He saw the shape again. It flitted by, closer this time. Suddenly,
with a burst of speed, the flying creature cruised closer still to
examine him like some giant curious hawkbat with a smooth bullet-shaped
body and fleshy wings.
A thranta! "Help!" Jacen shouted. The colorfully painted rider on
the creature's back gently tweaked the harness, directing the
thranta.
Jacen continued to drop, and the flying creature swooped down as well,
effortlessly sweeping the air aside with its broad wings. Jacen heard
the flapping sounds and a faint squeal that might have been a
high-pitched subsonic call. As they streaked downward together the
thranta rider met Jacen's eyes, nodded, and brought the creature under
him, matching the speed of the young man's descent. Then he nudged
upward so that Jacen dropped gently onto the creature's broad back, as
if caught in a safety net.
The rider tossed Jacen the loose end of a sturdy rope that he had tied
about his own waist. Jacen clutched the rope, trembling as the
realization that he had almost died caught up with him. He gasped, but
for a long moment could say nothing more than "Thank you."
Seeing Jacen secured on the back of his mount, the rider gave the
harness a light snap and nudged the thranta with his knees. The
creature took off with glee, soaring toward a white cloud bank far from
the gleaming technological island of Cloud City, which was now only a
silvery sparkle in the distant sky.
As he sweated and shuddered, just trying to catch his breath, Jacen
pulled himself forward and held on to the skinny thranta rider by the
waist. He was a young male, earless, with smooth skin that was painted
or tattooed in swirling colors and patterns that made the thranta rider
himself look like an optical illusion. The rider glanced over his bony
shoulder at his unexpected passenger, smiling and flashing ebony teeth
like polished gems.
" That's not a very good acrobatic routine you have, my friend," the
thranta rider said. "You really shouldn't jump unless you know your
mount will be there to catch you." The rider's voice was high-pitched
and musical, in contrast with the roaring air around them.
"I ... I didn't mean to jump," Jacen admitted, then heaved a huge sigh
of relief His entire body shuddered. "We were ambushed by assassins.
My two friends managed to catch themselves on an antenna beneath Cloud
City, but I couldn't hang on."
"Ambushed and fell," the thranta rider said. He nodded, his face
pinched and sorrowful. "Yep. I've seen that before." He flew on
without further explanation.
Jacen held on tightly, gradually regaining his composure, and finally
he introduced himself "I suppose I should tell you whose life you
saved. I'm Jacen. Jacen Solo."
The thranta rider said, "My name is M'kim. I practice with the sky
rodeo troupe, but I'm not a full-fledged member of the performing team
... yet."
The boy snapped the reins of the thranta, and it dove like a meteor,
then pulled up into a sharp loop in the air. Jacen was afraid he'd
fall, but the thranta circled, somersaulted, and became level again.
At any other time, he might have enjoyed the brief rush of
exhilaration, but he'd already had enough thrills for one day.
" So most days I come out with my friend here." M'kim patted the solid
fleshy side of the flying creature, and the thranta ducked and bobbed
in the air, showing off. "Just to practice."
"Hey, I'm certainly impressed," Jacen said. He held on, and found he
was actually enjoying himself as the thranta soared and danced. Life
seemed so sweet and exhilarating after his long fall and near brush
with death.
Suddenly he realized with a sick jolt that if Lowie and Tenel Ka had
managed to rescue themselves under Cloud City, they would believe he
had fallen to his death. He couldn't let his friends live with such
grief a moment longer.
" I've got to get back," he said, shouting into M'kim's ear hole. "I
But the thranta rider set his face in a grim expression and flew on,
arrowing deeper into the clouds below, and away from Cloud City.
"If I take you back too soon," M'kim said, "those who tried to kill you
might still be waiting. Better for now to let them think you're
dead."
"But that means everybody else thinks I'm dead too," Jacen said.
"And my friends may need my help."
The thranta soared through a layer of mist that slapped Jacen in the
face; he spluttered in the cold moisture and smelled a strong chemical
tang of gases that drifted up from the deep cloud-deck layers below.
"We'll go here first." M'kim released the harness and gestured ahead
in the direction of the thranta's flight.
Behind an obscuring veil of white mist, a heavy green-brown cloud
floated like a mat above the other layers of vapor. The dark island in
the sky seemed solid enough, and as the thranta brought them closer,
Jacen saw that the sludgy raft-cloud was actually a huge cluster of
algae nodules. The airborne sacs of gas-filled plant life drifted at
an equilibrium level in the clouds and photosynthesized by soaking up
sunlight, water vapor, and chemicals from the clouds.
"Amazing!" Jacen said. "It's like a living island."
The thranta flapped its sail-like wings and drove them closer to the
spinning, bobbling raft in the sky. "This is a place of solitude,"
M'kim said. "We can talk here and rest without fear of being
discovered.
There's no hurry. You're not at risk with me."
Jacen nodded. He was still deeply concerned about his friends, though,
and worried about what else might be happening to them while he wasn't
there to help. He didn't even know for certain that the two Jedi
Knights had managed to rescue themselves from their precarious perch
beneath Cloud City, but he believed his friends were resourceful enough
to get themselves out of a fix like that.
The thranta hovered over the floating algae island. Uncertain, Jacen
looked down at the squishy surface. But M'kim deffly danced off the
back of his flying creature and landed on the soft clusters of algae
sacs, bouncing on the surface of the green-brown nodules as if he were
swim ming.
The thranta rider lay back, gesturing for Jacen to join him. "Come
on.
We can watch the clouds go by and talk about what's really happening
over there in Cloud City." His face turned grave. "I have a feeling
you need to know this."
Still holding the harness, Jacen stood up on wobbly legs and balanced
on the back of the thranta. Then he jumped.
)acen fell for the second time that day, but this time he landed on the
soft, squishy mat of tangled algae clusters. It was like a damp
organic mattress that floated aimlessly, carried by the winds. The
bumpy green masses made a soft, uneven surface, like a cluster of
lighter-than-air pillows.
Watching him, M'kim lay back laughing as Jacen stumbled, then fell on
his face into the wet algae nodules. The greenish clusters shifted
like a living mass of solid bubbles. One greenish-brown bubble popped
with a splat in front of him, spraying Jacen with the strong, earthy
smell of compost.
He struggled to wipe away the sticky juice, but finally lounged back
and forced himself to relax. He could change his clothes later, and he
desperately needed a rest.
Rootlike tendrils dangled from the bottom of the algae island to soak
up moisture droplets and nourishing chemicals. Jacen listened to the
breeze rustling the tendrils. He heard the little fluttering noises of
small flying creatures darting in and around the tangled organic mat.
He spotted tiny insects and colored plantlike things that made up the
island complex, forming an entire ecosystem.
"I'm surprised there's so much life around here," Jacen said. "I
thought Bespin was just ... just an empty gas giant."
"Nothing in the universe is really empty," M'kim said. "Our troupe has
traveled all over, and I've found very few places that are truly
dead.
Life is ... tenacious."
"Yeah, I sure didn't expect to still be alive after that fall."
Bespin had many different levels where life clung, whether in
artificial cities, gas-storage refineries, or -temperate-layer algae
islands.
Thunderheads gathered in the vast sky overhead.
Jacen crawled to the edge of the squishy algae platform and looked over
the edge toward the soup of clouds far below. He saw flashes of
lightning and deep glows that skittered beneath the surface. Large
storms rose up as deep heat currents in the lower layers of the gas
giant stirred and shifted. It still looked impossibly far down.
Jacen gulped. If M'kim hadn't rescued him on his thranta, he would
still be falling....
Free of its rider, the thranta swooped above and below them, circling
the algae island, nibbling at the tender ends of the dangling root
threads and playing in the sky. Watching the exuberant creature, M'kim
laughed.
Jacen turned to the thranta rider. "What did you mean when you said
that other people were ambushed and fell off Cloud City? Someone we
know recently vanished off a balcony. The official report said he
jumped to his death." He shuddered, thinking of Cojahn and the long,
long terror he must have endured during his drop through the clouds.
M'kim looked nervous and sad. "When was this? When did it happen?"
Jacen counted back. "It would have been ... six standard days ago, I
guess."
M'kim nodded, pursing his lips. "Twelve Bespin days. Yes, that's what
I thought."
"You know something about it?" Jacen jerked and tried to sit upright
too quickly; the algae nodules shifted under him, and he had to squirm
to regain his balance. "Please, tell me."
M'kim looked away. His thranta swooped overhead again, giving its
near-silent high-pitched call. "I saw it with my own eyes," the
thranta rider admitted.
Jacen scrambled closer to the thin, painted boy. "What happened to
Cojahn? We need to know."
The thranta rider stared off into the distant skies. The sunlight
filtering through layers of mists dappled the tattoos on his face and
skin.
M'kim said, "I can tell you this much. Your friend didn't jump of his
own free will."
:'What happened to Cojahn?" Jacen pressed again.
'We were out practicing, flying around on the other side of Cloud
City.
We'd gone to the top to do loops around Kerros Tower. I was behind the
rest of the group, because I'm not part of the actual act yet, even
though I practice with the team. I saw a man on one of the outer
balconies, but he wasn't alone."
"Who? Who was with him?" Jacen said.
"One big, angry man who looked like he was in charge, and a couple of
thugs. I was surprised that the two thugs didn't do the dirty work for
the angry man."
"What did the man look like?" Jacen said.
"Pretty strange. He had some sort of visor across his face, a red
optical sensor, and short green hair the color of this algae you're
sitting on. He was quite unmistakable."
Jacen swallowed hard as he recognized the description: Czethros!
But the former bounty hunter and smuggler who had once promised to take
revenge against Han Solo was now a respectable businessman on Ord
Mantell-wasn't he?
"I know who you're talking about," Jacen said, "but what would Czethros
be doing on Cloud City?"
"That man shows up every once in a while," M'kim said. "Things go on
in Port Town and in some of the casinos that the Cloud City Gambling
Authority intentionally ignores. I've heard rumors that a powerful
criminal organization is trying to take over the gambling,
entertaimuent, music ... everything that happens on Bespin-and probably
other planets as well. Nobody pays much attention to us thranta
riders, but we see things. . . ."
Jacen thought of the sky-rodeo performers darting past windows, looking
in. Nobody would think to watch for a spy from the outside on a city
in the clouds.
"That man with the green hair-Czethros, was it?-he comes here,
supposedly on legitimate business. He meets with some of the important
Exex." M'kim shook his head. "But something strange is going on."
"What happened to Cojahn on the balcony? Was he pushed?"
"They were having an argument," M'kim said. "The man with the green
hair seemed very sure of himself, but when Cojahn didn't agree, the two
thugs came forward to threaten him. Czethros waved them away. He just
picked your friend up by the collar, yelled something at him, and
tossed him off the balcony. Just ... threw him over like a piece of
garbage. The man fell."
Sickened, Jacen imagined Lando's friend reaching out for help and
dropping, dropping.. .. "You couldn't help him? You couldn't catch
him like you caught me?"
M'kim shook his head. Tears glistened in his eyes. "We were pretty
high above Cloud City. I swooped down, but the winds were too
strong.
Thunder clouds were rising, and the sky was so dark that the man just
vanished into the black clouds. We couldn't find him."
Jacen drew a deep breath. "So why didn't you report this?"
"We don't know who we can trust." M'kim shook his head vigorously.
"Do you know how easy it would be for someone to sabotage one of our
harnesses or drug one of the thrantas before a show? We've already
received warnings and threats-nothing specific ... butenough to make us
worried." He drew a deep breath.
"Cloud City has a reputation as a clean place. If you gamble here, you
know everything's fair. But someone's trying to change that. We do
our sky rodeo, and our performances are well-attended. We've always
been paid well; we risk our lives. But now"-he cleared his
throat-"other factors are making life ... uncomfortable." Jacen felt
decidedly uneasy. "I need to get back to Cloud City," he said. "I
have to tell my friends."
M'kim hung
his head. "I know. We can go now. My people will
be.worried about me too, I suppose." He placed his long fingers to his
lips and blew a loud shrill whistle, startling Jacen. Instantly, the
thranta flapped up above the edge of the island, hovered overhead, and
bobbed about playfully.
"Climb up," M'kim said as the thranta dipped one of its broad, sturdy
wings. Jacen scrambled onto the smooth back. The thranta rider leapt
into place, grasped the harness with one hand, and snapped it lightly
to set the flying creature in motion.
As they flapped away from the algae island, Jacen looked down to watch
the matted mass disappear in the mists below. The thranta swept its
wings gracefully in broad powerful strokes that carried them higher and
higher into the sky.
Thick clouds had gathered, knotted conglomerations of mist and gas,
turning the sky dark. Jacen couldn't tell in which direction Cloud
City lay, but he hoped they would get back before the storm.
"Hey, how do you know where we're going?" he said close to M'kim's
ear.
The thranta rider shrugged. "We know."
The thranta flew onward and upward as a thunderhead nearly the size of
an asteroid rose in front of them. The thranta circled around, keeping
a good distance between them and the storm cloud. Lightning crackled