The characters that have appeared in previous Star Wars novels are property of Lucasfilm, Ltd. Captain Amaryl Assay, Admiral Tesh Dorass, First Officer Azzeh, and the name of Tycho's droid belong to the author. Any other characters presented here that have never been seen in a Star Wars novel are property of Iris Bailey. Do not repost anywhere without the permission of the author!
Stars and comets up on high,
Gently light the night time sky.
Hush, my darling; rest your head,
Snuggled safely in your bed.
Mommy loves her little boy,
Daddy’s pride and mother’s joy.
So I’ll hold you, young one, close and near,
To keep you safe from hurt and fear.
--Old Corellian Lullaby--
Wedge used all of his remaining strength to concentrate, trying to remember the words to the lullaby his mother used to sing. He seemed to be having a lot of trouble remembering things clearly, but he knew he needed to know those words. They were the only things that could keep out the pain. If only his head didn’t hurt so much. Or the rest of his body for that matter. It made it awfully hard to concentrate on anything as other jumbled thoughts kept getting in the way.
But if he remembered the words, and he really focused on them, he could hear his mother’s voice singing them to him. Like she had when he was a child. He missed her.
That song had always brought him a feeling of well being. Whenever he had been sick, or frightened, she had sung that song to him. It had always made things better. But as he’d gotten older, and wasn’t her ‘baby’ any more, she’d sung the song less and less. When he’d needed comfort, she and his father had consoled him in other ways, like most parents do as their children grow and mature. Then in one terrible instant they were gone, their lives snuffed out in a fiery explosion. Booster Terrik, a friend of the family and Mirax’s father, had taken him in. He had tried his best to guide and support him, and Wedge realized that he had come to think of him as a father figure. But now he was alone, with no one to comfort him anymore.
Months after he’d hunted down and destroyed his parent’s killer in a borrowed Headhunter, he lay in his bunk on the Pulsar Skate, halfway between wakefulness and sleep, and he’d thought of the song again. Although he was not a great believer in spirits, he had heard his mother’s voice singing it to him as clearly as if she’d been right there with him. With the certainty that only a grieving sixteen-year-old boy could have, he knew that it was meant to ease his suffering, and had clung to it for that reason.
Since that time, he’d had the same experience on two other occasions. Once, after the Alliance had made its escape from Hoth, and a raging case of Bilbringi Fever had put him in the medical center with blinding headaches and a dangerously high temperature. Then, again, when he’d been in the bacta tank on Home One, after nearly losing his hand and his life when he’d prevented an Imperial message drone from exploding in orbit around the forest moon of Endor.
Now, even at thirty, he needed to hear her comforting voice again. What are the words? ‘...Keep you safe from hurt or fear?’ That sounds right. And it does hurt...It hurts really bad. Mom?
"Mom?" He heard his own voice call to her, but it wasn’t his mother's compassionate voice that answered.
"No, General Antilles, your mother’s not here. Only a mother whose sons you’ve killed." Tchlinda’s tone was cold and brittle, not warm and enticing like it had been at the party the night before. Or afterward when she had tried to seduce him.Was that only last night? Time and place had become dislocated for him. He tried to look around, but he no longer had the energy to do even that. As another jolt of pain hit him, he had a moment of clarity and memories flooded back to him. That’s right, they’ve got me strapped down. I’m in the interrogation room.
He could feel where the straps had cut into his wrists and ankles, how the one across his bare chest was so tight that it made it hard to breathe. Rivulets of sweat trickled down his face to sting his eyes. Although he couldn’t remember most of it, he assumed he had been there for some time. I don’t remember them asking any questions. I wonder what I’ve told them? Have I betrayed my friends? Have I broken my oath to the New Republic?
Stars and comets up on high, Gently light the night time sky...
He grimaced as the fire started in his belly and spread in every direction, to his fingertips, to the soles of his bare feet. He banged his head on the back of the chair over and over again, trying to fight it. He gritted his teeth in an effort not to cry out, but the pain forced a strangled moan from him.
Hush, my darling, rest your head, Snuggled safely in your bed...
The sound of his suffering brought a smile to Tchlinda’s lips. "You are to be congratulated, General. We’ve been at this for nearly fourteen hours. By now, the average pilot would be begging to tell me every thing he knew."
He clenched his jaw, drawing on reserves of strength he didn’t even know he had just to be able to speak. "Rogue Squadron doesn’t...ungh...take the average pilot."
"My, my! Arrogance!" She applauded sarcastically. "You are a challenge." She motioned to a technician out of his view with a casual flick of her fingers. The technician complied and raised the pain intensity level. Wedge’s back arched as pain pulsed through his body, stealing his breath and numbing his mind.
Mommy loves her little boy, Daddy’s pride and mother’s joy...
Another groan escaped from him, but it quickly turned into a scream that ripped at his parched throat. After a few long minutes, the pain began to subside.
"Mmmm...Mom?"
Again, Tchlinda smiled. "I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that men will call for their mothers in situations like this, when their weakness takes hold. Like pathetic children." She leaned closer to Wedge and shook him so that he would look at her. His brown eyes opened and locked on to her. "Tell me, General, do you suppose that my sons were so weak that at the moment of their deaths, they called for me?"
Wedge struggled to concentrate on the right words. To his dismay, he discovered that he’d almost forgotten how to speak. He struggled to get his traitorous tongue to cooperate. "I...I hope so."
"What? Why would you hope so?" The surprise in her voice was obvious, but there was also an underlying tone of anger at the suggestion of weakness in her sons.
"B-because, if they did... it would mean...th-that...they loved you enough... to call for you...when they hurt...or were af-afraid, and really needed your comforting." He sagged back into the chair, the effort of his answer having exhausted him. His head lolled to one side, sweat sticking his hair to his face.
She stared at him, taken aback by his words. Finally she spoke, leaning close to his ear to whisper. "Eloquently put, General Antilles. But, since I was unable to comfort them at that moment, the least I can do is punish the man who murdered them." She turned to the technician again.
Agony pulsed through Wedge’s body in waves, drowning him. He wanted so much not to give her the satisfaction of hearing him scream out, especially since that seemed to be what she wanted the most. He couldn’t remember her having asked him any questions. She just seemed to want to make him suffer.
And suffering he was. He was not sure how they were doing it, but one minute his body burned, the next there was intense cold, like the frozen vacuum of space. At first it had been bearable, the concoction that Heblon had given him seeming to dull the pain. But that had worn off hours before. Again and again, the pain came. There never seemed to be an end to it. Always the pain...
So I’ll hold my young one near, To keep you safe from hurt and fear...
His mother’s voice came through the haze, wrapping him in the same comfort that it always had, and even the sound of his own screams couldn’t drown it out.
* * * * * * *
Off duty and dressed in civilian clothes, Tonar Heblon looked like any one of the hundreds of other crewmen making their way through the crowded streets of Jimmarra, the capitol city of Arramsetti III. Carrying Wedge’s small dufflebag over one shoulder, he turned down a small side street. He had a definite destination and purpose in mind, and it was one that he still wasn’t sure why he’d chosen.
He had been up most of the night, sitting in his small room in the Moff’s palace. He couldn’t have slept anyway, knowing what they were probably going to do to Antilles. Heblon had never met anyone like him before, either during his time as a doctor in the Catatonia Colony or after he had joined the Empire. And the effect that the pilot was having on him disturbed him.
When he allowed himself to think about it, Heblon knew he had serious doubts about his role in the Imperial Navy. He had been a healer for most of his life, and now all he did was to help destroy life. Now meeting and getting to know Antilles had only reinforced his reservations.
So he made a decision and then acted on it. In the three years that he had served aboard the Querulous, he had heard some rumors about an underground rebellion on Arramsetti III. Nothing substantial, but enough to convince him that maybe it did exist. Although he had never before thought of contacting them, he had managed, by spending some credits here and there, to find out where to go to get some information to them. He knew it would be difficult to get them to believe him, but he had to try.
Coming to the end of another dingy side street, Heblon spotted the place he’d been looking for. He stepped over to the alley on the left of the building, and hid his bag behind a refuse container. He then approached the entrance to the Dancing Droid.
It was a typical spaceport cantina. The atmosphere was smoky and humid, with customers from every corner of the galaxy filling the small cantina with the sights, smells, and sound peculiar to their home worlds. Although Heblon had never been in this particular cantina before, it had a familiar feel for him, since he’d been in others just like it. On how many worlds, and how many times before? He had lost track.
He entered the cantina and worked his way through the mass of bodies, shouldering up to the bar in between a huge, dark, and bearded human male and a shorter Twi’lek male. The place was busy enough that it took the bartender a few minutes to notice him.
"What’ll it be?" The auburn haired woman smiled pleasantly.
"A Lomin Ale...and maybe some information?" He scolded himself for the nervousness he was feeling. He had never done this kind of thing before and he felt extremely unsure of himself.
The bartender looked at him and then looked around apprehensively. "Look, we got liquor, we got food, and we got pleasure rooms upstairs, but information is too dangerous to deal in." She turned aside, and in a moment, handed Heblon his mug of ale.
Heblon dropped some credits on the bar for the drink. When the bartender reached for the money, he stayed her hand, slipping some more credits under her palm as he did. Without missing a beat, the money disappeared under the bar and the woman smiled. "What kind of information?" she asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
"I need to find some of the local Alliance underground. And don’t bother denying that they are here." Heblon kept his voice low. "I happen to know better."
"I could do that, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. They don’t trust me. I doubt that I could get them to tell me what time it is, much less how to get in touch with them. Sorry." She turned and started to move on to another customer, but he took hold of her wrist.
"Look, it’s really important. It could mean a man’s life."
The woman studied him, then shook her head. "Can’t help you."
Heblon thumped his fist on the bar in frustration. "Listen to me. I know that they’re active on this planet, and this cantina is one of their contact points. I just can’t afford to attract too much attention about this." She managed to free herself from his grip and walked away. He continued to drink his ale in silence, then turned to go. Go where, he was not sure.
He made his way back outside and looked around. He spotted a darkened corner where he could watch the bar without being seen and headed in that direction. But he didn’t get very far. Suddenly the two customers he’d stood between at the bar flanked him on both sides.
"Hey, pal. Wait for us." The big human draped a friendly arm over his shoulder, and before he could react, he felt something hard being pressed against his side. There was a sharp pain in his rib cage, accompanied by a tell-tail blue flash. He had never been hit with a weapon on stun before, and he wished that he had avoided the experience a little longer.
As every nerve in his body fired at once, he felt brief pain, then numbness. He remained conscious just long enough to know that maybe this time he had gotten into something that he shouldn’t have. Darkness nibbled at the edge of his sight, and his last thought was of Wedge, and who would be left to help either of them.
Copyright June 13, 2001 by Susan Hill.
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