“Let’s be sure we get in,” Luke says. “Let’s get arrested.” He starts down the ramp.
“What about Gideon’s ship?” Sidney asks. “We aren’t going to leave it here?”
“Can’t think of a better place,” Gideon answers. “This place is filled with tourist craft. By the time a guard notices this one, we’ll be dead or out.”
They lock the scow, then sneak through a door labeled “Authorized Personnel Only.” Within 30 seconds, a squad of stormtroopers surrounds them.
“What is the meaning of this?” demands their officer, Lieutenant Salva.
“The tour wasn’t complete enough?” Luke offeres, raising his hands in surrender.
An hour later, a shuttle carrying Luke and his companions enteres a processing bay. The center is littler more than a huge, dreary docking bay divided by force fields into 100 shuttle-sized holding pens. Black intrasystem shuttles in various stages of disembarkation occupy most pens. Anywhere from 10 to 100 disheveled and frightened prisonders of all races stand beneath each shuttle’s wings, awaiting the unloading of their shuttle-mates. Like Luke and his companions, each prisonder’s appendages are held together by short plasalloy shock manacles. Twenty stormtroopers and black-clad officer stand inside each pen to supervise the debarking process.
Remote controlled blaster cannons and observation cameras suspended at the ends of robotic arms dangle into the bay. The ceiling itself is lost in darkness, so Luke can only guess what horrors hang concealed in its murky abyss.
Five meters off the floor, a balcony runs around the exterior of the bay. Two hundred stormtroopers stand behind a variety of heavy weapon emplacements. In the center of teh balcony’s interior wall, a 50-meter transwall opens into a vast gray room filled with computer equipment and bustling technicians. A dozen officers wearing forboding black uniforms stand behind the transwall. They watch the operations below with the keen interest of demons selecting souls for damnation and torment.
As the shuttle lands, the despair of imprisonment on Tol Ado fully strikes Luke for the first time. Parnell designed the facility not to crush a being’s spirit, but to smother it. Crushing implies destruction, and destruction would be too kind for Governor-General Parnell. A prisoner without spirit is dead in all but the physical sense, and the dead don’t suffer.
Instead, by guarding against it so obviously, Parnell maintains the hope of escape. Then he buries that hope under the weight of impersonal and systematic oppression. The prisoner can make no appeal for justice, mercy, or even death. To Tol Ado, he becomes a body to march lockstepped into oblivion.
By the time Luke and his friends stand beneath their shuttle wing, Luke realizes that if they are to succeed in their plan, they must escape before the system sweeps them into a dark corner to be forgotten. But for now, they must wait – any escape attempt here would be suicide.
The shuttle guards drop three duffel bags in front of the prisoners. The bags contain their personnal belongings – blasters, complinks, chronometers, Luke’s lightsaber, etc. The Imperials have not yet decided how to categorize Artoo-Detoo. The guards have forced him into line with the other prisoners, but have not even bothered to place a restraining bolt on his shell. The Imperials apparently have no standard procedure for dealing with Droids.
“These are the saboteurs?” asks the reception squad officer. Without awaiting a reply, he continues, “General Parnell is aware of your performance. You may return to duty.”
Salva and his guards return to their shuttle without speaking a word. The officer ignores the prisonders, except to make sure the 20 stormtroopers watch them carefully. Luke feels more than a little overestimated.
They stand in their pen for over an hour. During that time, over 150 shuttle-loads of prisoners march out of the bay under heavy guard. Finally, a three-man repulsor cart approaches. Governor-General Parnell and an aide ride in the back. “These are the tourist center prisonders?”
“Yes, General.”
Parnell studies them carefully. When he reaches Luke’s face, the general glares at Luke for a long moment. “I know you, boy.”
Luke does not answer.
“To the Deathblock for interrogation,” Parnell says.
“As you order, General.”
Parnell leaves.
Three stormtroopers pick up the three duffel bags. Ten troopers step behind the party, and the remainder form up front. After asking processing control to deactivate their force-field, the officer issues a march order.
He leads them out of the processing center into a long white corrider. Despite the fact that his prisoners are shackled hand and foot, the officer maintains a quick pace. Luke and his companions must perform a tricky shuffle to keep up. Three hundred meters down the hallwway, they reach a T-intersection. The officer turns down the left-hand branch. Luke, Gideon, and Sidney folow, but Artoo continues straight down the corridor.
“Hey!” snaps a stormtrooper. He grabs Artoo. Sparks fly and the Imperial quickly withdraws his hand. The officer continues down his corridor, oblivious to what is happening behind him.
The little Droid increases his speed. The stormtroopers raise their blaster rifles to their shoulders, but hesitate to fire. They appear confused, as they don’t believe the Droid is attempting to escape. Finally, a trooper reports the situation to the still-oblivious officer.
“What’s wrong with it?” the officer asks Luke.
Luke shrugs. “Who knows?” He is stalling for time. “Maybe a faulty motivator. Salva’s guards smashed him around pretty hartd.”
“Call him back,” the officer orders.
Luke obediently turns toward the intersection. “Artoo-Detoo, come back here this instant!”
Artoo chirps defiantly. Luke cannot see him.
“I don’t think he’s listening to me,” the rebel pilot reports.
The officer’s face grows red with frustration. “I will not have a Droid make a fool of me in front of General PArnell. Bring that thing back, or you’ll all be on report!”
The guards obediently charge down the corridor. Even the three stormtroopers who had been carrying the duffels head off, perhaps glad to be relieved of the menial labor. Their parcels are hapharzardly dumped on the floor. The officer wathces them go, the veins on his forehead bulging with anger. A moment later, he is the only Imperial in sight.
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