Star Wars_ X-Wing 02_ Wedge's Gamble - Michael A. Stackpole [12]
“Lusankya?!”
“You know it?”
“Only by the most vague and nasty of rumors. It’s supposed to be Iceheart’s own private prison. Weird things happen to people there.”
Tycho nodded. “The guards, when they deign to speak to a prisoner, take great delight in noting that no one leaves unless Ysanne Isard is through with them.”
Corran shook his head. It was easier for him to believe that the Katana-fleet existed than it was to accept the existence of Lusankya. Corran had first heard the word mentioned after a rival of Corellia’s Diktat had been murdered by a trusted aide. The aide had been taken away by Imperial authorities about a year before the murder, but had been returned three months later. After he killed his boss he was reported to have repeated the word “Lusankya” over and over again. After that incident Corran had heard of a dozen other, similar situations where a seemingly normal person had turned on friends and family, betraying them or performing some hideous act of terrorism against them. Each of these incidents had a link to Lusankya in some way or other, but that link only became apparent after the crime had been committed.
Corran frowned at Tycho. “People who come out of there are human remote bombs. They do horrible things when the Empire activates them.”
Tycho’s hands convulsed into fists. “I know, I know. What’s worse, no one has ever mentioned Lusankya before they have acted. The clues are always found later. But with me, after three months of interrogation and detention, I guess they decided I was useless. I was in bad shape—catatonic for most of my time at Lusankya so I remember almost nothing, then I was let go. They shipped me to Akrit’tar. After three months I managed to escape from the penal colony there and made my way back to the Alliance. I was debriefed for two months but they couldn’t find anything wrong with me.”
“And they hadn’t found anything wrong with the other people who had been to Lusankya either, right?”
“No. The only difference between me and them was that I remembered having been there. It is the opinion of General Salm and some others that I was allowed to retain my memory, and that my escape was engineered, just so I could return to the Alliance and betray it.”
Without any evidence to prove he was a sleeper agent, the Alliance couldn’t imprison Tycho without seeming as much of a heartless entity as the Empire itself. Even so, Corran reminded himself, lack of evidence was not evidence of lack. Salm’s suspicions about Tycho could be one hundred percent correct, and the utter lack of evidence pointed to the skill of Ysanne Isard and her people.
Corran’s eyes narrowed. “So, you don’t even know, really, if you are an Imperial agent waiting to happen or not?”
“I know I’m not.” The Alderaanian’s shoulders slumped. “Being able to prove it is something else again.”
“But being constantly under suspicion, that’s got to wear on you. Why put up with it? How can you put up with it?”
Tycho’s expression drained of emotion. “I put up with it because I must. Enduring it is the only way I can be allowed to fight back against the Empire. If I were to walk away from the Rebellion, if I were to sit the war out, I would have surrendered to the fear of what Ysanne Isard might, might, have done to me. Without firing a shot she would have made me as dead as Alderaan, and I won’t allow that. There’s nothing in what I have to live with on a daily basis that isn’t a thousand times easier than what I survived at the hands of the Empire. Until the Empire is dead, I can never truly be free because I’ll always be under suspicion. Living with minor restrictions now means someday no one has to fear me.”
Tycho slowly opened his hands and scrubbed them over his face. “I don’t know if any of that sets your mind at ease, but that’s all there is.”
Corran shook his head.