Alone, Lowbacca intended to harvest the glittering strands of the plant from the center of the flower--without springing the trap.
Traditionally, a few strong friends would hold the flower open while the young Wookiee scrambled to the treacherous center of the blossom, harvested the lustrous strands of sweetly scented fiber, and quickly made an escape. But even this assistance was no guarantee. Occasionally young Wookiees still lost limbs as the carnivorous plant clamped down on a slow-moving arm or leg.
Performing the task by himself, though, Lowie had needed to be extra careful. He had removed the knapsack from his hairy back and extracted its contents: a face mask, a sturdy rope, a thin cord, and a collapsible vibroblade. He'd placed the mask over his nose and mouth to filter out the syren's seductive scents. He knew that the pheromones could produce an almost overpowering desire to linger or to touch--and he could afford no mistakes.
Working quickly, enveloped by sinister night sounds, he had fashioned a short length of thin cord into a loose slipknot, then formed a loop to make a sort of seat for himself in the sturdy, longer rope. Passing the free end of the long rope over a branch directly above the syren plant, he'd gathered up the slack in one hand, slid off the limb, and lowered himself with muscular arms.
Lowie had positioned himself as close as he dared to the gently undulating petals of the hungry syren blossom, an arm's length from the tantalizing tuft. He'd gripped the end of the long rope in his strong jaws to hold himself in place and free his hands. Then, using the loop of thin cord to lasso the tuft of precious fibers, he'd pulled himself close enough to slice them loose with his vibroblade. With a triumphant growl he'd jerked his prize toward himself, trapped the bundle against his body with one hairy arm, and stuffed the fiber into his knapsack.
In his excitement, however, the rope had slipped from his teeth. The trailing end uncoiled, dangled precariously, and then brushed one glossy petal of the deadly flower below. With a surge of gut-wrenching terror, Lowbacca had grabbed the tied end of rope and hauled himself upward as the syren's jaws snapped shut. The petals just grazed one foot as they closed with an ominous slurp and a backwash of wind.
He had earned this fiber, Lowie thought, every strand of it, enough to make a special belt, which he always wore afterward.
Exhaustion sank its claws into every muscle as Lowbacca made his way from one Massassi tree to the next, hour after hour, all through the night.
Distance held no more meaning for him; he had to get to the Jedi academy. He could hear nothing but his own ragged breathing. His injured leg wobbled unsteadily at each step. Fatigue blurred his vision, and twigs and leaves matted his fur. He pushed forward, always forward, arm-leg, arm-leg, hand-foot, hand-foot--
Lowie looked around, confused and disoriented. He had reached for the next branch, but there were no more branches. Raising his head, he looked across the clearing--the landing clearing!--and saw the Great Temple, its majestic tiers outlined in the predawn darkness by flickering torches.
Lowbacca never remembered afterward climbing down out of the tree or crossing the clearing. He noticed only the awesome, welcoming sight of the ancient stone pyramid as he bellowed an alarm. He roared again and again, until a stream of robed figures carrying fresh torches rushed out of the temple and down the steps toward him.
The night and the desperate journey had taken their toll on Lowie. The numbness imposed by his own determination had worn off, and his knee refused to hold him any longer. His gangly legs gave way, and he collapsed to the ground, moaning his message.
When he rolled onto his back, a circle of concerned faces filled his vision. Tionne bent over him and brushed the tangle of matted fur away from his eyes.
"Lowbacca, we were concerned for you!" Tionne said gravely. "Are you hurt?"
Lowie groaned an answer, but Tionne didn't seem to understand. She leaned closer to him, her silvery hair glowing in the torch light.
"Were Jacen and Jaina with you? And Tenel Ka?" She paused as he tried to moan another answer. "Did something happen?" she persisted. "Can you tell me where they are?"
Lowbacca finally managed to say that the others were in the jungle and needed help. Tionne's brows knitted together in an expression of worry. She blinked her mother-of-pearl eyes. "I'm sorry, Lowbacca. I can't understand a word you're saying."
Lowie reached toward his belt to activate Em Teedee--but he found nothing. The translator droid was gone.
Chapter 13
Tenel Ka ran through the cool near-darkness of the jungle floor, trying to come up with a plan. She held her bent arms in front of her to protect her eyes and to push obstacles from her path. Branches whipped her face, tore at her hair, and clawed mercilessly at her bare arms and legs.
Her breath came in sharp gasps, not so much from the effort of running--to which she was well accustomed--but from the terror of what she had just experienced. She hoped she had made the right decision. Her pulse pounded in her ears, competing with the symphony of alien noises as the jungle creatures welcomed nightfall. Though she searched her mind, no Jedi calming techniques would come to her.
When the loud squawk of flying creatures sounded directly behind her, Tenel Ka glanced back in alarm. Before she could turn again, she fetched up sharply against the trunk of a Massassi tree. Stunned, she fell back a few paces and sank to the ground, putting one hand to the side of her face to examine her injury.
No blood, she thought as if from a great distance. Good. Beneath her fingertips, she felt tenderness and swelling from her cheek to her temple. There would be bruises, of course, and perhaps a royal headache. She cringed at the thought. Royal. Although no one could see it, her cheeks heated with a flush of humiliation.
Tenel Ka pulled herself to her feet and took stock of her situation. In her newfound calmness she admitted to herself that she was completely lost. Jacen and Jaina--and by now perhaps even Lowbacca--were counting on her to return with help. She had always prided herself on being strong, loyal, reliable, unswayed by emotion. She had been levelheaded enough during her initial escape, but then she had panicked. She shook off thoughts of her stupid headlong flight.
Well, she thought, pressing her pale lips together into a firm line, I am back in control now. She decided to push on until she found a safer place to spend the night. When morning came, she would try to get her bearings again and return to the Jedi academy.
As she trudged along, searching in the fading light of day, the ground began to rise and become more rocky. The trees grew sparser. When she saw a jagged shadow loom out of the darkness ahead of her, she slowed. Ahead was a large outcropping of rough, black stone, long-cooled lava mottled with lichens.
Tenel Ka tilted her head back and looked up, but she could not see how high the rock went; the jungle dimness swallowed it up. Cautiously exploring sideways, she encountered a break in the rock face, a patch of deeper darkness--a small cave. Perhaps she could spend the night here, in this defensible, sheltered place. The opening was no wider than the length of one arm and extended only to shoulder height, forcing her to stoop to explore further. She needed only to find a comfortable, safe place to rest.
She shivered as she hunched down on the sandy, cool floor of the cave. Her every muscle ached, but for now nothing could be done about her pain; she could bear it as well as any warrior. But she had not eaten since midday. She felt in the pouch at her waist, finding one carbo-protein biscuit remaining. As for the cold, she could light a fire with the finger-sized flash heater she carried in another pouch on her belt.
Dropping to her hands and knees, she scrabbled along the ground near the mouth of the cave, searching for twigs, leaves, any-thing that would burn. Back on Dathomir she'd had plenty of practice in rugged camping and outdoor endurance.
As she thought of the cozy warmth of a fire and a soft bed of leaves, Tenel Ka's spirits rose. The nightmarish events of the afternoon began to settle into perspective. This was an adventure, she assured herself. A test of her will and determination.
Tenel Ka thought longingly of the cheery warmth of a crackling fire, of drinking hot, spiced Hapan ale with her parents. A rare smile crossed her lips as she thought of them, Teneniel Djo and Prince Isolder. If she were at home, she would only have to lift a hand to bring a servant of the Royal House of Hapes running to do her bidding....
Tenel Ka grimaced. She had never known poverty or hardship, except by choice. Well, you chose this, Princess, she reminded her self savagely. You wanted to learn to do things for yourself.
Her father, Isolder of Hapes, had always said that the two years he spent in disguise working as a privateer had done more to prepare him for leadership than any training the royal tutors of Hapes could provide. And her mother, raised on the primitive planet of Dathomir, was proud that her only daughter spent months each year learning the ways of the Singing Mountain Clan and dressing as a warrior woman--a practice that Tenel Ka had enjoyed all the more because it annoyed her scheming Hapan grandmother.
Teneniel Djo had been even more pleased when her daughter had decided to attend the academy and take instruction to become a Jedi. She had enrolled simply as Tenel Ka of Dathomir, not wanting the other trainees to treat her differently because of her royal upbringing.
At the academy, only Master Skywalker--who was an old friend of her mother's, and the man Teneniel Djo most admired--knew Tenel Ka's true background. She had not even told Jacen and Jaina, her closest friends on Yavin 4.
Jacen and Jaina. The twins trusted her. They needed her help now. She shivered in the cave. She had to stay safe for the night and then get back to the academy in the morning to bring reinforcements.
Tenel Ka heard a faint rustling, slapping, and hissing in the darkness behind her. She looked back into the undulating shadows, blinking to clear her eyes. Had the shadows really moved? Perhaps she had been foolish to spend the night in an unexplored cave, but cold and fatigue had overruled her natural caution. She looked up and thought she could discern glossy dark shapes clinging to the ceiling, moving like waves on an inverted black sea.
Don't be a child, she chided herself. She had always tried to show her friends how self-sufficient and reliable she was. Right now, she was cold and bruised and miserable. What would Jacen say if he could see her? He'd probably tell some dumb joke.
Tenel Ka gritted her teeth. She would just have to build a fire without the flash heater, using skills she had been taught on Dathomir.
It took an agonizingly long time for her strong arms to produce enough friction twirling one smooth stick of wood against a flat branch. Finally, she managed to coax forth a glowing ember and a tendril of smoke. Working quickly, she touched a dried leaf to it and blew. A tiny golden flame licked its way up the leaf. With mounting excitement she added another and then another, and then a few twigs.
A gust of wind threatened to extinguish the struggling flame, so she encircled her fire with a tiny earthen berm to protect it. She added more tinder, and soon the snapping blaze was large enough to warm her and cast a comforting circle of light.
Tenel Ka soon realized that the restless sounds of scratching and stirring she had heard earlier had grown louder--much louder.
Suddenly, a shrieking reptilian form plummeted from the ceiling, its leathery wings outstretched. Twin serpentine heads snapped and a scorpion tail lashed, razor-sharp claws outstretched. Tenel Ka raised an arm to protect her face as the thing drove directly at her. Talons raked her arm as she pushed herself backward toward the cave wall. Sharp fangs opened a gash in her bare leg, and she kicked fiercely, striking one of the creature's two heads with her scaled boot. In the flickering light from the tiny fire, Tenel Ka watched in horror as an entire flock of the hideous creatures--each with a wingspan wider than she was tall--dropped from the shadowy recesses of the cave and swarmed toward her.
She struggled for purchase on the sandy cave floor and pushed her feet against the stone wall. Tenel Ka propelled herself toward the mouth of the cave on her hands and knees.
She kicked the embers of her fire at the flapping beasts as she scrambled past, hardly noticing the bits of charred wood leaf that singed her own legs. One of the reptilian creatures shrieked in pain.
Tenel Ka smiled with grim satisfaction and launched herself through the cave opening, back out into the pitch blackness of the jungle night.
The monsters followed.
Chapter 14
At gunpoint, the TIE pilot led his captives back to the clearing with the small, crude shelter where he had lived for some time.
"So this is why you came running," Jaina said to her brother. "You found where he lives." Jacen nodded.
"Silence!" the Imperial soldier said in a brusque voice.
Jaina, her throat tight and dry, swallowed hard and looked around at the small, cleared site in the gathering evening shadows. Beside them a shallow stream trickled past. She couldn't imagine how the TIE pilot had survived all alone, without any human contact, for so many years.
The climate of Yavin 4 was warm and hospitable, placing few demands on the home the TIE pilot had created for himself. He had carved out a large shelter from the bole of a half-burned Massassi tree, in front of which he had lashed a lean-to of split branches. Altogether, it provided him with a simple but comfortable room, like a living cave. Jaina tried to imagine how long it had taken the Imperial, scraping with a sharp implement--possibly a piece of wreckage from his crashed ship--to widen the area under the gnarled overhang.
The TIE pilot had rigged a system of plumbing made from hollow reeds joined together, drawing water from the nearby stream into catch basins inside his hut. He had made rough utensils from wood, forest gourds, and petrified fungus slabs. The man had maintained a lonely existence, unchallenged, simply surviving and waiting for further orders, hoping someone would come to retrieve him--but no one ever had.
The Imperial soldier stopped outside the hut. "On the ground," he said. "Both of you. Hands above your heads."
Jaina looked at Jacen as they lay belly-down on the ground of the clearing. She could think of no way to escape. The TIE pilot went to the thick foliage and rummaged among the branches with his good hand. He wrapped his fingers around some thin, purplish vines that dangled from dazzlingly bright Nebula orchids in the branches above his head. With a jerk he snapped the strands free.
The vine tendrils flopped and writhed in his grip as if they were alive and trying to squirm away. The TIE pilot rapidly used them to lash Jaina's wrists together, then Jacen's. As the deep violet sap leaked from the broken ends of the vines, the plant's thrashing slowed, and the flexible, rubbery vines contracted, tightening into knots that were impossible to break.
Jacen and Jaina looked at each other, their liquid-brown eyes meeting as a host of thoughts gleamed unspoken between them. But they said nothing, afraid to anger their captor.
Marching clumsily through the humid jungle had made them hot and sticky, and Jaina was still covered with grime from her repairs on the TIE fighters engines. Now the cool jungle evening chilled her perspiration and made her shiver. Her hands tingled and throbbed, as the tight vines cutting into her wrists made her even more miserable.
In the hour or so since their capture, neither of the twins had heard any further sign of Lowie or Tenel Ka. Jaina was afraid that something had happened to them, that her two friends were even now stranded and lost somewhere in the jungle. But then she realized that her own situation was probably a lot more dangerous than theirs.
Without a word, the TIE pilot nudged them to their feet, then over to the large lava-rock boulders near the fire pit he used outside his shelter. They squatted there together, The stone chairs had been polished smooth, their sharp edges chipped away sl
owly and patiently over the course of years by the lost Imperial.
The last coppery rays of light from huge orange planet Yavin disappeared, as the rapidly rotating moon covered the jungle with night. Through the densely laced treetops, thick shadows gathered, making the forest floor darker than the deepest night on Jacen and Jaina's glittering home planet of Coruscant.
The Imperial pilot walked over to the splintered chunks of dry, moss-covered wood he had painstakingly gathered, one-armed, and stacked near his shelter. He carried them back and dropped one branch at a time into the fire pit, stacking the wood in formation to make a small campfire.
The pilot withdrew a battered igniter from a storage bin inside his shelter and pointed it at the campfire. Its charge had been nearly depleted, and the silvery nozzle showered only a few hot sparks onto the kindling; but he seemed accustomed to such difficulties. He toiled in silence, never cursing, never complaining, simply focused on the task of getting the campfire lit. And when he succeeded, he showed no satisfaction, no joy.
With the fire finally blazing, the TIE pilot ducked back inside his hut, rummaged in a vine-woven basket, and returned with a large spherical fruit. The fruit was encased in an ugly, warty brown rind. Jama did not recognize it. It was nothing they ate at the Jedi academy.
Holding it in his injured, gauntleted hand, the pilot used a sharpened stone to split open the rind, then peeled the fruit with his fingers. The flesh inside was pale yellowish-green, speckled with scarlet. He broke the fruit into sections, shuffled over to the two captives, and pushed one of the fruit sections in Jaina's face. "Eat."
She clamped her lips together for a moment, afraid that the Imperial soldier might be trying to poison her. Then she realized that the TIE pilot could have killed either of them at any time--and that she was extremely hungry and thirsty.
Star Wars - [Young Jedi Knights 1] - Heirs Of The Force Page 9