arms to direct Chewbacca's piloting. When the Shadow Chaser came to a
halt, its entry ramp extended. Chewbacca stood at the top, gesturing
with his cinnamon-furred arms and bellowing.
"Master Chewbacca cordially requests that we all come aboard," Em Teedee
translated, speaking in a wobbly voice as he bounced with each running
step Lowie took.
Jacen slung his satchel of belongings over one shoulder. He turned to
see if he could offer any assistance to Tenel Ka, but when he saw the
determined look in the warrior girils gray eyes, he decided he'd be
better off if he didn't ask.
They climbed aboard the Shadow Chaser and waved a brief goodbye to the
other students and Tionne, who held up a hand in farewell. Even before
the ship was completely sealed and ready to take off, 'Donne had ushered
the trainees back to their studies. With the threat of the Second
Imperium loose in the galaxy, the new Jedi Knights had no time to relax.
With a smooth surge of acceleration, so powerful yet gentle it seemed
almost to ghde against gravity, the Shadow Chaser aimed its nose upward
and arrowed straight into the mist-shrouded skies of the jungle moon.
Enroute to Kashyyyk, Jacen watched @wie and Chewbacca m the two front
seats of the narrow cockpit as the Shadow Chaser lurched into
hyperspace. When the pair spoke rapidly in the Wookiee language, they
sounded like two ferocious beasts challenging each otherbut Jacen knew
it was just a conversation, though he could make out only a few words.
Em Teedee had been instructed not to bother translating, so that Lowie
and Chewie could have some uninterrupted words in relative privacy.
@ile his sister tinkered with her multitool, disassembling a tiny
mechanical gadget she had brought from her workshop on Yavin 4, Jacen
took the opportunity to amuse Tenel Ka. He decided that, rather than
tellingjokes this time, he would explain to the gruff girl why certain
things were funny, why she should be laughing at his punch lines-well,
some of them, anyway. Jacen had begun to wonder if perhaps the girl
simply didn't understand, and that was why she didn't laugh.
After all, it couldn't be that every one of his jokes was bad.
He explained how ridiculous answers to straightforward-sounding
questions were supposed to be funny. He showed her how doing unexpected
things with food or simple items of clothing might be considered
amusing.
Tenel Ka watched him gravely, with full and unwavering attention. But
she never cracked a smile.
With a sigh, Jacen told a few of his best jokes, then gave her some of
his worst, trying to explain the difference by way of example.
Tenel Ka didwt laugh at either.
In desperation, he considered going to the food-prep unit, ordering a
pan of chilled Deneelian fizz-pudding, and then comically tripping so
that the entire mess splatted in his face-but by this time, Jacen
figured that even such a spectacular pratfall would have no effect on
the young warrior woman.
Shaking his head in surrender, Jacen decided to leave Tenel Ka alone. He
would occupy himself with something less discouraging for the time
being. His spirits instantly perked up as he reached out with Jedi
senses and detected something interesting in the back of the Shadow
Chaser . . . the faint glow of a life-form, some creature out of place
by the engine compartments. Jacen decided to go snoop. Nobody else was
likely to be interested, anyway.
In the shielded rear compartment beyond the sleeping bunks and the
food-prep area, Jacen heard the pulsing, pounding thump of engines as
the Shadow Chaser sped along through hyperspace. He looked at the
intricate control panels and access grids, the weapons batteries charged
with spin-sealed Tibanna gas, and the shield generators that projected a
canopy of protection around the sleek ship. But through all the din and
the vibrating power of the engines, Jacen could still detect the faint
emanations of some small creature, lost and frightened.
"Don't be scared," Jacen said, speaking with his voice and at the same
time thinking the words through the Force. "I'm your friend. I can help
you. Let me see you. It's okay."
He lowered his voice to a whisper as he bent down, looking in crannies
between the control grids. He followed his senses. 'I won't hurt you. I
just want to see you. I know you're afraid. You can trust me." He
touched his fingers lightly to one of the cool metal access panels,
gently brushing the ion shield generators with his mind.
He sensed the creature hiding back there, trembling, guarding something.
A little nest?
"It's just me," Jacen said. "Relax. I'll take care of you." He popped
the metal covering off the access panel to the ion shield generator.
Inside, in a comfortable little pocket of colorful debris, cowered a
furry eight-legged rodent, a mouselike creature with puffy frost-gray
ftir.
It looked up at him with tiny black eyes that glittered in the dim
light. It wiggled its damp nose. Judging by the pair of long teeth that
protruded from the center of its snout, this rodent was a gnawer, not a
flesh eater.
"Come here," Jacen said. "That's not a safe place for you to be." He
reached in and calmly drew the rodent out. Its eight legs trembled and
tickled against his palm like a plump furry spider, but a friendly and
gentle one.
Jacen stroked its back, then bent to peer at the nest again. The rodent
had chewed tiny strips of insulation from the power cables, yanked
threads and wires, and fabrics and plastics from the shield generator to
create a soft pocket in which squirmed four smooth cylindrical grubs,
the creature's young.
"Oh, what a nice nest you have," Jacen said soothingly. "But I don't
think you were supposed to use those components. We need this ion shield
generator, you know. It protects the whole ship." He continued stroking
the rodent and retrieved the nest carefully so as not to disturb the
young. He held the nest in his hand and placed the mother back on top,
snuggled against her little ones. "I'll keep you safe," 1 Jacen said,
"but we'll have to tell Jaina and Lowie about this, so they can make
repairs."
Preoccupied with calming his new pet, Jacen returned to the forward
compartments. He went to his sister who was still tinkering with an
incomprehensible mechanical gadget. "Hey, Jaina? I've got some bad
news."
She turned, holding up a small hydrospanner. "What?"
Before he could answer, though, the Shadow Chaser gave a sudden lurch
and rocked as if it had slammed into something invisible. The deck
tilted sideways, throwing Jacen to his knees. He struggled to protect
his new pet.
The colors of hyperspace swirled like a psychedelic flood in all
directions out the windowports. When the Shadow Chaser gave another
violent lurch, Jacen tumbled backward to the deck; it took all his
concentration to guard the precious nest.
"LTh, never mind," he said. "It can wait."
Jaina
gripped the armrests of her seat while the ship rocked back and
forth. Her tools and the electronic di-scanner remote she had just
repaired flew like projectiles to the bulkheads, then smashed onto the
deckplates, ruined.
When the ship momentarily stabilized, her brother crawled to his feet,
cradling something in one arm, his hair even more tousled than usual. He
checked to make sure Tenel Ka was okay. The warrior girl stood up,
planting her booted feet wide apart, seeking balance as the Shadow
Chaser shuddered and bucked its way through the disturbance.
"What is happening?" Tenel Ka said.
Ahead in the cockpit, Lowie and Chewbacca roared to each other, fighting
the controls.
"An ion storm?" Em Teedee chimed in with an electronic wail. "Are you
absolutely certain? We're doomed!"
Jaina's lips pressed into a tight, grim line.
"It's an ion storm, all right. Just bad luck.
Couldn't predict this. We plotted the shortest path to Kashyyyk using
the navicomputer. The on-line catalogs only display stable astronomical
hazards-star clusters, black holes, and high-energy nebulas-but, ion
storms come and go. They don't have any set position, but they sure
ripple up hyperspace when you pass through'em."
'Is it serious?" Jacen asked. Droplets of sweat broke out on his brow.
"I've got a bad feeling about this."
"Just have to wait and see," Jaina said.
Tenel Ka stood with her hand to her utility belt, ready to fight some
tangible foe with a throwing knife, her lightsaber, even her fibercord.
But none of those would do any good against an ion storm.
Chewbacca and Lowie grappled with the controls, hairy fingers flying
over panels, yanking levers. The Shadow Chaser winked out of hyperspace
and lurched back into the fringes of the furious ion storm.
"Uh-oh," Jacen said. "I forgot to tell you that we might have some
damage to our ion shield generator." He held up the nested bundle of
wires and insulation.
Jaina whirled, more worried than ever.
'Oh, no! That could-" As the Shadow Chaser plummeted into the space
storm, they were immediately surrounded by a spiderweb of high-energy
lightning bolts, powerful discharges that arched across the seething
knot of hot gas that formed the unexpected interstellar hurricane.
The ship thrashed like a mad bantha, throwing its passengers about.
Jacen braced his shoulder against a control bar, and Tenel Ka fell into
him. He held the warrior girl upright, pinning both of them against the
wall, still cradling his newfound pet in one hand. Jaina, trying to
struggle toward the cockpit, fell flat on her face.
The Shadow Chaser's rear engines kicked in, and the sublight drive
heaved them away from the rippling ion cloud. In the pilot seat
Chewbacca groaned, gripping the controls and wrestling to keep them on a
straight course, the shortest path out of danger.
Lowie cried out as fingernails of icy blue electricity skittered across
the control panels, burning out subsystem after subsystem.
Behind the back bulkheads, the straining ion shield generators squealed
loudly in surrender. Then, with a loud bang, they fell silent.
The rippling colors dwindled outside the cockpit window, and the Shadow
Chaser careened onward, spiraling out into open space, safe at last from
the storm. Still, Jaina shuddered to think of how much damage the stray
ion bursts must have caused.
Jacen brushed himself off and forced a lopsided grin. 'Now, uh, as I was
saying about that damage to the ion shields . . ."
He held out the eight-legged rodent, which cowered in her nest, as if
she comprehended the trouble she had caused. 'I found this critter's
nest in the machinery. I took her out, but I needed one of you to fix
the damage."
"It would appear that we now have plenty of time to fix it," Tenel Ka
said. "We are capable of fixing it, are we not?"
From the cockpit Lowie and Chewie consulted in growling voices.
"Oh, excellent!" Em Teedee said. "Master Lowbacca says we have been
quite lucky.
Our propulsion and life-support systems are largely intact and can be
repaired quite easily. My, that is wonderful news." Em Teedee fell
silent as the Wookiees continued, and then the little droid piped up.
"Excuse me-what did you say, Master Lowbacca? Oh dear! It seems,
however, that our navicomputer has been completely disabled.
We have lost all coordinates for getting from here to anywhere else. Oh
my. We're . . .
we're lost in space."
Chewbacca and Lowie both roared in outrage at the translating droid, and
comforting that you both have such confidence in your navigational
abilities," Em Teedee muttered after a moment.
The two Wookiees busily consulted with each other and began punching and
programming numerical values into the navigational control panel,
double-checking each other's calculations. Before long, after everyone
had helped with temporary repairs, the Shadow Chaserwas on its way
again.
At first Jaina was surprised that they were back on course-then she
realized that she shouldn't have been. After all, Kashyyyk was the only
Wookiee planet, and both Lowie and Chewbacca greatly revered the place.
V*Thy should she find it unusual that they had both memorized the
coordinates for their homeworld? -----------------IN A SECLLTDED meeting
chamber at the Shadow Academy, Zekk stood proudly, struggling to hide
any sign of nervousness. He raised his chin and waited to receive his
long-anticipated reward. It had come to this, at last.
The air smelled cold and metallic, exhilarating. Brilliant light stabbed
down from the metal ceiling, making him squint his emerald eyes; the
irises were ringed with a darker corona, like the shadowy outline around
his personality. Zekk tossed back his shaggy dark hair, one shade
lighter than black, and looked up, blinking, as @rd Brakiss approached
him in the harsh light.
The master of the Shadow Academy was wrapped in rippling silvery robes
of a fabric that looked as if it might have been spun by deadly spiders.
Against one wall, wearing her spined and glittering black cloak, stood
Tamith Kai, the fierce commander of the new Nightsisters. Her violet
eyes burned beneath a generous mane of ebony hair.
Beside Tamith Kai waited two other prominent Nightsisters-attractive and
petite Garowyn and muscular Vonnda Ra, both from the planet Dathomir. In
their black-spined capes and hzard-hide armor, the three Nightsisters
reminded Zekk of hungry birds of prey.
Next to them, the grizzled TIE pilot, Qorl, stood at attention,
surrounded by a stormtrooper escort of his most promising Imperial
trainees. Beneath the white armor, one of the burliest of these was the
gangleader Norys, who had led the Lost Ones on Coruscant not long ago.
While the other stonntroopers stood rigidly at attention, weapons
shouldered, Norys fidgeted and seemed angry and uncomfortable with the
ceremony. His senses finely tuned
by his own anxiety, Zekk could pick up
the harsh muttering words from behind the bully's white helmet. "@ash
collector . . . gets all the breaks."
Moving quietly and unobtrusively, Qorl rested his powerful droid
replacement hand on the stormtrooper's shoulder armor in a gesture that
was firm and clearly meant to quiet the bully. Zekk knew Qorl's droid
arm was powerful enough to crack the white armor like an eggshell. Norys
fell silent, though he obviously remained upset.
Zekk didn't mind. This was his moment of glory, and he smiled faintly at
the thought of how much had changed in only a few months-and how now he
had arrived at the peak of his triumph.
For this presentation and initiation, Zekk had worn his new leather
uniform; heavy round studs decorated the reinforced pads on his
shoulders, creating a kind of armored hide. His hands were encased in
thick black gloves that made a warm, satisfying creak as he clenched and
unclenched his fists.
Brakiss's porcelain-perfect face mfled with pride. He held out a gift, a
flowing black cape lined with deep, vibrant crimson, like fresh dark
blood.
"Young Zekk, I present this to you as a symbol of your importance to the
Shadow Academy," Brakiss said. "You have proven to be an avid pupil, a
true asset to the Second Imperium. Our efforts would be greatly
disadvantaged had you not joined us in our struggle. In your duel to the
death with Vilas, our other powerful candidate, you proved yourself to