Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 14_ Traitor - Matthew Woodring Stover [82]
“Nobody’s dead and nobody’s hurt,” Ganner said coolly, voice as even as his lightsaber’s hum, “but that can change. Anytime. It’s your call.”
The four Force-invisible white-robes, scattered around the small chamber off balance or off their feet entirely, hesitated. The middle-aged man stood motionless.
Ganner couldn’t restrain the hint of a smile. Not only am I good at this, he thought reflexively, I do it with style. He squashed the thought the instant it registered, exasperated with himself. Just when I think I’m making progress—
He gathered his caution in layers like body armor. “All right,” he said, calm, quiet, and slow. He held the eye of the middle-aged man and twitched the lightsaber; within the red-rimmed shadows cast upward on his face by the blade’s yellow glow, the man’s stare was as stony as ever. “Back up. Toward the door.”
The man’s stare softened into something like resignation, and he shook his head in sad refusal.
“I’m not bluffing,” Ganner said. “You and I are going to have a talk in the corridor. As long as nobody does something stupid, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t all live through this. Now move.”
Another twitch of the lightsaber, enough to shave a micrometer of skin off the man’s collarbone—and the man only sighed. “Ganner, you dope.”
Ganner licked his lips. He says that like he knows me. “You don’t seem to understand—”
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand,” the man said tiredly. “We’re being watched. Right now. If I so much as step outside this chamber, a Yuuzhan Vong pilot watching us will trigger a dovin basal concealed not very far from here. It will take all of ten seconds for this whole ship to collapse into a quantum black hole. A hundred million people will die.”
Ganner’s mouth dropped open. “What—how—I mean, why, why would—”
“Because they don’t trust me yet,” he said sadly. “You shouldn’t have come back, Ganner. Now you can’t leave this room alive.”
“I got in easily enough—”
“Getting out is different. And even if you do get away, knowing only what you know already—”
“If I get away? Who’s holding the lightsaber here?”
“It’s not a bluff, Ganner. I only wish it was.”
Ganner could hear the conviction in his voice, and in the Force he felt truth behind his words. But I already know he’s stronger than me. He could be faking the truth I’m feeling, and I’d never know it. And even if it were true, he couldn’t get any of this to make sense—
He couldn’t begin to guess what might actually be going on, or what he should be doing about it.
“I’m telling you this,” the man went on, “because the same thing will happen if I am killed. In case my conscience tempts me to sacrifice myself. As I said, they don’t trust me yet.”
“But—but—” Ganner sputtered. That feeling of being in over his head thickened. He was drowning in it. Taking a two-handed grip on his lightsaber to keep the blade from trembling, he tried to recover control of the situation. “All I want,” he said, almost plaintively, “is to hear what you know about Jacen Solo. Start talking, or I’ll have to take the chance that you’re bluffing.”
The man looked at Ganner like he knew him, like he’d known him for years, like he saw through him with the melancholy perception of a disappointed parent. Again, he sighed. “Talking won’t help.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
Slowly, deliberately, without any hint of a threatening speed, he lifted a hand. He pressed a spot on the side of his nose, and his face split in half.
Ganner took an involuntary step back.
The man’s face peeled open like the rind of an Ithorian bloodfruit, thick meaty flaps pulling away from each other, taking with them his thinning lank hair, the defeated pouches under his eyes, the jowls that had thickened his jawline. A network of hair-thin filaments slowly retracted from the pores of the face revealed beneath, leaking blood.
Beneath the retracting masquer, the face Ganner saw was thin, chiseled,