Qwi had little trouble breaking through the various passwords. Apparently, no one had expected her to bother looking. She read the full report with sickened astonishment: the destruction of Alderaan, the attack on Yavin 4, the ambush of the Rebel fleet over Endor, the huge hospital ship and personnel carriers blown into micrometeoroids by the second Death Star’s superlaser.
“What did you think they were going to be used for?” Han had said. Qwi closed her eyes to the thought.
Focus on the problem. It had been a mantra of her childhood. Be distracted by nothing else. Solving the problem was the only important thing. Solving the problem meant survival itself.…
As a child she remembered spending two years in the sterile, silent environment of the orbital education sphere above her homeworld of Omwat. Qwi had been ten standard years old, the same age as her other nine companions, each selected from different Omwati honeycomb settlements. From orbit the orange and green continents looked surreal, blurred by clouds and dimpled with canyons, blemished by upthrust mountains—nothing like the clean maps she had seen before.
But beside Qwi’s educational sphere orbited Moff Tarkin’s personal Star Destroyer. It had been a mere Victory class ship, but powerful enough to rain death and ruin down on Omwat if the students should fail.
For two years life for Qwi had been an endless succession of training, testing, training, testing, with no other purpose than to cram the total knowledge of engineering disciplines into pliable young Omwati minds—or to burst their brains in the process. Tarkin’s research had shown that Omwati children were capable of amazing mental feats, if pushed properly and sufficiently. Most of the young minds would collapse under the pressure, but some emerged like precious jewels, brilliant and creative. Moff Tarkin had wanted to test that possibility.
The gaunt, steel-hard man had stood in his dress uniform during important examinations, staring at the surviving Omwati children as they wrestled with problems that had stymied the Empire’s best designers. Qwi remembered how alarmed they had been when one of her classmates, a young male named Pillik, suddenly fell to the floor in some kind of secure, grasping his head and screaming. He managed to climb to his knees, weeping, before the guards grabbed him. He still grasped for his examination paper as they hauled him away, yelling that he wanted to finish his work.
In silence Qwi and her three surviving classmates went to the window of the educational sphere so they could watch as turbolasers from the Victory-class Star Destroyer obliterated Pillik’s honeycomb settlement in punishment for his failure.
Qwi could not be distracted by consequences. If her concentration faltered, everyone would die. She had to lock away all caring. Problems were pure, and safe, to be solved for their own sake. She could not allow herself to think beyond the abstract challenge at hand.
In the end Qwi had been the only one of her group who made it through the training. She received no instruction in biological sciences, saving her memory space for more physics, mathematics, and engineering. Tarkin had whisked her off to the new Maw Installation and placed her under the tutelage of the great engineer Bevel Lemelisk. Qwi had been in the Maw ever since.
Problems had to be solved for their own sake. If she allowed herself to be distracted by feelings, terrible things would happen. She remembered images of burning Omwati cities winking like faraway campfires from orbit, the laser-ignited wildfires that swept across the savannas of her world—but she had too many calculations to finish, too many designs to modify.
Qwi had salved her conscience by laying the responsibility on others. But the truth was, she created devices that had directly caused the deaths of entire civilizations, the destruction of whole worlds. With the Sun Crusher she could wipe out solar systems with the push of a button.
Qwi Xux had a lot of thinking to do, but she didn’t know how to go about this kind of pondering. This was an entirely new and different type of problem to solve.
Chewbacca stood like a statue, refusing to move and daring the keeper to use his power-lash again.
The keeper did.
Chewbacca roared at the pain lancing across his skin; his nerves writhed in the aftermath of the charge. He raised his hairy arms, seething with the desire to rip the fat, placid man’s limbs from his spherical torso.
Fourteen stormtroopers leveled their blasters at him.
“Are you going back to work, Wookiee, or do I have to nudge the power setting up a couple more notches?” The keeper tapped the handle of the power-lash against his palm, gazing at Chewbacca with a bland expression. His complexion was dusty-looking and bloodless, as if no hint of life had ever passed beneath the skin.
“Any other time I might have enjoyed the challenge of breaking you, Wookiee. I’ve been here fourteen standard years with an entire crew of Wookiee slaves. We lost a few during the process, but I cracked them all, and now they follow orders and do their work. But Admiral Daala insists that everything be in top-notch condition for mobilization by tomorrow.”
He flicked the sizzling green tip of the lash in the air in front of Chewbacca’s face, singeing some of the fur. Chewbacca peeled back his black lips and growled.
“I don’t have time to play games right now,” the keeper said. “If I have to waste any more time disciplining you, I’m going to dump you out into space. Do you understand?”
Chewbacca considered roaring in his face, but the keeper looked serious. At the very least Chewbacca had to survive long enough to find out what had happened to Han. A long time ago Han had rescued Chewbacca from other enslavers, and he still owed the man a life debt. He gave a low grunt of acquiescence.
“Good, now get back to that assault shuttle!”
Chewbacca wore gray work coveralls with pockets to hold engine diagnostic tools and hydrospanners. None of the tools could be used as a weapon; Chewbacca had already checked that much out.
The gamma-class assault shuttle took up a good portion of the Gorgon’s lower hangar bay. Chewbacca had a small databoard listing the configurations for the tractor-beam projector and the deflector-shield generators. He had worked on other ships before, and he knew the Falcon inside out thanks to the many on-the-spot repairs he and Han had been forced to make. With the specs on the databoard he could easily service decades-old Imperial technology.
On the rear of the assault shuttle Chewbacca checked the exhaust nozzles of the thrust reactors and grudgingly tested the blaster-cannon mountings. In the front of the vessel a convenient boarding hatch allowed access for the command crew, but Chewbacca opted for the more rigorous method of popping open and climbing through one of the foldaway launch doors used to disgorge zero-G stormtroopers during a space assault.
Inside, he had access to the engineering level, where he tinkered with the power modulators and the life-support systems. He restrained his urge to rip out circuits and damage the equipment—the keeper would execute him immediately, and such a minor sabotage would accomplish nothing. Even subtle damage was likely to be discovered in the initial checkout procedure.
The assault shuttle’s spartan passenger section held only benches for its complement of spacetroopers, as well as power-coupled storage compartments for their bulky zero-G armor. Up front Chewbacca powered up and checked out the command console, did a test run of the twin-tandem flight computers … and thought about uprooting the chairs on which the five members of the command crew would sit.
Outside in the Gorgon’s hangar bay the fat keeper shouted and lashed at the air. Chewbacca felt a surge of anger upon hearing cries of agony from the other cowed Wookiee slaves. He knew nothing about his fellow captives; he had been held in a separate cell, and they were not allowed to speak to each other. Chewbacca wondered how long it had been since these exhausted slaves had touched the branches of their home trees.
“Get working!” the keeper yelled. “We have a lot that needs to be done today! Three hundred ships on the Gorgon alone!” And Chewbacca knew the three other star destroyers had an equal number of TIE fighters, bla
stboats, and assault shuttles.
Chewbacca clenched his fist around an upraised storage lid, bending it noticeably. He wanted to know why Admiral Daala insisted on such desperate speed.
Qwi Xux did not like to be muscled around by stormtroopers. In her years at the Maw Installation, she had learned to ignore the rigid troopers marching around the corridors in white armor, in endless robotic training and formations that made no sense at all. Did they all have faulty memories, or what? Once she learned something, she didn’t need to keep drilling, drilling, drilling. Qwi paid little attention to them anymore—until a squad marched into her laboratory and insisted that she follow them.
Only moments earlier Qwi had shut down her illicit database searches, and she had disengaged the privacy lock on her lab’s entryway. She had no reason to think the stormtroopers suspected anything, but she still felt unreasoning terror.
The troopers folded around her in a protective bubble as they marched her along the tiled corridors. “Where are you taking me?” Qwi finally managed to ask.
“Admiral Daala wishes to see you,” the captain said through the filtered speaker on his helmet.
“Oh. Why?”
“She’ll have to tell you that herself.”
Qwi swallowed a cold lump in her throat and put a haughty tone in her voice. “Why couldn’t she come to me herself?”
“Because Admiral Daala is a busy person.”
“I’m a busy person, too.”
“She is our commanding officer. You aren’t.”
Qwi asked no further questions but followed in silence as they took her across an access tube to another asteroid in the main conglomeration, then aboard a small shuttle in the landing bay.
When they arrived aboard the Star Destroyer Gorgon, Qwi could not keep herself from staring in wide-eyed fascination. Though the enormous ships had hung in the sky above Maw Installation for as long as she could remember, Qwi rarely had an opportunity to board them. Her stormtrooper escorts took her directly to the Gorgon’s bridge.
The trapezoidal command tower rose high above the arrowhead-shaped main body, giving a panoramic view overlooking the vast landscape of the ship. Qwi stood and stared out the front viewport toward the cobbled-together collection of rocks that made up Maw Installation. For a moment she remembered watching from the orbiting educational sphere as Moff Tarkin obliterated Omwati cities far below.…
Command crew bustled about their stations, intent on their work as if in the middle of an important drill. In the corridors stormtroopers marched by at a brisk pace. Overlapping intercom messages peppered the air. Qwi wondered how the troops could be so busy after a decade of doing nothing.
Admiral Daala stood by her command console, staring at the deadly swirling gases that blocked her from the outside. Qwi saw her trim, perfect figure masked by an aurora of chestnut hair that flowed like a living blanket down her back. When Daala turned to face her, some of the hair remained where it hung, wrapping around her waist while other strands arced behind her.
“You wanted to see me?” Qwi asked. Her reedy voice quavered despite her efforts to control her nervousness.
Daala looked at her for a moment, and Qwi had the impression of being placed under a magnifying lens in preparation for dissection. Then Daala suddenly seemed to recognize her. “Ah! You are Qwi Xux, in charge of the Sun Crusher project?”
“Yes, Admiral.” She paused a moment, then blurted, “Have I done something wrong?”
“I don’t know. Have you?” Daala answered, then turned back to the broad window, staring out at her other ships. “I can’t get any straight information out of Tol Sivron, so I’ll tell you directly. If you have any further work to do on your Sun Crusher, finish it now. We are mobilizing the fleet.”
Daala misinterpreted Qwi’s shocked silence. “Don’t worry—I’ll authorize whatever assistance you need, but everything must be done within a day. You’ve had two years longer than Grand Moff Tarkin gave you. It is time to put the Sun Crusher to use.”
Qwi took a deep breath, trying to keep her thoughts from spinning. “But why now? Why such a rush?”
Daala whirled back at her, wearing a sour expression. “We have received new information. The Empire lies wounded and vulnerable on the outside, and we can’t just sit here and wait. We have four Star Destroyers, a full fleet the Rebellion knows nothing about. Since the Death Star prototype is not capable of hyperspace travel, it is useless to us in this operation—but we will have the Sun Crusher. Your beautiful Sun Crusher.” The lights of the fiery gases outside glimmered in Daala’s eyes. “With it we can destroy the New Republic, system by system.”
All of Han’s warnings echoed as loud as screams in Qwi’s head. He had been right about everything.
Daala dismissed her, and Qwi stumbled as the stormtroopers escorted her back toward the waiting shuttle. Qwi would have to make her decision sooner than she had expected.
24
In her own quarters images of planets scrolled in front of Leia’s eyes. Statistics, populations, resources—cold data that she had to absorb and assess to make her decision. She rejected most of the worlds out of hand; others she marked as possibilities. So far nothing had jumped out at her as the perfect place for Luke to establish his Jedi academy.
It hadn’t seemed like such a difficult request, since the New Republic encompassed so many possible planets. She had found Dantooine as a new home for the survivors from Eol Sha—why was an academy site causing her so much trouble?
After meeting Luke’s first two trainees and seeing how unusual they were, Leia suspected the Jedi studies would require complete isolation. She had spoken again to Gantoris and Streen in the past day and was discouraged to find both of them feeling miserable and abandoned. If only Luke would come back soon—with Han!
As she thought of other places, Leia pondered how Yoda had trained Luke on the swampy planet of Dagobah, a place completely devoid of other intelligent life. Her brother would want someplace similar for his own trainees.
Okay, what about Dagobah itself? she thought, putting a fingertip on her lower lip. The swamps had hidden Yoda for centuries, and it was certainly isolated from the mainstream of galactic traffic … but Dagobah had no appropriate facilities either. They would have to erect an academy from scratch. Mobilizing the New Republic construction forces, Leia could get the job done in short order—but she wasn’t sure that was the right answer. Somehow she felt the right site would jump out at her. Because the restoration of the Jedi Knights meant so much, Luke would be very selective about the proper site. She just hadn’t found it yet.
The message center buzzed. Again. Though it was barely midmorning, she had already lost count of the interruptions. With a sigh Leia answered it, seeing the image of another minor functionary take shape in the central focus.
“Minister Organa Solo,” the functionary said, “I’m sorry to call you at home, but we need you to decide on a meal selection for the Bimmini banquet. The deadline is today. The choices are grazer fillets with tart sauce, nerf medallions with sweet fungi, broiled dewback—”
“I’ll take the nerf medallions. Thank you!” She switched off the receiver, then calmed herself before returning to the images of the planets.
In the bedchambers Jacen burst into loud sobs, joined in a moment by his sister. Threepio cooed sounds of consolation, then began another one of his lullabies, which set them to crying louder. Part of Leia wanted to hurry into the children’s room to see what was the matter, while another part of her just wanted to seal their door so she could have a little more quiet.
On the morning after the reception at the Skydome Botanical Gardens, both children had come down with a cold. Slight fever, congestion, and general crankiness—the type of frequent minor illness the twins would no doubt suffer for another few years—but Leia didn’t want to just abandon them to the care of Threepio.
After some refresher programming, the protocol droid had proved himself capable of caring for the two-year-olds. But
Leia felt a defensiveness in herself. She was their mother; while it was a new set of responsibilities for her, Leia did not want a droid to watch them all the time, no matter how competent his programming. The children had already spent so much of their lives with Winter that Leia wanted to make up for lost time—if her political duties would only give her the chance!
Before she could call up the file on another planet to consider, the message center buzzed again. “What is it?” she said, mustering every scrap of civility she still possessed. She did not recognize the alien administrator in the image.
“Ah, Minister Organa Solo, I am calling from the office of the deputy assistant minister of industry. I was told you might be able to offer a suggestion about a type of music that would be appropriate to play during the arrival of the Ishi Tib delegate?”
For a moment Leia reconsidered her time as a prisoner of Jabba the Hutt. At least the sluglike crime lord had not required her to do anything more than sit there and look beautiful.…
Before she finished signing off, a message came in from Admiral Ackbar. Though she liked the Calamarian admiral, she found it difficult to keep her temper from boiling. How was she supposed to get anything done with all these interruptions?
“Hello, Admiral—can I help you quickly? I’m in the middle of a rather large project right now.”
Ackbar nodded graciously, swiveling his big fish eyes to the front in a gesture of courtesy. “Of course, Leia. I apologize for the interruption, but I’d like to solicit your comments on the speech I have just written. As you remember, I am giving it before the Cabinet tomorrow, and you agreed to provide me with data on the rezoning of embassy sectors in the devastated areas of Imperial City. I did write the speech without your input, but I need to have the information before tomorrow. I’ve marked clearly where you need to add your thoughts. Would it be possible—”
“Of course, Admiral. I’m sorry I haven’t been more attentive. Please send it to my personal network address, and I’ll get to it right away. I promise.”
Star Wars: The Jedi Academy Trilogy I: Jedi Search Page 27