All around him, the Ghostling children sat in chains, weeping. They were beautiful creatures, flawless. Each had a strange light that glowed from within them.
Some of the people of Mos Espa, upon seeing the Ghostlings headed to their death, turned away and stifled sobs of their own.
Dorn wished he could do it all over again. He wished he could find some way to take back his deeds and make everything right.
Soon he saw the arena from the distance, its lights already shining in the late afternoon. It rose above the desert on the outskirts of Mos Espa. Crowds of slaves and free people alike were filing through its gates.
Music played. A commentator announced the night’s events.
The slaves entered for free. Some were required by their masters to watch what happened to any slave who dared try to escape from Tatooine.
But the free people paid for their own entrance, a minimal fee to satisfy their morbid curiosity. Gardulla would make sure that Dorn’s death and the deaths of his friends were entertaining, so that the crowd would pay to watch next time.
The transport slid down to the loading docks, where dangerous monsters were normally offloaded.
Dangerous monsters — is that what they think we are? Dorn wondered.
Dorn suddenly understood that he was dangerous. He was dangerous because he had stood up to evil. He was dangerous because he had dared to say no.
In a corner of the galaxy where corrupt leaders ruled only because decent citizens did not dare to resist, that made Dorn the most dangerous kind of being around.
In minutes the guards had the back of the transport open. With stun batons in hand, they ordered the children out.
Kitster led the way, followed by Pala and the Ghostling children. Dorn came last.
They marched to their cell, and Dorn wondered what Gardulla had planned. Would she give the Ghostling children weapons and force them to fight one another? Or did she have something more diabolical in mind?
He passed a door, and behind it heard roaring. It sounded like a Krayt dragon. That seemed to answer his question.
At last they reached a cell, and the others all filed in. But Dorn stopped at the door.
A huge Gamorrean guard stood there. He had blue blotches on his green cheeks, and oversized tusks that stuck out from his piggy jaw. His red eyes blazed at Dorn as he pushed him into the cell.
Dorn stared him in the eye. The hulking guard was afraid of him. “I defy you,” Dorn said.
The guard clubbed Dorn with the stun baton. The blow itself would have knocked him down, but the electric shock added another layer of pain.
Dorn crumpled to the ground. The guard slammed the door.
No matter what, Dorn thought, I defy you still.
Anakin could hear the children crying, even above the clamor of announcers on the loudspeakers out in the arena, even over swelling music of the orchestra.
He followed the sound and soon found himself under a holding cell. Using his beamdrill, he’d cut the pins that held the grill to the drain an hour ago. Now he pushed his head through. Anakin saw the Ghostling children all chained together.
The iron chain ran through a ring in each child’s manacle. Locks held the chain to Dorn’s hand in the back, and Kitster’s in the front.
Anakin climbed through with his beamdrill.
He had to hurry. It was getting dark outside, and the guards would be coming any moment. He’d hoped for more time. He needed time to free the Ghostlings, time to escape, and more time to reach Jira and her smuggler friends out in the desert.
Dorn, Kitster, and Pala looked very happy to see him. But there was no time to lose. The plasma beam cutting torch on the drill quickly carved through the locks.
Anakin urged everyone into the drainpipe, crawled down himself, and pulled the grate back over the pipe.
He heard the door scraping open above.
A guard shouted, “Sound the alarms!”
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Anakin followed Dorn and the others through the drainpipes. Sand flew everywhere. Anakin made sure that he gave each kid a sandmask, just to make it through the pipes. He didn’t want anyone to choke.
He had only three glow rods. Up front, Dorn carried one. A child in the middle of the group took another, and Anakin held the last. All he could see were jumbled shadows and the feet and legs of the Ghostling boy that crawled directly ahead of him.
The pipes were hardly big enough for a child to squeeze through. Anakin had to wriggle through the flowing sand, pulling himself on his elbows, pushing with his toes.
Anakin pushed the Jawa ion blaster into his sack.
“I’m at a junction,” Dorn yelled after they’d crawled for some time.
Anakin took a deep breath, removed his mask, and shouted, “Head down to the right! Go till the second pipe opens overhead. That will take us to the Podrace hangar.”
Distant alarms wailed, echoing spookily through the pipes. Anakin hoped that the signal jammers he’d made for his friends kept working. If they didn’t someone’s transmitter might give their location away.
“Watch out behind you,” Pala shouted through the pipe to Anakin. “They’ll be sending capture droids.”
Anakin knew that.
Capture droids were made to hunt for fugitives. Like seekers, they could track by scent. Their infared eyes could see in the dark. Their stunners could knock even the biggest man down. They could crawl into tight spaces.
And once they got their claws into you, they wouldn’t let go.
Right now, Anakin couldn’t stop them. As long as he was stuck in this narrow pipe, he couldn’t turn around to shoot his ion blaster.
“Hurry!” Anakin shouted.
The children scurried as fast as they could. Overhead, behind him, Anakin heard guards yelling, followed by the sound of the metal grate scraping against the pipes. He listened for the telltale sound of mechanical legs scrabbling at his back.
The child in front of him suddenly waded into some deeper sand. He’d reached the juncture. Three small pipes met here in a box, then the sand blew into a windpipe down below.
From behind came a scraping sound, the rap, tap, tap of mechanical feet scurrying through pipes.
Anakin dove headfirst down the pipe at the juncture and came up with his Jawa ion blaster. He didn’t dare stick his head up where the capture droid could get him.
He simply thrust the barrel of the ion blaster into the open pipe, then fired. The blaster wouldn’t damage any creatures but droids. Blue ionized gases roared through the pipe.
Three electronic vocoders squealed, echoing in the enclosed space. Anakin’s mouth dropped in astonishment. There had been three capture droids in the pipe.
Charges of energy shot through the droids. They slumped together in a heap, useless.
The blast hurled Anakin back. He crawled forward, ears ringing.
Anakin listened for more signs of pursuit from the capture droids. He heard none. He dove into the larger pipe. It was only a hand-span wider than the one he’d just come through, but it felt much bigger.
Earlier the sand had been still. Now it swirled all around him.
It pushed him along rapidly. He followed at the feet of the child in front of him. It was a hundred meters from the Podrace hangar — or at least that’s what he guessed.
He reached the juncture and saw the Ghostling child in front of him try frantically to crawl up it. But sand rushed from the pipe, creating a strong current, and Ghostlings were so frail. The Ghostling couldn’t make it!
Furiously the child kicked and pushed against the side of the pipes, but the sand won, pushing him off farther into the system.
Anakin reached the pipe and t
ried to push himself up. Sand seethed around him. It was a torrent.
He could think of only one reason for so much sand: the slave masters were flooding the pipes! The children would be smothered.
Perhaps they were trying to kill the children, or perhaps they were only trying to cut off their escape route.
In any case, Anakin couldn’t make it up the pipe. He could only follow the current of sand and the Ghostlings.
Anakin hurtled through the pipes. Sand shoved and jostled him.
He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t slow. He dropped his bag with the ion blaster and his beamdrill, and slid along as best he could, clinging to his glow rod.
The Ghostlings, Pala, Dorn, and Kitster all drifted ahead faster than he did. Anakin lost sight of them. He had no idea how fast he was going, or how far.
The torrent swept him for perhaps a thousand meters, past opening after opening, pipes that could have led anywhere.
Suddenly the pipe opened up, and the flood spat him into a chasm. He flew headlong into a dune.
He managed to cling to his glow rod. In the drifts below, he spotted his bag with the Jawa ion blaster and the other supplies in it. It was sinking! But his lungs were hurting. The dust was choking him.
He left the bag, stood up for fresh air, and coughed until his lungs cleared. He put the sandmask back on and dove again.
Frantically, he reached down for his bag. The currents of sand shoved the bag deeper, as if to lure him farther away from his friends.
He surfaced for breath and saw something: the trail of a monster.
He had no sooner seen the trail than the creature appeared.
A rock wart!
An orange leg wrapped around his arm, and another reached toward the glow rod.
It was trying to pull the glow rod away.
Anakin wrestled with the monster, wishing that he had a weapon. But all his tools were at the bottom of the dune.
He managed to pull the sandmask from his mouth with his free hand. A clawed foot came into view.
Anakin bit the claw with all his might.
The monster shrieked. Suddenly the rock wart quit fighting to steal his glow rod and began fighting to escape.
Anakin bit it again for good measure. The wart scurried away.
Anakin ducked under the sand and grasped his tool bag. Then he stood and raised his glow rod in order to get his bearings.
The children had waded into a large chamber, perhaps eighty meters long and forty meters wide. The low ceiling was cut from stone.
Dozens of pipes opened into the chamber. It seemed to serve as some kind of catch basin, where large objects could be cleared from the drainage.
In the sand around him, Anakin could see Ghostling children. The small boy that Anakin had been following coughed. He raised his head feebly, and let the sand cover him.
Anakin grabbed the child from behind, and tried to pull him to safety.
“Over here!” Pala shouted. In the corner was a landing, a solid spot where everyone could sit.
“Get out of the sand!” Anakin warned. “There’s something down here with us!”
He flailed, trying to drag the little boy with him.
The children struggled, thrashing in the sand, until they reached the landing. They launched themselves onto it and sat, coughing, as they studied the sand’s surface.
Anakin got the child to safety.
“There’s a monster in here?” Princess Arawynne asked. Some of the Ghostling children began to cry.
“Yeah,” Anakin said. “And it tastes awful.”
“What do we do if it comes after us?” one Ghostling child asked. He couldn’t hide the terror in his voice.
“I bit it hard,” Anakin said. “That scared it away — at least for now. You can all take a bite, if it comes back.”
Anakin shoved the child onto the landing. The boy couldn’t stop coughing.
Oh no, Anakin thought. He’s hurt, and I don’t know how to get out of here. We’re in deep trouble.
“Someone has to find us a way out of here,” Arawynne said.
Anakin felt so tired, he could barely move. But he couldn’t let his friends down.
“I’ll go,” he offered. If anyone spotted Pala or Dorn or one of the Ghostlings, they’d be recognized as escapees instantly. Anakin had surprise on his side.
As long as nobody was looking for him.
“Hurry,” Arawynne begged. “They will be after us.”
Anakin nodded.
He looked up at the pipes that emptied into the chamber. There were dozens to choose from.
He picked one at random — a big one just overhead. Kitster and Dorn boosted him up and handed him his tool bag.
Anakin took out his beamdrill. There was not much power left, but he had a feeling that he’d need it. The beamdrill could cut through just about anything: rock, duracrete — even armor plate.
All Anakin needed to do was find a drainpipe that led up into an empty room, and then cut his way out.
He inched through the pipe. There was hardly any sand here. Wherever this pipe led, it had not been used in a long time.
Perfect, he thought. He imagined a safe, abandoned warehouse.
He inched along, clunking as he pushed with his toes and shoved his tool bag ahead. The pipe took him up to a Y-shaped intersection. He looked up the left end, and then the right.
He didn’t know which way to go. He turned off his glow rod to see if he could spot light in either direction. If he could see light, then it would mean that the tunnel came to an end nearby.
No sooner had he powered down the glow rod than he heard growling from the pipe on his right. He’d heard that same sound before at Watto’s junkyard: womp rats!
The dirty rodents often burrowed beneath big sheets of metal. A full-grown womp rat could be as long as a man. They were big enough to carry off children and even full-grown Jawas.
Anakin didn’t have a blaster, and he doubted that a womp rat would be scared of his teeth.
All he had was his beamdrill.
Anakin fumbled with its controls in the dark. He set the plasma beam for a long, narrow ray.
The womp rats stalked closer. He could hear their feet pounding the metal pipe. Anakin screamed, hoping they would back off.
For a fraction of a second it worked.
He swung the nozzle of the beamdrill up, just as a womp rat charged.
He pulled the trigger on the beam actuator. A searing white stream of superheated gas sprayed from the beamdrill. It acted like a flame thrower.
Up the tunnel the womp rat’s fierce red eyes reflected the beam’s light. It growled and bared its enormous incisors, just as the beamdrill sliced through it!
Behind, other womp rats snarled and backed away. Anakin scampered into the left fork of the tunnel, eager to escape.
Anakin followed the pipe. A dozen times it twisted and met smaller pipes.
Each time it did, he carefully took the handle of his glow rod and scratched an X into the roof overhead. That way he’d know how to get back.
Finally he reached a juncture and saw a drainpipe straight overhead.
Anakin turned off his glow rod, then sat beneath the pipe for a second, listening. The room overhead seemed quiet. He squeezed into the pipe, climbing up until he neared the drain. The drain cover was secured with rusted bolts.
Anakin considered cutting through them. They looked so flimsy, he decided that if he just hit them, they’d probably snap. He banged against the drain cover with the handle of his glow rod.
A bolt broke with a clank.
Suddenly he heard a door whoosh open.
Someone whispered in Huttese, “Did you hear that?” The voice sounded mechanical, like a droid's vocoder.
“What?” a similar voice asked.
“There’s someone in here!”
Anakin held still, not daring to move.
A light snapped on. Two figures crept into the room. He could see them through the grate. They were
Morseerians — creatures with green skin, long lumpy heads, and four arms. Since Morseerians breathe methane, they both wore goggles and gas masks. The speakers on the masks made their voices sound mechanical.
Anakin recognized the two immediately. They were space pirates. These Morseerians sometimes came to Watto’s junkyard looking for spare parts. The large enclosure overhead was some kind storage room that had once housed some heavy cleaning equipment.
The pirates began searching the room, shining strong beam lights into the corners. Anakin slid down the pipe, trying not to make any noise.
“Hey,” one pirate said. “Look at that drain cover. Someone’s been working at it.”
Desperately, Anakin dropped down the pipe until he reached the main junction. Overhead, the light flashed around as the pirates neared.
His feet touched ground, and Anakin slithered to safety just as a wrenching noise came from above. Rust and dirt drifted through a strong beam of light.
Anakin hid. He hardly dared to breathe. The Morseerians were as big as humans, but with larger heads and shoulders. They couldn’t crawl down the pipe.
“Think someone has been trying to break in here?” one of the Morseerians asked.
The pirates seemed mighty suspicious. Anakin had a brilliant idea.
He tried to remember exactly how the womp rat had growled.
He felt back, low in his throat, and made a similar noise. To Anakin it sounded like the king of all womp rats, crying out for blood!
For heart-pounding seconds, he waited for the pirate’s reactions.
“What’s that?” a pirate asked. “A sick worrt?”
“Nah, dirty womp rat vermin,” the other pirate grumbled. Suddenly a blinding blue light flashed in front of Anakin’s eyes. A sizzling blaster bolt slammed into the pipe. Shards of hot metal and bits of rust flew.
Anakin tried to blink the dirt from his eyes. His heart raced. That blaster bolt had been close!
“Think you got him?” a pirate asked.
“Doubt it,” the other Morseerian said. “But I’ll bet he doesn’t come around here again. Better check the money chest, just to make sure.”
Star Wars - Episode I Adventures 008 - Trouble on Tatooine Page 2