Alien Crossfire Chapter 3

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As he slowly climbed up from out of the white of agony, he wondered for a split second how long he had been in this room. How long he had been tortured like this. Seasoned like this.

How long he had been without the Force.

He looked around, and saw the bundle of feathers in the corner which meant that Vergere was there once more to have a discussion with him. He sighed, not truly wanting to have it, but knowing that there really was no way around having it.

Almost as if she had sensed his thoughts, her eyes popped open and she lifted her head, her beak opening in an approximation of a smile, the crest of feathers on her head, rising and shifting to oranges and red.

"Good morning, little Solo. How are you today?"

He stared at her for a second. "Why are they doing this? The torture, the breaking, I almost understand. But they never ask me questions."

Her head cocked slightly. "Who is to know the mind of our Masters?"

"Why are you here?"

Her head slowly tilted to the other side, the orange feather crest shifting to the golden yellow which Jacen had learned to associate with her surprise. "Why to help you of course."

"Help? Then you’re letting me go?"

She cawed a laugh. "Why ever would you think that little Solo? Besides that is not help."

Jacen felt his mouth drop open. "Why wouldn’t letting me go free be helping me? If that’s not help then what’s your definition of it?"

She bobbed her head. "You are right; our problems might be a linguistic one. But I still say that I am helping you."

"This doesn’t feel like helping."

She spread her wings wide. "Be that as it may. Tell me little Solo, how do you think I should help you?"

"Let me go. Let me out and then help me escape."

Vergere hunched down, folding her legs beside her. "I have a story to tell you little Solo. When I was young, younger than you, and was just beginning to understand and embrace the Force, I had a pet; a shadowed moon moth. I found the larva and nurtured it throughout its cocoon state. Then, there at the end of its transformation, I could feel its desperation in the Force. The cocoon is very tough, very hard to break open, and the creature’s struggles, its fear and confusion, washed over me in the Force."

Jacen listened to her story in silence, his horror growing at her every word. He knew where this was going. He had had a shadowed moon moth in his menagerie while growing up. The years of feeding it stripped insulation and crumbled duracrete. The weeks of it being in the cocoon. And finally that long, torturous night when it struggled to escape, to complete its transformation from the larval grub to a fully grown moon moth.

"Please tell me you didn’t."

Slowly, Vergere nodded her head. "Sadly I did. I gave the creature what I think you mean as help. I took my utility cutter and sliced open the cocoon, freeing the creature."

"No."

"Oh yes, little Solo. It was a pitiful creature. Even the wing-flutes were stunted and broken. It was as mute as it was planet-bound." She gave another sad shake of her head. "I robbed that creature of its destiny because I 'helped' it."

Jacen frowned for a second. "But that’s not what help is either?"

"Then what is it?"

Jacen opened his mouth to respond, and then clamped it shut again. He let out a small sigh. "I don’t know."

Vergere’s feather crest rose in amusement again. "Then how can you continually ask for it?"

"I, I don’t know."

Vergere bounced up. "The Embrace has grown impatient. But before I go, tell me little Solo, what should I have done about the moon moth?"

"Protected it. Kept it away from hawk-bats."

She tilted her head slightly in amusement. "And keep other well-meaning persons with utility cutters away?"

Jacen empathically nodded his head. "Yeah."

"And maybe, just maybe, occasionally stop by, and let the little moon moth know that it’s not alone?"

Jacen felt like another bomb had gone off in his head.

"Wait."

Vergere smiled at him, and started to hop away.

"Vergere wait! You’re not talking about a moon moth, you’re talking about us. And, and the moon moth is an indigenous species. It’s native to Coruscant."

The door closed behind her with a wet slurping side.

"Vergere!"

Then the Embrace pulled him up off the floor; tightening the leathery vines which were attached to his arms, wrists, legs and ankles, and began to twist his body out of shape.

"Vergere!"

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The Embrace released him once more. His throat was parched, a desert which scalded every fiber of his being.

He opened his eyes to find Vergere sitting there, a gourd in her hand. She hopped over to him, and pressed the gourd to his lips. Water, cool and clean, flowed from it, and Jacen’s throat clenched, and he gagged and coughed. His body hitching from the intrusion of the water, the twisting motion sent fresh waves of agony through out his body.

Calmly, and effortlessly, Vergere ripped a piece of her robe off, and wet it in the water. She then placed the sodden piece of cloth-flesh in his mouth, where he greedily sucked the water from it. She did this for a long while. Simple motions which sated the fire in his throat.

Finally she once more raised the gourd to his lips, allowing the clean, cool water to flow past them, and down his throat. He sighed, happy in the simple pleasure of the water.

"Have you ever wondered what pain is? Our Master’s believe it is a gift. The one true gift from the Gods, that allow them to know that they are still alive. That they are here. Me, I believe that pain is a god itself. The driving task-master of life. That divine thing which is common to all life, and pushes all life forward. After all, consider this; if you stop feeling pain, then you are dead."

Jacen looked up at her, wondering just how insane she was. "I don’t care how dead you say I am it still hurts."

Vergere laughed. "Of course, that the dead are beyond pain is a matter of faith. One which I do not feel quite up to testing at this time." She hesitated for a moment, her head cocked slightly to the side. "Could pain also be a teacher?"

"And what am I supposed to be learning?"

"Is it what the teachers teaches or what the student learns?"

Jacen felt himself growing frustrated. "And just what is that supposed to mean?"

Vergere shrugged. "Who can say?"

He lowered his eye, too tired to watch the parade of colors as they flashed across the crest of feathers on her head. "I just wish you could be where I’m at. Feel what I feel."

Her cawing laughter was loud in the small chamber. "Who is to say that I haven’t been?"

Jacen just looked at her confusion clouding his face.

She tilted her head to the side again. "So back to my question, do you think pain is a teacher?"

Jacen lifted his eyes towards her. "I don’t know. I just want the pain to stop."

Vergere seemed to deflate, and turned away from him, she barked a short self-deprecating laugh. "Oh deception, how cruel it is. And of course self-deception is the most cruelest of them all. All this time, I thought I was speaking to an adult. A true Jedi. But you are nothing more than a babe. A wailing infant, crying for its mother's teat."

"What? But I didn’t do anything!"

Vergere turned back towards him, the crest of feathers on her head flattened tight against her skull as she stared at him. Her black, fathomless eyes pierced his soul. Silence hung on the air, heavy and accusing.

I didn’t do anything.

It rang in his ears, an illusionary echo which caused Jacen’s face to begin to burn in embarrassment. Vergere leaned in close to him, her hook beaked mouth centimeters away from Jacen’s nose.

"Exactly! And is that not the babe’s actions? To kick its feet, ball the tiny fists and wail, while it hopes that an adult will stumble by and take care of it?"

Jacen looked down at his hands, feeling his face burn in his embarrassment. She’s right.

She placed a feathered hand on his shoulder. "Let me give you a gift. You are alone. No one is going to come rescue you." Her voice dropped an octave. "Everyone thinks you are dead."

Realization slammed into him. No one is going to rescue me. Not Uncle Luke, not Mom or Dad or Jaina or Tenel Ka. I’m dead. I’m helpless.

Jacen tightened his jaw and looked up at her. She stared back, her gaze calm and level. "There. Now you are free. You don’t have to worry about waiting around for a rescue."

"But what do I do? What can I do?"

She shrugged her shoulders, her crest lifting and twisting into orange once more. "Whatever you want. Whatever you accept to do. Of course one of your options is to stay here in the Embrace. Do you know what will happen?"

Jacen slowly shook his head. "No."

She smiled cheerfully. "Nothing. Nothing at all. Maybe one day you’ll go insane. Eventually you’ll die." She paused and did one of those odd tilts of her head before she continued speaking. "Of old age."

The full import of that statement slammed into Jacen, leaving him breathless. She was talking about him being here forever. Never getting out, never escaping. Not days or weeks or months in the white.

Not just years.

But for the rest of his life.

He sucked in a deep breath.

"Of course there is the other option?"

He looked back up at her. "And that is?"

"Learn from the pain."

Then she was gone again, leaving Jacen alone with his thoughts.

They’re not coming for me. No one is. I’m all alone. Helpless.

He gave his head a quick shake.

No. Not helpless, just alone. They’re not the same thing.

The Embrace pulled him up off the floor, dropping him back into the white, as he considered all the things that Vergere had told him.

That he was alone.

That pain is a god.

That pain is the task-master of life.

That pain is a teacher.

So what had he learned?

That it was all those things and more.

Then the realization came to him. He was in the white. The mind-shattering agony which he had already spent a lifetime in. And he could think clearly and sanely.

He grinned. For weeks or months or days the white had been eating at him. Biting away at his sense of self, his sanity.

Now he began to eat the white.

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Tsavong Lah was settled in his meditation chambers, his inner sanctum. His body twisted by the Embrace of Pain which was at the heart of the room. It had him lifted up off the floor, his arms pulled back so that his shoulder blades were nearly touching, and his ankles were being ground together. Jets of boiling water crashed against him, clouds of steam wafted through the room.

For Tsavong Lah, the pain was a focus, a point of concentration, which allowed him to grasp reality in a clearer form than at other times; especially when he was in the clouds of white steam of his cleansing room.

He felt that he saw better, thought clearer and reacted more in line with reality as a whole.

Pain was a bridge from his limited understanding to the mind of the gods.

The door tongue slushed open, and Tsavong Lah lifted his head as a cool draft washed over him. The wind was a shock to his system, an almost painful change from the boiling water and steam. He saw Seef, his communications assistant, stepping into his cleansing chambers, holding a villip in her hands.

"Did I not say I was cleansing? How dare you disturb me?"

"Belek Tiu, Warmaster. My life in payment, but this requires your urgent attention."

She laid the villip before him, and then pulled her coufee out, placing the tip of the weapon, against her throat. The Warmaster watched disinterested, knowing that she will kill herself for having seen him nude. He frowned for a second, and decided that he can use her, both to fulfill a command handed down from Shimmra, as well as to spread the fact that his implant had not been rejected yet.

"Wait."

She paused, the tip of the blade just disappearing into her neck. Her eyes flicked up at him, and he tilted his head towards his private chambers, a silent command, which left no doubt about his intentions.

"Prepare yourself. The warriors have all been commanded to procreate."

She nodded her head perfunctorily and put away her coufee. On her face there was no hint of if she considered this a better fate than death. He stroked the villip, causing it to invert, becoming the scarred visage of Nas Choka.

He noticed that Seef had retreated back against the wall, and knelt, awaiting his command. He turned his attention back to Nas Choka.

"Report."

"My Lord, a New Republic fleet has retaken the world Borelias. A lightning fast attack against the garrison we had left there, one so quick, they were not able to get out a warning."

Tsavong Lah frowned, as he considered the implications. "We knew they would do something after our taking of their throne world. Send Wyrpuuk Cha’s fleet to liberate it. Domain Kraal despises Domain Cha. I can’t think of a better punishment against Kraal for not holding Borelias than being indebted to Domain Cha."

Nas Choka bowed his head in submission. "It will be done, Warmaster."

Still lost in his thoughts, Tsavong Lah released himself from the Embrace. Standing, he gestured to Seef and stepped through the door and into his sleep chambers.

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