"Everybody okay?" Han said.
Chewbacca grunted. "So far," Kyp said.
Han turned to look as Skynxnex zoomed safely through the tiny avalanche he
had caused. Falling rocks and debris pelted the next car, though, making it
spin out of control. The car struck the rough tunnel wall in a shower of
sparks, then exploded, spewing shards of metal everywhere.
"One down," Kyp said.
Echoing sounds came from the open tunnel mouth ahead. Through the infrared
goggles Han could see other spots of warmth, a caravan. They shot past the
side tunnel just as another train of floating mine cars emerged.
"They've got reinforcements!" Han said in dismay. But then he saw the cars
were all linked together--another mining party on its way back to the muster
room at the end of a shift.
Skynxnex and the other guard plowed right into them. Their accelerating cars
rode up and over, knocking three hapless workers out of their seats and
leaving them blind and lost in the tunnel. The driver of the work train
slewed out of the way, ramming into the rocky wall of the tunnel.
Skynxnex spun in the air but somehow kept his seat. The second guard fared
even better, pulling up beside Skynxnex as they zoomed away from the site of
the wreck and the shouting work crew.
Han had no idea where they were going, but they were getting farther and
farther away from anyplace good. With Skynxnex and his double-blaster behind
them, they had no choice but to keep fleeing deeper into the tunnels.
Ahead in the inky blackness a sudden clump of pearlescent glitters sprang
out of a bare rock wall, wavering in the air. Then the luminescence started
traveling down the tunnel away from them, as if trying to outrun the
approaching cars.
"Another bogey!" Kyp cried.
Their floating car followed the bogey, closing the gap. But as they neared,
the swirling glowing thing accelerated, as if taunting them by flying ahead,
whipping around curves just in front of them. By the faint glow Han could
actually see the winding curves of rock.
Skynxnex and the other pursuer zoomed along in their wake.
"Uh-oh," Kyp said. "I think I just figured out what course we're on. All
this feels very familiar."
"What?" Han said. "How can you tell?"
"The most recent set of destination coordinates in this navigation computer
was programmed by Boss Roke. We're going back down to where that monster
was!"
The glowing bogey roiled ahead of them, dipping up and down but refusing to
pop back into the spice-covered walls. As it rushed along, the bogey's
bodily illumination activated threadlike veins of glitterstim, leaving a
patchwork of blue sparks in their wake.
In a long, straight stretch of tunnel Skynxnex fired his double-blaster
again.
As if he could sense the blast coming, Kyp rocked the car to one side as the
intense pulsed bolt shot down the tube, passed through the bogey without
harming it, and struck a distant wall. The impact blew open a huge aperture
into another grotto.
Seeing an escape, the bogey ducked through the new opening.
"Put it on manual," Kyp said. "Let me fly it." By now their eyes had grown
accustomed to the bogey's glow, and they could actually see where they were
going.
"I don't want a free return trip to where that monster is waiting." Han
relinquished the controls. Without a moment's pause Kyp launched the car
into the wide-open section of wall that led to an unknown maze.
"This is the same series of tunnels," Kyp said.
As they plunged into the new grotto, something long and fibrous stung Han's
face like a sharp wire whipping past him.
The bogey shot into the vast chamber, flying across the darkness to the far
wall. Upon striking the rock face, though, it did not melt through and
vanish as the first bogey had done days earlier. Instead, the glowing ball
stuck on the rough rock surface. It glittered and spangled and pulsed, as if
struggling.
Another whip-like strand struck Han's face as they flew through the air.
Around the bogey in the glow, wide veins of spice fizzled blue as the
illumination activated them. The light crackled and spread outward in a
network, geometrical criss-crossings along the wall. All of the spice in the
chamber began to race around in long lines as the light increased in a chain
reaction. The pattern looked familiar.
"Like a web!" Han said.
The bogey struggled frantically as the spice around it grew brighter and
brighten. Han saw long fibers of free-hanging glitterstim draped through the
open air of the grotto. From behind them Skynxnex fired again in a long
continuous blast that missed them in the wide space. The powerful pulsed
beam struck the far ceiling of the chamber, making it erupt with hot broken
stone that poured down from the roof of the tunnel. The images in Han's
infrared goggles were blindingly bright.
The bogey stretched and struggled as parts of the spice web tore away in the
avalanche, yanking portions of the glow with it.
Then Han saw the monstrous creature rise up from its lair on the grotto
floor--a huge spider made of blown glass, all sharp edges, with a hundred
legs and a thousand eyes. The bristling legs moved in a blur as it clambered
up the debris toward the glowing bogey struggling in the spice web.
Han wrenched the floating car around, ready to plow his way out and away
from the monster that had almost captured him in the tunnels--even if he had
to fly right down Skynxnex's throat.
On the rocks below, tossed aside like wadded sheets of used paper, lay the
crumbled forms of Boss Roke, Clorr, and the guard, frozen solid and drained
of every drop of their bodily energy.
The creature must lay down deposits of spice as its web to capture bogeys,
Han thought, or any other warm creature it can find down in these tunnels.
That was why light activated the glitterstim spice--to trigger the bogeys'
capture in the trap.
Skynxnex and the pursuing guard roared into the grotto. The scarecrow fired
again, paying little attention to where he was going. His blast ricocheted
off the wall, activating more spice.
The spider-thing glowed a dull blue with electric arcs crawling up and down
its needlelike limbs, as if the creature itself were made out of activated
spice. Attracted to the approaching heat source, it reared up.
Skynxnex did not see it until he had driven his floating mine car nearly
into the grappling-hook claws. In the last instant Skynxnex pointed his hot
double-blaster down and fired at the voracious creature--but the energy
spider absorbed the blaster's power and snatched out with a dozen limbs.
Skynxnex tried to leap out of the doomed car, but the spider thing speared
him with a sharp leg, raising his scarecrow body higher. With the last of
his strength, Skynxnex flailed his arms as his body grew cold.
The multi-legged creature began to feed.
The pursuing guard rebounded sideways as he struck a thick mass of spice
fibers dangling from the ceiling. The glitterstim sparked and glowed in the
; growing illumination. As the guard saw Skynxnex captured, saw the huge
energy spider and the collapsing ceiling of the grotto, he whirled his
floating mine car around and fled back out the cavern entrance as fast as he
could go.
Han, though, saw an open passage in the ceiling and noticed a dim trickle of
light coming from it. He wanted only to be out of there before the thing
came scrambling after them, clawing its way up glasslike strands of
glitterstim. ...
"Up there!" Han urged.
Kyp plunged the car upward into the ceiling opening and suddenly came upon
another network of tunnels. But these catacombs looked man-made. At last,
one of the illicit mining shafts dug by spice smugglers searching to find
active veins.
Han let out a whoop of delight. "This is it! We're out of here now!"
Chewbacca clapped him on the back, nearly belting Han out of the pilot's
seat.
They raced upward. The distant daylight pierced through the jagged obstacles
of the passage. Han did not want to slow down. Kyp accelerated toward the
light.
The floating car burst into the thin open air of Kessel, where watery light
blinded them like a supernova. Blinking and struggling to see, Han yanked
off his goggles and took back the pilot controls. He evened out their
trajectory above the flat, desolate surface of the small planet.
Off to their right he saw the towering stack of an atmosphere factory
gushing white steam and air vapor into the sky. "That way," Kyp said. "We'll
be able to find a ship."
"Good idea," Han said.
As they approached the enormous construction, flying low enough to avoid
notice, he kept an eye out. Moruth Doole would not know of their escape
until the lone surviving guard returned to the muster room and made his
report. Han, Kyp, and Chewbacca would have a few moments to get a head
start, but not very long.
Adjacent to the atmosphere factory, Han did indeed see a broad landing pad
with four craft on it. Two of the ships were local landskimmers and useless
to them--but the others were small supply shuttles, spaceworthy enough,
though they wouldn't go fast.
Holding the breath mask against his face, Han pointed with his other hand.
"Down there. Get one of those ships and we're away from Kessel." He grabbed
Kyp's shoulder. "We can go home."
When Luke returned to Coruscant, he had a joyous reunion with Han and Leia's
two-year-old children, whom he had not seen for some time, not since he and
Ackbar had set up the secret, protected planet for them.
He waited in Leia's living quarters, playing with the twins, tossing them in
the air and juggling them using his Jedi powers. Jacen and Jaina squealed in
delight, giggling and intuitively trusting that their Uncle Luke would never
let them fall.
Children were a wonder to him. Raised with his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru on
the parched world of Tatooine, Luke had had little time for playing with
children because the life of a moisture farmer was wrapped up in such hard
work.
When he left Tatooine with Ben Kenobi, Luke had joined the Rebel Alliance,
spending time as a fighter pilot and in Jedi training with Yoda. He never
had time or opportunity to see children--and now he felt as much pleasure
playing with them, watching their wide-eyed innocence, as they seemed to
enjoy having him around.
"Faster! Faster!" Jacen cried.
Instead, just to tease him, Luke stopped the boy cold in the air, letting
him hang motionless as Luke orbited Jaina around him. The little girl
squealed and stretched out her hand, trying to grab her brother's ear as she
spun.
Tiring of that, Luke let Jaina drift into a cushioned seat while he reached
out to catch Jacen as the boy descended, holding him in his arms. Jaina
squirmed and reached her pudgy arms up, wanting to be held too.
Luke made faces at the little boy, puckering his lips and wiggling them back
and forth. He spoke in a funny head-cold voice that sounded something like
Yoda's. "The Force is strong in this little one, hmmmm? Yes!" But then Luke
wrinkled his nose and noticed something he didn't need Jedi powers to
understand. "Or maybe that's not the Force I sense. Leia, I think you need
to perform a motherly duty." He held Jacen in front of him.
Threepio bustled into the room. "Allow me to take care of that, sir. I have
been getting a great deal of practice in the past day or two."
Luke smiled at the thought of Threepio trying to manage squirming twins. He
noticed the droid looked a bit scuffed and battered. "Was that part of your
protocol programming?"
"My manual dexterity is sufficient to the task, Master Luke." Threepio
flexed his golden motorized fingers, then took Jacen from Luke's grasp. "And
believe me, I enjoy these duties much more than gallivanting through space,
getting shot at by Imperial fighters, or getting lost in asteroid fields."
Leia came into the room. She forced a smile that Luke could tell was a mask.
She looked very tired. It wasn't just the strain of combining her diplomatic
duties with being a mother; something else deeply concerned her, but she
hadn't said anything. Luke did not pry--he could have reached in and taken
the secret from her mind, but he would not do that to his sister. And she
might even have figured out how to block him by now. He would let her broach
the subject in her own way.
"The prep unit will have the meal ready in just a few minutes," Leia said.
"I'm very glad you're back, and the twins seem to be pleased too."
Luke realized that he hadn't seen Han since his return; but because of their
busy schedules, seeing Han and Leia in the same place at the same time was a
rare occurrence anyway. It was a wonder they had somehow managed to have
three children! Could Han's absence have something to do with Leia's hidden
concern?
Luke picked up Jaina with the Force again, raising her into the air. She
giggled and began flailing her arms and legs as if swimming through the open
spaces of the room.
"Leia, I need your help in a couple of bureaucratic matters," Luke said.
"Sure." She smiled wryly at him. "What can I do?"
"I still need to contact Mara Jade and a handful of other possible Jedi
candidates. But now that I have two trainees here and waiting, I've got to
find a place where we can begin our Jedi studies. And I have to find it
soon.
"I've spoken with Streen and Gantoris, and it's clear to me that Coruscant
is not appropriate. Streen doesn't like to be around people, and he's not
going to be very comfortable anywhere in Imperial City. All of Coruscant is
covered with metropolis, buildings on top of buildings.
"And--'' He hesitated, but this was a private conversation with Leia; he
could not hide any of his worries from her. "There is some danger about what
we might do. Who am I to be teaching all these Jedi potentials? I have no
way of knowing what might trigger a disaster like one of the Emperor's Force
storms. It would be better if we found someplace isolated, a place of
solitude where we c
an conduct our training without interference."
"And in safety." Leia's dark eyes met his, and he knew that both of them
were thinking of Darth Vader. "Yes, I agree. I'll try to find you an
appropriate place."
"And while you're looking," Luke continued, "we also need to relocate all of
the people on Eol Sha. There's only about fifty of them left on that
outpost, but the planet is doomed. When I took Gantoris, I promised we would
find a new home for the survivors. See what you can do."
"For a group of people that small, it shouldn't be difficult," Leia
answered. "Anyplace sounds better than the planet they're leaving."
Luke laughed. "Or you could always have Han win another planet for them in a
card game!"
She looked at him as if stung. Yes indeed, he thought. It was something to
do with Han. He bounced Jaina up in the air again, touching her to the
ceiling, then letting her fall back down.
Suddenly Lando Calrissian burst into the room unannounced. "Leia! Winter
just told me that Han hasn't come back yet. Why haven't you talked to me
about it?"
Startled, Luke let Jaina fall and barely managed to catch her in the air a
handbreadth above the hard floor. Jaina giggled deliriously, confident that
the whole thing had been planned.
Lando looked upset and angry as he glared at Leia, planting his hands on his
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