Star Wars: Red Harvest Read Free Page A

academy will soon see a side of you that I don’t think you want them to see
, Scopique’s voice mocked in his head.
Do we understand each other?
    Jura’s thoughts flashed back four standard years to the day he’d first arrived at the academy, a scared and ignorant kid from the other side of the galaxy. He’d spent his first couple of days keeping a low profile, avoiding everyone, hoping to get his bearings before anybody had a chance to push him around, but that wasn’t how things worked around here. On the third morning, he’d been in the dorm, making up his bunk, when a fist swung out and smashed him hard between the shoulder blades, knocking him to the floor where he lay gasping for air.
    When Jura managed to roll over and look up, he saw a gigantic Sith apprentice named Mannock T’sank looming over him. T’sank was stronger and older than Jura, and the smirk on his face was one of nearly homicidal glee.
    “You look good lying there on the floor, newbie,” T’sank leered at him. “You know what you’d look even better doing? Licking my boots.” He’d held out one of his filthy leather dung-kickers, waving the toe right under Jura’s nose, close enough that Jura could smell the tauntaun droppings—T’sank had been sentenced to cleaning the paddocks for some minor offense. “Go ahead, newbie. Give them a good tongue-polish.”
    Even then, Jura had known this was a test; how he respondedwould determine the way he was treated forever after in the Academy’s court of public opinion. Grimly, with the air of someone planning his own funeral, he had stood up and told T’sank exactly what he could do with his boot.
    The results had been even worse than he’d expected. T’sank punched him in the face so hard that Jura blacked out, and when he woke up his entire head was a gonging carillon of pain. He couldn’t move. There was a dirty rag stuffed in his mouth, crammed so far back that he almost choked on it. Looking down, he saw that he was naked and tied to the bunk by his feet and ankles while T’sank stood over him, grinning with malevolence that bordered on madness. When Jura tried to inhale, he started gagging and panic took hold of him; he lost all control and burst into frightened tears, while T’sank howled with laughter.
    And then, abruptly, the laughter had stopped. His last memory of T’sank was the thin, surprised yelp that the sadistic apprentice had let out right before he’d gone flying backward out the door. When Jura had craned his head and looked up through tear-blurred eyes, he’d seen Scopique standing there. The Zabrak had made no immediate move to untie him. Instead he’d been holding what Jura realized was some type of holocam, pointing it at him while the lens autofocused.
    “Smile,” Scopique had said from behind the cam, walking around the bunk, still recording Jura where he lay struggling to regain control of baser bodily functions. “Hold on, let me get your good side.”
    When he was satisfied with the footage, he’d put the recorder away, yanked the rag out of Jura’s mouth, and untied him.
    “Get up,” he told Jura. “Come on.” He glanced back out the half-open doorway, where T’sank had landed, half conscious and crumpled. “I gave him a good shot to the head, but it won’t keep him down forever.”
    Jura struggled to his feet, wiped the blood and snot from his nose, and hurriedly struggled back into his robes. “Thanks,” he mumbled.
    Scopique waved Jura’s gratitude off as if it disgusted him, then ejected the holocartridge from the cam and slipped it into his pocket,giving it a protective little pat. “For safekeeping,” he said, and Jura got the message. None of what happened had been about kindness or mercy. Jura was in his pocket now, and however long he stayed here, the Zabrak wasn’t going to let him forget it.
    “And newbie?” Scopique had said, on his way out the door. “Welcome to the academy.”
    Welcome to the academy
.
    Jerked back into