Chapter 12
A/N: Thank you so much to I Love Dance, Treenahasthaal, Forever-Luke, xoxo, and Yazz for the reviews!
"Please," Jaina Solo said sweetly. "I would really like to come, if that's all right with you, Wedge." She batted her eyelids and looked up at him.
"I'm not sure that's a good idea, Jaina," Wedge hedged. He was late for an important meeting, and Jaina, even without her two brothers, could be…intractable.
Or in other words, Wedge was certain that her innocent facial expression was hiding something far more sinister. Like a certain stuffed Ewok doll behind the door . . . or embarrassing action figures staging a mock battle underneath General Cracken's chair . . . or even something as simple as a bucket of water placed over an opportune doorway.
She had proved time and time again in the past few days that she had inherited Han's drive for mischief and creativity in carrying it out, combined with Leia's stubbornness and killer instinct.
Winter was on Mon Calamari, and the trying task of watching the Solo children had been delegated to Wedge and Iella.
"Please?" Her lips trembled slightly.
"You'll have a great time with Hobbie, won't you?" Hobbie nodded energetically behind him. The fact had been made clear to every one of Wedge's subordinates that the commander had six thousand ways to make them miserable if they didn't bail him out of babysitting duty.
"I didn't have a great time last time!" Her voice's pitch rose a few degrees. "I don't want to stay with Hobbie! I want to go with you."
Wedge could sense a tantrum coming on, and he silently prayed to the Force that it wouldn't.
It did.
Jaina's eyes filled with rebellious tears, and she glared up at him with large brown eyes. "Ever since my parents left, nobody wants me around. I want to know where they are and when they're coming back! WHERE are they?"
Wedge sighed, more sympathetically this time. "I do want you around. But this is a very important meeting—"
"Where's Uncle Luke?"
"He'll be back soon," Wedge said, hoping that they would be. "He's a Jedi. Jedi always beat the bad guys, remember?"
"He isn't beating the bad guys right now," said Jaina.
"What do you mean?" asked Wedge quietly.
"There was an old man with red eyes. I dreamed about him."
"What was the old man doing?"
"Hurting Uncle Luke," said Jaina simply. "Uncle Luke is very cold, and he can't move. He can't hear me."
Wedge exchanged a disquieted look with Hobbie. "It's just a dream," he said, hoping it was true. But Jaina looked unconvinced. "But even if it is true, your mom and dad are coming. They will put the evil man in prison and bring Uncle Luke back here."
Wedge sighed. "Okay, you can come to the meeting with me." He watched a relieved Hobbie furtively edge towards the door.
Jaina cheered up slightly on the way to the seminar room. Wedge had no doubt that she was worried, but she was unquestionably shamelessly manipulating him.
When they arrived, he sat her down in a seat next to his and firmly told her to remain quiet, without much hope. After the others filed in, they exchanged the usual pleasantries and began. Wedge could imagine that Jaina was bored senseless by all the classified information being shared in the meeting. However, she indeed kept quiet – for a time.
One of the Captains leaned forward and addressed the table. "No secrets between us, right?" she asked melodramatically.
"I haven't got any," Booster said sardonically from somewhere across the table.
"Wedge is made of plastic," Jaina hissed to the Major beside her.
The others stared. Wedge sank down further into his seat and consoled himself with the fact that as soon as Han and Leia came back, it would be over.
Leia paced the dirt floor of the cramped prison cell. She had been sealed behind a partially translucent yellow-orange energy field, but Han had been taken away. Leia was not one to lounge around and worry, but there was nothing else she could do. Also, she had a strong suspicion that her husband, wherever the stormtroopers had taken him, wasn't enjoying himself either.
Her constant movement had begun after the pounding headache from the tranquilizer dart had ended. She just Leia couldn't understand how the Imperials had snuck up on them without her sensing a thing.
A more optimistic thought hit her. Maybe she would see her brother again!
But Leia didn't even know if Luke was on Xandra, let alone in this particular base as Syal had said. The fact that she wasn't in the cell with them suggested that she was conspiring with their captors. There were ways to beat truth drugs, after all, even though Leia had sensed no deception from her.
Her thoughts wandered incessantly back to Han. What was happening to him?
Noise came from the corridor outside the cell, and Leia backed away from the energy field. A group of armed grey-uniformed men stepped into her line of vision, and the field fizzled and cut out. One of them, using the muzzle of his blaster, pushed Han into the cell with them and activated the field again.
"Miss me?" Han asked.
Leia embraced him in relief. But when she pulled away, the smile had faded from his face.
"What is it?" she asked softly.
"Luke's here," he said somberly.
There was a long pause. Leia found that her throat had closed up.
"They took me up to a creepy glass temple filled with candles. Luke was in it, and he was tied to the top of a block of stone. At first, I thought he was – not moving, but he was breathing."
"Was he injured?"
"Yes."
Another pause. "Are you going to elaborate on that?" Leia snapped. Immediately, she regretted the sharpness in her voice.
"He's been tortured," Han said reluctantly. "They wanted me to patch him up. Apparently, they don't need medics over here."
Leia put her head in her hands. "How is he?"
"Not so good," said Han. "Not in any condition to help us escape, that's for sure."
"Was he lucid?" she asked, wanting to press for details. Sort of.
"Kind of halfway between lucid and drugged into incoherency," he admitted. "I gave him some bacta. He'll be okay once we bust out of here."
Before Leia could respond to that, there was a sharp noise in the corridor outside the cell. The barrier dissolved again, and Syal and Soontir Fel entered.
"Welcome to Xandra," Syal said pleasantly. "I hope the sedatives wore off?"
"Did you come here to do anything besides gloat?" Han asked curiously.
"No, that's about it," she replied. "It's so nice to be on this side of the energy field. Although, I imagine your brother-in-law would prefer to have an energy field between him and Darth Cinerate. . . . Oh, has anyone told you yet that you're being imprisoned by the Sith?"
"Why would he need a barrier between him and Cinerate?" Leia asked dangerously.
Syal smiled but remained silent.
"Soontir, you've fallen so low. First, third-rate holoscreen actresses –" Han glanced pointedly at Syal – "Then stormtroopers, and now, the Sith."
Leia noticed that Fel seemed to have something in his eye. No, wait— there was a pattern to the movement of his eyelids.
Mon Calamari blink code!
She looked slightly past him, her peripheral vision taking in his eyes. E I N G W A T C H E D F R O M B A C K L E F T C O R N E R A T T A C K S Y A L B E I N G W— Being watched from back left corner, attack Syal. Attack Syal?
Leia could not figure out what she had to lose, so she lunged. She hit Syal on her midriff, and she felt something shoved into one of the deep pockets of her fatigues, right before the end of a blaster hit a glancing blow on the side of her head. She hadn't been hit that hard, but her vision blinked out for a second and the world lurched.
"I'm sure that you'll have almost as much fun here as I did at NRI headquarters," Syal sneered. With that, the two of them backed out and activated the field again.
Han helped her up, giving her a questioning glance. Out of all the people likely to snap and attack an armed captor, Leia was not one of them. "Are you all right?" he asked.
"Yes," she whispered, pretending to lean into him for comfort, her back conveniently to the left corner. She reached into her pocket and withdrew a flimsi from her pocket, angling it so Han could read it as well.
We're on your side. We have access to (monitored) Holonet. We have no plan yet, but in the mean time, will arrange a visit with your brother. It will be risky. Cinerate is draining Skywalker's life and force energy, and if you come into contact with him, he may decide to drain yours too. A meal will be delivered to you. Dissolve the flimsi into water, and if your answer is yes, stretch out your left hand.
Lunara Seras seethed all the way up the stone steps to Darth Cinerate's temple. I'm his apprentice, yet he treats me like a common servant! Anyone could have shown that nobody Syal Antilles and her useless husband to their little room.
However, she quashed her disobedient thoughts as she slowed her pace and entered the temple. As she made her way through the winding corridors, she allowed herself to wonder what the Master wanted. He sounded inordinately pleased, a clearly positive sign for her health.
She passed the mauve patterned stained glass panels, and entered Cinerate's courtyard. "I have arrived, my master." She knelt humbly before him. He looked better than he had for weeks. Apparently, Skywalker's energy was doing him good.
"Rise, Lunara."
She did so, bewildered. He had called her by her first name, with no title? And his tone had been almost . . . fond?
"Lunara," he repeated, stepping beside her and placing a bony hand on her arm. "There becomes a time in every man's life when he realizes that he must have concern for his legacy."
"I am not your legacy, Master?" she asked, failing to keep all of the hurt out of her voice. He was replacing her?
"No, no, you misunderstand me," he chuckled, an act Lunara didn't realize he was capable of. "I have decided to make you the mother of my heirs."
"Master?" she gasped. Cinerate apparently misread her incredulous horror as delighted disbelief.
"It is true, Lunara. You are the only one here that I trust implicitly, and all of our heirs will have boundless force sensitivity."
Heirs?!
Lunara walked back to the base in a haze, barely noticing the red-uniformed guards that jumped out of her path. She shook the dust out of her cloak as she entered it, and wandered through the halls, taking a roundabout route to her quarters. No more training, only virtual house arrest for the rest of her short life. After she had produced a few heirs, without value as his apprentice, the day that he got angry at her was the day she died. Lunara was good, but she would admit any day that she couldn't stand up to Cinerate.
She passed a security observation booth for the prisoner cells, when a strange movement caught her eye. It was one of the twin observation centers for the high-security group of cells. While the one that she had led the Fels through had observed from the right wall, this booth observed from the left.
Leia Organa Solo was facing towards the holocam, surreptitiously dropping a thin object into her water.
Why would she do that?
Lunara rewound the tape and focused in. The object was thin, with a relatively large surface area. . .a flimsi? The Solos and Horn had all been searched, and no such item had been found and confiscated, which meant that they had to have acquired the item at the base.
Interesting.
Commander Wedge Antilles winced as the pebble hit the glass side-table for the millionth time. "Jacen," he began, "The briefing is going to start in a few minutes. Don't you think it's time to put that away?" From his left, Mirax smirked in amusement.
Jacen shook his head. "Uncle Luke says to always practice when you get a chance. See, I'm getting better." He screwed up his face and held out his hand. The pebble shakily rose up a few inches and proceeded to levitate over the glass again. It hung suspended into the air for a full half second before it plinked onto the table again.
Wedge silently vowed to take brutal and violent revenge on Luke if – when – he arrived home.
Plink.
Plink.
Plink.
Plink.
If I ever go insane, that's the sound I'm going to hear. When they're wheeling me to my daily psychiatric visits, I'm going to describe this noise as the footsteps of rampaging Ewoks determined to eat me if I don't place my pillows at 72 degree angles—
Wedge's mental tirade was cut short by a slamming door. A bright-eyed Twi'lek woman beckoned him towards the door. "Right this way, Commander Antilles," she chirped. "The meeting is beginning."
Wedge rose and entered the seminar room. Already occupying it were politicians, some of which Wedge knew and some he didn't. Borsk Fey'lya was seated almost at the head of the table, second only to Admiral Ackbar, who was heading the meeting. Or in other words, the respective heads of the staunch opposition to and supporters of the Chief-of-State.
"Commander Antilles," Ackbar's measured tones addressed him. "If you could please summarize the situation with Chief-of-State Organa Solo for the Senators?"
Wedge inwardly groaned. "To be perfectly honest, Admiral, there really isn't all that much to say. The Chief-of-State and General Solo discovered Master Skywalker's location, and they came to the conclusion that the risk was worth safely bringing him home."
Senator Fey'lya spoke up. "They left without consulting anyone else? Two of the most important people in the New Republic can't just take off. What were they thinking?"
"I couldn't answer that, Senator."
"Couldn't, or won't?"
"With all due respect, Senator Fey'lya, neither the Chief-of-State nor the General saw fit to explain their decision to me."
"Yet," the Bothan outwardly mused, "Their children are in your care. They told you nothing?"
Ackbar finally stepped in. "Senator Fey'lya, Commander Antilles had nothing to do with the planning or execution of the Solos' departure. In any case, we are here not to assign guilt, but to find a temporary solution."
"Very well," Fey'lya abruptly switched tactics. "I move to elect an individual to be given emergency powers to serve as temporary head of the government."
Ackbar gave him a weary look. "Very well. Would anyone like to make a nomination?"
Kark Aair'bwa, the esteemed Junior Senator from Bothawui, immediately spoke up. "I nominate Senator Fey'lya. It's clear we need a decisive and politically astute leader to get us through these trying times. . . ."
A/N: Luke and Leia see each other again next chapter; I promise!