Star Wars_ Rebel Force 05_ Trapped - Alex Wheeler [22]
The people of Belazura a had plenty to thank the Empire for. Before the Imperials arrived, Belazurans had been useless fools whose skills were limited to serving tropical drinks and pulling flailing Phindians out of the surf. But the Empire had put them to work in the mines and the factories, turned them into productive galactic citizens.
Though none of them looked very happy about it.
Except for periodic convoys of Imperial troop carriers, the narrow streets of Belazura's capital city were nearly deserted. Small wonder, as every able-bodied man and woman was either at work or asleep. But those who couldn't work—the aged, the infirm, the very young—shuffled down the sidewalks, heads down, shoulders hunched. X-7 had no hope that anyone here would recognize him from his past; Project Omega had rebuilt his facial structure. But even if he'd worn the same face as this Trever Flume, there seemed little chance that any of these Belazurans would even dare look at him.
X-7 had followed the trail of information as far as it would take him. It had taken him here. Soresh's codes had provided access to an encrypted Imperial network that had revealed all he could ever want to know about Project Omega. How its unwilling recruits were culled from prisoners whose families thought they were dead. How their brains were wiped. How they were molded into slaves of the Empire, convinced that they had been volunteers. How the records of their past were wiped from the system.
But information wasn't nearly as easy to erase as most people thought. It had been well buried, but X-7 had found it—little more than a name, Trever Flume. Captured on Belazura at age eighteen, shipped off to Project Omega, where he became its most successful graduate. Code name: X-7.
That was it, the dead end. So X-7 had stolen himself a Howlrunner and flown to Belazura. He wasn't leaving until he'd found some answers.
The simplest way to track down information would have been to report to the Imperial liaison at the spaceport. But X-7 needed to stay off the Imperial radar. And likely some kind of fail-safe trigger in the system existed, designed to red-flag anyone who came looking for answers about Trever Flume.
Instead, he decided to begin his search for the past in a more obvious place: Trever Flume's home.
My home? he wondered, staring at the decrepit, crumbling structure that had been Flume's last known address. The two-story house was falling apart: peeling paint, rusted siding, broken generator. Its windows were boarded up, Rebel graffiti scrawled across them in fading reds and blues. It was abandoned; that was clear.
X-7 closed his eyes, trying to force a memory. But the flashbacks always came when he least expected and least desired them. When he was trying to remember, his mind stayed blank.
"You don't belong around here."
X-7 whirled around, furious with himself that he hadn't heard the Arconan approaching. By instinct, his hand flashed toward his blaster—but he stopped himself. The Arconan's anvil-shaped head was shriveled with age, his marble-like eyes milky and unfocused. Despite his hostile glare, there was no chance he'd be a threat. Let it play out, X-7 thought. I can always kill him later.
He adopted a mild, harmless expression. Project Omega might have stripped him of the ability to experience human emotion, but he was remarkably good at imitating it. "I'm looking for the family that used to live here," he said. "They're old friends of mine, and since I'm passing through town, I thought I'd catch up."
The Arconan looked around at the crumbling buildings and cratered street. "No one just passes through this part of town."
Patience, X-7 cautioned himself, itching for his blaster. He'd make this being talk, one way or another. But it would be smartest to do so without attracting unwanted attention.
The street might