Star Wars_ X-Wing 03_ The Krytos Trap - Michael A. Stackpole [98]
Tycho stared down at his hands. “Which could be never.”
“That’s your nightmare. Their nightmare is that some Emdee-oh droid with a Cognitive Matrix analysis package will unscramble your brain and declare you cured in a week or two. They’d have to let you go free, which would make the justice system seem impotent.”
Tycho’s head came up and the bright blue of his eyes surprised Nawara with its intensity. “What you’re saying is that the sabacc cards have been programmed against me.”
“It’s worse than you know.” Nawara jerked a thumb toward the exterior wall. “The day we got back from Ryloth, the Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front blew up a school. It’s been thirty-six hours and they’ve still not found all the bodies. Some were vaporized in the explosion, unrecoverable—just like Corran’s. Both humans and non died in the blast. Someone claiming responsibility said that such acts of terror would continue until the state’s sham trial of you, an obviously innocent man, was ended and you were set free.”
“What?” Tycho shook his head. “In court you showed that the Imps had planted the information to frame me, and now you’re telling me that they’re saying I’ve been framed? What’s going on?”
“Your trial is divisive. The government is using it to show they, unlike the Empire, can handle things in an open manner. Imperial agents, on the other hand, are making it look like evidence is being trumped up against you. It makes humans think you’re a sacrifice being offered up to keep the Alliance together. The non-human population already thinks you’re guilty and somehow responsible for the Krytos virus—it doesn’t matter that you had nothing to do with it.”
Tycho leaned forward and slapped his hands on the table. “Nawara, you have to let me testify on my own behalf. I can convince them I’m innocent.”
The Twi’lek sat back. “You’ve been talking to Diric again, haven’t you?”
Tycho nodded. “He visited me while you and Wedge were gone. Aside from Winter, he was my only visitor. He says that talking to me has him convinced I’m innocent.”
“That’s great for him, but he was also an Imperial prisoner, so he feels a sense of kinship to you. Most other folks don’t have that bond.”
Tycho raised an eyebrow. “You endured Imperial discrimination against non-humans. Can you really say you weren’t an Imperial prisoner?”
Nawara hesitated for a moment. The greatest thing for him about joining the Rebellion had been having the weight of oppression lifted from him. As a non-human he was treated as inconsequential by the Empire. Imperial magistrates would ignore him and his objections, or they would overrule him and threaten him with contempt for wasting the court’s time by bringing up points of law. He knew that at any moment he could be gathered up in some Intelligence sweep and incarcerated for whatever was left of his life, and no one would know.
Fear was once a constant factor in his life. Then he joined the Alliance, and while he didn’t fully leave fear behind, he was given control over it. Now, with the Empire in retreat, that same control had been extended to others. Even the most despised individuals in the Empire now knew freedom.
And still have a taste for revenge against their oppressors.
“Yes, I could say I, too, was their prisoner, Captain, but that doesn’t matter. The fact is that if you testify, Commander Ettyk will destroy you on cross-examination.”
“How?”
“She’ll go back through your life and make it into a mockery of what it’s been.” Nawara’s eyes narrowed to bloody crescents. “She’ll point out that you volunteered for the Imperial Academy and were a successful TIE fighter pilot. She’ll suggest you were so callous that you were speaking to your family and fiancée via the holonet at the precise moment Alderaan was destroyed—all because you had learned, being as you have always been an Imperial Intelligence