by John Whitman
Fett's capture cable fell limply to the floor. Fett swung his blaster around
to shoot Hoole, but the feathered serpent had slipped down the corridor that
led to the sleeping cabins.
Fett took one step down the corridor, and something small and hard
ricocheted off the back of his helmet. Fett whirled and fired as the small
object was still bouncing away in midair.
A drinking cup, struck by Fett's blaster bolt, shattered into a
thousand pieces.
Another drinking cup leaped off a shelf and flew toward the bounty
hunter. This time, Fett simply swatted it aside with the back of his hand.
Tash was using the Force again. Zak knew she couldn't do much against a
killer like Boba Fett. She wasn't strong enough in the Force to throw
anything really heavy at him. But at least she was doing something. He, on
the other hand, felt totally useless.
Fett's helmeted head swiveled from the corridor where Hoole had
disappeared, to the chair that Tash was hiding behind. The bounty hunter was
trying to decide which prey to capture first. He never bothered to look at
Zak, who had already been taken out of action.
Finally, Fett spoke. "Surrender now and I won't kill you," his hard,
cold voice rasped. "You're worth more to me alive. Fight, and you'll die."
"Leave us alone!" Tash yelled from behind her chair.
Fett ignored her. "Surrender. You are unarmed."
As if to prove him wrong, a blaster bolt sizzled out of the hallway and
glanced off the bounty hunter's armored shoulder. The force of the blow spun
Fett around, and immediately the bounty hunter dove for cover. He pressed
himself against one wall, out of sight of the corridor.
"Armed," Fett muttered to himself. "Not in the profile."
Zak would have smiled if his muscles hadn't been frozen by the stun
bolt. Hoole was using the blaster he'd taken from the other bounty hunter.
"Last chance," Fett shouted down the corridor. "Surrender or die."
"Leave the ship!" Hoole ordered back from his hiding place.
"You've made your choice," Fett replied.
Still holding his blaster in one hand, the killer pointed his other arm
down the hallway. There was a wrist rocket attached to his glove. The rocket
flared and then shrieked as it hurtled down the corridor.
"Uncle Hoole!" Tash shouted.
The small rocket hit the back of the ship and exploded. Flames and
smoke blasted down the corridor and continued to pour out of the hallway.
Cautiously, the bounty hunter started down the blasted hall.
Zak's arms and legs tingled as feeling began to return to them.
"Zak," Tash whispered, appearing beside him. "Are you okay?"
"Shhtunnd," he slurred out of his half-frozen mouth. Tash helped him
sit up.
"Where did he come from?" Tash whispered.
"He must have spotted us on Nar Shaddaa and sneaked on board the ship,"
Zak guessed. "I'll bet a Hutt's treasure that's his ship following us, on
autopilot."
"What do we do now?" Tash asked. They both stared down the hallway.
Zak felt his jaw start to work better as the stun bolt's effects wore
off. "Escape pod. We've got to get off the ship."
"But where will we go?" Tash whispered back. "We're in the middle of
hyperspace!"
Tash had barely spoken when the ship lurched and slowed. The soft hum
of the hyperdrive engines died, replaced by the sudden churning of the
sublight drive. The Shroud had dropped out of hyperspace.
Tash and Zak heard someone shout from the back of the Shroud, and
another explosion rocked the ship. A cloud of smoke rolled toward them from
the engine room-and something rushed toward them out of the cloud.
It was Uncle Hoole.
The shoulder of his robe had been torn away and blood trickled down his
sleeve.
"Uncle Hoole, you're hurt!" Tash cried.
"We have to get off this ship before Boba Fett kills us all," the
Shi'ido said grimly.
"The escape pod!" Zak said.
"Yes," Hoole agreed. "We just left hyperspace. We should be over the
planet Koaan."
A blaster bolt ripped through the wall above their heads. "Come!" Hoole
ordered.
Together, they staggered toward the escape pod and jumped inside. Zak
strapped himself into a seat, sparing a quick glance out into the hall.
Boba Fett was stalking toward them, blaster in hand.
Hoole slapped the controls, closing the emergency blast doors just as
the bounty hunter fired. They heard the energy bolt slam into the heavy
crash door. The Shi'ido glanced around to make sure Zak and Tash had both
safely strapped themselves into their crash webbing; then he pulled a large
red handle. Safety bolts exploded, and the escape pod hurled itself away
from the ship.
"Look at the damage," Zak whispered, staring at the Shroud through a
viewport.
Smoke and flames poured out of the ship's engines.
"Yes," Hook explained. "I tried to trap Boba Fett in the engine rooms,
but he was too careful to be tricked. He fired his wrist rocket into the
engines to flush me out. If I had not shapeshifted into a fire-resistant
Gregonian salamander, I would have been killed."
Tash checked the escape pod's small control panel. "According to these
readings, we're dropping into Koaan's gravity field. We should be able to
land with no trouble. Will we find help there?"
"I do not know," Hoole replied. "But I will try to land us as close to
the research center as possible."
"And as far away from Fett as we can get," Tash added.
"I wouldn't worry about him," Zak said. "It looks like the Shroud is
headed for an explosion or a crash landing. Maybe it'll take Fett with it."
The escape pod wasn't designed for long flights. It was programmed to
find the closest planet and land there as softly as possible-which proved to
be not very softly at all.
Koaan's gravity grabbed hold of them, pulling the small pod faster and
faster toward the surface. Entering the planet's atmosphere, the pod began
to heat up until the outside flamed like a meteor. The inside grew hotter,
too. Hoole fired the landing rockets, trying to slow their descent, and the
pod rattled and bumped through the air. Just when Zak thought he couldn't
take the heat or the rattling any longer, the pod hit the ground with an
enormous thud! that jolted him from his feet to the top of his head.
They had landed on Koaan.
Hoole opened the hatch and all three of them crawled from the smoking
escape pod onto sandy ground. They had landed on the edge of a lake. Zak got
the impression of green hills in the distance, warm sun, and a brilliant
blue sky. But like Hoole and Tash, he was exhausted and quickly collapsed
facedown on the ground. He closed his eyes with a sigh.
The sound of a footstep made him look up.
Lying there, he could see a long shadow creeping along the ground. It
was the shadow of a being covered in hard, smooth armor.
The shadow fell across him.
CHAPTER 3
"Look out!" Zak shouted, scrambling away from the helmeted figure. He
expected to feel another of Boba Fetes stun bolts
.
Instead, a mechanical-sounding voice spoke: "There is no need to panic,
Zak."
Zak blinked. The figure standing before him wasn't Boba Fett. In fact,
it wasn't a living creature at all. It was a droid. "Deevee!" Zak shouted.
The silver droid took another step forward. He was built to look as
much like a human as possible, but the movements of his mechanical arms and
legs were stiff and jerky.
"Deevee!" Tash shouted after Zak. She threw her arms around the droid.
"It's good to see you both again," Deevee said to the two Arrandas;
then he turned to their uncle. "And Master Hoole. Welcome back to Koaan."
Hoole, who rarely smiled, almost grinned to see his old companion.
"Thank you, D-V9. I am glad you received my transmission."
"Indeed," the droid said. "Although I expected you to arrive by ship,
not by lifepod."
"So did we," Zak said. "But Boba Fett had other plans."
"Boba Fett!" squawked the droid. Deevee had been with them on their
first encounter with the bounty hunter months earlier. "What does that
killer want?"
"Us," Tash answered. "The Empire has put a price on our heads."
"Which brings us to our visit," Hoole added. "Deevee, do you have
access to the research center's unprocessed data files?"
Deevee nodded. "Of course, Master Hoole. I'm now the assistant to the
chief anthropologist. I have access to the entire facility."
"Good," Hoole said. "Because here is what we need . . ."
On the way to the research facility, Hoole-interrupted often by Zak and
Tash-told Deevee everything that had happened to them over the last few
months. After they had helped the Rebel Alliance destroy a terrible
scientific experiment created for the Empire, Zak, Tash, and Hoole had
searched for a safe place to hide. But trouble and terror seemed drawn to
them the way light was drawn down a black hole in space.
"It sounds terrible," Deevee said as they came near the research
center. "Your situation has become worse since we last parted company."
"That's why we need a really safe place to hide," Tash said. "Not just
a distant planet. We need a planet no one has ever heard of."
"I'm sure you'll find it in the old catalogs," Deevee said. "That
information isn't classified, so no one will question your presence as long
as you are with me. However, Master Hoole, your face is very well known here
from your days as an anthropologist. You will surely be recognized."
"That is not a problem," the Shi'ido replied. He closed his eyes. His
gray skin seemed to wriggle across his bones for a moment-and then Hoole was
gone, replaced by a very average-looking human with brown hair and brown
eyes.
"Excellent," Deevee said. "I wouldn't want anyone to recognize you with
all the stormtroopers about."
"Stormtroopers!" Hoole said through his new shape. "There have never
been stormtroopers on Koaan."
"There are now," the droid said with a hint of sadness in his
mechanical voice. "Ever since the Rebellion, the Empire has sent military
forces to control every scientific facility it owns, no matter how small.
But they shouldn't trouble us."
Deevee was right. The Galactic Research Academy was a place of learning
and a storehouse of information gathered by scientists and scholars from
across the galaxy. Because it contained no military secrets and stayed out
of politics, it wasn't considered very important by the Empire or the
Rebellion. As long as the Academy didn't break any Imperial rules, it didn't
get much attention. The few Imperials on the planet were there to make sure
no one spread any information that would show the Empire in a bad light.
Although Hoole's familiar face might have caused a stir, the sight of a
droid escorting one human adult and two human children made no impression at
all.
Deevee led them through a courtyard where a few scholars, mostly human,
hurried here and there on Academy business. They then followed Deevee into a
large building several stories tall.
"All the floors above us contain the main library," the droid explained
as they reached a bank of turbolifts. "It's one of the most complete records
of galactic knowledge anywhere. But we are going down."
A turbolift arrived and they entered. The lift descended with a gentle
hum. A moment later the door opened and they found themselves facing a
sour-looking man in an Imperial uniform. His skin was pale and sickly from
sitting in a dingy office belowground every day.
Zak tensed on seeing the Imperial uniform, but Deevee merely shuffled
out of the turbolift, leaned forward, and spoke so that his voice would be
picked up by a microphone on the Imperial's desk. "Greetings, Deputy Strey.
D-V9 requesting access to raw data files. I have three researchers from
offplanet with me."
The Imperial, Deputy Strey, glanced at a screen. "Voice authorization
confirmed. Go ahead," the Imperial said.
Deputy Strey didn't even look at them again as they continued down a
dimly lit hallway, past several unmarked doors. To Zak, all the doors looked
alike. But Deevee knew where he was going. He opened one of the doors and
stepped inside.
They were in a large room lined with rows of shelves. Each shelf was
piled high with containers, and each container held hundreds of datadisks.
In the corner was a computer terminal.
"This place is some thrill," Zak said sarcastically.
"It may look boring to you, Zak," said Hoole. "But every one of those
disks contains the records of a team that discovered and explored an
uncharted planet. Who knows what dangers they faced, or what treasures they
discovered?"
"Well, no one knows," Deevee answered. "These records have been sitting
here for years."
"Why?" Tash asked, staring wide-eyed at the galaxy of information
around her. Tash was a reader, and the thought of all that knowledge made
her head spin.
"Everything we record has to be approved by the Empire first," the
droid explained. "All these disks are just copies. The originals are on
Coruscant, the Imperial capital. Once a file is approved, we can send it
upstairs to the main library. Luckily for us, with nothing else to do, the
Academy scholars have been copying and cross-referencing the files into this
computer. Thus, we don't need to search through the disks themselves."
Zak looked at the stacks of datadisks that reached the ceiling. "Good.
There are enough disks here to smother a bantha."
As Deevee activated the computer terminal, Hoole, who had shifted back
into his own shape, said, "Go back years, Deevee. Look for something that
was discovered before the Empire took over."
"Why?" Tash asked her uncle.
"If a planet was discovered under the Empire, it was probably
discovered by Imperials. We do not want to go anywhere they have been. We
want a place that was discovered a long time ago, and then forgotten."
"I think I've found just the planet," Deevee said, after a short
search. "This planet was discovered by an exploration team almost forty
years ago.
It-"
The door hissed open behind them. Startled by the intrusion, they all
whirled around to see Deputy Strey standing in the doorway. His pale face
had gone even whiter. He looked like death itself.
Deputy Strey gagged, as if trying to speak. Then he fell face first
into the room and did not move again.
CHAPTER 4
While Zak and the others were staring down at Strey, eight beings
charged into the room, stepping over the Imperial's body. The first was a
woman with long, thick hair, a blaster in her hand. Behind her came a
Twi'lek with two thick tentacles growing out of the back of his head. They
were wrapped around his shoulders like a scarf. Four men followed, all
dressed in sloppy flight uniforms, all heavily armed.
The woman glared at Hoole, Zak, and Tash. Then she pointed her blaster
at them. "Who are you?" she demanded.
Hoole returned her gaze calmly. "We could ask you the same question.
What have you done to that man?"
The Twi'lek looked at the woman and said, "We don't have time for this,