The Knave

[The Knave]

Jigraci’s Say-So

With all the political upheaval and disbelief that was going through the galaxy right at that moment, one of Warden Jigraci’s least concerns ought to have been Prisoner 866, the Knave. He was neither the commander of any great army, or even the captain of the Misfit. He was, however, the warden to the primary prison rotunda within the Misfit, which arguably housed the most dangerous criminals in the galaxy, and something unprecedented had just happened.

Presently, Warden Jigraci fumed. He stood in his office, pacing quietly in front of his inner circle. Rory Parsten, the DHO for the Misfit, sat running his hands through his hair. As the disciplinary-hearing officer, it was his typically his job to hear an inmate’s side of the story and issue punishment—this case was very special, though, and a quick punishment could not be meted out so easily. The Knave was already in Isolation Center 4, in the “hole,” with no sentient contact. His privileges could be removed, but besides carbonite freezing, execution, or re-education protocols, there wasn’t really all that much to discuss.

Associate Wardens Drexl Ugan and Eston Wesbirz sat against the wall just behind Parsten. Standing in front of them was the ISIS man, Special Agent Loran Mortist. The room was silent. They had all heard Mortist’s suggestion, and while it was certainly tempting, and the warden wanted to tear the fiend apart himself, another problem had presented itself only moments ago. The flimsiplast printout on his desk summed it all in just a few sentences, but the last line said it best: IMPERATIVE THAT PRISONER TO REMAIN ALIVE, UNHARMED, AND COHERENT FOR FURTHER INTERROGATION!

“What the hell else could they want with him, huh?!” Jigraci shouted. “I ask you! He’s just slain an ISIS agent, and he’s already given them mountains of intel to put help their full-on investigation and invasion into the Cademimu Sector! I ask you, what in all the nine hells else could they want with him? What do they expect to extract from a dried tomato?! I ask you!”

“I think it says it right there, Warden,” said Parsten. “They’ve uncovered something. Something classified.”

“Classified my ass? Why can’t they at least tell me? He’s my prisoner, after all! He’s been given to me, to delegate and handle as I please! Why else give me this job if I’m not going to be allowed to exercise the power of a prisoner?! At this rate, he’ll become emboldened! You heard him! He’s provoking us! In all my years, I have never seen anything like this! Since I’ve been warden here, there has never, ever been a single death of anyone on staff! Now it happens, and not only is the prisoner barely punished, but we’re asked to lay off?! Lay off, like he's some precious prize! Whose side are they on here, Mortist?” Something occurred to him just then, and before the ISIS man could answer, the warden went on, “And what was that business in there about ‘there you are,’ like he knew you.” Jigraci stopped pacing. “What did he mean?” he demanded.

The warden had at first liked the way this Mortist thought, the idea of torturing the bastard had sounded like a terrific idea, something to sate his own bloodlust. However, he now felt as though an ISIS conspiracy to pull jurisdictional powers over the prisoner was forming around him. This was Jigraci’s domain, and no one had ever messed with it before, not even the commander of the Misfit.

Mortist finally cleared his throat. “The prisoner and I have a…special relationship.”

“Define ‘special’,” Jigraci said.

“I was a part of the mission that brought him in. It was an operation called ‘Jagged Spire.’ It was classified, so I won’t say anymore. But what you can probably figure out for yourself is that it resulted in bringing him in. Jagged Spire’s primary goal was bringing in the Knave—he was thought to be a myth for a while, until an assault at a data dump installation on Haruun Kal more or less confirmed that he was real. Before that, all of his crimes had pretty much been chalked up to a series of isolated attacks from different criminals, but all of them becoming attributed to one man; his name was in the ether for years, word got around in the underworld. I followed my sources, and a few others that were involved.”

Rory Parsten turned to look at him. “You’re the one who brought him in? You caught him?”

“I didn’t put the binders on him,” Mortist clarified. “Someone else did that. But I dogged him. I dogged him from Adumar to Bespin to Deyer. I slowed him down enough until others got their paws on him.”

“So what did he mean that he knew you were here?” Jigraci asked. “Had you visited his cell without my knowledge before? So help me, if you went around using your ISIS resources to make contact with the prisoner without my permission I’ll—”

“I never once undermined your authority, Warden,” he said. “I was granted special permission to know the location where the Knave was taken, and I came here seeking very specific information from him. I didn’t know this was going to happen.”

“You didn’t answer my question. How did he know you were here?”

Mortist shrugged. “Most likely it was his inane blathering. The Knave is clever, but he’s also off his rocker. He says and does things that make sense only to him, if even that. Most likely he meant to sew mistrust, and from your tone, he’s obviously done that. He wanted this to happen. This. Us in this room, emotions running high. It might have only been a gamble, and when he saw me, he improvised, claiming to have been waiting for me to show myself.”

Jigraci was still incensed by all of this. “Nemei was an ISIS profiler and interrogation expert, and she tested my patience. Now you’re here, claiming that you would like to tear our prisoner apart, as well, yet your bosses are the same as hers, and they’re singing a different tune, one that lets him survive. Unharmed, no less! I’m gaining a distaste for ISIS, Special Agent Mortist.”

“Let’s not forget who the real enemy is here, Warden. It’s your prisoner.”

“He’s right, Jigraci,” Parsten chimed in. He sighed, shaking his head. “We can bitch about bureaucracy until we’re blue in the face, but if they want him alive and coherent, we dare not harm him. All we can do is ensure his security is heightened, he’s not to be allowed anyone inside or outside of his cell, droids only to deliver his meals. And he eats only every other day from now on, and only gets two meals on those days.”

“But,” Mortist went on, “let’s also not forget that he’s got information. We can get it from him, but we…well, we can’t harm him. Apparently, ISIS knows something I don’t know, something that I guess is above my pay grade, so they need him for something else, maybe something that came out of Jagged Spire, a loose end that needs tying off. Or maybe something else entirely. Whatever the case, and as much as I hate to say it, we have to listen to them. But it doesn’t mean we can’t at least talk to him. They didn’t say anything about that, did they?”

Parsten shook his head. “I dunno. The last person to talk to him was Nemei. Now she’s down in the morgue.”

Jigraci didn’t like that idea, either. “Talking to that maniac is a privilege—I’d rather leave him under no sentient contact. He gets his meals from droids, like Rory says. Anything else and we’ll probably be giving him more of what he wants.” The warden considered that bastard down in cell 20172, the creature of ineffable ambiguity, the monster without remorse. He seethed just thinking about it. But, he seethed even more thinking about what all ISIS would glean from the villain without his knowledge. Jigraci had been undermined and left out of the loop, and now, he felt himself wanting answers. “What might you talk to him about?” he asked Mortist, his interested piqued.

The sooner we get what ISIS needs out of this bastard, the better, he thought. Only, we don't know exactly what they need out of him. If we keep him talking, though...

The answers might come, or else the Knave would be proven to be a blithering idiot without an iota of valid intel left inside his brain.

[The Knave]

A "Treasure Trove" of Intel

“What is he talking about now?” asked Warden Jigraci.

Drexl Ugan, who was one of his oldest associate wardens, glanced through the transparisteel glass into the interrogation room. “The maniac’s in there running his mouth again, sir,” he said. Drexl walked over to a chair and propped one foot up on it, and then propped his arms on his knee. “The interrogator droid has had him under the influence of enough drugs to knock out a Bantha.” He shrugged. “For some reason, though, it only makes him a little drowsy. But, he is forthcoming with information. Don’t know how much of it is true, but…”

“What kind of interrogator droid are we using?” Jigraci wanted to know. He walked over to the transparisteel glass, which was a one-way mirror, and looked in on Prisoner 866.

The Knave sat slumped in his chair, and was picking at something on the back of his bald head, which security droids shaved every two weeks on every prisoner aboard the Misfit, just to make sure they didn’t forge anything useful out of their own hair.

For a few days now, the Knave had sat without lights, without power, without anything but water and a few crackers down in his dungeon in IC4. He didn’t seem the least bit uncomfortable, like any other prisoner would. Instead, he looked like he was sitting on a porch, looking out at his front yard and thinking about whether or not the weather was going to be good enough later to mow his lawn. He looked as content as an old man with several children and grandchildren, all grown and healthy, without a care left in the world except to sit back and enjoy the fruits of his lifelong labor.

“We’re using a T-1Q Interrogator Droid, sir,” Drexl said. “We figured we’d use the more assertive model after…” He let the sentence drop.

After the monster murdered Dr. Nemei, he thought. After he used her own head-tails to snatch her head towards him and jerked her head sideways while he shoved a sharpened thumbnail into her eye socket, dug into her brain matter and jerked her head the other way, snapping it. Jigraci had never wanted to be rid of a prisoner more in his entire life, but what could he do? So far, ISIS had seemed pretty satisfied with the intel he had relinquished, and IMEXCO appeared impressed with the results ISIS had gotten out of that intel. Meanwhile, Warden Jigraci had seen nothing but death and manipulation—he maintained the monster whilst ISIS agents ran around having a great time with the intel Nemei and Jigraci’s people had extracted from the Knave.

Jigraci thought about Nemei. He had never really liked her, but he hadn’t despised her enough to wish her dead, especially not at the hands of that villain. But I warned her, he thought. I’ve warned them all, and repeatedly. But nobody listens. ISIS won't listen. IMEXCO won't listen. None of them will. He peeked in through the window. The Knave glanced up at the ceiling, blinked a few times while staring at the light, looked amused for a moment, and then stared back down at the table while he continued to pick at something on the back of his bald head.

“Where’s that Mortist guy?” Drexl asked. “Didn’t he want to interrogate this guy himself?”

“He’s ISIS,” said Jigraci. “He’s going to do whatever he wants to do, and we’ll just have to sit here and like it.” He nodded towards the prisoner. “What about him, though? You said the interrogator droid got something else out of him?”

“Yes sir, and without much prying, either. Bastard didn’t even put up a fight, practically volunteered every single bit of it.”

“What’s he saying?”

“Something about a ship, I dunno.”

“What did the interrogator droid advise?”

“That the subject is ‘completely docile.’ ” Drexl chuckled. “Yeah, I had a laugh at that, too.”

“He always seems docile. Until he’s not.”

“I was in here listening in while he spoke with the droid. He said he had some information about a ship, and that if we got hold of the ship then we could get some intel out of it, which could lead us to a ‘treasure we wouldn’t believe.’ His words, not mine. He spoke of an intel treasure trove, some of it involving the NR, and some of it involving the old Galactic Empire, some underworld connections...and the interrogator droid said that he scanned honest—the lie detection programming and sensors detected no falsehood or fallacies.”

“They never do with this one,” said Jigraci. “What were the conditions on which he would yield the rest of the information about this ship?”

“To speak to you,” Drexl said. “Or to Mortist. Then, he said he’d like to speak to Nemei. When the droid reminded him that he had killed her, he just said, ‘Oh…yeah.’ And he wasn’t laughing and didn’t seem to be making a joke. I don’t know, Warden. This egg’s been cracked one too many times. If he is serious about some ship loaded with a treasure trove of intel, then I personally believe that it’s false—he only scans honest because he’s honestly insane and actually believes his own nonsense. That’s just my two credits, though. Take it however you like.”

“Thank you, Drexl,” he said, looking in at the prisoner. Jigraci watched for a few more moments, and then said, “Give him a day to settle. If Mortist’s not back around, I’ll step in there and talk to him.”

The associate warden looked at him. “Sir…I wouldn’t go anywhere near that man—”

“I’ll have security droids with me in the room, and he’ll be in a paralysis energy field. He’s not going anywhere.”

[Loki Mortist]

Loran Mortist merely nodded respectfully as the Director made his way past with the security detachment before handing the man a big shiny red button. This big shiny red button was a control device for a very large and unobtrsive looking box that trundled into the prisoner's holding cell on four small tracked treads.


He was still around trying to collate his thoughts together on how to proceed with a man as dangerous as the Knave. But despite this he was still intrigued on the possibility of a 'treasure trove' kept somewhere.

Normally in his memory, criminals who operated with the ability to blackmail their unwilling accomplices to assist them in their activities normally might keep several stashes in reserve for times they needed them. Or as a bartering chip. Was that what the knave wanted now? To barter?

A question concerning pirates and human slave trafficking in the Cademimu Sector. Some interesting things had trickled down from investigating the orders pathways upon which which had come down... they're stop over point was from someone higher up in ISIS - but not in the same division as IntOrg. A former boss of Nemei named Coldrach Pierot had passed them on from someone even higher up that he couldn't access. It was interesting- Pierot had come in under the Remnant side of operations. And his service record listed him as the former Remnant's go to guy for their cells in the Cademimu Sector.

Some of the cells there in the past had done wetwork there before transfering over to ISIS. Perhaps that was the reason the orders had come down? Was there a connection they thought the Knave might know?

Mortist didn't know- it was hard for him to read other people. Something he'd have to improve upon in the future.

So for now he'd simply listen, watch to keep the Warden safe, and wait to ask his own question.

[The Knave]

The Tale of a Ship

The room was dark.

They kept lights on, but sometimes the overhead fluorescent bulbs flickered on and off indecisively. He believed they were doing that intentionally. This was, after all, an interrogation room. Men’s nerves were meant to be rattled in here. There was an odor to the air—a pungent one, created from a mixture of neglect and heavily-scented air fresheners. The air was redolent with it. He sniffed at the air, and stuck out his tongue, then slowly reeled it in and tasted it. Yes, definitely. The air freshener pervaded everything.

He heard a hiss behind him. The Knave was in a stasis field, so he could only turn his eyes to see. He looked at a small, circular, white dish on the wall. It was that apparatus on the hissing came from. It happened every few seconds. The air freshener was most likely not air freshener at all. It was a soft narcotic, one meant for relaxing the muscles and the mind.

When the door at the far side of the room shunted open, he expected to see the interrogator droid come hovering in. And it did. But it wasn’t alone. Warden Jigraci stepped inside, with two Zeeo droids on either side of him, as well as one Human guard that the Knave had never seen before—he marked the new guard’s face, and glanced at the warden.

The door shunted closed behind them, and for a time there was only silence. The Knave hovered in midair, and the warden sat there with his hands flatly at his side, just looking at him from afar, appraising him.

No one said anything.

Finally, the warden licked his lips and sighed. “Well?”

The Knave blinked. “Well, what?”

“Something about a ship, and a stash of intel?”

“Ah. That.” The Knave remained where he was for a time. For a moment he was transported back in time, to a point when he had been in a similar situation, only the roles had been reversed. “You want the intelligence?”

“I only want what you have to say,” the warden clarified. He still hadn’t taken a step closer to the prisoner. “It’s ISIS that wants this intel. If it even exists,” he added.

“Oh, it exists.” The Knave winked. “You just have to know where to look.”

“First of all, I’m going to ask the most sane question, and you try to follow me with no games. Why would anyone care about this intel? What kind of intel is it? What does it pertain to?”

“Everything.”

“Everything?” the warden chuckled. “That’s a lot.”

“Yes. It is.”

“Explain.”

“Utmost Suffer.”

Warden Jigraci blanched. “Excuse me, inmate?”

Oh, he's getting testy now. “That’s the name of the ship. The Utmost Suffer. Or, at least, that’s what it’s been nicknamed by collectors. They called it that because it was supposed to be bad luck, but really it was all the owners with bad luck, the ship was a ship. An exemplary ship, a special kind of ship, but a ship just the same.” He flexed a few of his muscles, testing the stability of the stasis field. Like everything else on the Misfit it was top-of-the-line. The Knave glanced around at the ceiling, estimated it to be about four meters above the floor. “It’s an old ship. Legendardy, but still in mint condition. A one-of-a-kind. Never one built like it before, and never one like it since.”

“ISIS isn’t in the habit of collecting ships, so if you’re trying to lure us with that then you’re wasting my time as well as—”

“The ship passed through many hands in its time. It once belonged to a powerful Hutt, and a few other crime lords. One such underworld leader was named Vorka ek tah Mex.” The Knave glanced at Jigraci. “Know him?”

The warden thought for a minute. “Name sounds familiar.”

“It should. You have him here inside the Misfit, frozen in carbonite.”

The warden scoffed. “And how would you know our prisoner roster? You’ve never—”

“I know because before I became a resident of the Misfit, Warden Jigraci, I had people on the inside.”

That gave Jigraci pause. “Surely you think I’ll bite that bait?” He shook his head. “You’re not going to turn me or my men against one another by suggesting we’ve got a mole among us.”

“As you will,” said the Knave, moving along. “I’ve got an itch on my right thigh, can you get it for me?” He sniggered. “I’m kind of in a bind here.”

The warden gave him a stern look. “Utmost Suffer. Go on.”

“Well, that’s it, really. Vorka ek tah Mex was a collector. Not just of rare vehicles, but of intelligence. He didn’t trust his people, so he used to move his most volatile data around with him personally, and would only upload it onto his favorite ship—his favorite ship while he lived, it’s said, was the Utmost Suffer. And the data he collected he got from one of his favorite infochants, a fellow known only as the Iridonian.”

The warden nodded. “I have heard of him,” he said. “I used to work at IntOrg, it’s where I got my start.”

“So you probably know that he occasionally swaps info for info, and he’s one heck of a contact because many times he never even looks at the data he’s swapping—therefore, his clients can be absolutely sure that only they know the contents of the intelligence package. The Iridonian collects files and files and files on various subjects, compiles them, holds onto them, and waits until he comes across someone willing to pay for information about that particular subject.” The Knave tried to shrug, but the stasis field wouldn’t even allow that. “He’s the best in the business. The NIF has used him for at least a decade, and only the top bounty hunters know how to contact him at any given time.

“I got this information from a man whose last bit of business in this galaxy was with the Iridonian. Vorka ek tah Mex’s mind is surely gone by now—you people attempted re-education procedures on him, but years inside carbonite turned his brain to mush, and trying re-education only made it worse. But this contact I had said that he had it on good authority that information he sought had been given to Vorka ek tah Mex by the Iridonian before my contact could get to it.” The Knave added, “And this contact of mine wanted that information very, very badly.”

“Why? What was it?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” he said. “He wouldn’t say. But he didn’t really need to. Whatever it was, it was valuable. As I said, Vorka ek tah Mex collected more than rare starships and starfighters—he collected the heads of his enemies, he hoarded credits, he collected Jedi and Sith artifacts, and he collected treasures from a thousand different dead or dying cultures across the galaxy. Vorka was captured by you people many years ago, and the Utmost Suffer passed through several hands. Last I recall, though, word was that it had fallen into the secret collection of Rend gu’Larso.”

“Who is that?” the warden asked, his curiosity now obviously piqued.

“A syndicate leader on Coruscant. But officially he’s only what you people call a ‘suspect.’ To many on Coruscant, he’s a humanitarian and philanthropist.”

“What about this ship?” the warden asked. “Utmost Suffer. What’s it look like?”

“Look it up on the HoloNet, I’m sure there are some old holos of it that you can find.”

“What else?”

“That’s it.” The Knave winked. “Happy hunting.”

The warden looked at him like he wanted to throttle him. Which he probably did. But all Jigraci did was sigh heavily, and then stared at him at length. He pondered the Knave for a moment, and then looked to the Human guard and nodded towards the door.

“Let me know how the search goes,” the Knave called as the doors were shutting.

He was left alone then with the soft whine of the air conditioning. He sniffed the air. The odor was still there. It had never left. A part of him wanted to drift off to sleep, so that part of him did. The other part of him wished to stay awake, so that part of him did. Half asleep and yet half aware, he saw dreams merge and interact with the interrogation room he was in, so the sea of his own life ebb and flow, the waves crashing against him before retreating back into the past.

He wondered if he was alive or dead. He wondered if what all he had just told the warden was true or false. He wondered if he was dead and recalling what it had been like to be alive and thinking inside the clunky skull of a fleshy Human…