Star Wars - Gathering Shadows - The Origin of the Black Curs - Unpublished Read Online Free PDF Page A

that she had walked right off the edge of a sheer rock face that descended hundreds, perhaps even thousands of meters.
    Tru’eb was next to her, staring into the gorge. It was impossible to make out the bottom of the valley, a dark well with layers of fog drifting above it. Plunging down into the darkness, the cliff wall was a marbled gray with steplike ridges naturally chiseled into it. There were also outcroppings along the way, so heavily overgrown that the plants and trees hung precariously out over the valley: and waterfalls poured out of the rock face in a number of places. After several dozen meters everything disappeared into a bluish-gray soup.
    Far below, winking on and off through the fog, there was a small blue light. And another, and another, and a hundred, neatly lined up. Platt shut her eyes and then looked again.
    “Running lights,” she said. amazed. “But it’s too dark to make out the garrison.”
    “Hence, the Valley of Umbra,” Tru’eb said.
    “Yeah, I get it. Look at the waterfalls. Twenty credits says that’s a leaky aqueduct.”
    “Look there,” Tru’eb said. “Do you see that? There, and over there—all around.”
    Platt looked. Weaving in and out of the cliff was a series of metal ladders and walkways, probably leading to maintenance ducts hidden in the rock face.
    Tru’eb took her macros. “Six hundred meters down.” He looked up. “And the distance across is twice that. I suppose we can safely say we know where Harkness is.”
    Mist oozed up over the edge of the valley. Platt wasn’t sure whether she should be excited or appalled at knowing where Harkness was.
    “There must be a turbolift or a flatbed loader leading down,” Tru’eb said. “You have code cylinders in that uniform, correct?”
    “Yes, but I’m not keen on explaining why we’re not at our post. Or why one of us grew head-tails and fangs and the other decided he was much freer as a woman.”
    Tru’eb shrugged. “Then it’s straight down.”
    “How?”
    “We’ll take the maintenance ladder wells. They must eventually lead all the way to the bottom.”
    “Suppose somebody’s working on them, genius?”
    “Why would they? They have repulsors.”
    “Yes, but I’m trying to delay this as long as possible.” She looked at him. “I really don’t want to go down there.”
    “But you will.”
    “But I will.” She sighed and slid down on her belly, wedged her foot into the cliff face and hoisted herself down. The nearest ladder was about five meters below, according to the macros, but it wasn’t hard to get a foothold on the crags. Before long the two smugglers were standing on a solid, grassy boulder that jutted out over the valley. One of the rusty maintenance ladders, dripping with moisture, stuck out of the rock face nearby.
    “I’ll go first,” said Tru’eb, dusting up his hands with dirt and taking a step toward the ladder.
    Platt grabbed his shoulder. “Tru’eb.”
    “Yes, Platt.”
    “Why are we doing this?”
    “Harkness is our friend.”
    “So what? We have lots of friends.”
    Tru’eb stepped onto the ladder. “No, we don’t.”

    Before Morgan had died, Jai had experienced several incidents in which she had forgotten who she was.
    The most prominent of them had happened about eighteen months ago, when she led a five-man Infiltrator team to Bevell Three on a supposedly well-planned assignment. They were supposed to capture four Imperial agents, but somebody had tipped off the Empire; a squadron of TIE bombers appeared out of nowhere and razed the area. Everybody fell, except for Jai, who walked away without even a bruise. As usual, she got everybody out. But for the first and only time in her SpecForces career, she didn’t get somebody out alive; Leong, the team’s comm specialist, died en route to the medical frigate.
    Jai went through the next week completely numb, not responding much to anything or having any sort of recognizable emotion. High Command promoted her to master