Lando sprang up onto the ramp with the vigor of a man half his age. “Han! You made great time.”
Han gave him a quick embrace. “We were chased off Coruscant by bureaucracy. You were the lesser of two evils.”
“I usually am.” Lando offered one of his rakish smiles, obviously pleased still to be considered a bad influence. “C’mon inside. Tendra and Chance are there.” He glanced up at the top of the ramp. “Hey, Artoo! Long time.”
The conference room was laid out with a light lunch and drinks. The chamber did not seem as though it belonged on this dingy, slowly dying world; the oval table in the center was topped with the finest blue-white marble, the chairs were covered in flawless dark leather, and the whole atmosphere conveyed a sense of doing business in the heights of Coruscant’s business district.
But the oversized display viewport in the longest wall showed the unpromising grounds of the mineworks, powdery, sterile whiteness from which nothing could grow. In the near distance was the parked Falcon. Farther away was a dark building with featureless brown walls; every few minutes, a gout of gas erupted from it, sending much-needed oxygen and nitrogen into the unhealthy-looking pink sky. In the far distance on artificial slopes was a building of tremendous size, gray and tan, its outer walls steeply slanted backward with rows of gleaming durasteel and transparisteel; that, Han knew, was the old Imperial Correctional Facility, the prison from which the former masters of Kessel had drawn the workers for the mines.
Han, Leia, Lando, Tendra, and Nien Nunb sat at the table. In an adjoining chamber, the door left open so sound would carry, Allana and Chance played in the company of the droids—not just C-3PO and R2-D2 but also the little boy’s nanny droid. The four-armed automaton with its round, beaming face and almost-human female voice looked identical to Nanna, the ferocious defensive droid fabricated from a nanny droid and a YVH 1 combat droid to nurse and protect Ben Skywalker in his early years; Leia idly wondered if this was the same one.
Tendra, Lando’s wife—a lean woman, dark-haired, many years the junior of her husband—was dressed in a pearlescent blue jacket-like top that suggested a world of distant sands and arena duels between animals and men. The blouse beneath it was an iridescent gray, and her long skirt alternated layers of those two colors. Tendra waited until the catching-up chitchat had completely died away before getting to business. “I guess I ought to offer some context.”
Han nodded ruefully as he ate a strip of grilled bantha steak from a skewer. “That’s definitely the businesswoman’s approach. Do you have a printed agenda to give us?”
She smiled. “Quiet, you. Lando has owned these mines for about thirty years now. I bought in when we married. Nien Nunb, who manages the facility, and very well, I might add, gradually acquired shares as part of his contract. The three of us own the business outright.”
Leia nodded. “And since Kessel’s government basically consists of whatever the major business owners want it to be, there’s no one to bail you out if disaster wrecks the business.”
Lando looked unhappy. “That’s right. And while on the one hand the only thing we stand to lose is money, it’s a lot of money. And on the other hand, if this business becomes unviable, for us or anyone else, the amount of glitterstim available in the galaxy drops to zero. All the legitimate medical uses of the drug go away.”
Nien Nunb spoke in the rapid, singsong language of his people; he understood Basic, but had a hard time articulating it.
Lando translated: “And, yeah, there’ll be a negative reaction on the illicit side of things. Glitbiters, glitterstim addicts, will cause a lot of trouble as they fight over the last remaining stores, and there will be a scramble for a new drug to appease them. They’ll probably end up with more dangerous ones, like one of the synthetic ryll replacements.”
Finished with his skewer, Han set it down. “I thought Kessel was just a rock. An ugly, cold rock shaped like a ground tuber, spinning peacefully through space. No tectonic or volcanic activity at all.”
“It is.” Lando frowned.
“That’s what we thought, too, until the quakes started,” Tendra said. “This was about two standard years ago, at the height of the war. Actually, I remember exactly when. I got Nien Nunb’s report about the first quake the same day the news broke about the destruction of Centerpoint Station. The first few quakes were very minor, but they’ve gotten worse over time. The scientists don’t know what’s causing them, so they can’t make any useful predictions, but they have no reason to believe they won’t continue to worsen until they wreck everything, collapsing all the mines and destroying the atmosphere plants, which would make the planet uninhabitable.”
Nien Nunb spoke again. Lando said, “Yeah, I left that out. Sorry.” He returned his attention to the Solos. “He’s reminding me that the seismologists we brought in detected a system of natural caverns, really big ones, much deeper than our mineworks. Seismic scanners have detected them, and also revealed that some have collapsed betweeen readings, which may be part of the whole disaster.”
“Why are there caverns in the first place?” Leia asked.
Lando looked confused by the change of subject. “Huh?”
“Caverns are usually caused by water moving through soft rock, eroding pockets out of it, correct?”
“I guess.”
Han grinned at Lando. “Science hurts, doesn’t it, pal?”
“Economics is my science.”
Leia continued, “But Kessel has never had that kind of water.”
Lando shrugged. “Maybe the energy spiders dug them. To have a place to spin their webs where light wouldn’t hit them.”
Leia gave him a scornful look. “You’re saying the spiders evolved on the surface with photoreactive webs then, figuring out that light destroyed their webs, dug out elaborate cavern systems to live in and waited for prey species to begin wandering down there to be eaten?” She shook her head. “The photoreactive nature of the webs is clearly a later adaptation, something that happened once they’d been down in the caverns for thousands or millions of years.”
Lando held up his hands, signifying surrender. “I don’t know.”
“Lando, there are too many mysteries on Kessel. I spent my time on the trip here doing research. You have tombs on the surface no qualified archaeologist has ever opened. You have avian creatures the size of humans on the surface who have a weird attachment to those ruins. You have caverns that shouldn’t exist and groundquakes that can’t happen. You’ve brought us here to solve your problem, but I think it would be half solved already if you’d put some money into answering those questions years ago.”
During Leia’s rant, Lando gradually hunched down, comically drawing his head closer to his shoulders like a shelled marine reptile trying to withdraw for defense. “Not many of the avians around anymore,” he said. “They’re a dying species.”
“Which is all right with you, because they don’t bring any money into the company.”
Lando cast imploring eyes on his wife. “Help.”
Tendra smiled at him. “Sorry, darling. You’re on your own.”
“Oh.” Lando straightened, resuming a normal pose. He turned to Nien Nunb. “All right. We need a complete archaeological team here to investigate the tombs. Not big, but fully funded for at least one Galactic Standard year, with a tentative extension of two more years if we like their work. We also need a complete xenobiology lab setup and team here, same terms, to study indigenous life-forms other than the energy spiders. Roll the expenses into our losses from the interruption of mining operations.” Finished, he looked expectantly at Leia.
She nodded, mollified.
Han snorted. “Well surrendered, General. So lay it out on the table. What exactly do you want from us?”
“I’d like you to go down there. Use your skills and Leia’s Jedi abilities to figure out what the scientific teams I’ve sent down haven’t been able to. Figure out why this is happening.”
Han had suspected this would
be the request, but foreknowledge didn’t keep it from turning his stomach sour. To go into those tunnels again … Yet Lando was his friend, a friend in need, a friend who had helped them in very bad times. He glanced at Leia, saw her nod. “Yeah, sure.” He hoped his voice didn’t sound as ungracious as he felt.
“Great,” Lando said. “So … what do you need?”
“A vehicle,” Han said. “Very small, no bigger than your repulsorlift mine cars, so we can navigate wherever they go. Packed with sensors. Active, passive, as broad a range as possible. And weapons. No energy weapons—I’m talking fragmentation explosives, slug-throwers, whatever you can manage, since the energy spiders can gobble up pretty much any energy output from handheld or small vehicle weapons. Hand weapons, too, in case Leia gets it in her head that she needs to step out of the vehicle.”
“Done,” Lando said.
“When can you have it ready?”
“It’s waiting at the mine main entrance.” At Han’s upraised eyebrows, Lando smiled. “I know your ways, old buddy.”
“I guess you do.”
“Can I go?” That was Allana, standing at the doorway to the other room—just on the other side of it, half concealed by the doorjamb.
Han and Leia exchanged a look. Leia turned her attention to Allana. “Were you listening at the door?”
Allana hesitated, then nodded. She stepped forward, her movement tentative. “Threepio started telling a story and I got sleepy, but I didn’t want to nap so I moved to where I could listen to you, because you’re more interesting.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie.” Han gave Allana a look that he hoped was both affectionate and sternly parental. “It’s dangerous. No place for a little girl. You’ll need to stay with Threepio and Artoo and Chance.”
“I’d rather be with you.”
“I know, Amelia. But it’s not going to happen this time. On a mission, sometimes people serve best by remaining where others know they’re safe. That’s a contribution, too.” Han turned back to the others, and the amused, knowing looks on all their faces eloquently said, Not that anyone is ever willing to do that.
The vehicle Lando had prepared, resting on the white, dusty soil in front of the mine entrance building, had apparently started its existence as an airspeeder; it had the same low, rectangular frame with a central passenger compartment that was ubiquitous to that class of vehicle.
But this was a hard-top model, and emerging from the center of the roof was a small turret. Protruding from that were twin barrels, one no wider in diameter than Han’s thumb, one wide enough nearly to fit his fist. He recognized them as a slugthrowing blaster and a grenade launcher, ancient designs seldom seen toward the galactic Core but more prevalent in Outer Rim worlds and less-developed planets. The turret looked like a recent patch job; there were signs of new welding around it and the turret, a dull metallic gray, had not been painted tan like the rest of the vehicle. On the metal surfaces over the engine compartment and cargo compartment were other recent additions, blue transparisteel bubbles that housed sensor equipment; they were on patches of metal where paint had been burned away and leads punched through so wiring and connectors could pass from the sensors into the vehicle’s interior.
Han experimentally rapped on the speeder’s frame and viewports with his knuckles. Both areas returned reassuringly deep thumps.
“Armored?” Leia asked.
Tendra nodded. “Used to be a speeder for shuttling visiting dignitaries between the prison and the landing field. It’s old but sturdy. Sort of like Lando.” She winked in her husband’s direction.
Lando shot her a dirty look but addressed Han instead. “The grenade launcher has two modes—two sorts of ammunition. The switch is on the weapons-control yoke. One mode is fragmentation explosives, very nasty. Be at least fifty meters away from one of those when it goes off, even if you’re inside the vehicle. The other is a decoy we came up with for dealing with the spiders in a nonviolent way. Fires a flying drone with a very powerful heat package in it, gives off an energy signature brighter than a squad of miners. It automatically steers to avoid walls and has a flight duration of about a minute. Fire it off, let the spider chase after it, and go the other way.”
“Well, it’s no Falcon,” Han said. “But it’ll have to do.”
Inside, piled on the rear seat, were thermal suits, infrared goggles, spare breath masks with numerous replacement oxygen canisters and batteries, extra energy packs for the thermal suits, cases of food and water, and backpack weapons firing ammunition similar to the vehicle’s turret systems.
Han caught Lando’s eye. “How long do you actually expect us to stay down there?”
“As long as you want or need to. I actually packed the vehicle for myself. Over the last couple of weeks, Nien, Tendra, and I have all taken her down there, looking for a cause for the trouble and planting sensors for the seismologists. With no luck.”
“Fair enough.” Han took a deep breath, trying to dispel memories of the desperate flight he, Chewbacca, and Kyp Durron had taken through those shafts and tunnels more than thirty years before. It didn’t help. “Let’s go.”
Clad in thermal suits—pallid yellow jumpsuits of a slick, heat-retentive cloth, further warmed by a network of tubes laced through the surface—and breath masks, Han and Leia boarded the speeder, Han at the controls. In moments, the passenger compartment pressurized and they could remove their breath masks. They gave one last wave to the Calrissians and Nien Nunb; then Han started the vehicle’s motivators and set it into forward motion.
Ahead was the building surrounding the main mine entrance. Han followed its old rail tracks to the door, which obligingly rolled open before them. Once through, Han activated the speeder’s external lights.
They illuminated a vast single chamber, its ceiling crisscrossed with metal beams with mobile winches hanging from them. There was no floor, just a crater, a gigantic bowl cut out of the gray-white stone, vanishing into darkness at its deepest point, the exact center. The rail tracks led straight down the hole.
His shoulders riding up and going rigid with tension, Han followed the rails. In moments, the angled bowl dropped out from beneath them and they descended on repulsors alone down a vertical shaft that seemed endless.
JEDI TEMPLE, CORUSCANT
As Kenth Hamner settled more and more into the role of Interim Master of the Jedi Order, he began rearranging things to suit himself, to increase his comfort and efficiency in the position.
For example, morning briefings. Each day after breakfast was served and consumed, he stood in the Great Hall and allowed the Jedi to gather so he could catch them up on all the news he felt he could distribute. Perhaps sending files to all their datapads would have been more efficient, but he liked to see reactions and get immediate responses. Of course, the observers now stood among the Jedi, an odd contrast in their mix of dress—some civilian, some in day wear comfortably resembling their old military uniforms, some in the current uniforms of Galactic Alliance Security or Intelligence divisions.
This day, Master Hamner began, “As you may have heard on this morning’s HoloNet News broadcast, there are rumors that the government is preparing a case against Jedi Valin Horn for criminal actions and damages caused by recent events. We will, of course, resist these proceedings, as it is clear that Jedi Horn was, and remains, of diminished capacity. Both the government and the Jedi Order agree that qualified analysts of mental disorders must be allowed to examine Jedi Horn to evaluate the relevance of his mental state; we are in the process of deciding on specialists agreeable to both sides.”
He consulted his datapad, then looked around, his manner more stern. “On another matter, I will not single out anyone for direct disapprobation, but it is clear that some of the Jedi Knights have been indulging in behavior that makes it more difficult for their observers to do their jobs. Though the Order approves of passive resistance in circumstances of civic unrest, it is not appropriate for Jedi themselves to perform passive resistance ag
ainst rules agreed to by the Order itself. This will be my last warning unaccompanied by corrective measures.
“Speaking of observers, former Jedi Tahiri Veila has flatly refused to allow her observer to accompany her. Veila’s unusual legal status makes her opposition to the government regulation an interesting one, and the Temple’s own lead counsel has accepted her case as she and the government countersue each other.
“Master Sebatyne, Jedi Sarkin, Jedi Tekli, please report to me for new assignments. That is all.”
As the assembly broke up, Jaina ducked around a column, the better to remain unseen by her observer, and made her way stealthily to a back set of stairs. Moments later, she was two levels down and entering a conference room little-used because of its low ceiling and uninvitingly dark wall color.
Jag, inside, waited until the door was sealed behind her before taking her in his arms. “You’ve shaken your pursuit.”
“He’s so … friendly. It would be a shame to kill him.” It was a joke, but even in jest, the notion of cutting down Dab, who so resembled her brother Anakin, of killing in a sense a second brother, sent a shudder through her. “This has got to end.”
“The sneaking around?”
“Oh, I’m fine with the sneaking around.” She smiled, her humor restored. “But to actually be followed while I’m sneaking around, I hate it.”
“You could always resign from the Order, come away with me to the Empire, and set up that rival Jedi school.”
“Stop saying that. It’s beginning to tempt me.” She spoke in a more serious tone. “Jag, I’m the Sword of the Jedi. I’m the defender of this Order, not of some rival Order, some start-up school. My fate is here.”
“Your fate was that you would live a restless life and never know peace. How can you accept that for yourself?”
“What if I didn’t? What if I had rejected it, retired as a Jedi, decided to enjoy myself after the Dark Nest mess? I’d have been off on a vacation world when Jacen became the force he turned into. What if I was the only thing that could stop him, and I never did?”
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