• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Tamith Kai's face appeared behind a broad transparisteel panel in the wall that Lowie had not noticed before. Still groggy from his interrupted sleep, Lowie threw himself against the panel in frustration. Tamith Kai's pleased chuckle sobered him instantly. "A fine start," she said.

Lowie backed into the center of the room and sat down, wrapping his long hairy arms around his legs, afraid to make any further response lest he lose his temper again.

Her taunting voice echoed through the empty chamber. "Oh, we are far from finished with our lesson, Wookiee. You will stand."

Lowie pressed his forehead to his knees, refusing to look at her, refusing to move.

"Ah," the voice continued, "perhaps it is for the best. The fire of your anger will burn brighter the more fuel I add."

The high-pitched sound drilled into his brain again, and flashing lights assaulted his eyes. Lowie concentrated, focused his mind inside himself.

He mutely endured.

The lights and sound ceased as a heavy black object fell from an access hatch onto the floor beside him. Deep in concentration, Lowie didn't flinch, but he looked up to see what it was.

"This is a sonic generator," Tamith Kai's rich, deep voice announced. "It produces the lovely music you've been enjoying today." An undercurrent of cruel amusement rippled through her words. "It also contains the high-intensity strobe relay for the glowpanels. To complete your lesson for the day, all you need do is destroy the sonic generator."

Lowie looked at the boxy object: it measured less than a meter to a side, was made of a dull burnished metal with rounded edges and corners, and had no handholds whatsoever. He reached for it.

"Rest assured," Tamith Kai's voice came again, "even a full-grown Wookiee cannot lift it without using the Force."

Lowie tried to heft the object, found that she was correct. He closed his eyes and concentrated, drawing on the Force, and tried again. The generator hardly budged. Lowie shook his head in confusion. The weight itself, or the object's size, should not have mattered, he told himself.

Perhaps, he reasoned, he was just too tired. Or perhaps Tamith Kai was using the Force to hold it down.

"Think, my young Jedi," Tamith Kai chided. "You cannot expect to lift the heaviest object with your weakest muscles."

Lights flashed again, and a dagger of sound pierced his ears. But only for a moment.

"Do not keep your anger pent up," Tamith Kai's voice continued as if there had been no interruption. "You must use it ... release it. Only then can you set yourself free."

Lowie recognized what she was doing, and the knowledge gave him strength.

He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and concentrated, prepared to resist the lights and sound.

But he was not prepared for what followed.

From all sides, jets of icy water exploded from the walls, buffeting him with bruising force. He was drenched and shivering, but still the high-pressure streams pummeled him, invaded him. The prying liquid forced itself up under his eyelids, inside his ears and mouth, and streamed down his body, chilling him to the bone.

As unexpectedly as it had begun, the watery attack ended. Shuddering convulsively from the cold, Lowie looked down to find himself ankle-deep in water that was barely warmer than glacial runoff. Anger welled up within him, but he suppressed it, let it flow out of him as the water had streamed down his body. He tried instead to shift the sonic generator again, but to no avail.

As if Lowie's effort had triggered it, the sonic generator began a fresh assault on his senses, strobing the glowpanels and flooding the room with high-pitched wailing until Lowie feared he would drown in it.

Instead, he concentrated on thoughts of his friends Jacen and Jaina. He would be strong.

When the generator paused, more fists of freezing water pounded him again from all sides.

How long these tortures alternated, Lowie could not say. After a time, it seemed his life had always been a litany of lights, sound, water, lights,