“This has to be some kind of test” Decimâ mused. The Chief Adjudicator didn’t strike her as a man with a sense of humor, so this had to be some kind of test within a test. “Master N’kre?” she considered the idea; it wouldn’t be the first time she suspected her Master had hand-selected her training subject in order to observe her reaction. With a slight nod of her head she turned to the table before her, ignoring the active surveillance cameras. Decimâ untied the cord that held her tools and smiled as she unfurled the leatheris rolls like a scroll, extending out from the center nearly 15 cm on either side before the final instruments tapped flat on the work surface. Decimâ let her annoyance and disappointment in her test subject fill her with renewed determination.
She had imagined this moment for days, the Jedi who was to be her first subject as a fledgling interrogator within the Sith Inquisition. She imagined him stoic and self-righteous, and she had fantasized about all the ways she would eventually break him. Decimâ had played through each scenario repeatedly in her head: one where she used lightning to bring him to heel, another her fists, her torturer’s tools and even one scenario where she let the Jedi prattle on about how he empathized with her sad slave past and wanted to ‘save’ her from the Sith. Every scenario ended with the man broken and confessing all he knew while she stood with smug satisfaction at having broken a Jedi.
What Decimâ did not expect was this child Jedi with a tear-streaked face babbling something about emotion and peace. She sighed as she flipped the coverlet up and exposed the tools meticulously arranged and strapped into place. Decimâ stroked the metal with the back of her fingertips and looked to the boy’s face. He had stopped his muttering and had grown pale as he watched her reveal the instruments. She wondered idly if the boy had spent time in the kitchens as she had, and if he was familiar with the similar tools that the cooks used for fine slicing, descaling fish and deboning meat. As if to answer her question she heard one of the guards laugh and she looked up with a glare.
“Sorry, m’Lord, your Jedi seems to have fainted.” said the female guard, trying to keep the mirth from her voice.
Decimâ bristled in annoyance as she summoned the medical droid to revive the Jedi. She sat on a chair, observing as the droid injected him with a stimulant. She wondered if the heightened senses from the stim would bolster his resistance or feed his fear. Decimâ didn’t have to wait long for an answer, as soon as he was conscious he started to scream and thrash in the restraints. The medical droid stepped away from the young man and announced “The prisoner is revived.” Decimâ dismissed the droid with a wave of her hand and approached the Jedi, stepping into his personal space, making him cringe with discomfort.
“You sicken me.” Decimâ said with a sneer of disgust. Her face mere inches from his. “This is what the Jedi sent to us?” She waited for him to answer, enjoying the discomfort he was feeling at her presence.
“I… I am Caleb Gorin, padawan of the Jedi Order.” The boy said, finding his strength in stating his name.
“Well Caleb Gorin, I am Decimâ and I am here to extract what little you may know by any method I see fit.” She said with a grin. “You have seen my instruments, shall we make some music together?” Decimâ drew her gloved fingertip down the boy’s forehead and left it between his eyes. She could smell him, his sweat acrid, the stink of imprisonment and fear coming off him in waves.
“Nnnn … I don’t know anything!” He insisted, “we were just…”
Decimâ cut him off before he could continue. “If you know nothing, then I may as well kill you now and go for lunch.” The boy stopped talking. “Let’s try this again, Caleb Gorin. We will start with why you were on Taris spying and then move to broader subjects.”
Six hours later, the boy hung limply in the restraints, his robes soaked with sweat and urine. Decimâ motioned to the guards to take him away as she flexed her hands into fists, their dull ache her constant companion. The boy had very little information about the operation on Taris and even less about the Republic in general. What he did have was quite a bit of information about the recruitment, training and culture of the Jedi Order. Information that Decimâ thought may be useful, she decided not to kill the boy. While she hadn’t been told not to, she hated to let a thing of value be lost; who knows what else the little mouse might know. She meticulously cleaned her blades, she barely had the chance to use one, the boy was incredibly talkative.
“There will be another time” she thought as she set the roll of her tools into it’s plain Orowood box. “In the meantime, I need to find a more appropriate box to store these in.”