distrust.
"My name is Ynos," the man said. "I'm what passes for a leader in this
group of villagers, though we're mostly starving and we don't amount to
much of anything."
"If you're starving then why aren't you out working the fields?"
Jaina asked. "There seems to be plenty of cropland, and it's a
beautiful day."
"Because we're afraid to," Ynos said, his lips twisting in an angry
snarl. "The mountain miners have ruined all of our fertile land.
There was a time when we harvested enough to keep us fat, with plenty
left over for trading with the miners, as well as for export
offworld.
Now we barely scrape by with our tiny gardens here."
He gestured to small patches of plants outside the ramshackle homes.
"A few of our people have tried to clear some of our old acreage, but
it's a dangerous task. The cursed miners plant burrowing detonators
everywhere."
Jaina shuddered. She had heard about mobile robotic explosives that
tunneled into the ground and waited there for someone-anyone-to
unwittingly step on them.
"Some of our braver young men and women venture into the forests to
hunt for food, but even the trees and shrubs are booby-trapped with
deadly pits and trip wires. Sometimes our hunters don't come back."
Several villagers sighed or smothered soft moans of despair.
"It is only a matter of time before we're all wiped out," Ynos said.
"Then the mountain villagers will have won the war."
"Unless we kill them first," said one brash young helper.
"And then we will all be dead anyway," Ynos replied in a heavy voice.
Tenel Ka looked at the man and studied his stump of a leg. She seemed
to feel a camaraderie with Ynos, though her injury had been caused by
an accident, and his by an act of war. "There is no honor in such
destruction. Only cowards kill those they cannot see. And only a fool
kills when there are other options."
Ynos sighed and looked around at the squalid village. Jaina followed
his gaze. Her heart went out to the desperate workers in the nearby
fields. She saw a few figures moving slowly, taking each step with
meticulous care.
A sudden wash of dread flooded through her. All the young Jedi Knights
whirled and focused on the same field, sensing the dangerjust as one of
the distant farmers stepped forward. An explosion ripped under his
feet, sending up a cloud of dust and dirt shards, along with an
incinerating heat.
The scattered workers in the fields screamed. Some froze in utter
terror, while others ran blindly back along the narrow, well-packed
trails that led safely through the cropland. The villagers lurched
into motion, rushing toward the field.
Anakin popped back into the Falcon and emerged a moment later carrying
the medikit. Tenel Ka ran like a hunting cat, with Anja pacing her
step for step, as if it were some kind of a competition rather than a
race to rescue an injured man who had stepped on a burrowing
detonator.
"Be careful!" Ynos shouted, limping behind them as the other young
Jedi ran. At the edge of the fields, many of the farmers stopped to
embrace those who had successfully made it onto safe ground. The young
Jedi Knights followed the narrow footpaths. Jaina could see where
other detonators had left craters and pockmarks in the fields,
uprooting precious crops, leaving their poisonous residue as a chemical
stain on the once-fertile dirt.
Ahead, Jaina saw the mangled body of the man who had been hurled high
by the explosion and dropped back down among the rocks and clods of
dirt. His clothes were torn, his face and limbs scorched from the
blast. Blood seeped from massive injuries in his legs and chest. The
man groaned. Jaina and her companions rushed to his side.
"Saw it...... the man groaned, " saw it coming toward me ...
jumped." He gasped for breath, and Jaina thought she could hear his
ribs cracking as he inhaled. "Not fast enough. This place ...
infested with burrowers."
Han came up, panting. "Looks bad. Can we get him back to the Falcon's
medical bay?"
Anakin opened the medikit, but the mangled man shuddered. Blood still
oozed from his wounds. A moment later, he collapsed backward with a
convulsion. Jaina could tell without checking that he had died.
Just then Ynos hobbled up on his mechanical leg and looked down at the
dead man. He assessed the injuries with narrowed eyes and nodded
grimly. "Perhaps it's best he died quickly. He'd never have
recovered, and he would have hated being crippled."
"That is not for us to judge," Tenel Ka said. "We cannot know what he
might have contributed-even with a handicap-had he survived."
Ynos shook his shaggy head in despair. "There will be more deaths and
injuries like this. Many more, and there's nothing we can do about
it.
The miners buy burrowing detonators and turn them loose in our fields
faster than we can clear them. We'll never have happy lives again.
We'll all starve."
Han Solo forced an optimistic expression and put a hand on the old
man's shoulder as three farmers gently carried their friend's body
away.
"You won't starve tonight. The Falcon has plenty of food packs in its
prep unit. I can make you all a decent meal, something to give you
strength. It's not much, but it's the best we can do right now."
Ynos looked at them, hunger in his eyes. Jaina could see he
desperately wanted to accept the offer.
"No argument," Han said, before the limping man could think of anything
to say.
One by one, the other villagers approached, eyes still wide with horror
at the death they had witnessed, but ready to see how Han and the young
Jedi Knights intended to help them.
Before Han Solo and the young Jedi Knights prepared evening meal in the
Millennium Falcon, the villagers all worked together to dig a grave for
the man who had died that afternoon. They buried him in an area
already dotted with mounds, and Jacen realized with shock that each
mound was a grave. He doubted that many of the dead had fallen prey to
natural causes.
Anobis appeared worn out and stretched to its limits, as if it were
making a last gasp for life. As far as Jacen could tell, agricultural
settlements such as this one continued fighting only out of sheer
habit, not because of any lingering convictions. The current of hatred
ran too deep to be diverted by any rational arguments.
The fanners ate the Falcon's food supplies with great gusto as Jacen
and Jaina served meal after meal from the galley. Tenel Ka, Lowie, and
Em Teedee welcomed guests and cleaned up after each one, while Zekk and
Anakin tinkered with the food-prep unit to see if it could produce the
meals faster.
The sun of Anobis set in a coppery orange glow behind the ominous
mountains where the enemy mining villages were located. The smoke in
the air made the colors more vivid. Keeping to herself, Anja gazed
toward the craggy shadows with something akin to
longing, while the
farming villagers looked at the mountains with fear and loathing.
Outside, Han ate with old Ynos. The village leader seemed content that
his people had received this small reprieve. "So who speaks for all
the farmers?" Han asked. "Is there a council I could talk to? What
would it take to bring about a cease-fire between the miners and
farmers-stop all this death and destruction, even temporarily?"
Jacen paused in his serving to listen to the old farmer.
"Each of the farm communities is separate and independent, though ours
is one of the largest," Ynos said, wiping his mouth. "I can speak for
these people as well as anyone else. I know how they feel."
He heaved a great sigh. "You saw what happened this afternoon.
It is a common occurrence. Day after day, our people are slaughtered
indiscriminately by brutal weapons that strike unarmed targets. None
of us are soldiers. The graveyard beyond the village is filled with
the innocent victims of the miners' hatred."
Jacen saw his father shoot a glance over at Anja, his face troubled.
Jacen was confused because the young woman had told a completely
different story about how much pain the farmers caused the people in
the mountains. He would have to assume that neither story was exactly
correct.
As twilight turned into deeper dusk, the most physically fit young men
and women finished eating their fill of the donated rations, then went
out as sentries to guard the village. The mine-laced fields sprawled
toward the forests and mountains in the west, while behind them rocky
hills etched with canyons looked just as inhospitable. Night insects,
birds, and more sinister-sounding creatures bumbled and set up their
songs around the darkening plain, particularly from the rugged hills to
the east where the brush fire still glowed.
"What are you afraid of?" Jacen asked one of the villagers. "What are
you guarding against?"
The gaunt young man looked at him in shock. "Everything," he said.
When Jacen finally settled down to eat, he felt uncomfortable with his
usual large plateful when these people had been starving for so long.
Off in the darkness he heard the strange night sounds getting louder.
A low hooting and snarling from the rocks came closer. The villagers
looked up in alarm.
The ferocious sound grew louder, echoing, as if it came from dozens,
perhaps even hundreds of throats. Now a rustling approached through
the distant, fire-ravaged hills. After a moment of rising tension, the
sentries shouted an alarm.
Tenel Ka sprang to her feet and stood beside Jacen. "What is it?"
she said. "Are the mountain miners attacking?"
Anja dropped back toward the Falcon, a startled look on her face.
Lowie sniffed the air and growled. "Dear me, Master Lowbacca," Em
Teedee said. "I'm certain I can't identify the specie,;, but I do
agreethose definitely sound like the voices of predators."
The sentries yelled out, "Knaars! Knaars!" The villagers who were
still eating dropped their plates of precious food and scrambled back
to their homes. Some grabbed sticks, others gathered prized
possessions.
Many wailed in panic.
"What is it?" Jacen cried. "What are knaars?"
"Monsters!" Ynos said, pivoting on his droid leg. "It sounds like an
entire herd migrating from the hills. The fire must have driven them
in our direction." He hung his head as villagers continued their
disorganized evacuation efforts all around them. "Now the miners will
have cause to rejoice. Our village will be wiped out."
"Can you not fight these monsters?" Tenel Ka said.
"For a few minutes," one of the villagers said.
"I'm going to kill five before they take me down," a brash young man
said, though the look of terror on his pale face belied his brave
words.
"Killing five won't even help," Ynos said. "A migration pack contains
hundreds, and the fire has driven them into a frenzy."
"We can fight beside you." Tenel Ka clutched her lightsaber. "We are
Jedi."
"Then you might kill five yourself But we'll still all fall under their
fangs and claws." Ynos shook his head. "We may as well fightthere's
nowhere to run." He glanced over at the deadly minefields blocking
their path toward the forest, their direction of escape.
Han stood up and put a protective hand on Jacen's shoulder as the
sounds of hooting and howling grew louder. They heard thundering feet,
claws skittering on stones. "I could take some refugees in the
I can't carry nearly enough, though."
Ania stood beside the boarding rwnp. "I'll get my lightsaber," she
said, and ducked inside.
Jacen glanced after her with a questioning look. He had thought she
always wore the weapon at her belt. But that hardly mattered now. He
was much more concerned about the oncoming predators.
Inside the back cabin where she had stashed her pack, Anja rummaged
among her belongings and took out the small black carbon-freeze unit.
Her fingers trembled. She had been wanting the spice so badly; now, at
last, she had a perfect excuse.
Hunching over to hide what she was doing, Anja took one of the tiny
black cylinders in her hand. Its coldness felt welcome against her
sweaty palm. Czethros had given her only enough andris for four
doses-not as many as she wanted ... but she would have to make it
last.
Looking longingly at the three remaining packages of spice, she sealed
them in her pack. Then she carefully unwrapped the insulating opaque
paper that surrounded the spice. The andris spice came from a newly
discovered vein on Kessel, the highest quality available.
Anja could barely wait. Outside she heard shouts, human voices among
the predatory growls. She would have to hurry.
Before the spice could warm to air temperature, she slipped it under
her tongue and felt the energy course through her. Her muscles sang.
Her nerves became much more sensitive. Her thoughts whirled. Her
blood pumped more freely, the air tasted sweeter, and her mind opened
to things around her that she had never before noticed.
The spice heightened her senses, increased her ability to fight,
improved her reflexes. Anja clasped the ancient lightsaber at her
side. With the full dose of spice surging through her body, she felt
vibrant, powerful, ready to take on any foe.
As Han Solo led a group of escaping villagers into the Falcon, Anja
pushed past him to run outside. At this moment she didn't care how
many knaars were attacking. She could handle them all.
"There's no time to argue, Dad," Jaina said, standing at the base of
the ramp as Han Solo tried to cram a last few people aboard. Zekk had
already gone into the cockpit and was powering up the engines for
immediate takeoff. A dozen of the remaining villagers huddled around
Jaina in terror, holding sticks and agricultural implements. One woman
had a small laser drilling tool.
"Take Anakin and go," Jaina insisted. "We have our lightsabers, and we
have to help these people."
"But I can't leave my own kids behind," Han said, obviously torn.
"We're Jedi Knights, Dad. We have a better chance than any of these
villagers. We've got to protect them."
And with that, the first knaars charged out of the darkness at the
ramshackle line of buildings, looking for prey. Jaina stood startled
for a moment. Tenel Ka, Lowie, and Jacen all stared at their new
enemy.
"We're doomed," Em Teedee wailed.
The knaars were fast-moving reptilian predators, sleek saurians with
purplish-blue scales and a silver frill of razor-sharp spines along
their backs. Tails slashed back and forth, inflicting damage on
anything around them with their wicked barbs. The creatures' muscular
anus ended in a fistful of claws, and their immense jaws were heavy
machinery designed only for eating.
The pack of bloodthirsty beasts stampeded into the village. They
swiveled their heads from side to side, clenching and unclenching their
grasping claws, looking for flesh to tear.
As the Falcon blasted its repulsobets and rose up, Jaina watched it
swivel around and fly low to the ground, approaching the predatory
knaars. Han and Zekk would use blaster cannons to shoot the creatures,