Star Wars: Brave Misdeeds

Chapter 3

"Dreams are certain evidence of a haunting."            —Zahabu No'bi <NIF>

The landscape was surreal, but Soelle recognized it as home—the Doaba Badlands, Socorro—deep in the interior of the Socorran deserts where none but the fearless roamed among the unpredictable earthquakes, bottomless sand wells, predator-infested water grottoes, as well as the occasional hostile native. Soelle was on foot, which was a certain death sentence in such an unsympathetic environment. She seemed unconcerned by the location as she followed a strange figure up a steep incline into the dunes. Often they had to crawl on theirs hands and knees to get closer to the summit, fighting to maneuver through the shifting ash and sand. Though she was unclear why or how she had come back to Socorro, she was filled with a tremendous sense of calm and good spirit and felt a smile on her face. Yet, it was not truly her face.

The figure walking ahead of her was dressed in all white: close-fitting smuggler's cargo pants tucked neatly into white boots, and a white gunman's duster that was more gray than white from the airborne ash in the air. Because he wore a white turban, she could not see his hair or his face as he led the way farther up the slope. The man was telling a joke, but she could only remotely hear what he was saying in accented Corellian. She laughed, moving up to the stranger until they were shoulder to shoulder, peering into a deep dust bowl of a valley.

Soelle felt puzzled. There was supposed to be something on the dune floor, a shipment of spice. She dropped down to a knee and then lay prone in the ash, staring along the interior wall. There was nothing but sand—sand and the distinct hiss of a lightsaber, erupting in the stillness. With no time to react, she threw herself to the right side; but not before a searing pain shot into her shoulder and forearm. The agony sent waves of nausea burning through her throat. Though she tried to cry out in pain, her voice was stolen in the shriek of the assaulting lightsaber, wielded in the hands of a trusted friend.

It was difficult to breath; the wound was mortal, but there was time...time to repay the betrayal. Her right arm was disabled, useless. Utilizing her left arm, Soelle grasped the lightsaber from her belt and ignited the blue blade and threw it. Expecting the desperate ploy, the attacking figure moved effortlessly from harm's way; but he did not anticipate that the saber would remain hovering about him, dancing and pirouetting, a vessel of the Force. As the traitor moved in for a kill, Soelle manipulated the Force in a last act of revenge, the Dark Side rising within her, even as her life ebbed away. She had to leave a mark, a final mark so that this injustice would be properly avenged.

The aggressor sensed peril at the last moment, pivoted abruptly, but not before the blue blade lanced through the left side of his chest. Though Soelle struggled to keep the blade in position, her vision darkened, a tunnel with only pinpricks of light moving farther and farther away until there was nothing.

"No!" Soelle shrieked. Her voice reverberated within the stark walls of her small house, as she sat up from her bed. In terror, she dove to the floor and writhed in agony. The skin and muscles of her right arm and shoulder burned unmercifully with scorching ferocity. Gasping for air, the disoriented girl flailed about on the cold, duracrete floors desperate to relieve the agony, remnants of the nightmare. The sleeveless military tee she wore was soaked with sweat and clung to her feverish skin. Knees bruised, Soelle crawled to the small shower adjoining the refresher and activated the water unit. Sobbing in the corner of the stall as the cold water poured over her and her fretful tears, she pulled at the slave collar about her neck, feeling as if the leather band strangled her.

Soelle wept inconsolably. It was the same dream. Every night. Some times it was only the climb up the hill. Other nights, she stood alone in the desert as the hot Socorran sun bore down on her shoulders...his shoulders, the man whose presence she occupied in the dream. More recently, the nightmare had played itself out completely with the lightsaber battle and the subsequent death, the ever-painful death and the yearning for revenge. Soelle lurched forward toward the drain and vomited, sickened by the sense of dying that always left her violently ill, every night for nearly two weeks.