When he was finally released from the medical unit, Rimon stood by the door that closed behind him, thought – and walked in the first direction that caught his eye. All his dealings with the Empire suggested that wherever he went, he would eventually end up where they wanted him. And no one would particularly ask his opinion; he should be glad he wasn't under escort or in chains. The direction that caught his eye turned out to be towards the mess hall. It was almost empty now; the cadets were doing something other than practicing their spoon-wielding techniques. Only in the corner sat a few officers, hastily consuming their lunch, and some distance from them – a man Rimon was already quite familiar with.
Hmphing, Rimon slowly moved towards Kailas, immersing himself in the Force on the way and checking two points of interest. The attitude of the local officers towards Varou and Varou's attitude towards himself and the local officers. At least from this, he could understand something about the situation he found himself in.
Kailas was occasionally glanced at with wary attention – who this man was and what he was doing there, the officers didn't know. But since he was sitting in the mess hall, and no one was rushing to escort the intruder out, it meant he had the right to be there. The fact that no one tried to talk to him, to strike up a conversation, could be an alarming sign. But it might not be, if Varou was higher than them in the table of ranks. Rimon was not a military man and could not determine this.
Kailas himself paid no attention to the officers at all – he was busy fighting with a plate of meat stew and seemed quite content with life.
Approaching his table, Rimon sat opposite him, feeling the officers' gazes on his back. He didn't know what to say. On the one hand, his new acquaintance had saved his life. On the other hand, he had a complete feeling that Varou was using him, and that was unpleasant, to say the least. And since there was nothing to say, politeness took over.
"Bon appétit," Rock wished him friendly.
"I recommend it," Varou poked his plate expressively with his fork. "Real meat. And the cook is good. They let you go? Good."
"And I heard that the better the army, the worse the food," Rimon said thoughtfully, looking around the mess hall thoughtfully.
"I don't know if the rebels eat better, but they fly worse than the graduates here," Kailas gestured invitingly with his fork, and a waiter droid rolled up to the table, placing a plate of stew, a fork, and bread in front of Rimon.
What was hidden in this phrase? Pride in the Academy? Or a simple statement of fact? On Kuat, according to the news, the rebels had given the Imps a good thrashing, but what exactly was happening in the galaxy was unclear; Rimon hadn't had time for that lately.
"I haven't flown against either one, although..." Rock's eyes gleamed almost imperceptibly, "did you graduate from this place?"
"It happened," Kailas nodded. Now he was himself. Not an actor wearing his usual mask – a wanderer returned home. "But I turned out to be not the best pilot."
"But you put me in a desperate situation," Rock continued with the same gleam in his eyes, "back then, on the simulators."
Varou squinted at him, hitting a piece of meat with a single accurate fork strike.
"Did you guess or were you told? Did you want to shake up the old days..."
"I was told," Rimon said calmly, beginning to leisurely tuck into his meal. "Although I could have guessed myself – you were very flustered when I returned... And what are your plans for me?"
"I only had one plan, and not for you," Varou replied phlegmatically. "It was very necessary to bust this sarlacc pit. And then you... And you're as much a terrorist as a twi'lek bantha. Well... I arranged a one-way ticket for you. With full rehabilitation."
Rimon listened to Kailas's answer, simultaneously immersing himself in the Force: the Imperial could lie like a god, but he could hardly hide his inner emotions, and in them, one could find answers to many of his questions.
But Varou wasn't lying. He was omitting a lot – that was for sure. But his words were not lies.
"And what are you going to do with my..." Rimon didn't search for the word for long, but it took him a while to phrase it carefully so as not to lie to himself, "employers?"
"Me?!" Kailas exclaimed, pushing his empty plate away. "Nothing. Except I'll return what I borrowed. Did you have some dealings with them?"
"A contract," Rimon said with a wry smile, "which, apparently, has been fulfilled."
"That's for you to know," Kailas squinted, sipping compote from his glass. "Shall I give you a lift? Or will you find your own way out?"
Engaging in a verbal duel with representatives of either intelligence or security was not among Rock's favorite pastimes. Even if these representatives were quite peaceable towards him.
"A lift would be better. But I'm still curious... How was the signal transmitted to the Empire?" Rimon thought about the words of the investigator who had interrogated him, an unexpected thought struck his mind. "Or... did you plant a worm in my datapad?"
"Don't leave your things lying around," Varou advised gently. "I have excellent mutually beneficial relations with your employer. I didn't even tell anyone what I found in your things. Otherwise, it wouldn't be an investigator talking to you right now... And in a different tone. And believe me, neither I nor those who work with me would have the strength or the means to get you out."
"Scientific research," Rimon replied calmly, "a hobby, but thank you, I'll be more careful in the future."
"Be careful with such hobbies," Kailas examined the bottom of the glass, found nothing more attractive than a lonely cherry there, and sighed. "They can lead to very unpleasant places... Finish eating and let's go. We shouldn't linger here too long."
"I could have been locked up far away and for a long time even without hobbies," Rimon sighed in response, "before. Before we met. And after, too, for that matter..."
He ate quickly, but tried, first, to behave as decently as possible, after all, it was no joke, almost at the top of Imperial society; second, he didn't really want to eat, and he consumed the food simply because he had to. Because after such extreme entertainment as stratospheric jumps without a parachute, the body is sharply depleted.
"I was thinking, for my first job, I'll buy a repulsor belt, to hell with these jumps without insurance," Rimon stated, finishing his portion and taking the last sip. Then he wiped his lips, his hands, and put the napkin in the empty glass.
"Buy yourself a para-wing," Kailas advised, getting up from the table. "It's more reliable. And it's much more pleasant to fly on it than on repulsors."
The transport ship was waiting for them on the same platform where it had been forcibly landed. Everything on board remained as it was – down to the mattresses in the cargo hold and the blasters on the instrument panel.
The weapons were transferred back to Rimon along with everything else.
"How will you plot the course?" he asked, looking back at the pilot.
"Swearing and cursing," Kailas informed him, settling into the chair. "Because these scoundrels still stole the flask."
"One less temptation," Rimon chuckled, calculating how best to get to Dantooine. Because he couldn't recall any direct routes from Carida, not those planets – "I've been forbidden to drink at all, those Hutt doctors."
"But no one forbade me," Varou sighed regretfully, finishing the system check before takeoff and requesting a takeoff corridor. The transport ship gently lifted off the platform, gaining speed. "And our first jump will be here..."
Kailas's fingers flew across the keyboard, entering a chain of coordinates.
"Be friends with us, kid, you won't regret it," he chuckled. "We know paths that smugglers only dream of..."
"If you knew the paths of smugglers," Rimon grinned crookedly, "you wouldn't sleep at night."
"As if I haven't seen them," Kailas waved him off, bringing the ship into the acceleration vector before the jump. "You think I haven't flown with your kind? I have... I've flown... And now you'll fly with me. Buckle up, it'll be bumpy."
"After what I did in the sky? I'm not so sure," Rimon doubted, but he buckled up. At least for safety reasons.
The precaution turned out to be not superfluous at all. The first jump was very short – only a few minutes. Then there was a series of similar ones, some longer, some shorter, with a change of direction, in close proximity to lifeless stars, in places difficult for navigation – and all without a single delay, without preliminary calculations, only the tapping of fingers on the keyboard, a gaze shining with strange excitement, and stars tearing from their places...
And the overload compensation slider was lowered to the limit of endurance.
Rimon, as soon as Kailas began his antics, quietly chuckled. There it was, free fuel and government service, no economy. And then he buried himself in his datapad.
It wasn't that he was angry at Kailas for finding his data, he was angry at himself for being so careless. It was a dangerous oversight not to password-protect the interface. Launching a random combination generator, Rimon got a normal, meaningless six-character password, and then, memorizing it, he wrote a program that blocked any actions until the password was entered. However, he couldn't limit the number of attempts yet, as he lacked a second level of protection. But he could delete all utilities that created file access history, then remove all search services, and then hide the necessary documents where it would take as long to crawl as it would to reach the Unknown Regions in a sub-light ship without knowing the way. It took him about three to four hours, but when he finally pulled away from the console, Varu was still drumming his fingers on the buttons.
A terrible thought struck him. Rimon could still attribute a few jumps to Kailas's good memory, who was entering familiar coordinate chains. But to jump from memory until now?! Rimon's entire nervous system bristled, his hand instinctively went to his blaster, and his owner went into the Force, peering at the pilot. Varu was not in the Force. Or rather, he was visible in it, but not like all other people: he was merged with it, completely at its disposal. Thus, as far as Rimon could understand, they meditated in the Order, or perhaps not. Calming his paranoia, which had begun to run wild, he stood up and left, deciding not to disturb Kailas. If he accidentally broke his concentration, he'd have to search for where he'd ended up...
Finding a quiet, dark spot in one of the cabins, he sat down, crossed his legs, unbuckled his holster for some reason, and frantically recalled everything Kailas had told him. Varu had studied at the Academy, but, according to him, he wasn't the best pilot. However, he was currently piloting without a navicomputer. No doubt, no tracker would catch him that way, but he wasn't thinking about the economic aspect at all, which meant he was being supplied with fuel. He was on good terms with the Empire, and Malihai trusted him... or not Malihai? He knew what lightsabers were, and he also knew what happened in the Empire to those who played with such blades. Now the question was, who was he and where did he come from? The fact that he was a trained Force-sensitive was obvious, but he hadn't learned to shield his mind, otherwise, Rock wouldn't have been able to read him so easily. So, he was trained in only one thing or a narrow range of skills. The question was, what? Flying was clear. He immediately wanted to stand behind him with a blaster after arriving and interrogate him. But Rock couldn't do that. Why?
Because Kailas had saved him, saved not only him from punishment, but his soul; he wouldn't have to account for the deaths of a hundred and fifty thousand people. And for that, he was grateful to him, so much so that he was ready to forgive almost anything. But only almost.
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Rimon thought again about what Kailas had said, what he had felt. No, he couldn't find the answers to his questions, not now. He knew one thing for sure: he wouldn't turn him in to anyone. Nor would he betray him. And that if necessary, he would get involved in any adventure for him – that was also clear. Because he owed him, and he couldn't help himself. Even if he wanted to.
A barely perceptible vibration of the hull changed its character – the transport had exited another jump. While he was sitting in the dimly lit cargo hold, this had happened more than once, but now time was passing, and the hyperdrive wasn't engaging.
Rimon stood up, stretched, and went to the cockpit. During his time in the darkness, his questions had only multiplied, and he needed to get answers to them, to know, just to know, who he was dealing with.
The transport was descending for landing – below, the surface of the planet was smoothly rotating like an overturned bowl. Kailas was in the same position as Rock had left him, except his fingers weren't darting across the keyboard, entering another coordinate chain, but the glassy sheen in his eyes clearly showed that the pilot was still in a trance.
Rimon didn't bother him, he had neither the desire nor the reason. Instead, he began to peer at the approaching planet; he had always liked this view. The way a small ball transforms into a huge, life-breathing sphere – there was something monumental about it, showing how vast things could be that sentient beings were accustomed to looking at from afar.
Kailas was piloting the ship for landing in a desert area. A small lake at the foot of a cliff, a forest, a silver thread of a waterfall – and not a single sign of civilization. The transport landed softly on the rocky shore, the engines died down, and the pilot leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes.
"Does it happen to you often?" Rimon asked with sadness in his voice, looking at the spray created by the waterfall.
Kailas didn't respond immediately. The silence lasted for about a minute, and it was starting to seem like he wouldn't answer at all, but a muffled, tired voice finally sounded:
"If by 'so' you mean a twelve-hour slalom – then not often."
"That's cool, of course. Impractical, but cool," Rock said with the same intonation, but allowed himself to smile a little, probing what Kailas was feeling, "but I wasn't talking about that."
Rimon preferred to let Kailas figure out what he meant.
Monstrous, inhuman fatigue emanated from the pilot – and, as an unexpected background to it, a quiet, barely perceptible joy, slowly fading. He either didn't want to figure it out or saw no need. In any case, the question "about what exactly?" did not follow.
"There's food in the galley. If you want, cook something."
Varu avoided the answer, although it was expected. Rimon didn't pressure him, nor did he ask direct questions. If the person didn't want to talk, then so be it; respecting others' secrets was one of the important professional traits of a smuggler. Instead of continuing the conversation, he actually went to the kitchen. With all this self-study, he had completely forgotten that his body hadn't eaten or drunk anything the whole way.
After a solitary meal, prioritizing nutrition over taste, Rimon decided to go outside and walk around the ship. But first, he returned to the cockpit and checked on the navicomputer exactly where they had landed. If the navicomputer wasn't lying, they had landed on Dantooine after all, but quite far from inhabited places.
Kailas, judging by his barely perceptible breathing, was sleeping the sleep of a mortally tired man and didn't react to Rimon's presence at all. Rock decided not to disturb him and postpone his walk outside. Instead, he began methodically searching the ship, room by room.
Fruitlessly.
Finding nothing interesting, Rimon finally went out through the cargo hold and took a deep breath of the planet's air. Then he immersed himself in the Force and looked at the surrounding space in a new way. The world had transformed subtly, but it wasn't enough. Rock decided to try to dig deeper, to see if he could look where he couldn't easily look: at the bottom of the lake, under the waterfall.
Under the veil of the Force, which hid the invisible world from ordinary sight.