Lyra

You open your eyes to see Doujo sitting up in his bed concentrating on a data tablet. He is unaware of your watching, and you enjoy the moment until your readout machine gives away your alertness by pinging and G’noa-Fan comes in to shut it off and greet you. He fusses around helping you sit up and then goes off to get your breakfast.

Doujo gets up to kiss you and sits back on his bed. "Healer G’noa-Fan said you’ll be discharged after breakfast. The brainwashing drugs are gone. You’ll just have to check in for your arm once a day." You don’t respond, so he continues, "Good news."

"Oh, sure."

"I thought maybe I could show you around the ship, not that there’s much of it. It’s just a transport."

"How many people are aboard?"

"Counting you, let’s see, carry the one, I think, about… five."

"Five."

"Yes, you haven’t met our pilot, Gui-ron. There are a lot of droids aboard as well."

"Why is there a Healer for a crew of three?"

"This Healer was especially assigned to this mission, as were we, for his skills in working outside the Force. I didn’t expect to need his services, myself, but it was thought that you would."

G’noa-Fan returns with your breakfast and leaves.

"Nothing for you?" you ask.

"I already ate."

You poke your food. "What happened to you? You were burned?"

"I was following you out of the bar after our conversation in Galgiet’s."

"You were in there?"

He pauses thoughtfully. "Yes, I watched you play. Then I heard a fight outside, but the door was blocked. When I put my lightsabre through it, the door exploded."

"Who kidnapped me?"

"Malde Moroc. He was a Jedi at one time, but he took a different path."

"He was there himself?"

"My Master said so, yes."

That voice. He was the one. The one who took you from your home. No, who took your home from you. Your family. Your world. Your life.

"Lyra?"

You lay back against the pillows and close your eyes. "I’m tired."

You lay there a long time, thinking as close to nothing as possible. You hear Doujo go out, the uneaten breakfast cleared, your machine checked. After a while you hear someone come back in. You open your eyes, and it is Ridan. He’s sitting on Doujo’s bed, peeling a red-skinned fruit with a large knife. The flesh is yellow, and he speaks slowly, his words in harmony with the dullness inside your head. "I’ve been waiting for this to ripen. It’s called Lia-Ra, which means ‘Gift of Heaven’ in the language spoken where it grows. I think it sounds like your name." He carves off a chunk and eats it. "Mmm, yes, it’s ripe. Try some." He cuts a second piece and holds it out.

The fruit looks good, with the juice dripping down his fingers, but you can’t muster the enthusiasm to reach for it until you see the care in his eyes and remember his tenderness last night. The memory breaks your mood, and you reach out. He smiles kindly and shakes his head and approaches to kneel by your bed. "It’s too messy. You’ll get your IV lines all sticky. Here…" and he pops it in your mouth.

"Good," you smile. "Thanks."

He cuts the rest of the fruit, alternating between feeding himself and you, then washes in the corner sink.

"You’re quiet today."

You confirm this by not answering.

"We could just play cards," he winks.

That gets a bigger smile, and a shake of the head. It brings back thoughts of last night, and you realize that the only thing you want right now is for this man to hold you, for how could anything not be all right within those arms? God, when did you become so needy! A whole year of needing no one, rejecting everyone, and suddenly you’re desperate for a hug? Pathetic. But the need is immune to your derision, and it grows inside you. Mechanically, you sit up, swing your legs off the edge of the bed and hold your good hand out for him. Surprised, he takes your hand, but you pull him closer and use his arm to help you up, and then your arms are around his waist. His arms envelop you, and you feel like you’re practically inside his tunic with him. He kisses the top of your head. "He killed my family," you blurt before you can lose your momentum, "my husband, my parents, my brothers and sisters, their families. He plucked me from them, and killed them all. He destroyed everyone and everything I knew. It’s all gone."

Ridan holds you out, has bent over to look in your face. "Who? Who did this?"

"Malde Moroc."

**

The tears, where are they? Why won’t they come? Anything to replace this dry ache, this unending longing for the past.

The three of them decided you should remain under the Healer’s care for now. The story came pouring out of you, but there was no relief. You told how you went to bed on a normal night. Your husband was by your side, but a strange dream came. You dreamed you were ephemeral, like a ghost, and were sucked into a wire to the sky, dimensionless. Then you were in a spaceship looking down on your planet, and suddenly it wasn’t a dream any more. They drugged you, but before it took effect, you heard the voice give the order: "We have one. Destroy it." That voice. The last thing you saw was your Earth evaporating into mist, like a dune in a sandstorm. So softly, and it was just gone.

Later they gently questioned you further and discovered that when you had regained consciousness, you had heard the rogue Jedi’s men talking. They were excited that their new weapon had been so successful. "Someone called it an ‘anti-bombsicle’ and they thought that was hilarious."

"I’m unaware of any weapon that could vaporize a planet," said Doujo.

"Something cold," said Ridan. "Does it freeze things, or is the bomb itself cold? What kind of weapon would need to be cold to work?"

"Well, ‘bomb’ implies that the weapon is delivered in a container. Maybe it’s not something that needs to be cold to work, but something that needs to be cold to be delivered. Maybe it detonates when it warms up."

"Anti-matter," said Ridan. "They’ve got a frozen anti-matter bomb. At absolute zero the anti-matter would be inert, but as soon as it warms up it will annihilate with the closest normal matter."

Doujo looks skeptical. "Interesting, but they couldn’t have packed the whole anti-mass of the planet in a bomb, even if it was frozen tight. Its inertia would be the same as a planet’s. How would they move it? Or stop it? It would plow right through the earth and drag it along! And then it would implode, not vaporize."

Ridan considers and replies, "They didn’t need the whole mass, just enough to unglue it. Anti-electrons would do the job."

Doujo whistles. "Positrons. Where did they get a planet-full of positrons?"

"Good question. I hope we don’t have another tragedy to discover."

They thought a moment, and then Doujo continued, "Another question is, where did they find a planet with no Force?"

"Little one, do you remember how you got to Ruy?"

"A wormhole. They talked a lot about it, as though it were something special. I guess we went through one, but I was blindfolded the whole time. The ship was damaged in it."

"How damaged?" asked Doujo

"An engine was destroyed and they sent out an S.O.S. A freighter picked us up, and that’s where I got away. I hid in a crate and they never found me. When we came to port on Clara, I stowed away on a methane tanker going to Ruy, because I heard that was a good place to disappear."

"How long were you on the freighter?"

"A day or so."

"So there’s a wormhole a day or so from Clara. Interesting. Did your abductors say anything else?"

"Pilot mumbo-jumbo. I wasn’t really paying attention."

You had sort of wound down then, and G’noa-Fan suggested that was enough questions and chased the Jedi out. Your head is still buzzing with inner silence. When will this dead feeling be gone?