Project Boussh: Interrogation
by Josh Nolan

"Can you hear me?"
The voice rang dimly through the static the stun bolt had left in his
nervous system.  Something fuzzily tapped his cheek, but he found it
hard to respond.
"Hello?  Anyone at home?"
The voice had an Australian accent - which meant it wasn't a
stormtrooper.  Mixed emotions were triggered by that realisation,
along with the memory of the stormtrooper snarling, "Stay down, you
blasted idiot." Slowly, the jangling of his sensations lessened, and
he found he had been swinging his head from side to side.
"Wakey wakey," chimed the voice, clearer in Bill's head this time.
Groggily, Bill opened his eyes to see a man dressed from head to toe
in black, a balaclava over his face, revealing only his blue eyes and
fringes of a reddish-brown beard around the man's mouth.  The man was
crouching in front of the chair where Bill was sitting, keeping his
eyes level with Bill's.  Bill tried to adjust his posture, but found
that he was tied to the chair, his arms, wrists and ankles
immobilised.
Bill took a quick look around to establish his surroundings.  He was
in a dingy room covered in peeling paint, lit by a bare bulb
protruding glumly from the ceiling just to Bill's left.  Apart from
the man crouching in front of him, there was another man, similarly
clad to the croucher, leaning sullenly against the wall, what looked
like a lightsabre ostentatiously hanging from his belt.  Mentally,
Bill tagged the two men Crouch and Stand.
"You with us?" asked Crouch, shaking Bill's shoulder gently, concern
evident in his eyes.  Bill tried to speak, but found his tongue still
would not obey his commands.  Crouch saw Bill's attempt, and smiled
reassuringly.  "That's okay.  You won't be able to talk for a while,
so I can tell you what's going on."
"That's great," observed Stand, also in an Australian accent.  "Why
don't you just point out the single flaw on our doomsday machine while
you're at it?"
Crouch grimaced apologetically.  "Sorry.  My colleague is under the
impression you're an Imperial sympathiser.  I prefer to think that
you're more an unwilling accomplice.  I was able to convince him not
to kill you out of hand, because I knew you'd jump at the chance to
prove me right.  Am I right?"
Crouch's quiet offhand mention of killing sent a chill running up
Bill's spine.  The implications came crashing in on him - these people
are serious, this isn't a game, I could die *for real* here - and he
stared at Crouch dumbly.
"Am I right?" asked Crouch again, his eyes searching Bill's face for
an indication he'd heard.  "Just nod if I am."
Bill nodded, his survival instincts starting to talk to him in a loud
voice.
"Okay.  Good.  Now, I should mention that my colleague can use the
Force.  He's going to be monitoring what you say - and if he thinks
you're lying, well... I'm not sure I'll be able to talk him out of
doing anything rash."
Bill finally convinced his tongue to obey him, and blurted out, "He's
a Jedi?"
Crouch downcast his eyes for a couple of seconds, and said, "Well,
he's got a lightsabre and can use the Force.  I wouldn't go so far as
to say he's a *Jedi*..."  Crouch broke off, and glared at Stand.
"Look, if you do that to him, he won't be able to talk - and what use
would he be then?"
Stand shook his head, and, straightening abruptly, stalked away from
them a few metres.  "No need for namecalling," Crouch muttered to his
back, and turned again to Bill.  "Sorry.  But you'll need to start
talking about your involvement with the Imperials soon, or he'll
get... angry."
The quiet menace of this last word was lost on Bill, as something
suddenly struck him as familiar.  Something from a book...
Bill burst out laughing as the scene finally came to him.  Crouch drew
back from Bill, apparently quite unsure what to make of his sudden
hysteria. Stand turned around abruptly, and began tapping his foot
impatiently.
"Just a second!" Crouch snapped at Stand, and grabbed Bill's
shoulders. "Are you all right?"
Bill's laughter began dying off, and he nodded.  "I guess - you guys
have got - a ysalamiri around the place?" he managed to gasp out.
"What?" said Crouch, frowning.
"Oh, like I haven't read 'I, Jedi'.  I know this trick.  Good Jedi/Bad
Jedi.  Pretending the Bad Jedi can do Force stuff - give me a break!"
Crouch left his hands on Bill's shoulders, and turned slightly to
speak to Stand.  "I told you it wouldn't work," he said with a note of
harshness that had not been there before.
"It was kind of important to try and talk to him reasonably," said
Stand, no longer quite so sullen.
"Talk to him reasonably?" asked Crouch angrily.  "This... this -
quisling?!"  Bill's vision blurred briefly, and a large portion of his
face was suddenly numb.  "That's the only language he'll understand,"
snarled Crouch, and plowed his fist into Bill's solar plexus.
"Hey!" yelled Stand, running up behind Crouch.  As Crouch wound up for
another punch, Stand grabbed his arm and dragged him away from where
Bill sat gasping.  "Back off!"
Crouch angrily shook Stand off, glaring at Bill.  Stand stepped
between them, his hand planted in the middle of Crouch's chest.  Stand
shot a desperate glance at Bill.  "You'd better start talking - I
don't think either of us want him to start breaking your fingers."
"Funny," growled Crouch, redirecting his hate-filled gaze at the back
of Stand's head, "I'm pretty much looking forward to it."
Bill's vision swam as tears filled his eyes, more from fear for
himself than the pain settling in on the side of his face.  "I'll
talk," he heard himself say. "I'll tell you everything you want to
know."
"The turncoat's turning again," muttered Crouch.  "What a bloody
surprise."
Stand turned to face Crouch.  "Shut up," he said flatly.  "I don't
want to hear it."
Crouch took one step back, and folded his arms slowly, keeping Stand's
gaze in an unspoken challenge.  Stand held it for a few seconds,
nodded, then turned back to Bill.  "Right," he said.  "We can start
with just what the Imperial base is for."
Bill stammered, "I -I don't know for sure.  We've got four TIEs in
there -"
"What kind?" interposed Stand.
"Interceptors.  Four of 'em.  We've got a bunch of stormtroopers as
well.  Um -"
"How many stormtroopers?"
"Uh - about, um, I dunno, twenty, I think?  Maybe a few more?"
"Has anyone told you anything about the mission?  Have you listened in
on briefings?"
Bill shook his head desperately.  "No.  The new guy, Major Defel, he's
a big guy for keeping secrets.  I mean, I'm just a civilian -"
"Defel?" asked Crouch, frowning, taking a step forward.  "Where have I
heard that name before?"
"Uh - it's the name of some shadow people, or something - uh, I tried
making a joke about it when he first arrived, but he didn't like it -
uh, Defel's a real hardarse, he's got no sense of humour, one of the
stormies said he'd captured a B-Wing and its pilot singlehanded - he
reckoned the pilot was more beat up than Defel was, or something."
Stand frowned for a second, pausing in thought.  "This would have been
a few days ago?"
"Yeah, they reckon they pulled Defel out of the wreckage, and found
out he was a Major.  What with him crawling out of a B-Wing and all,
they -"
"I think that's enough about Major Defel," Stand interrupted.  "We are
adequately informed about the good Major.  Now, how well is the
warehouse defended?"
********
The interrogation continued for about an hour, Stand relentlessly
asking questions about the guard routines, the locations of defensive
E-Webs, the alert status of the starfighters, noncombatant personnel
and the locations of the various quarters.  Bill blearily answered as
best as he could, his speech starting to slur as his cheek began to
swell from where Crouch had hit him.  Crouch stalked up and down
behind Stand, scowling, sneering whenever Bill revealed weakness.
Finally, Stand seemed to run out of questions.  As silence fell over
the room, broken only by Crouch's occasional feral growl, Bill plucked
up his courage and asked, "Is that a real lightsabre?"
In answer, Stand unhooked it from his belt, and with a snap-hiss, a
bright pink blade sprang into being above the handle.  Bill's jaw
dropped in naked admiration, until Crouch growled, "Cut his nuts off
with it."  This brutal remark snapped Bill back to reality.  He shut
his mouth, trying to do anything to stay alive.  Or at least intact.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" asked Stand, waving the glowing blade around,
changing the pitch of its menacing hum.  Bill nodded, transfixed by
the shining cylinder of light, hypnotised by the hum he knew so well.
Stand stepped forward, bringing the blade closer, until it was about
twenty centimetres away from Bill's damaged face, and Bill was amazed
to *feel* the heat rolling off the fantastical weapon.
Then there was a blue flash, and everything went dark.
*******
Nick sheathed the lightsabre and pulled his balaclava off, shaking his
ponytail free.  He turned to where Josh was holstering his blaster,
and said, "I'm glad you've never been that angry at *me*."
Josh shrugged.  "You should have heard what the voices in my head
wanted me to do.  That was restrained."  He looked at where Bill
Skywalker sat, his bruised head hanging limply.  "We should leave him
some water. He'll be really thirsty when he wakes up."
Nick tossed the lightsabre to Josh.  "How long's that going to be?"
Josh caught the metal cylinder deftly, and said, "A day or so, I
think. I had the power setting up pretty high.  And I'm kind of glad
the Jedi trick didn't work.  It's so much more fun to be the bad guy."
Nick nodded as he began to untie the unconscious stoolie.  "Though you
were more just plain scary.  I thought you were going to kill him if I
hadn't stopped you."
Josh shivered.  "I know that was what we were trying to get across,
but - well, I'm not sure how much of it was fake."
There was an awkward pause, broken when Nick cleared his throat.
"Well, at least he cleared up one thing for us."
Josh shook himself out of his wallowing, and frowned.  "What's that?"
"This Major Defel business. I think we can now officially state that
Brad has fewer marbles than Vickie."
Josh thought for a few seconds, then nodded.  "Agreed."