. "Tirien, my family and I are in your debt after tonight, and I have tremendous respect for your abilities. But there's so much evidence to corroborate this accusation."

"Circumstantial evidence!"

"Evidence nonetheless."

Tirien tried to keep the frustration off his face, looking back through the one-way mirror to wear Rotef sat with a convincing expression of fatigue and pain. Detaining Jerex Antilles was the most thorough course and, if all went well, might resolve the issue with minimal inconvenience and no media circus. But Tirien thought of Khofin of Knylenn, whom he and Kenza had detained for the sake thoroughness on circumstantial evidence; the last time he had conceded to thoroughness, he had fed a budding civil war on Kuat. Taking that risk with Alderaan could not be the right action.

He took a deep breath. "I can get the truth out of him."

The king frowned at the change in his voice. "Tirien, if you're suggesting coercive interrogation tactics—"

"Jedi don't torture," Tirien said flatly, and with enough bite in his voice that the king bowed his head contritely.

"We could double-team him?" Narasi suggested. "Both try and mind trick him at once?"

Tirien shook his head. "Too dangerous. Exerting too much telepathic power to compel a resisting mind can break it entirely, and I've already pushed him about as far as I can without risking it.  No, this needs a different approach."

And without waiting for the king's leave, or betraying his own misgivings, Tirien returned to the interrogation room, Narasi hurrying to catch up. He strode back to the table, and this time he did not sit down. "Last chance. Tell me who really hired you."

Rotef chuckled; the last bout of resistance had broken a sweat out on his forehead. "What, are you gonna torture me? I've been there; if you hurt me enough I'll say whatever you want me to say to make you stop.  Doesn't make it true."

"No," Tirien agreed, and pointed at Rotef's forehead. "The truth is in there."

Rotef sighed. "Another round of making me tell you what I already—"

"No," Tirien interrupted, "I'm going to go in and get it."

A wave of his hand tore the table off the floor and smashed it against the wall. Rotef followed it with wide eyes, but with the barrier between them gone, Tirien stepped up and held out his palm over the mercenary's forehead. He reached out with the Force not to compel, but to see; not to bewitch the mind, but to open it like a datafile and peruse it.

Rotef jerked like he had been shocked. "Agh! Stop!  Get out, get OUT!"

Jerex Antilles Tirien told that writhing mind, and fragments of memory responded, all of them blue-white and hovering in midair over a palm-sized holoprojector. "You've never met Jerex Antilles. You've never even seen him but in a holo."

"STOP!"

The job, he breathed into the Force. The Organas. He sensed fear and protectiveness, and he followed those emotions down to an image of a freighter and its forged registration signature, its fifteen-being crew of mismatched pirates and their arrival on Alderaan. The mind shuddered and Tirien's stomach heaved, but he pressed harder, following the trail of memory like a path through a forest, beating aside the unrelated brush to the oldest memories tied to the chain. There was a holo missive, a hiring order for the kidnap of the Organas. It had only a digital code signature, but the mind knew what it meant, had read it before…

Someone was yelling…in pain? Was it Rotef, or Tirien? Was Rotef Tirien? He knew the man's mind well enough that he might as well be…

The code signature. Another missive for a battle in the Mid Rim…an initial contact…and there, a hiring order as part of a campaign some years before, a few mercenary companies assembled to bolster an aspiring Sith Acolyte's forces. He hadn't been Darth then, but the name was the same, and his cold, handsome features were not much changed even in the latest reconnaissance holos…

Tirien had what he needed, and he drew the Force back to find himself nauseated, a sharp pain behind his eyes; he staggered, and Narasi steadied him. Rotef trembled in his chair, his restraints clattering like a rain of spilled coins. His eyes stared forward, but Tirien could sense his mind was not broken or destroyed, merely stunned at the totality of what had happened to it. Tirien leaned on Narasi for support until he felt he could stand, then walked from the room.

"Tirien?" Rosulus asked warily.

"They came in on a freighter called the Bloody Cutlass, although they told Aldera Spaceport they were the Sorimow Scow," Tirien reported in a flat voice. "There are four more aboard the ship now, and they're all armed. Their orders were to abduct your family and take you as prisoners to Lantillies.  They were one of several mercenary groups hired by a Sith Lord named Darth Shakelli."

"Sorimow Scow," Captain Draulet said, already pulling out his comlink. "On it."

"Shakelli?" Rosulus asked. "From Saleej's organization?"

Tirien nodded, then looked at Narasi meaningfully. "He's a Human Sith. A tall, blond man."

"That's what I saw! A bunch of dark figures, and a blond man with a red blade."

"Visions aren't always literal. He was never here, but you saw Shakelli because he's responsible for this."

Narasi looked deep in thought, and Tirien left her to her ponderings to turn back to the king. "It wasn't Jerex Antilles."

King Rosulus looked through the mirror to the interrogation room, swallowed, and nodded as he looked back. "I believe you."

Tirien sighed, but the relief he had expected did not come; some lingering unease was choking it off at the roots before it could blossom. Only then did he realize how tired he was—worn down in body and soul alike. Rosulus laid a hand on his shoulder. "Alderaan's in your debt twice over tonight. And now I think we all need some rest.  It's almost morning, but I trust I can prevail on you to stay another day?"

Coming down off the high of revelation, Narasi was actually swaying on her feet; as Tirien steadied her, he mustered a smile to hide the disquiet gnawing his insides and said, "We are your servants, Your Majesty, and we've never been so happy to obey."