Sci's alarm went off early. He got up quickly, showered and dressed, and checked the other rooms. Sylvana was still asleep, but sleeping fitfully, Arrek was fast asleep, Emily was out like a light, and Bethany was already gone. She was enthusiastic about getting back to learning. Sci reluctantly walked into the small room Face was using, to find Face had similarly woken up. The two men went into the common room and sat down. "How do you plan to do this?" asked Face.
"First," said Sci, without a trace of a smile, walking over to the kitchen area, "we make breakfast. I wouldn't tell anybody anything this major on an empty stomach. Then, we wait for them to get up."
It took the better part of an hour to make breakfast, but shortly afterwards both Lorrdains were sitting at the table having a full breakfast--probably, Sci thought, the first full breakfast since the morning they left Mendellia. They weren't saying much, though. They both seemed lost in thought. Emily wandered in, ate her fill, and wandered off again. Sci wasn't worried--he had faith in Emily's ability to take care of herself.
Sylvana, after she had eaten, yawned. "I have a splitting headache, and I had some weird dreams."
Arrek chuckled. "Weirder than normal?"
She nodded, sobering slightly from her normally bouncy self. "I had the normal weird ones, too, but there was one in particular. This time, I'm really me, and I'm sitting in a tapcafe with Face, which really happened yesterday, but he's telling me some weird things about himself, me, and Alisky..."
Sci and Face exchanged glances, and Sci took a deep breath. "You weren't dreaming, Sylvana. You actually did have that conversation with Face. Alison Sky was Terra Eleven before you were, and she died under my command."
Sylvana and Arrek gaped at him. Sylvana had a slightly hurt look.
Sci looked down at his plate. "Project Boussh was our first mission. It started as a search-and-rescue, but it escalated quickly into a fight for our planet. In the last battle, we and a small battle group took on three Star Destroyers, and Alison was part of a team that infiltrated the lead ship to try to destroy it. She was assigned as a guard to a pair of slicers, and as such she threw herself at a bunch of stormtroopers. We never found even a body, and then the ship blew up."
Sci looked up at them. He wasn't actively crying, but he was as close as anyone in the room had ever seen him come to it. "I took a group of untrained innocents, all except one older than I am, thrust them into a situation far beyond what could be expected of anybody, and got one of them killed. And to top it off, I'm still doing it. And there isn't a day that goes by that I don't wonder what I should have done.
"I'm sorry that I didn't tell you sooner, Sylvana. I really am. But Wes and Hobbie told me how you reacted when you found out she was dead. I didn't want that to happen, not yet. Your skills were too--" He stopped and looked down again, unable or unwilling to meet her eyes. He choked out the last words. "Too... valuable to us to risk losing you."
Sylvana had closed her mouth and sat, listening, tears forming in her eyes. Arrek was silent as well; he had known Alison, and respected her. Sylvana opened her mouth to speak, but Sci raised his hand and lifted his head slightly. "There's more. A lot more."
"I want to tell you everything now, because if I don't I might not have the courage to tell you ever again."
"You're not Terrans."
Sylvana frowned slightly in confusion. Not Terrans? But that doesn't make any sense! She quirked an eyebrow, silently beckoning Sci to continue.
Arrek had seemed to withdraw. He was in the room, but his thoughts were elsewhere. His face contorted in confusion and understanding at the same time, his eyes had glazed over and were unseeing. Slouching back deeper into his chair he seemed like he was no longer a part of proceedings.
Sci's look softened, more to his typical near-emotionlessness, as he calmed somewhat. He took a steadying breath, then continued. "We don't know this for sure, but a number of people have noticed it. Here's what we think."
"Your family is from Lorrd, the same planet Face is from. We think that you went on vacation, and your ship malfunctioned. It occasionally happens that ships do that near Terra--our moon is surprisingly large for our planet's size, so it has a stronger gravity well than expected."
As the young Major spoke, she nodded absently while her gaze drifted over to meet that of Captain Loran. Something in his eyes, in the way he held himself, seemed to ask her to believe this...this fantastic tale. Her attention soon re-centred on Sci.
"We think your parents, with you two as children, crash-landed on Terra, and that the memory of that crash is what gives you an anxiety attack when you land. They realized they couldn't leave, and set up a home for themselves there. At the time, SACUL didn't have the resources it does now, so your crash went unnoticed."
Well, that seems to explain it away in a neat little package. Might even explain why I never felt like I belonged where I was... Sylvana sighed inwardly. Still, why do I have no memory of any life elsewhere?
"Here's why we think this. You know the mode of kinetic speech developed by the people of Lorrd. It was developed when they, as a slave population, were forbidden by their masters to speak, and so they developed a way of speaking without words. This should sound familiar to you; that's where the story you told Hobbie about comes from. The race that conquered Lorrd until the Jedi freed the planet were Argazdan, and they look like the 'he-death' picture you drew for Hobbie. You said that you got that out of one of your father's books."
It all seemed like too much to take in at once. Was it so imperative that she and her siblings were kept in the dark about their unique heritage? You would think that when I started corresponding with Klivian, almost three years ago now, they would have said something. Then again, Mum and Da weren't in the least curious or surprised with anything that happened anyhow...
After a long pause, with Sci letting each of them mull things over in their minds, he continued. "And one more revelation: Sylvana, I think you're Force-sensitive, or something like it. Your dreams mirrored events that happened on Terra to the Paris team, metaphorically, almost before they happened. And that's been happening to you, according to your brother and Emily, for as long as they've known you. As a result, I want both of you to accompany me to meet with Jedi Master Skywalker today, so he can figure out exactly what that is."
Sylvana frowned as Sci told her about her dreaming. The displeased look vanished when she found they would be going to meet the actual Luke Skywalker! That was a drop of 'good' excitement that was much needed. It encouraged her to know that perhaps the famous Jedi Master could help her find out more about what had happened, about what was going on.
He passed two datacards over to them. "Here. A full report of Alison's death, all the notes I made that went into figuring out that you weren't native, and what actually happened in Paris that mirrors your dreams."
Sylvana took the datacard and slipped it into her pocket. "Thank you," she said softly.
Sci pushed away from the table and stood. "I told Master Skywalker that we'd meet him at 1500. Please be back here at 1430." Without another word, he crossed to the door and departed.