Bria rounded a corner in Retribution’s corridor, and was joined by her medical officer. Daino Hyx would be in charge of handling the slaves once they were rescued. Hyx was a short, bearded man with the brightest blue eyes Bria had ever seen, and a shy smile that most people found irresistible. Hyx had been a scholar at one of Alderaan’s top universities. There he’d studied medicine and psychology, and had wound up specializing in the treatment of addictions. Since joining the Corellian resistance six months ago, he’d applied his formidable skills to the problem of the Ylesian Pilgrims.
Bria was convinced that there were many frustrated idealists to be found among the underfed, overworked ranks of the Ylesian Pilgrims.
Since her first raid on Ylesia nearly two years ago, sixteen slaves that she’d rescued were currently topnotch fighters or operatives for the Corellian resistance. Another ten had been awarded medals for valor …
posthumously.
Bria had pointed out to her commanding officers on Corellia that Ylesia, with its thousands of slaves, was a potential goldmine of Rebel recruits if only they could find a way to overcome the addictive effects of the Exultation. True, Bria herself had overcome addiction to the Exultation to become a valuable addition to the Corellian underground. But it had taken her nearly three years of unrelenting effort to cure herself. She’d tried everything from meditation to drugs—and had only found the strength she needed when she decided to dedicate her life to the eradication of slavery and the Empire that condoned it.
But they didn’t have three years to devote to curing the Pilgrims.
They had to find a cure that would work in weeks or months, rather than years.
That was where Daino Hyx came in. By thoroughly analyzing the physical, mental and emotional effects of the Exultation (at one point he’d traveled to Nal Hutta to meet a number of t’landa Til males and studied how they produced the effect) Hyx believed he’d found a cure.
Hyx’s cure involved a mixture of mental, emotional and physical treatments, ranging from anti-addiction drugs to interactive and group therapy.
Today, if all went well, Hyx would get the chance to begin putting his new treatment to the test.
He glanced up at Bria. “Nervous, Commander?”
She smiled faintly. “Does it show?”
“No. Most people wouldn’t notice a thing, I’m sure. But I’m not most people. I got to know you pretty well while we were first working on the new therapy. And assessing the mental and emotional states of humanoids is my job, remember.”
“That’s true,” Bria admitted. “Yes, I’m a bit nervous. This is different from capturing a customs patrol ship or raiding some lonely Imp outpost.
This time, we’re going up against the people who used to own me, body and spirit. I’m always just a bit afraid that when I’m exposed to the Pilgrims’ addiction that my own will somehow come back.”
Hyx nodded. “You have an emotional stake in this raid, not just a military goal. It’s perfectly understandable that you’d feel anxiety.”
Bria gave him a quick glance. “That won’t keep me from doing my job, Hyx.”
“I know,” he said. “Red Hand Squadron is very efficient, I hear. From what I’ve observed about your people, they’d follow you into a black hole and out the other side.”
Bria laughed a little. “I don’t know about that. If I were crazy enough to mess with black holes, I hope they’d be sane enough to hold back. But my troops would follow me into Palpatine’s Imperial Palace, that I know.”
“You wouldn’t last very long,” he said dryly.
She smiled, but no warmth reached her eyes. “But we’d have fun for a while. It would be worth my life to get a shot at Palpatine.”
“How soon does the first wave launch?”
She glanced at the tiny chrono-ring she wore. “We’re waiting for the signal from my operative on the space station. Then we’ll microjump into position. He’ll tell us the moment Helot’s Shackle undocks from the Ylesian space station. We want to catch the slavers before they can leave the system.”
“Makes sense.”
Bria turned right and entered the turbolift. “I’m going down to do a final check of my troopers who will be going in the boarding shuttles.
Want to tag along?”
“Sure.”
They took the lift down to the shuttle launch bay. When they stepped out, the launch area was a controlled frenzy of crews making last minute checks of vessels, equipment and weapons. One of the troops, seeing Bria, put two fingers in his mouth and whistled piercingly.
“Commander on deck!”