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By Root 518 0

Though he had not blacked out, the Emdee droid had kept him in the infirmary overnight for observation—at least Corran assumed it was overnight, having had no way of judging the passage of time. Corran had gone over in his mind what had happened and came to two conclusions. The first, which no one doubted, was that the guard had singled him out because someone had mentioned his desire to escape. Though Corran hadn’t mentioned it to anyone other than Jan and Urlor, the questions he had asked of the inmates would have been enough to alert even the most dense of individuals to his plans.

The second thing he had concluded, and had spent the last week attempting to convince Jan and Urlor was true, was that they were all upside down. The technology for creating and negating artificial and real gravity was ancient. Ships of all sizes and stripes could generate their own gravity. Reversing the gravity in the complex would lead any escapees to assume that by going up they’d be getting closer to the surface and freedom when, in fact, they’d be getting farther from it and killing their chances of escape. If Corran had heard troopers marching past, any escapee would run full on into at least one level occupied by soldiers. Even if he didn’t get captured, by the time he realized what had happened, he’d have a long way to go just to get back to the prison level, much less go beyond it to freedom.

He shook his head. “No, I’ll still go even if my experiment is unsuccessful. I have no doubt that I’m right—the experiment is just to convince you I’m right.”

Urlor folded his arms across his chest. “Why do you care if we believe you?”

“If I’m right, you can come with me.”

The big man held up his ruined right hand. “You’d find a cripple of little use to you. I’ve learned to become patient. I’ll wait for you to come back.”

“You’re wrong there.” Corran looked at Jan. “How about you?”

The older man sat silently on his billet for a moment, then shook his head rather firmly. “Forgive me. There is no way I can go, but I allowed myself to indulge in the fantasy.”

“You’re strong. You could make it.”

“I appreciate your assessment of me, Corran, but it is overgenerous.” Jan shrugged. “Besides, just as a desire to keep me safe prevents our people from harming our Imperial compatriots, so a desire to keep our people safe prevents me from joining you. If I escape, Iceheart will kill the lot of us. I’ll remain here and keep them safe until you can bring help back.”

Corran frowned. “So neither of you will go?”

“No.” Urlor shook his head. “You’ll be on your own.” Unspoken in that sentence was the conviction there was no way to guarantee that the Imps didn’t have spies among the Alliance prisoners.

And my traveling alone means that if I’m a spy, I won’t be taking anyone else with me. “Don’t worry, I’m no Tycho Celchu, nor will I let myself be betrayed by one another time.”

Jan’s eyes narrowed. “Tycho Celchu? He was here once for several months. They called him out one day and he vanished. Was he a traitor?”

“He’s the reason I’m here. He gave the Imps override code data on a Headhunter I was flying. They took control and I’m here.” Corran forced his balled fists open. “Isard told me Tycho is on trial for my murder, so justice does prevail.”

Urlor scratched at his jaw. “Celchu was a sleeper, wasn’t he?”

As much as Corran hated Tycho, that description sent a shiver down his spine. Within the prisoner population were individuals who were suffering severe shock from their interrogations. Most were ambulatory, but not much beyond that. In the brief time he’d been in the general population he’d seen one or two of them recover to a certain extent, but their attention spans and short-term memory were short and shot respectively. They did seem to get better, but only gradually.

“I believed he was, but that must have been an act. If you think about it, being a sleeper meant many people would speak in front of him. When he recovered he’d have folks trying to help him with his memory.” Jan shook his head. “When he got to the point where he should have been