Heirs of the Force Page 11

from one Massassi tree to the next, hour after hour, all through the

  night.

  Distance held no more meaning for him; he had to get to the Jedi academy

  He could hear nothing but his own ragged breathing. His injured leg

  wobbled unsteadily at each step.

  Fatigue blurred his vision, and twigs and leaves matted his fur. He

  pushed forward, always forward, arm-leg, arm-leg, hand-foot,

  hand-footLowie looked around, confused and disoriented. He had reached

  for the next branch, but there were no more branches. Raising his head,

  he looked across the clearing-the landing clearing!-and saw the Great

  Temple, its majestic tiers outlined in the predawn darkness by

  flickering torches.

  Lowbacca never remembered afterward climbing down out of the tree or

  crossing the clearing. He noticed only the awesome, welcoming sight of

  the ancient stone pyramid as he bellowed an alarm. He roared again and

  again, until a stream of robed figures carrying fresh torches rushed out

  of the temple and down the steps toward him.

  The night and the desperate journey had taken their toll on Lowie.

  The numbness imposed by his own determination had worn off, and his knee

  refused to hold him any longer. His gangly legs gave way, and he

  collapsed to the ground, moaning his message.

  When he rolled onto his back, a circle of concerned faces filled his

  vision. Tionne bent over him and brushed the tangle of matted fur away

  from his eyes.

  "Lowbacca, we were concerned for you!"

  Tionne said gravely. "Are you hurt?"

  Lowie groaned an answer, but Tionne didn't seem @o understand. She

  leaned closer to him, her silvery hair glowing in the torchlight.

  "Were Jacen and Jaina with you? And Tenel Ka?" She paused as he tried

  to moan another answer. "Did something happen?"

  she persisted. "Can you tell me where they are?"

  Lowbacca finally managed to say that the others were in the jungle and

  needed help.

  Tionne's brows knitted together in an expression of worry. She blinked

  her mother-ofpearl eyes. "I'm sorry, Lowbacca. I can't understand a

  word you're saying."

  Lowie reached toward his belt to activate Em Teedee-but he found

  nothing. The translator droid was gone. ----------------TENEL KA RAN

  through the cool neardarkness of the jungle floor, trying to come up

  with a plan. She held her bent arms in front of her to protect her eyes

  and to push obstacles from her path. Branches whipped her face, tore at

  her hair, and clawed mercilessly at her bare arms and legs.

  Her breath came in sharp gasps, not so much from the effort of

  running-to which she was well accustomed-but from the terror of what she

  had just experienced. She hoped she had made the right decision. Her

  pulse pounded in her ears, competing with the symphony of alien noises

  as the jungle creatures welcomed nightfall. Though she searched her

  mind, no Jedi calming techniques would come to her.

  When the loud squawk of flying creatures sounded directly behind her,

  Tenel Ka glanced back in alarm. Before she could turn again, she

  fetched up sharply against the trunk of a Massassi tree. Stunned, she

  fell back a few paces and sank to the ground, putting one hand to the

  side of her face to examine her in'

  jury.

  No blood, she thought as if from a great distance. Good. Beneath her

  fingertips, she felt tenderness and swelling from her cheek to her

  temple. There would be bruises, of course, and perhaps a royal

  headache. She cringed at the thought. Royal. Although no one could

  see it, her cheeks heated with a flush of humiliation.

  Tenel Ka pulled herself to her feet and took stock of her situation. In

  her newfound calmness she admitted to herself that she was completely

  lost. Jacen and Jaina-and by now perhaps even Lowbacca-were counting on

  her to return with help. She had always prided herself on being strong,

  loyal, reliable, unswayed by emotion. She had been levelheaded enough

  during her initial escape, but then she had panicked. She shook off

  thoughts of her stupid headlong flight.

  Well, she thought, pressing her pale lips together into a firm line, I

  am back in control now. She decided to push on until she found a safer

  place to spend the night. When ing came, she would try to get her

  bearings again and return to the Jedi academy.

  As she trudged along, searching in the fading light of day, the ground

  began to rise and become more rocky. The trees grew sparser. When she

  saw a jagged shadow loom out of the darkness ahead of her, she slowed.

  Ahead was a large outcropping of rough, black stone, long-cooled lava

  mottled with lichens.

  Tenel Ka tilted her head back and looked up, but she could not see how

  high the rock went; the jungle dimness swallowed it up.

  Cautiously exploring sideways, she encountered a break in the rock face,

  a patch of deeper darkness-a small cave. Perhaps she could spend the

  night here, in this defensible, sheltered place. The opening was no

  wider than the length of one arm and extended only to shoulder height,

  forcing her to stoop to explore further. She needed only to find a

  comfortable, safe place to rest.

  She shivered as she hunched down on the sandy, cool floor of the cave.

  Her every muscle ached, but for now nothing could be done about her

  pain; she could bear it as well as any warrior. But she had not eaten

  since midday. She felt in the pouch at her waist, finding one

  carbo-protein biscuit remaining.

  As for the cold, she could light a fire with the finger-sized flash

  heater she carried in another pouch on her belt.

  Dropping to her hands and knees, she scrabbled along the ground near the

  mouth of the cave, searching for twigs, leaves, any thing that would

  burn. Back on Dathomir she'd had plenty of practice in rugged camping

  and outdoor endurance.

  As she thought of the cozy warmth of a fire and a soft bed of leaves,

  Tenel Ka's spirits rose. The nightmarish events of the afternoon began

  to settle into perspective. This was an adventure, she assured herself.

  A test of her will and determination.

  When she had collected kindling and some thicker branches, Tenel Ka

  began to build her fire against the velvety shadows of gathering night.

  She fumbled in her belt pouches for her flash heater and groaned as she

  remembered that Jaina had borrowed it that afternoon. She rubbed her

  cold, bare arms and blew on her hands to warm them.

  Tenel Ka thought longingly of the cheery warmth of a crackling fire, of

  drinking hot, spiced Hapan ale with her parents. A rare smile crossed

  her lips as she thought of them, Teneniel Djo and Prince Isolder. If

  she were at home, she would only have to lift a hand to bring a servant

  of the Royal House of Hapes running to do her bidding. . . .

  Tenel Ka grimaced. She had never known poverty or hardship, except by

  choice. Well, you chose this, Princess, she reminded herself savagely.

  You wanted to learn to do things for yourself Her father, Isolder of

  Hapes, had always said that the two years he spent in disguise working

  as a
privateer had done more to prepare him for leadership than any

  training the royal tutors of Hapes could provide. And her mother,

  raised on the primitive planet of Dathomir, was proud that her only

  daughter spent months each year learning the ways of the Singing

  Mountain Clan and dressing as a warrior woman-a practice that Tenel Ka

  had enjoyed all the more because it annoyed her scheming Hapan

  grandmother.

  Teneniel Djo had been even more pleased when her daughter had decided to

  attend the academy and take instruction to become a Jedi. She had

  enrolled simply as Tenel Ka of Dathomir, not wanting the other trainees

  to treat her differently because of her royal upbringing.

  At the academy, only Master Skywalkerwho was an old friend of her

  mother's@s, and the man Teneniel Djo most admired-knew Tenel Ka's true

  background. She had not even told Jacen and Jaina, her closest friends

  on Yavin 4.

  Jacen and Jaina. The twins trusted her.

  They needed her help now. She shivered in the cave. She had to stay

  safe for the night and then get back to the academy in the morning to

  bring reinforcements.

  Tenel Ka heard a faint rustling, slapping, and hissing in the darkness

  behind her. She looked back into the undulating shadows, blinking to

  clear her eyes. Had the shadows really moved? Perhaps she'had been

  foolish to spend the night in an unexplored cave, but cold and fatigue

  had overruled her natural caution. She looked up and thought she could

  discern glossy dark shapes clinging to the ceiling, moving like waves on

  an inverted black sea.

  Don't be a child, she chided herself. She had always tried to show her

  friends how self-sufficient and reliable she was. Right now, she was

  cold and bruised and miserable. What would Jacen say if he could see

  her? He'd probably tell some dumb joke.

  Tenel Ka gritted her teeth. She would just have to build a fire without

  the flash heater, using skills she had been taught on Dathomir.

  It took an agonizingly long time for her strong arms to produce enough

  friction twirling one smooth stick of wood against a flat branch.

  Finally, she managed to coax forth a glowing ember and a tendril of

  smoke. Working quickly, she touched a dried leaf to it and blew. A

  tiny golden flame licked its way up the leaf. With mounting excitement

  she added another and then another, and then a few twigs.

  A gust of wind threatened to extinguish the struggling flame, so she

  encircled her fire with a tiny earthen berm to protect it. She added

  more tinder, and soon the snapping blaze was large enough to warm her

  and cast a comforting circle of light.

  Tenel Ka soon realized that the restless sounds of scratching and

  stirring she had heard earlier had grown louder-much louder.

  Suddenly, a shrieking reptilian form plummeted from the ceiling, its

  leathery wings outstretched. Twin serpentine heads snapped and a

  scorpion tail lashed, razor-sharp claws outstretched. Tenel Ka raised

  an arm to protect her face as the thing drove directly at her.

  Talons raked her arm as she pushed herself backward toward the cave

  wall. Sharp fangs opened a gash in her bare leg, and she kicked

  fiercely, striking one of the creature's two heads with her scaled boot.

  In the flickering light from the tiny fire, Tenel Ka watched in horror

  as an entire flock of the hideous creatures-each with a wingspan wider

  than she was tall-dropped from the shadowy recesses of the cave and

  swarmed toward her.

  She struggled for purchase on the sandy cave floor and pushed her feet

  against the stone wall. Tenel Ka propelled herself toward the mouth of

  the cave on her hands and knees.

  She kicked the embers of her fire at the flapping beasts as she

  scrambled past, hardly noticing the bits of charred wood and leaf that

  singed her own legs. One of the reptilian creatures shrieked in pain.

  Tenel Ka smiled with grim satisfaction and launched herself through the

  cave opening, ---------------back out into the pitch blackness of the

  jungle night.

  The monsters followed.

  AT GUNPOINT, THE TIE pilot led his captives back to the clearing with

  the small, crude shelter where he had lived for some time.

  "So this is why you came running," Jaina said to her brother. "You found

  where he lives." Jacen nodded.

  "Silence!" the Imperial soldier said in a brusque voice.

  Jaina, her throat tight and dry, swallowed hard and looked around at the

  small, cleared site in the gathering evening shadows. Beside them a

  shallow stream trickled past. She couldn't imagine how the TIE pilot

  had survived all alone, without any human contact, for so many years.

  The climate of Yavin 4 was warm and hospitable, placing few demands on

  the home the TIE pilot had created for himself.

  He had carved out a large shelter from the hole of a half-burned

  Massassi tree, in front of which he had lashed a lean-to of split

  branches. Altogether, it provided him with a simple but comfortable

  room, like a living cave.

  Jaina tried to imagine how long it had taken the Imperial, scraping with

  a sharp implement-possibly a piece of wreckage from his crashed ship-to

  widen the area under the gnarled overhang.

  The TIE pilot had rigged a system of plumbing made from hollow reeds

  joined together, drawing water from the nearby stream into catch basins

  inside his hut. He had made rough utensils from wood, forest gourds,

  and petrified fungus slabs. The man had maintained a lonely existence,

  unchallenged, simply surviving and waiting for further orders, hoping

  someone would come to retrieve him-but no one ever had.

  The Imperial soldier stopped outside the hut. "On the ground," he said.

  "Both of you.

  Hands above your heads."

  Jaina looked at Jacen as they lay bellydown on the ground of the

  clearing. She could think of no way to escape. The TIE pilot went to

  the thick foliage and rummaged among the branches with his good hand. He

  wrapped his fingers around some thin, purplish vines that dangled from

  dazzlingly bright Nebula orchids in the branches above his head. With a

  erk he snapped the strands free.

  The vine tendrils flopped and writhed in his grip as if they were alive

  and trying to squirm away. The TIE pilot rapidly used them to lash

  Jaina's wrists together, then Jacen's. As the deep violet sap leaked

  from the broken ends of the vines, the plant's thrashing slowed, and the

  flexible, rubbery vines contracted, tightening into knots that were

  impossible to break.

  Jacen and Jaina looked at each other, their liquid-brown eyes meeting as

  a host of thoughts gleamed unspoken between them.

  But they said nothing, afraid to anger their captor.

  Marching clumsily through the humid jungle had made them hot and sticky,

  and Jaina was still covered with grime from her repairs on the TIE

  fighter's engines. Now the cool jungle evening chilled her perspiration

  and made her shiver. Her hands tingled and throbbed, as the tight vines

  cutting into her wrists made her even more miserable.

  in the hour or so sin
ce their capture, neither of the twins had heard

  any further sign of Lowie or Tenel Ka. Jaina was afraid that something

  had happened to them, that her two friends were even now stranded and

  lost somewhere in the jungle. But then she realized that her own

  situation was probably.

  a lot more dangerous than theirs.

  Without a word, the TIE pilot nudged them to their feet, then over to

  the large lava-rock boulders near the fire pit he used outside his

  shelter. They squatted there together. The stone chairs had been

  polished smooth, their sharp edges chipped away slowly and patiently

  over the course of years by the lost Imperial.

  The last coppery rays of light from the huge orange planet Yavin

  disappeared, as the rapidly rotating moon covered the jungle with night.

  Through the densely laced treetops, thick shadows gathered, making the

  forest floor darker than the deepest night on Jacen and Jaina's

  glittering home planet of Coruscant.

  The Imperial pilot walked over to the splintered chunks of dry,

  moss-covered wood he had painstakingly gathered, one-armed, and stacked

  near his shelter. He carried them back and dropped one branch at a time

  into the fire pit, stacking the wood in formation to make a small

  campfire.

  The pilot withdrew a battered igniter from a storage bin inside his

  shelter and pointed it at the campfire. Its charge had been nearly

  depleted, and the silvery nozzle showered only a few hot sparks onto the

  kindling; but he seemed accustomed to such difficulties.