Star Wars - The Longest Fall by Patricia A. Jackson

Author:Patricia A. Jackson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 1996-11-11T02:44:44+00:00

“Well spoken,” Lieutenant Uland concurred. He swallowed the entire portion of his wine and set the goblet aside as the first warm charge rushed through him. warding off the intoxicating chill brought on by Tremayne’s name.

Vharing met Parnet’s statement with a thin smile, marveling at the black mockery of fear behind the General’s insipid eyes. “Then to Death, gentlemen,” he raised his goblet, “the longest fall.”

As Vharing’s face met the cold embrace of the deck floor, he was as a dead man. Hot surges of agonizing sensation lanced through his battered skull and he awoke from that desperate state — alive by every indication of the pain that swept through his heightened senses.

With a child’s wondrous delight, he experienced the sharp agonies of living — the nagging aches and stiffness of his joints, the twisted pinch of his uniform, chafing uncomfortably at his skin. One of his insignia pins had broken in the fall and was piercing the muscle of his chest. Dead men do not bleed, he thought to himself, feeling the warm adhesive of his blood against the fabric of his uniform.

There was a dull roaring in his ears as his physical faculties returned. A momentary stab of pain confessed itself to be a separated rib, possibly two, suffered in the fall to the waiting room floor. His right index finger would not move on command and any effort to coerce it brought a secondary wave of sensory anguish. And there was more. Something was terribly wrong — he could not breathe.

In desperation, Vharing searched the room, his lethargic eyes slow to focus on his surroundings. The delay in his vision brought terrifying images back to his bewildered brain, making the few objects in the immediate area seem gigantic in comparison to his frail, battered body. This appalling effect redoubled his terror, prolonging the agony of his asphyxiation.

Why doesn’t he finish it! Vharing demanded in his mind, unable to speak. His throat was on fire. The salted aftertaste of blood repulsed him and caused him to gag, aggravating his desperate circumstances.

Then as his will to survive conquered the army of dull senses numbing his brain. Vharing opened his mouth. The frigid chill of the waiting room sliced at his tongue as he took his first gasp of air. The experience was a miserable agony to endure; the icy sting swept through his mouth and then into his nostrils.

Vharing coughed, continuing to wheeze as his lungs began to function. “Alive?” he rasped, startled by the hoarse growl of his voice. Had Tremayne left him for dead? Impossible.

Slowly rising from the floor, Vharing swallowed with deliberate caution. He closed his eyes, near fainting, as the agony in the back of his neck intensified. There was undoubtedly some damage caused by Tremayne’s wrath, but nothing the surgeon droids in the Interrogator’s sick bay could not fathom. Spreading his fingers wide and wiggling his toes inside the hardened leather of his boots, Vharing grinned and turned for the door.

Pausing momentarily, he stared

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