unconsciously imitated. "I have a meeting with the Howler Tree People of
Bendone . . . they speak a very strange language and need a team of
translators. It'll take me all morning long just to hold a conversation."
She closed her eyes and rubbed her fingertips at her temples. "And their
ultrasonic voices give me a headache!" Leia drew a deep breath and forced a
smile. "But it's part of the job. We have to keep the New Republic strong.
There are always threats from the outside."
"This is a fact," Tenel Ka said gruffly. "We have seen the threat of the
Shadow Academy and the Second Imperium firsthand." Lowbacca growled, clearly
remembering the dark and difficult time he and the twins had experienced
aboard the cloaked Imperial training station.
"Hey, I've got something that'll cheer you up, Mom," Jacen said, reaching
into his pocket. "A present I kept for you." He held out the glittering
corusca gem he had snagged while using Lando Calrissian's gem-mining
machinery deep in the stormy atmosphere of the gas-giant Yavin.
Leia looked down at it, blinking in amazement. "Jacen, that's a corusca gem!
Is this the one you found at GemDiver Station?"
He shrugged and looked pleased. "Yeah - and I used it to cut my way free
from my cell in the Shadow Academy . Would you like to have it?"
Leia's expression showed how deeply moved she was, but she closed her son's
fingers around the valuable gem. "Just having you offer it to me is a very
special gift," she said. "But I don't really need any more jewels or
treasures. I'd like you to keep it--find a special use for it. I'm sure
you'll think of something." Jacen flushed with embarrassment, then turned an
even deeper red when she gave him a big hug.
Han Solo came into the cozy dining area from the family's living quarters,
freshly washed and wide awake. "So kids, what's up for you today?"
Jaina ran to give her father a hug. "Hi, Dad! We're going to spend some time
catching up with our friend Zekk."
"That scruffy-looking teenaged junk hunter?" Han asked with a faint smile.
"He's not scruffy-looking!" Jaina said defensively.
"Hey, just kidding," Han said.
"Just make sure you don't get into trouble," Leia said.
"Trouble?" Jacen said, blinking his eyes in feigned innocence. "Us?"
Leia nodded. "Keep in mind that we're having a special diplomatic banquet
tomorrow night. I don't want to have you stuck with a medical droid because
of a sprained ankle--or worse."
Threepio interrupted as he tried to herd dark-haired Anakin off to a quiet
room. "I do wish you'd let me keep them here to continue their studies,
Mistress Leia. it would be ever so much safer." Anakin looked dejected that
he couldn't go out on an adventure with his older brother and sister.
Em Teedee spoke up from Lowbacca's waist. "Well, you need have no fear for
their safety, my conscientious colleague. I shall personally see to it that
they behave with the utmost caution. You can count on me."
Lowbacca growled a comment, and Jaina didn't think the Wookiee was agreeing
with the little translator droid.
In the open air Jaina waited next to Lowbacca, Tenel Ka, and Jacen as they
stood in one of Coruscant's busy tourism information centers, a deck that
jutted from the grandiose pyramid-shaped palace. Dignitaries and sightseers
from across the galaxy came to the capital world to spend their credits
visiting parks, museums, odd sculptures, and structures erected by ancient
alien artisans.
A boxy brochure droid floated along on its repulsorlifts, babbling in an
enthusiastic mechanical voice. It cheerfully listed the most wonderful
sights to see, recommended eating establishments catering to various
biochemistries, and gave instructions on how to arrange tours for all body
types, atmosphere requirements, and languages.
Jaina fidgeted as she studied the bustling crowd - white-robed ambassadors,
busy droids, and exotic creatures leashed to other strange creatures. She
couldn't tell which were the masters and which the pets.
"So where is he?" Jacen said, putting his hands on his hips. His hair was
tousled and his face flushed as he scanned the crowd for a familiar face.
The four young Jedi Knights stood under a sculpture of a gargoyle that
broadcast shuttle arrival times from a speaker mounted in its stone mouth.
Gazing up at the cloud-frothed sky, Jaina watched the silvery shapes of
shuttles descending from orbit. She tried to amuse herself by identifying
the vehicle types as they passed, but all the while she wondered what had
delayed their friend Zekk. She checked her chronometer again and saw he was
only about two standard minutes late. She was just anxious to see him.
Suddenly, a figure dropped directly in front of her from the gargoyle statue
overhead - a wiry youth with shoulder-length hair one shade lighter than
black. He wore a broad grin on his narrow face, and his sparkling green
eyes, wide with delight, showed a darker corona surrounding the emerald
irises. "Hi, guys!"
Jaina gasped, but Tenel Ka reacted with dizzying speed. In the fraction of a
second following Zekk's landing, the warrior girl whipped out her fibercord
rope and snapped a lasso around him, pulling the strand tight.
"Hey!" the boy cried. "Is this the way Jedi Knights greet people?"
Jacen laughed and slapped Tenel Ka on the back. "Good one!" he said. "Tenel
Ka, meet our friend Zekk."
Tenel Ka blinked once. "It is a pleasure."
The wiry boy struggled against the restraining cords. "Likewise," he said
sheepishly. "Now, if you wouldn't mind untying me?"
Tenel Ka flicked her wrist to release the fibercord. While Zekk indignantly
brushed himself off, Jaina introduced their Wookiee friend Lowbacca. Jaina
grinned as she watched Zekk. Though the older boy had a slight build, he was
tough as blaster-proof armor. Under the smudges of dirt and grime on his
cheeks, she thought, he was probably rather nice-looking-but then, she
wasn't one to talk about smudges on the face, was she?
Recovering himself, Zekk raised his eyebrow,., and flashed a roguish smile.
"I've been waiting for you guys," he said. "We've got plenty of stuff to see
and do . . . and I need your help to salvage something."
"Where are we headed?" Jacen asked.
Zekk grinned. "Someplace we're not supposed to go - of course."
Jaina laughed. "Well then, what are we waiting for?"
Jacen looked out at the sprawling city and thought of all the places he had
yet to explore. Coruscant had been the government world not only of the New
Republic , but also of the Empire, and of the Old Republic before that.
Skyscrapers covered virtually every open space, built higher and higher as
the centuries passed and new governments moved in. The tallest buildings
were kilometers high. Many had been destroyed during the bloody battles of
the Rebellion and had recently been rebuilt by huge construction droids.
Other parts of the planetwide city remained a jumble of decay and wreckage,
their abandoned lower levels and piled garbage forgotten over the years.
The buildings were so high that the gaps betw
een them formed sheer canyons
that vanished to a point in the dark depths where sunlight never penetrated.
Catwalks and pedestrian tubes linked the buildings, weaving them together
into a giant maze. The lower forty or fifty floors were generally restricted
from normal traffic; only refugees and daring big-game hunters in search of
monstrous urban scavenger beasts were willing to risk venturing into the
shadowy underworld.
Like a native guide, Zekk led the four friends down connecting elevators,
slide tubes, and rusty metal stairs, and across the catwalks from one
building to another. Jacen followed, exhilarated. He wasn't sure he knew
exactly where they were anymore, but he loved to explore new places, never
knowing what sort of interesting plants or creatures he might find.
The skyscraper walls rose like glass-and-metal cliff faces, with only a
narrow wedge of daylight shining from above. As Zekk took the companions
farther down, the buildings seemed broader, the walls rougher. Mushy blobs
of fungus grew from cracks in the massive construction blocks; fringed
lichens, some glowing with phosphorescent light, caked the walls. Lowbacca
looked decidedly uneasy, and Jacen remembered that the lanky Wookiee had
grown up on Kashyyyk, where the deep forest underworld was an extremely
dangerous place.
High overhead Jacen could hear the cries of sleek winged creatures-predatory
hawk-bats that lived in the city on Coruscant. The breeze picked up,
carrying with it heavy, warm scents of rotting garbage from far below. His
stomach grew queasy, but he pressed on. Zekk didn't seem to notice. Tenel
Ka, Lowie, and Jaina hurried behind them. They proceeded across a roofed-in
walkway where many of the transparisteel ceiling panels had been smashed
out, leaving only a wire reinforcement mesh that whistled in the breezes.
Jacen noted etched symbols along the walls, all of them vaguely threatening.
Some reminded Jacen of curved knives and fanged mouths, but the most common
design showed a sharp triangle surrounding a targeting cross. It looked to
Jacen like the tip of an arrow heading straight between his eyes. "Hey,
Zekk, what's that design?" He pointed to the triangular symbol.
Frowning, Zekk glanced around them in all directions and then whispered, "It
means we have to be very quiet down here and move as fast as we can. We
don't want to go into any of these buildings."
"But why not?" Jacen asked.
"The Lost Ones," Zekk said. "It's a gang. They live down here - kids who ran
away from home or were abandoned by their parents because they were so much
trouble. Nasty types, mostly."
"Let's hope they stay lost," Jaina said.
Zekk glanced up, his forehead creased with troubled thoughts. "The Lost Ones
might even be looking at us right now, but they've never managed to catch me
yet," he said. "It's like a game between us."
"How have you managed to get away from them all the time?" Jaina whispered.
"I'm just good at it. Like I'm a good scavenger," Zekk answered, sounding
cocky. "I may not be in training as a Jedi Knight, but I make do with what
skills I've got. Just streetwise, I guess. But," he continued, "even though
I have kind of an . . . understanding with them, I'd rather not push it.
Especially not while I'm with the twin children of the Chief of State."
"This is a fact," Tenel Ka said grimly. She kept her hands close to her
utility belt in case she needed to draw a weapon.
Zekk quickly ushered them through dilapidated corridors that were heavily
decorated with the gang symbols. Jacen saw signs of recent habitation,
wrappers from prepackaged food, bright metallic spots where salvaged
equipment had been torn away from its housings.
At last they moved on to deeper levels. They all breathed more easily,
although Zekk confessed even he had not fully explored this far down. "I
think it's a shortcut,'' he said. "I need your help so I can recover
something very valuable." He raised his dark eyebrows. "I think you'll like
it - particularly you, Jacen."
Zekk made his living by scavenging: salvaging lost equipment, removing
scraps of precious metal from abandoned dwellings. He found lost treasures
to sell to inventors, spare parts to repair obsolete machines, trinkets that
could be turned into souvenirs. He seemed to have a real skill for finding
items that other scavengers had missed over the centuries, somehow knowing
where to look, sometimes in the unlikeliest of places.
They descended an outer staircase, slick with damp MOSS from moisture
trickling down the walls. Jacen had to squint just to see the steps. As they
turned the corner of the building, Zekk stopped in surprise. In the dim
light reflected from far above, Jacen could see a strange jumble protruding
from the side of the building, smashed construction bricks, naked durasteel
fungus growing on its outer hull, the damaged shuttle appeared to have been
there a long time.
"Wow!" Zekk said. "I didn't even know this was here." He hurried forward,
edging his way along the damaged walkway. "I don't believe it. The salvage
hasn't even been picked over. See I'm lucky again!"
"That's an Old Republic craft", Jaina said. "At least seventy years old.
They haven't used those in . . . I can't even remember. What a find!"
Tenel Ka and Lowie held the creaking ship steady as Zekk scrambled inside to
look around. He poked into storage compartments, looking for valuables.
"Plenty of components are still intact. Engine still looks good," he called.
"Whoa, and here's the driver. I guess his parking permit ran out." Jacen
came up behind him to see a tattered skeleton strapped into the cockpit.
"Oh, do be careful," Em Teedee said from Lowbacca's waist. "Abandoned
vehicles can be terribly dangerous - and you might get dirty as well."
"Was this what you wished to show us, Zekk?" Tenel Ka said.
The older boy stood, bumping his head on a bent girder that ran along the
shuttle's ceiling. "No, no, this is a new discovery. I'll have to spend a
lot more time down here." He grinned.
Engine grease smudged his face, and his hands were grimy from digging
through compartments. "I can get this stuff later. I need your help for
something different. Let's go." Zekk scrambled out of the shuttle wreckage
and grasped the rusted handrail on the rickety walkway. He looked around to
get his bearings, making certain he wouldn't forget the location of this
prize. The skull of the unlucky pilot stared out at them through empty eye
sockets.
"Looks like you really do know this place like the back of your hand," Jacen
commented as Zekk led them elsewhere.
"I've had plenty of practice," Zekk said. "Some of us don't take regular
trips off planet and go to diplomatic functions all the time. I have to
amuse myself with what I can find."
It was midmorning by the time they reached Zekk's destination. The
dark-haired boy rubbed his hands together in anticipation, and pointed far
below. "Down there - can you see it?"
Jacen looke
d down, down over a ledge to see a rusted construction crawler
latched to a wall about ten meters away . . . completely out of reach. The
construction crawler was a crane-like mechanical apparatus that had once
ridden tracks along the side of the building, scouring the walls clean,
effecting repairs, applying duracrete sealant - but this contraption had
frozen up and begun to decay at least a century ago. Its interlinked rusted
braces were clogged with fuzzy growths of moss and fungus. Jacen squinted
again, wondering why the other boy meant to salvage parts from such an old
machine-but then he saw the bushy mass, a tangle of uprooted wires and
cables woven together, bristling with insulation material, torn strips of
cloth, and plastic. It looked almost like a . . .
"It's a hawk-bat's nest," Zekk said. "Four eggs inside. I can see them from
here, but I can't get down there by myself. If I can snatch even one of
those eggs, I could sell it for enough credits to live on for a month."
"And you want us to help you get it?" Jaina asked.
"That's the idea," Zekk said. "Your friend Tenel Ka there has a pretty
strong rope - as I found out! And some of you look like good climbers,
especially that Wookiee."
Em Teedee shrilled, "Oh no, Lowbacca. You simply cannot climb down there! I
absolutely forbid it." Lowie hadn't looked too eager at first, but the
translating droid's admonishment only served to convince him otherwise. The
Wookiee growled an agreement to Zekk's plan.