Act V: Scene 2
On Alderaan…
Brushing aside the Alderaanian prison guards as incompetent, soft-hearted fools, Bastila Shan, Colonel of the Imperial Security Forces, takes special charge of Zena’s interrogation. She barely registers a glance as janitorial staff take out the body of the surgeon who betrayed Kane Highsinger—sic semper traditoribus?
Shan—now sporting a glowing red cybernetic eyepiece—wants to know all about Mace’s plans for the subversion of Alderaanian rule. Who are his co-conspirators, and where does he intend to strike next?
Zena’s answer is a wad of spittle on Bastila’s cheek, and a string of choice expletives in low Basic.
Colonel Shan decides Zena needs to be “softened up”. She gestures to her aide, a silent cyborg – who promptly summons nine officers of the Imperial Guard. “I trust you know what to do, Captain,” Colonel Shan says. As the Colonel and her cyborg subaltern leave the room, the leading officer gives her an evil wink.
Meanwhile, CJ Thorpe and R2-D2 arrive at an Imperial landing base on Alderaan. Thorpe sends a video message to a contact in the Alderaanian navy: a brown-haired young officer by the name of Bail Antilles. Captain Antilles agrees to meet Thorpe in one of Alderaan’s many ritzy nightclubs.
In the dungeons, the nine officers exit Zena’s cell, the last of them rearranging his uniform as he steps out. Colonel Shan, now returned, enters to find Zena, now half-naked with her white gown shredded to rags, and all her glorious red hair hacked off.
Unfortunately for the Colonel, Zena is now more recalcitrant than before: she merely stares at her captor in angry silence, but her eyes gleam with a deadly hate.
Colonel Shan gives an order to her aide. “Fetch the electrodes.”
In the nightclub, Thorpe and Bail Antilles meet to discuss Zena’s plight. As Antilles flirts casually with a teal-skinned waitress with a Mohawk of brown hair, Thorpe asks him for the use of his security clearance.
Antilles tells him that it will be difficult to break into the prison without being detected. The Alderaanians have greatly tightened security under the Imperial aegis. He’ll give Thorpe a high-level keycard … but he can’t do more without risking his own position.
Thorpe agrees. It’s a start. The two men get up and leave the bar, but are accosted by a band of ruffians as they go – which Thorpe handles in the same vein as Ben Kenobi in SW 1977 (or Toshiro Mifune in Yojimbo). After paying for “the mess,” they exit the nightclub, crossing the city center’s famed Herald Square toward the direction of the prison.
As Zena writhes in pain under electric torture, Colonel Shan tells her the story behind her glowing red eyepiece…. and how the man who put out her eye was none other than Zena’s rescuer in Tarna, CJ Thorpe.
Thorpe and Artoo enter the prison with relatively little trouble… or so it seems. One guard recognizes Thorpe from a report of the disturbance at the nightclub earlier in the evening. The two disguised Rebels begin to hurry down the corridors.
Artoo stops at a computer terminal, and uses it to discover where Zena is being held – the highest security level of the prison, to which they lack security clearance. There’s no hope for it: CJ will have to go there.
Leaving Artoo behind to seek out a suitable escape craft, CJ uses his lightsaber to overcome as many guards as possible. But soon alarms as ringing, and ray shields go up in front of his path, then behind him.
A great one-sided battle ensues. At first CJ takes out many guards, sustaining only a scratch on one cheek, but eventually the odds tell on him, he is captured. However, the Alderaanians do not recognize him as a Rebel quite yet; they know only that he is the officer who sliced up some people in a bar.
Bail Antilles is summoned to the lower-security area where Thorpe is confined. He looks sadly at his friend, feeling helpless to intervene. The guard outside Thorpe’s cell remarks about how this poor unfortunate is lucky. He’ll probably be sent to 20 years in the spice mines of Kessil. Whereas the princess, on the other hand, at the current rate is going to become cell fodder for the new cloning program…
Hearing these words, Antilles realizes that Alderaan has changed. The old kingdom that he once served is dead.
And in his heart Bail Antilles makes a decision.
In the blink of an eye, Bail’s lightsaber is out; in another second, the prison guard’s head has toppled from his shoulders. Bail releases CJ, and the two head toward the high-security zone where “the Princess” is being held.
Once again Colonel Shan leaves the interrogation room – this time with blood on her gloves. An Imperial courier arrives, with the message that the Emperor has asked for her presence on the space station orbiting Aquilae. It seems the natives are attempting an uprising, which the Emperor wants put down with all speed.
Shan, annoyed at this interruption in her work, nonetheless obeys the Emperor’s orders. She tells her cyborg aide to prepare her personal shuttlecraft: she must reach the Aquilae system as soon as possible. Not that this rebellion will amount to anything, of course—but the Emperor likes devoted servants who step to their tasks with alacrity.
As she leaves, she tells the duty officer, “Process the prisoner… then send her to the oubliettes until I return.”
Not long after Colonel Shan’s departure, Bail and CJ arrive and break into the interrogation room. What they find appalls them: Zena, clad only in a ragged skirt, has had her hair shorn, a prisoner number in Alderaanese branded on her forehead—and her eyes put out, both of them, by Bastila Shan’s awful cruelty.
Zena’s sobs of pain turn to joyful cries when she hears Chuiee’s voice. Tears run from her eye sockets, mingling with the blood on her cheeks. Quickly, Chuiee and Bail free Zena from her restraints, and the three of them make their way to the prison hangar.
By this time, alarms are blaring once again. Colonel Shan’s craft has already departed. The ranking officer in charge of security once more activates ray shields to slow the fugitives’ progress. This time, Bail Antilles uses his officer’s lightsword to cut a hole in the floor, dropping the trio into an air vent.
They wind up in a garbage compactor. The walls begin to close in. CJ radios to Artoo, who hacks into a data terminal and shuts down the power to the garbage units. The heroes emerge, and head onward to the hangar bay, where they reunite with R2.
Knowing the consequences of his treason, Bail decides to go with the others. They take over two 2-person Starfighters – older models, and slower than the likes of Bastila Shan’s high-speed shuttle.
With CJ and Zena in one fighter, and Bail and R2 in the other, the four take off through the closing hangar doors. Soon they are racing up into the space over Alderaan, setting course to rejoin their friends on Aquilae.