TITLE: Tortures
Author: Alison Sky
E-mail: RogueFlygirl@aol.com
URL: http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/jedichild/index.html
Rating: PG-13

Summary:  A Republic Soldier learns the true meaning of torture

Type: This is a story that plays mind games on you.  You will be creating the
images in your mind from what you read.

Disclaimer: All Star Wars stuff belongs to George Lucas, and I can only play
around in his world, not own any of it. 

Feedback: PLEASE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He couldn't see anything. His eyes were open, but there was no light.
Everything was in blackness, not even a light slit from under a door. At
first, the soldier thought he was blind, and he shook his head, trying to
move the fear out of his mind.

He then tried to stand, but he learned that his arms and legs had been bound
together behind his back. There was hardly any slack, and any false movement
sent a sharp pain through his ankles and wrists.

As the soldier moved about, he could feel the coldness of a metal floor
beneath his naked body. His flesh tried to shy from it, being so cold.

Helpless… that was how he felt. Blind, bound, naked and cold… he had nothing
to protect him.

Where am I? He thought to himself. He carefully turned his body as so he was
lying on his stomach, then rocked back, settling into a kneeling position. At
least now he was upright. Getting his internal bearings, he then closed his
eyes and listened carefully.

A hum… vibrations… I'm on some kind of ship. The soldier tried to remember
how he had gotten to where he was, but he couldn't remember. He tried to
remember something, anything... but his mind drew a blank. Where am I? WHO am
I?


"Where am I?!" came the strangled voice of the solder over a speaker.

A woman stared at his image on an infra-red monitor as the solder went
through the mental stages of a nervous breakdown. Beside her sat a young
lieutenant at a control desk. "What are his vitals?" she asked him.

"Increased heart rate and brain activity," the lieutenant replied. "Blood
pressure also rising. He is in the midst of a paranoia fit."

"Good," the woman said. "Let's begin the stimuli."


The soldier's head popped up. He could hear something. There was something in
the room with him… whispers… he could make out faint whispers, like the
trendils of sound following a wind through the crack of a door on a windy
day. He could not make out what words were being formed, though.

The whispers were all around him, whispering words that he could not identify
by language, but by the emotion that they carried. He heard fear… pain…
anger…

Then, the voices started to grow, in both volume and in intensity. The
whispers turned into screams and cries, yells and shouts. Soon, the voices
filled the room, vibrating off the walls and hurting the soldier's ears.

Then, he heard blasters being fired. He could hear the people scream and
heard their feet as they ran by. Yet he saw nothing, and this scared him
more. Then he heard a blast go past his shoulder, and the sickly smell of
ozone diffuse filled the room. The soldier tried to hold in his breath, but
it was knocked out of him as he felt a blaster shot hit his knee. Pain surged
through his body, and he fell to his side, again on the ground.

Another shot hit him, this time on his ribs, and he now heard his own screams
join those around him as more and more jolts hit his body.


The woman let the soldier's scream send a cold shiver of delight down her
spine. With an ice-cold grin, she turned to the lieutenant. "Next phase."


The screams faded away as the sound of an X-Wing's takeoff sounded. The
vibrations of a moving ship became more noticeable, as did the gentle swaying
of the floor. The soldiers lifted his head up, expecting to see a starfield
in front of him, but the blackness remained.

Suddenly, alarms flared and target lock whistles sounded, and the soldier
looked around in alarm. The sound of a TIE fighter past by his left ear, and
then the ion firing of their cannons sounded. The room shifted, and the
soldier found himself bouncing along the floor, rolling back and forth, but
never hitting any wall.

Another ion shot, and then the room shook violently. The smell of burned
circuits infiltrated his nose, as did some smoke, making it hard to breath
without coughing. A third shot came, and tiny electric shocks came from the
floor, spasming through the soldier's body. He jerked, trying to get away
from the shocks, but his bindings held true and kept him from moving. He
could feel pain as his body struggled against the bindings, which stretched
and broke the skin around his wrists and ankles.

Then, a sound of wind exiting the room and the atmosphere in the room started
to vent. Hard vacuum took its place, and now the soldier couldn't breathe for
real. As he struggled, he noticed that his body started lifting off the floor
and hover. Never did he hit a wall or ceiling. Without gravity or atmosphere,
the soldier knew that he had little time left.

Then reality hit him. They are playing with you mind! A voice within him
spoke. Don't let them fool you.

Just before the soldier thought he would black out, the atmosphere flooded
back into the room, and he took big, deep breaths to fill his lungs with the
much loved oxygen. He still floated, however, and the soldier didn't know
whether he was still moving or hovering still. He also had no clue how high
he was. He could be five inches off the ground, or five meters, for all he
knew.

Just hold on; figure out what's happening. It can't go on forever. The voice
in the soldier's mind kept him calm for the moment.

Then the sound of Alderaan's music filled the room, and the soldier gulped
hard. Or maybe it can…


The lieutenant looked up at the woman. "Last phase initiated."

As the music came in over the loudspeakers, the woman nodded, her icy grin
still in place.


The soldier heard the music, and a cold shiver filled him. Voices started to
speak, happy tones with no care to the world. Alderaan… I know that place…
why? And why does it make me shiver?

Then, a heavy, droning sound started to cut through the happiness. It sounded
like a large ship moving through space and then stopping in place. Slowly,
the voices stopped, and the music slowed. A high-pitched hum came, and then
the room was filled with a bright burst of pure white light for a nanosecond.

Screams filled his ears and the soldiers tried to blink away the pain his
eyes suffered from the light. The screams got louder, and the music started
to play in discords. He could hear their death cries, while a new smell, one
of burning flesh, flooded over him.

Heat started to rise in the room, and the soldiers felt that he, too, was
burning. It got to the point where the heat became unbearable, and he twisted
and turned in the air, trying to fight free.

After minutes of agony… or was it just seconds… a large explosion sounded,
deafening the soldier temporarily. Tears streamed down his face as he felt
himself slowly being lowered to the room's floor.

My home… that was what is was like to die there… I'm so sorry, my people… my
family…

He lay on the warm floor for a few moments, feeling painful memories flood
him. Then, a door opened and a silhouette loomed in the doorway. The soldier
looked up and mentally steeled himself. "You will not win, Isard."

Ysanni Isard entered the room and crossed to the soldier. She grabbed his
face and locked his gaze with her mis-matched eyes. "We'll see, Celchu. We
shall see."

With a sinister laugh, Isard departed, leaving Tycho Celchu once again in the
dark.

END