him
as focal points for the dark forces he played with.
"The Brotherhood of the Sith could have ruled the galaxy, could have
squashed the doddering Republic and turned the other Jedi Knights into mere
parlor magicians--but I was betrayed." The shadow of Exar Kun drifted about
the floor of the temple, making no sound as he moved. He hovered over the
sleeping and helpless form of Dorsk 81.
"When the Jedi combined their might and came here to this moon to fight
me, they unleashed such power that I had to drain dry every last one of the
Massassi just to trap my spirit within these temples--to survive so that one
day I could come back."
Kun's coal-black arms reached down, as if to strangle Dorsk 81. The
smooth-skinned clone stirred uneasily in his spellbound sleep, but he made
no
move to defend himself.
With a thrill of fear and reluctance, Kyp called out, "Exar Kun! I'm the
one you're trying to teach. Don't waste your time with him."
He was enthralled by the new wonders Kun had shown him, but Kyp was savvy
enough to know when he was being manipulated. Exar Kun thought he was
playing
Kyp like a mesmerized convert. But Kyp was skeptical--Han Solo had taught
him
that much. He could play his own part, however, to get what he so
desperately
wanted.
As Exar Kun turned back to face him, leaving Dorsk 81 unharmed, Kyp
spread wide his arms in complete acceptance of his new instructor. "Teach me
more about the ancient Sith ways."
Kyp swallowed, then made his voice strong, because this was what he
really wanted. "Tell me how to use these new powers so I can crush the
Empire
once and for all."
On Coruscant, Chewbacca and Threepio took the twins through the sculpted
duracrete columns at the entrance to the Holographic Zoo of Extinct Animals.
At home the pestering children had rapidly worn down even Threepio's
patience programming and had driven Chewbacca into a roaring frenzy. Getting
Jacen and Jaina outside seemed like a good idea for all concerned. The
foursome took transit tubes across the upper skyscrapers in old Imperial
City
to reach the rooftop levels of the Holographic Zoo.
At the Zoo's gaudy archway Chewbacca let his furry arms dangle behind
him; his huge paws engulfed the tiny hands of the children. Chewbacca took
two
sprawling strides forward, then waited for the twins to catch up before he
took two more steps and waited again. Threepio scuttled ahead as if he were
in
charge. He had just undergone a deep oil bath so that his gold alloy plating
gleamed in the artificial lights.
They stepped under the grandiose arches. Threepio went to the cashier
kiosk, punching in Han and Leia's credit code. Chewbacca, impatient with
Jacen's and Jaina's short legs, scooped up the twins, one in each arm, and
strode forward.
They endured a dull preshow in an empty waiting room filled with chairs,
cages, and sockets to accommodate the bodies of all alien visitors, until
the
far doors automatically clicked open. Chewbacca, still carrying the twins,
marched down a sloped tunnel to the lower levels. Threepio hurried after,
trying to lead the way, but he could not get past the bulky Wookiee.
Arcing, glowing lights shot overhead, inept simulations of stars and
comets and planets. As they passed motion sensors, booming godlike voices
echoed in stereo from microspeakers in the walls.
"Journey down the corridors of time! Travel the lanes of space! You will
experience forgotten wonders from a long time ago and far, far away. You
will
see extinct creatures lost from our galaxy but recreated here--and now!"
The walls around them darkened. Streaks of light shot out, funneling down
in a crude animation of starlines for a fake journey into hyperspace. The
floor beneath their feet rumbled and vibrated in the simulation. The
children
were startled, but Chewbacca groaned at the corniness of it. The illusion
ended, and the recorded voice spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. "We have
arrived... at a universe of possibilities!"
They stood before a choice of several doorways.
"This way children, this way," Threepio said, stepping forward. He had
already scanned the data brochures about the exhibits, and after correlating
them with the twins' interests, decided exactly which dioramas he would show
them first. "Let us go see the mammoth krabbex of Calamari."
As they stepped through the portal, holograms flared, surrounding them
with a turbulent oceanscape, a jagged reef thrusting out from white foamy
waters. Standing in a swirl of green-and-purple seaweed battered by the
rushing waves stood a segmented crustacean, a ten-legged krabbex with dual
mandibles in its mouth, twin rows of spines down its back, and eighteen
glossy
black eyes, four of which were on its front grasping claws. The krabbex
reared
up and let out a bellow like a wampa ice creature set on fire.
The twins watched as three green-skinned mermen thrashed out of the
foaming waves, cocking jagged spears made of pale bone. The mermen hauled
themselves onto the reef and attacked.
The spears pierced the exoskeleton of the krabbex, and the monster
clipped at them with its pincers. It swung to the left and grabbed one of
the
mermen, slicing into his smooth green flesh and dragging him out of the
water,
where his fused finned legs thrashed like the tail of a fish.
"Let's go," Jaina said.
"Next one," Jacen said.
"But, children, I haven't told you the biological background of these
creatures yet," Threepio said.
"Go now," Jaina insisted.
They walked right through the surrounding illusion to the far wall, where
several more openings presented themselves. Chewbacca urged the children
through the left-hand door.
"Oh, not that one, Chewbacca," Threepio said. "I'm not certain--was
But they had already entered the second chamber to be surrounded by the
illusion of a desert planet. Waves of invisible heat rippled from a scabbed,
dried clay surface. A strange creature scuttled atop a rocky outcropping
with
a bloodcurdling roar. It had a squarish humanoid head and a massive feline
body, huge curved claws, and a segmented tail that thrashed back and forth,
capped with a wicked-looking scorpion stinger. As it opened its mouth to
bellow again, cracked yellow fangs dripped with venom.
"A manticore?" Threepio said in disbelief. "Well, really! I'm astonished
they haven't updated their display yet. That creature was proved to be a
jumble of mismatched fossils long ago. Manticores never existed."
Directly behind them in the hologram another mantico re echoed the
bellowing challenge and climbed over the baked rocks. The twins tugged on
Chewbacca's furry arms and headed through the nonexistent creatures toward
the
next set of openings.
"Let me choose this time, children," Threepio said.
Chewbacca groaned. The twins didn't seem to care.
"Go home," Jacen said.
Jaina nodded in agreement. "I want to go home."
"But, children," Threepio said, "I'm sure you'll enjoy this next one. Let
me tell you all about the mournful singing fig trees of Pil Diller...."
After three more dioramas and three more of Threepio's boring lectures,
the twins decided that they would much rather play hide-and-seek than
continue
the tedious expedition through the Holographic Zoo.
While they couldn't communicate telepathically with each other word for
word, they did know in a clear but general way what the other was thinking.
When Jacen broke away from Chewbacca to run through the glacier eyries of
the
Snow Falcons, he headed to the left. At the same time, Jaina sprinted in the
opposite direction, brushing past a startled Threepio. The twins used their
fledgling talent with the Force to guide them into one of the other openings
that led to an exit corridor.
Chewbacca bellowed; Threepio called after the children, but Jacen and
Jaina met up outside the dioramas, pleased with their escape and giggling.
They trotted down the white-tiled corridor as fast as they could go, past
icons for refreshments, rest-and-recharge rooms, repair facilities.
At an intersection of corridors, an old maintenance droid worked in an
open turbolift. Jacen and Jaina had seen turbolifts before. That was how
they
got back home once they reached the Imperial Palace.
The maintenance droid was gunmetal-gray with two heads and numerous
mechanical arms, each studded with a handful of attachments. The droid's two
heads faced each other. One head bore a set of bright optical sensors, while
the other face was a blank screen that displayed data, statistics, and
official Imperial Building Code specs.
Muttering to itself in binary, the droid searched its back compartment
for a particular tool, found it missing from its bin, then puttered down the
corridor. It left the turbolift wide open with only a small dangling sign
saying Out of Service.
The children ran for the turbolift and ducked inside. They had watched
their parents and Threepio use the controls many times.
The panel looked different from the one in the Imperial Palace much less
ornate, discolored with age and rough use, with a wall of buttons marking
hundreds of different floors in the kilometer-high metropolis. Since the
lower
levels of the city had been abandoned and buried long ago, a thick metal
plate
had been welded onto the bottom half of the panel, sealing off the first 150
floors. But the maintenance droid had removed the barrier plate to check the
turbolift circuits.
The children barely knew their numbers, though Threepio had been trying
to get them to recognize the primary numerals. The lessons frequently
frustrated the protocol droid, but the twins were bright. They had picked up
more than Threepio had realized.
The rows of buttons looked like shiny colorful circles to Jacen and
Jaina. They stared at them, not knowing which to push, but they did
recognize
some of the numbers.
Jaina spotted it first. "Number one," she said.
Jacen pushed the button. "Number one," he repeated.
The turbolift door closed, and the floor fell away as the elevator shot
downward, humming as it accelerated. Jacen and Jaina looked at each other in
momentary terror; then they giggled. The turbolift descent went and on,
until
finally the platform came to a stop. The door whisked open.
Jacen and Jaina stood blinking. They stepped out into the shadowy bottom
levels of the forbidden metropolitan wilderness. Around them they heard
large
startled creatures clattering through the fallen debris.
"It's dark," Jacen said.
Behind the twins the turbolift door slid shut as the elevator reset
itself and returned to the upper floors, leaving Jacen and Jaina alone.
Chewbacca blasted through the exhibits like a land-speeder out of
control. He howled and called out for the two lost children. Threepio
scurried
behind him, trying to keep up.
"I can't see anything through these holograms," Threepio said. Chewbacca
sniffed for the twins. He charged through another opening.
All the shouting and chaos finally brought one of the Bothan zoo
attendants. The Bothan fluffed up his white fur and flailed his arms as he
tried to get Chewbacca to calm down. "Shhhh! You are disturbing our other
patrons. This is a quiet place for enjoyment and education."
Chewbacca roared at him. The Bothan, much smaller, stood on his pointed
toes, trying to draw himself up in a laughably ineffective attempt at
meeting
Chewbacca's eyes. "We never should have let Wookiees into the Holographic
Zoo.
"
Chewbacca grabbed the Bothan by the white chest hairs and hefted him off
the ground. He let loose a string of growls, grunts, and howls.
Threepio rushed up to them. "Excuse me, if I might be allowed to
translate," the droid said, "my friend Chewbacca and I are currently
searching
for two small children who appear to be lost. Their names are Jacen and
Jaina.
They are two-and-a-half years old."
Chewbacca roared again.
"Yes, yes, I was just getting to that. This is really something of an
emergency. The children just ran off from us, and any assistance you could
offer--was
Chewbacca used both hands to shake the Bothan attendant like a rag doll.
his-comwd be most appreciated," Threepio finished.
But the Bothan had fainted.
Jacen and Jaina hiked through a forest of fallen girders, orange and
yellow toadstools, and lumpy fungus growing in ancient garbage. Unseen feet
skittered across fallen beams and webwork structures overhead.
The massive foundations of the buildings looked indestructible, overgrown
with thick moss. Things moved in the shadows, but nothing came clear, even
as
the childrens' eyes adjusted to the shadowy light. Drips of warm,
bad-tasting
water fell around them in a slow arrhythmic rain.
Jacen looked up, and the enormous buildings seemed to rise forever and
ever. He could glimpse only a blurred slice of what might have been the sky.
"I want to go home," Jaina said.
The wreckage of abandoned equipment lay in piles, rusted and corroded.
The twins scrambled over crashed vehicles, the hulks of discarded
battleships
and fighting machines, deep debris left from the previous year's civil
warfare.
Jacen and Jaina came upon a half-collapsed wall that had once contained a
computer screen. The terminal lay tilted on its side with the screen smashed
inward, leaving broken teeth of transparisteel. But the twins recognized it
as
a data unit similar to the ones inside their own quarters.
Jacen stood in front of the broken panel and put his small hands on his
hips, trying to look like his father. He addressed the computer screen--and<
br />
he
knew exactly what to say, after having heard the bedtime story many times
before. "We are lost," he said. "Please help us find our home."
He waited and waited but received no response. No lights illuminated the
panels. He heard no answer from the torn speaker unit, where glistening
black
beetles had made a nest.
Jacen sighed. Jaina took his hand, and the two turned around as they
heard a slithering sound down the cramped alleyway.
A formless gray-green creature paused behind them, a granite slug with
two eyes protruding on gelatinous stalks as if assessing the two children.
As
it moved, it scoured green sludge off the cracked duracrete alleyway,
trailing
thick translucent slime.
The granite slug slithered toward them, and the twins backed away. From
the bottom of the slug's underbelly, a jagged crack opened up, a quivering
lipless mouth that sucked in a long hollow whistle of air.
Jaina stepped up to it. It was her turn this time.
"We are lost," she said. "Please help us find our home."
The granite slug reared until it towered over the little girl. She
blinked up at it. Jacen stood by her side.
Then the granite slug seemed to deflate again, hooked its body into a
broken passage to the right, and landed on the stones with a wet slapping
sound.
A rustle of wind suddenly kicked up, and the granite slug churned down
the side alley in alarm. Jacen looked up just in time to see the sharp
mantalike wings of a hawk-bat that swooped down from high above, metallic
talons outstretched.
The granite slug attempted to burrow into the rusted debris, but the
hawk-bat landed on top of the wreckage, ripping and tearing at the fallen
hunks of metal with its claws. Its triangular beak bobbed up and down like a
piston until it had exposed the granite slug and slashed at the slimy
creature. The hawk-bat flapped its broad wings again, heading toward the sky
with its squirming, dripping prey.
Jacen and Jaina looked up at the creature, then at each other. The two
began trudging through the dark underworld of Coruscant again.
Jaina said, "And he walked, and he walked..."
"We must sound the alarm immediately, Chewbacca!" Threepio said. But the
Wookiee seemed reluctant to admit they had lost the two small children.
They left the unconscious Bothan attendant in one of the holographic
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