Star Wars_ Rebel Force 05_ Trapped - Alex Wheeler [16]
Suddenly, Lune looked up and met his eyes. "Take a holopic," he suggested caustically. "It'll last longer."
Something else the man had in common with the boy, Ferus observed: He still saw more than anyone expected.
"It's been too long," Ferus said softly. "I've thought of you often over the years. You and—"
"How do you know Luke?" Lune asked sharply. "What are you doing here on this cursed moon? What are we doing here?"
He doesn't want me to say Trever's name, Ferus thought. Because he can't stand to hear it? Or he can't stand to hear it from me?
"Fair enough," he said aloud. "I was an acquaintance of Princess Leia Organa on Alderaan. After the…disaster, I found the princess again, and came to know several of her friends. Good people."
"Apparently not good enough for you to tell them the truth about who you really are."
"If you'll let me explain, I think you'll see why it's important Luke not know I'm a Jedi," Ferus said, stalling for time. What was he supposed to say: I'm keeping the secret because the ghost of a dead Jedi Master warned me that Luke wasn't ready?
"Oh, I see," Lune spat out. "If the Empire knew the truth, you'd be a target. And if the Rebels knew the truth, they might expect you to do something. But you've become a coward. So you stay hidden."
"You think that little of me?" Ferus asked.
"I don't think of you at all," Lune said. "Not since I was a child, and you abandoned us all to die."
"I never abandoned you," Ferus said. "You had your mother and Clive, and—"
"And I was supposed to protect him, isn't that right?" Lune said sourly. "That's what you told me, before you left, that I should take care of Trever. I was a child. A child! You were a Jedi, and who were you protecting? Only yourself."
Ferus shook his head. "I thought you would be safe," he said desperately. "All of you.
I had a mission—"
"So did they, that day," Lune said bitterly. "They all had missions. My mother. My father. Trever. "
Ferus flinched at the name.
"You think you know what happened to them," Lune said. "I can see it on your face."
"And I'm so sorry for your loss," Ferus began.
"But you can't know. Not unless you were there. Like I was. But I was only fifteen, and they wouldn't let me go with them. Even though I could have helped. So I watched them from a hill overlooking the factory. Like lizard-ants, swarming across the grounds, shooting, running, dying."
Ferus wanted to stop listening. As Lune went on, relating their deaths in horrifying detail, Ferus wanted to summon the Force around his ears like a thick blanket, drowning out the noise. But he made himself hear it all. A Rebel mission betrayed from the inside.
An ambush. His old friend Clive cut down where he stood, ripped through by blasterfire.
Lune's mother, Astri, fierce and proud, blown to bits by an Imperial grenade. And Trever.
Trever, who had survived as an orphan on the streets of Bellassa when he was only a teenager, until Ferus had turned him into a soldier and a fugitive. Trever, who had died a prisoner, trapped inside the munitions factory when the concussion missiles rained down and the building imploded.
"Enough!" Ferus finally cried. He laid Luke's body out on a narrow cot, then lowered himself to the edge, resting a hand on the boy's shoulder. Only then did he notice that his hand was trembling. "Please, Lune," he said quietly. "Enough."
"It's Div."
And Ferus nodded, acknowledging that it was true. "I'm sorry for what happened to them," he said. "And for what's happened to you."
"Nothing happened to me."
Ferus sighed.
"Don't," Div said harshly. "Don't you dare judge me. So I'm different from the kid you remember? Look at you. Those people we used to be? They're gone. Erased. Whatever