~10~

The Secret Revealed


As Luke and Mara had been rendered helpless by their uncharacteristic binge on Fixer's local ale, Lilandra and Jaina had now taken their places in the spacious cockpit; Lilandra piloting while Jaina navigated their way.

Lilandra's hands were clumsy upon the controls from exhaustion and the fog now hostilely invading her brain, and her stomach and throat burned with nausea as hyperspace sped past in an uncomfortable blur. Beside her, Jaina was white and tight-lipped, her eyes red and unblinking behind the scratched visor of her helmet.

The air seemed tinged with a solemn sobriety that hadn't been there before Tatooine. Jaina's face was sad as she stared through the nothingness, her fingernails dug deeply into the sides of her chair.

"Jaina?" Lilandra asked quietly. "What do you see when you look into hyperspace?"

Jaina looked at her unenthusiastically, lifting the visor. "It has this way of taking the happiness out of you, Lil. Particularly when you're tired."

She was silent, pausing to glance at the digital charts dancing in front of her on a map screen that was completely illegible to Lilandra. Then, entering something into the computerized log on her lap, she spoke again.

"I keep wondering what it must be like, to be persecuted."

Lilandra sighed. "You know what it's like, Jainy. You've been persecuted since before the notion of your being was even conceived."

"I meant to the degree that the Terapinn prisoners have been persecuted. I can't imagine it. If they were taken from their families, or if they had been rich beyond their wildest dreams ... Doesn't it worry you, Lil? Aren't you scared of who they might have become?"

"I can't imagine it," Lilandra admitted. "But something just keeps reminding me that this is justice."

"But what if we're getting in over our heads? What if Fixer was right? I shudder to think what kind of people Palpatine would've wanted to imprison beyond the reasons of life itself."

"Well … we'll have to fight, won't we? We're no strangers to fighting. You know politics."

"Too well," Jaina agreed grimly. "But just because we've got experience doesn't mean we should take unnecessary risks. A Jedi is not supposed to throw herself into situations that would compromise her values. Any Master will tell you that Jedi weren't given their powers to kill."

"But to fight for a cause?" Lilandra suggested, shrugging. "It's how the ancients would have wanted it. The Jedi have always been the keepers of peace. Peace means tolerance, patience, and sympathy. You've got all of that. But it's no good if you don't put it to use."

Jaina remained silent, thinking, warming her thin, delicate hands on the console.

"There's something out there that we can learn from, to any end," Lilandra said softly. "And goodness knows we're hungry for the experience."

"No turning back now, anyway," Jaina replied, just as pensively. "We're coming out of hyperspace in an hour."

In the bunkroom, Tara sat on the couch with her elbows resting on her knees, and her head in her hands. She was watching Luke and Mara sleep. Beside her, Anakin had conked out long ago, and was snoring softly, and Dave was in another bunk, reading.

Across from her, Luke and Mara occupied separate bunks, still lying stationary in the positions in which they had been heaved, with great difficulty, upon the mattresses. Luke was lying on his back, his mouth hanging open, his arm flung across his face, while Mara's head was buried into her pillow, deep, muffled snores emanating from her.

"They'll wake up soon," whispered Tara, almost afraid to shatter the oddly tense quiet in the room, but needing to speak somehow, if only to make sure that her voice was still in proper working order. Dave looked up.

"What makes you so sure?"

"I can tell. Soon." There was relief in her tone.

Dave sighed, and put down his datapad. Motioning her over to the bunk, he patted the mattress beside him. Grateful for the invitation, she went, and settled cross-legged beside him, looking down at her knees.

"Jaks," Dave said matter-of-factly, watching her fumble with the cuffs of her pants. "What's with all this morose business? Have you been feeling all right these past few days? I mean, you've been acting like you're the angel of death or something."

"When did you learn to read me?" Tara asked.

He grinned. "When Jaina told me how to tell when something is on your mind."

"Really," she replied, a bit put-off, but interested. "And how's that?"

"You chew your lip. Like this. And you say weird, off-topic things that are really just an expression of your troubled inner thoughts."

Tara rolled her eyes. "Good to know I'm so predictable."

"Am I right though?" Dave asked, a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

"Yes," she admitted. "I'm sorry for my behavior this past week. I just … need to work some things out. With myself. Just myself. Not Anakin, cause I can read your mind just as easily. You're freaked out by our habits towards each other."

Dave raised his eyebrows. "Well … let's face it. You two don't act like a normal couple."

"We're not a normal couple," Tara pointed out. "We're trapped in a nightmare of stereotypes that we seem to be constantly attempting to defy."

"Seems like you've given this considerable thought."

"Yes, well … I have some decisions to make."

Dave thought for a moment. "Seems to me we went through this a few months ago when you decided to move in with him, Jaks."

"Well, it isn't easy for me!" Tara exploded. "You and Jaina, your relationship has just been so bloody formulaic! Besides the objections from Leia and Han, everything just fell into place with you two. Like you're some sort of mirror image of Leia and Han themselves. But I feel like Anakin and I, we're more like Luke and Mara, fighting all the time, breaking up, getting back together … he's like a needy child sometimes, and I just don't have the ambition to work at it anymore!"

Dave regarded her sadly as she laid her cheek miserably against the bedpost.

"Tara."

"What?"

"Have you ever thought of telling these things to Anakin? You can't deny him the access to your emotions which he is owed as your boyfriend of three years."

On a different train of thought from Dave, traveling a steeper path, Tara sighed and murmured, "Sometimes when I wake up in the morning and see that he's still beside me, and I know that when he wakes up he's going to want to lie there for a while with his arms around me, just enjoying some moment he perceives as romantic, whether it be commenting on the state of my hair, or the things I happened to say in my sleep, I dread it. I absolutely dread it, Dave. Waking up is so hard to do."

Dave shook his head. "Anakin has no complaints."

"Exactly!" Tara cried, exasperated. "He's in utter blissville! And you ask me why I won't talk to him? I *can't*, Dave, he doesn't listen to me! Like I said, he's a child. I'm trapped in the nightmare of his coming of age!"

Dave actually laughed at this. Tara scowled and kicked her feet over the end of the bed, rubbing them back and forth across the metal floor.

"It was easier when we were just kids. These things didn't matter so much when he was fourteen and I was sixteen, and all that mattered was competing to see who could impress each other more. But I've gotten past the stupid fixations of adolescence, while he seems to delight in them," Tara spat savagely, wringing her hands. "I know how Mara feels sometimes. Ani is just like Luke – his head in the clouds and his mind on the ethereal. He feels his way through life, doesn't think about the consequences of his actions and words."

"But that's Anakin for you," Dave reasoned. "He is a passionate fellow, and he's still young."

"I know," Tara moaned. "But sometimes … sometimes I wish he weren't. He's such a smart boy, but that's all he is. Just a boy."

"I still think you should try," Dave said. "Trying sure as hell beats being miserable and forgoing the sex for the sake of your own urge to sulk."

Tara regarded him dubiously for a moment, but then she laughed softly. "You men," she said. But that was all.

From the lower bunk, Luke abruptly made a noise somewhere between a gurgle and a groan. His eyes opened halfway, and he sat up, promptly hitting his head on the bottom of the bunk above his.

He seized his head, doubling over in obvious pain, and gagged suddenly.

Tara jumped up and threw herself upon the bunk, grabbing Luke's hands and pulling him up.

"Bathroom, bathroom, please and thank you!" she cried, pushing him towards the door. There was the brief sound of retching before Tara slammed the door and brushed her hair back from her forehead.

"Pleasure begets pain," she grumbled. "Just let him try and mess up those blankets. Mara will have his head when she regains consciousness."

"Nothing like the post-drunken chunks," Dave sighed, reverently patting his belly and stretching out his legs across Tara's lap. "Reminds me of the good old days. Odd, cause I can't remember a thing about them."

Tara chuckled, pushing his socked feet away and leaning back against the wall. "If Jaina heard you talking like that …"

"She knows," Dave said, dismissing it with a casual swipe of his hand. "Finds it charming, actually."

"She always did like tough redneck men," Tara said roguishly. "Not like me. Faithful and true to mid-pubescent science geeks."

"Don't sound so remorseful!" Dave laughed. "I'd have given it all up to have known Jainy when *I* was fourteen. She's exactly the kind of woman who could ease the troubles of puberty."

"That's probably how Anakin feels about me," Tara said. She sounded surprised.

"Jeez, absolutely. Listen to me, Jaks: don't give him reason to feel otherwise. He would die for you, and you know it."

"Yeah, but it just feels like teenaged angst sometimes, Dave. Tell me it isn't so." She sounded somewhat desperate.

"You'd know if it was," Dave reassured her. "You're a brilliant lady, Tara, but don't ever let me hear you saying you don't need Anakin Solo, because I'd have to slay you for lying."

Tara felt she might've kissed him right then out of gratitude if Luke hadn't come staggering out of the bathroom, his face looking very gray.

"Never again," he muttered. "Never doing that again."

"You always say that until the next time," Dave said jovially. "Welcome to your first hangover!"

Luke shot him a venomous glare. "How's Mara?"

"Still asleep," Tara replied.

"Not anymore," growled Mara came from the uppermost bunk. "Ugh, what a nightmare. I haven't been drunk like that since the old days in the Court. You had to hand that to Palpy – he had a knack for choosing booze."

Luke headed for the cockpit door. "And penal colonies. How close are we to Terapinn?"

His question was answered by the swift, loud beeping of the hyperspace meter from behind the door.

The ship lurched suddenly as it fell out of hyperspace, and Mara made a run for the bathroom. Tara and Dave grabbed each others' hands and picked their way gingerly across the sloping floor behind Luke, heading for the jump seats, but both felt their feet leave the ground as the ship gave a violent jerk downwards, throwing them all headlong into the wall of the corridor.

The cockpit door slid open, jerked off its track by another sharp lurch, and Tara heard Jaina's shuddering gasp before a tidal wave of blackness seemed to break over her head.

A brutal sensation overtook her – the feeling of freefalling, down into despair as deep as an ocean. Even screaming was agony as pain ripped through her head. Panic seized her; she was mute as her throat closed with horror.

It was as it had been with the arrival of the map: a huge outpouring of usually benign emotion magnified by several thousand times flowing up, down, sideways, and diagonally through her mind, blasting her flat, rendering her helpless. She took a great gulp of air, fighting against the impressive onslaught with rapidly diminishing strength. A desperate ache ebbed and flowed through her; the burden of emotional distress had become too great for its mental confines to withstand, and had broken the threshold between the mental and the wholly physical.

She was vaguely aware of someone's foot connecting with her elbow, which was bent back against the wall – how had she gotten to the floor? – And that person stumbled backwards. There was a sickening crunch, and Tara felt breath leave her at once.

Her arm had gone numb. Pushing out a feeble cry, Tara heaved herself up, staring through a myriad of glowing spots to the cockpit beyond. Luke had fallen beside her; there was blood on the floor, and she could just make out the shapes of Lilandra and Jaina, embracing tightly in the cockpit, faces wrought in matching grimaces of pain. Light was flowing through the corridor, from the pale, gray-blue half-sphere hanging innocuously before the viewport: the penal colony of Terapinn.

Inert from the shock, Tara could only lie there, fighting to comprehend the magnitude of what she was experiencing, and failing. Even words failed her. She was frozen, pressed back against the cold metal floor with the force of a hundred thousand memories, the collective emotions of a lost generation washing over her, sending shivers raking through her body. It was as though she could feel the misery of anyone anywhere who was crying at that very moment, feel the joy of anyone who was laughing … feel the pain of all who were sick, or dying …

"What is this?" she gasped, gazing at the voluminous clouds bearing up on the atmosphere of the planet in front of her, the jagged mountain peaks soaring towards her as the *Jadesaber* floated ever closer.

"It's *Jedi*," someone whimpered fearfully from the cockpit. "*Hundreds of them."