Winter held the new baby, Anakin, smiling at something out of view. Leia
smiled back, though the static images couldn't see her.
Part of that long loneliness would soon be over.
Jacen and Jaina could now use some of the Jedi powers to protect themselves,
and Leia could shield the twins as well. Within little more than a week--no,
it was exactly eight days--her little boy and girl would be returning home.
Knowing that the twins were coming to stay lightened her mood. Leia eased
back into the self-conforming chair as she turned on the entertainment
synthesizers, playing a pastorale melody written by a famous composer from
Alderaan.
The door chime sounded, startling her from her reverie. She glanced down to
make certain she had remembered to dress herself, then went to the entryway.
Her brother Luke stood in the shadows, cowled in his brown hood and cloak.
"Hello, Luke!" she said, then gasped. "Oh, I forgot completely!"
"Developing your Jedi powers is nothing to take lightly, Leia." He frowned,
as if scolding her.
She gestured him to come inside. "I'm sure you'll have me make it up with
extra practice sessions."
When seen from a distance, the huge construction droid moved at a plodding
pace, lifting its immense support pods only once every half hour to shuffle
a step forward. But standing right beneath it, General Wedge Antilles and
his demolition teams saw the construction droid as a blur of motion, its
thousands of articulated arms working on structures to be disassembled. The
walking factory plowed deeper into the morass of collapsing and
half-destroyed buildings in an old sector of Imperial City.
Some of the droid's limbs ended with implosion wrecking balls or plasma
cutters that sent explosive jolts into the walls. Collector arms sorted
through the rubble, yanking out girders, shoveling boulders and steelcrete
into dispensing receptacles. Other raw wreckage was scooped directly into
the churning mandibles and conveyor belts that brought the resources down to
elemental separators, which in turn pulled out the useful substances and
processed them into new building components. The heat rising from its
internal factories rippled in mirage-like waves, making the immense machine
glow in Coruscant's star-filled night.
The construction droid continued to work its way through the buildings
damaged from the devastating firefights during the recent civil warfare.
With so much to repair or destroy, sometimes the droid's collector arms and
debris nets were not sufficient.
Wedge Antilles looked up just in time to see a packed receptacle split from
its moorings. "Hey, keep back, everybody! Under cover!"
The demolition team scrambled under the protection of an outcropping of wall
as the debris fell twenty stories. A rain of boulders, transparisteel, and
twisted rebars crashed with explosive force into the street below. Someone
yelped into the comlink, then promptly silenced himself.
"Looks like this main building is going to go any minute," Wedge said. "Team
Orange, I want you to keep at least half a block away from that thing.
There's no telling what that droid's going to do, and I don't want to shut
it down. It takes three days to reinitialize and get it working again."
Wedge had not been thrilled with using the outdated and unpredictable
technology of the construction droids, but they did seem to be the fastest
way to clear the wreckage.
"I copy, Wedge," the Orange Team Leader said, "But if we see any more of
those feral refugees, we're going to have to try and rescue them--even if
they are faster and hide better." Then the comlink channel broke into
chatter as he ordered other team members to move.
Wedge smiled. Even though he, like Lando Calrissian and Han Solo, had been
promoted to the rank of general, Wedge still felt like "one of the guys." He
was a fighter pilot at heart, and he liked it that way. He had spent the
last four months in space with the salvage crews there, hauling wrecked
fighters into higher orbits where they would pose no risk to the incoming
ships. He had salvaged the vessels not too badly damaged and self-destructed
those that posed too great a hazard in the orbital traffic lanes.
Last month Wedge had requested a ground assignment for a change, though he
loved to fly in space. Now he was in charge of almost two hundred people,
supervising the four construction droids that churned through this section
of the city, restoring it and erasing battle scars from the war against the
Empire.
The construction droids each had a master plan deep in their computer cores.
As they repaired Imperial City in swaths, the droids checked the buildings
in front of them, fixing those that needed minor repairs, demolishing those
that didn't fit into the new plan.
Most of the sentient life forms had been evacuated from the deep underworld
of the ancient metropolis, although some creatures living in the darkest
alleys could no longer be classified as fully human. Shabby and naked, with
pallid skin and sunken eyes, they were the descendants of those who had long
ago fled to Coruscant's darkest alleys to escape political retribution; some
looked as though they had not seen the sun their entire lives. When the New
Republic returned to Coruscant, an effort spearheaded by the old veteran of
Yavin 4, General Jan Dodonna, had been to help these poor souls, but they
were wild and smart, and eluded capture every time.
The streets--or what had been streets centuries ago--were covered with dank
moss and a lush growth of fungus. The smells of decaying garbage and
stagnant water swirled around them anytime Wedge's team moved. Microclimates
of rising air and condensing moisture created tiny rainstorms in the alleys,
but the dripping water smelled no fresher than the standing pools or
gutters. Wedge's teams deployed floating repulsor-lights, but clouds of
settling dust from the demolition work filled the air with thick murk.
The construction droid paused in its work for a moment, and the relative
silence sounded like a thud in Wedge's ears. He looked up to see the droid
extending two of its big wrecking-ball arms. It swung the balls with mammoth
force, toppling the wall in front of it. Then the droid levered its
support-pod legs forward to take a step into the collapsing building.
But the side of the wall did not slough inward quite as Wedge expected;
something inside had been reinforced more than the rest of the building. The
construction droid tried to step down, but the wall would not yield.
The titanic droid began making loud, hydraulic sounds as it attempted to
regain its balance. The forty-story-tall mechanical factory tilted sideways
and hung poised on the verge of toppling. Wedge jerked out his comlink. If
the construction droid fell, it would take out half a block of buildings
with it, including the area where he had just sent Team Orange to take
refuge.
But then a dozen of its arms locked together and extended to the adjacent
wall of buildings, splaying out, breaking through in places, but steadying
the droi
d's weight just long enough for it to regain its balance. A rustling
noise came over the comlink as Wedge's teams let out a collective sigh of
relief.
Wedge tried to see by the light of the shimmering aurora overhead and the
floating lights they had strung. Hidden behind an edifice indistinguishable
from the rest of the buildings stood solid metal walls, heavily reinforced
but buckled and ruptured by the enormous foot of the construction droid.
Wedge frowned. The demolition teams had encountered a lot of ancient
artifacts in the ruined buildings, but nothing that had been so powerfully
shielded and hidden. Something told him this was important.
He looked up with a start to see that the construction droid had reoriented
itself and returned to the reinforced building that stood in its way.
Bending down its scanner-dome head, the droid inspected the tough walls of
the shielded room, as if analyzing how best to rip it to shreds. Two of the
explosive electrical claws extended downward.
The construction droid knew nothing about what secrets these buildings might
contain. The droid merely followed the blueprint in its computer mind and
carried out its programmed modifications.
Wedge felt an agonized moment of indecision. If he shut the droid down to
inspect the mysterious building, it would take three days to reset all the
systems and power it up again. But if the droid had indeed uncovered
something important, something the Cabinet should know about, what would a
few days matter?
Blue-white lightning flickered on the ends of the construction droid's
explosive claws as it reached toward the shielded walls.
Wedge picked up his comlink and made ready to shut down the droid--and then
his mind blanked. What was the code?
Beside him Lieutenant Deegan saw his moment of panicked confusion and
snapped the answer. "SGW zero-zero-two-seven!" Wedge instantly keyed it into
the comlink.
The droid froze just as it was about to discharge its electrical claws.
Wedge heard the hissing rumble as the factories inside went into standby
mode, powering down and cooling off. Wedge hoped he had made the right
decision. "Okay, Purple and Silver Teams come on in with me. We're going to
do a little exploring here."
Summoning a cluster of floating lights to follow them, the teams converged
at the foot of the construction droid and then moved into the wreckage.
Loose dust flickered down.
They scrambled over the rubble, careful not to cut themselves on shattered
transparisteel and protruding metal. Wedge heard the skittering sounds of
small life-forms hiding in the new cracks. The patter of falling stones
continued to fall as the collapsing walls shifted and re-shifted. "Watch
your backs--this place is still falling apart," Wedge said.
Ahead a wide cave-like gash had opened in the heavily shielded room, showing
only a lightless interior. "Let's go in. Nice and easy." Wedge narrowed his
eyes at the shadows around them. "Be ready to retreat at a moment's notice.
We don't know what's in there."
A deafening screech sounded far above, reverberating in the night. The
demolition teams jumped, then forced themselves to relax when they found it
was only the cooling construction droid venting waste heat. Wedge stepped to
the edge of the darkened hole. The buckled crack in the wall was completely
dark, showing nothing.
The moment he poked his head into the darkness, the monster lunged forward,
all fangs and spewing saliva.
Wedge cried out and stumbled back, bouncing against the jagged edge of the
opening as the locomotive of claws and fur and armored body plating charged
at him. Before he could straighten his thoughts--before he could even
imagine shouting an order to his troops--a spiderweb of crisscrossed blaster
fire erupted into the night. Most of the beams struck home with a smoking
hiss into the creature's body. A second round of blaster fire lanced out.
The monster roared in explosive surprise and pain before collapsing with
enough force to start a small avalanche in the debris. Its death sigh
sounded like steam escaping from a furnace.
Wedge slumped to the ground and suddenly felt his heart begin beating again.
"Thanks, guys!"
The rest of them stood, frozen in surprise and terror, gawking at their own
reflexively drawn blasters and at the heaving, dying hulk of the monster
that had dwelled within the shielded building.
The thing looked like a huge armored rat with spines along its back and
tusks coming out of its mouth. It had the tail of a krayt dragon, flicking
in its final convulsions as black-purple blood oozed around burned craters
of blaster wounds in its hide. "Guess it got hungry waiting in there," Wedge
He sent the bobbing lights through the opening to illuminate the chamber
ahead. Nothing else seemed to be moving inside. Behind them the giant
armored rat shuddered with a last groaning sigh, then sagged.
In pairs they pushed through the opening into the isolated chamber. The
metal-plated floor was strewn with cracked bones and skulls from the
sub-humans that lived in the city's lower levels.
"I guess it found something to eat after all," Wedge said.
On the far side of the dark room, they found another tunnel from deeper
underground where a grate had been peeled aside. The grate was rusted, but
bright score marks from large claws showed where the rat-thing had torn its
way through.
"Not it--a she," Lieutenant Deegan said. "And now you can see why she was so
upset." He pointed to the corner where the worst damage had occurred.
Broken blocks of building material lay piled on the rat-thing's nest. Bright
smears of blood showed where three of the creature's young--each one the
size of an Endorian pony--had been crushed by the boulders.
Wedge stared for a moment before he looked around the rest of the gloomy
room. Adjusting the light-enhancers on his visor, he could see dark gadgets,
consoles, bed-platforms with manacles and chains. Parked and dormant on two
stands were glossy black Imperial interrogation droids; secret computer
ports stared gray and dead like amphibious eyes.
"Some sort of torture center?" Lieutenant Deegan asked.
"Looks like it," Wedge answered. "Interrogation. This could yield a lot of
information the Emperor didn't want us to have."
"Good thing you shut down the construction droid, Wedge," Deegan said. "It's
worth the delay."
Wedge pursed his lips. "Yeah, good thing."
He looked at the cruel interrogation droids and the torture equipment. A
part of him wished he had never found this place.
The sculpture on Leia's crystal table jittered forward, stopped, then rose
into the air. The figure was a fat man with spread palms and a grin wide
enough to swallow an X-wing fighter.
The dealer had assured Leia that it was a genuine Corellian sculpture, that
it would make Han think fond memories of his own world just as Han's images
of Alderaan did for her. Upon receiving the anniversary gi
ft, Han had
thanked her profusely, but could barely control his laughter. He finally
explained that the statue was a trademarked figurine stolen from a chain of
cheap Corellian eating establishments. ...
"Keep concentrating, Leia," Luke whispered into the silence, leaning closer.
He watched her intently. Her eyes were focused in the far distance, not
seeing the sculpture at all. The statue continued to levitate, rising higher
off the table; then suddenly it bumped forward to topple onto the floor.
Leia heaved a sigh and slumped back in the self-conforming chair. Luke tried
to cover his disappointment as he remembered his own training. Yoda had made
him stand on his head while balancing rocks and other heavy objects. Luke
had received other training from the twisted Joruus C'baoth, and he had
learned the depths of the dark side from the resurrected Emperor himself.
His sister's training had been much less rigorous, and more haphazard as she
continually rescheduled lessons to accommodate her increasing diplomatic
duties. But Leia concerned him: he had been working with her for more than
seven years now, and she seemed to be blocked, having reached the limit of
the powers she could master. Given her heritage as the daughter of Anakin
Skywalker, Leia should have been easy to train. Luke wondered how he would
manage to instruct a large group of students at his proposed Jedi academy if
he could not succeed with his own sister.
Leia stood and picked up the fallen statue from the floor, setting it back