Star Wars - Jedi Academy Trilogy 1 - Jedi Search Read online

  Luke held up another finger. "As well, the droids could search the database for forgotten descendants of known Jedi Knights from the Old Republic days. We should turn up a few leads."

  "And what will you yourself be doing?" Mon Mothma asked, shifting in her robes.

  "I've already found several candidates I wish to investigate. All I ask right now is that you agree this is something we should pursue, that the search for Jedi be conducted by others and not just myself."

  Mon Mothma sat up straighter in her central seat. "I think we can agree to that without further discussion." She looked around to the other senators, seeing them nod agreement. "Tell us your second request."

  Luke stood taller. This was most important to him. He saw Leia stiffen. "If sufficient candidates are found who have potential for using the Force, I wish to be allowed‑‑with the New Republic's blessing‑-to establish in some appropriate place an intensive training center, a Jedi academy, if you will. Under my direction we can help these students discover their abilities, to focus and strengthen their power. Ultimately, this academy would provide a core group that could allow us to restore the Jedi Knights as protectors of the New Republic." He drew in a deep breath and waited.

  Senator Bel Iblis raised himself slowly to his feet. "A comment, if I may? I'm sorry, Luke, but I have to raise the question‑‑we've already seen the terrible damage a Jedi can cause if he allows himself to be swayed by the dark side. We just recently fought against Joruus C'baoth, and of course Darth Vader nearly caused the death of us all. If a teacher as great as Obi‑Wan Kenobi could fail and let his student fall to evil, how can we take the risk of training an entire new order of Jedi Knights? How many will turn to the dark side? How many new enemies will we make for ourselves?"

  Luke nodded somberly. The question had been working at the back of his own mind, and he had pondered it deeply. "I can only say that we have seen these terrible examples, and we must learn from them. I myself have touched the dark side and come through stronger and more wary of its powers than ever before. I agree there is a risk, but I cannot believe the New Republic will be safer without a new force of Jedi."

  A murmur rippled through the chamber. Bel Iblis stood a moment longer, as if he meant to say something else, but instead he sat down, looking satisfied.

  Admiral Ackbar got to his feet and applauded with his flipper-like hands. "I agree that the Jedi's request is in the best interests of the New Republic," he said.

  Jan Dodonna also stood. After narrowly surviving the Battle of Yavin, Dodonna had treated Luke with complete trust. "I agree as well!"

  Soon all the senators were standing. Luke saw a broad grin on Leia's face as she too stood. He felt the rainbows around him from the crystal ceiling, seemingly full of power, and he felt warm inside.

  Mon Mothma sat, nodding gravely. She was the last to stand up, and she raised her hand for silence. "I give you my hopes for the rebirth of the Jedi Knights. We will offer whatever help we can. May the Force be with you."

  Before Luke could turn, applause from the audience rolled like a storm through the chamber.

  Leia's quarters were among the most spacious and accommodating in the Emperor's abandoned palace‑‑and the room echoed with emptiness. Leia Organa Solo, formerly a princess, currently the New Republic's Minister of State‑‑felt tired and worn as she returned to her rooms at the end of a long day. The high point had been Luke's triumphant address before the assembly, but that was merely one detail in a day filled with problems. Confusing contradictions in multilingual treaties that even Threepio couldn't fathom, alien cultural restrictions that made diplomacy nearly impossible‑‑it made her head spin!

  As Leia looked around her quarters, a frown etched her face. "Illumination up two points," she said, and the room grew brighter, driving some of the quiet shadows farther away. Han and Chewbacca were gone, ostensibly to reestablish contact with the planet Kessel, although she believed it was more of a vacation for him, a way to relive the "good old days" of gallivanting across the galaxy. Sometimes she wondered if Han ever regretted marrying someone so different from himself, settling down with diplomatic entanglements on Coruscant. He tolerated endless receptions during which he had to dress nicely in clothes that obviously made him uncomfortable. In conversations he had to speak with a measured tact that was completely foreign to him.

  But Han was off having fun at the moment, leaving her stuck in Imperial City. The New Republic's Chief of State, Mon Mothma, gave Leia more and more assignments, letting the fate of planets hang on how well she accomplished her tasks. So far Leia had performed well, but the seven years since the Battle of Endor had been filled with many setbacks: the war against the alien Ssi‑ruuk Imperium, the resurgence of Grand Admiral Thrawn and his bid to reassemble the Empire, not to mention the resurrected Emperor and his gigantic World Devastator machines. Though they seemed to be enjoying a time of relative peace at last, the constant warfare had left the New Republic on shaky ground.

  In a way it had been easier when they had the Empire to fight against, to unify all the factions of the Alliance. But now the enemy was not so clearly defined. Now Leia and the others had to re-forge links between all the planets that had once been crushed under the Imperial boot. Some of those worlds, though, had suffered so much that now they wanted to be left alone, given time to lick their wounds and heal. Many wanted no part of a galaxy-wide federation of planets. They wanted their independence. But independent worlds could be picked off one by one if other powerful forces ever allied themselves against them.

  Leia walked into her bedchamber and stripped off the diplomatic clothing she had worn all day. This morning it had been crisp and bright, but the fabric lost its vigor after too much time under the rainbow lights of the grand audience chamber.

  Within the next week or so, Leia would have to arrange meetings with ambassadors from six different worlds in an effort to convince them to join the New Republic. Four seemed amenable, but two insisted on complete neutrality until their planets' specific issues were addressed.

  Her most difficult task would be two weeks hence, when the Caridan ambassador would arrive. Carida was deep in territory still held by vestiges of the Empire, home of one of the primary Imperial military training bases.

  Even though Emperor Palpatine was dead and Grand Admiral Thrawn overthrown, Carida refused to face reality. It had been a major victory that the ambassador agreed to come to Coruscant at all‑‑and Leia would have to entertain him, no doubt smiling pleasantly the entire time.

  Leia turned on the controls of the sonic bath and set it for a gentle massage. She eased herself into the chamber, letting out a long sigh, wanting just to blank out the troubles from her head.

  Around her, fresh‑cut flowers from the Skydome Botanical Gardens brightened the room with their faint perfume. Mounted on the wall were nostalgic scenes from the planet Alderaan, pictures of the planet where she had grown up, the planet Grand Moff Tarkin had destroyed to demonstrate the power of his Death Star: the peaceful, sweeping grasslands that whispered in the wind, the soaring kite creatures that ferried people from one smooth tower city to another, the industry and deep settlements built into the walls of wide cracks plunging into Alderaan's crust ... her home city rising from the center of a lake.

  Han had procured those pictures for her just last year; he wouldn't say where he had found them. For months the images wrenched her heart every time she looked at them. She thought of her foster father, Senator Bail Organa, and her childhood as a princess, never suspecting her true heritage.

  Now Leia looked on those pictures with bittersweet fondness, as an indication of Han's love for her. He had, after all, once won a whole planet in a card game and had given it to her for the other survivors of Alderaan. He did love her.

  Even though he wasn't here now.

  After only a few minutes the sonic bath unknotted her muscles, revitalizing and refreshing her. Leia dressed again, this time in something more comfortable. In the mirror she l
ooked at herself. Leia no longer spent the meticulous time with her hair that she had when she was a princess on Alderaan.

  Since then she had borne three children, the twins, who were now two years old, and recently a third baby. She was able to see them only a few times a year, and she missed them terribly.

  Because of the potential power carried by the grandchildren of Anakin Skywalker, the twins and the baby boy had been taken to a carefully guarded planet, Anoth. All other knowledge of the planet had been blocked from her mind, to prevent anyone from prying it out of her thoughts. During their first two years, Luke said, Jedi children were most vulnerable. Any contact with the dark side could warp their minds and abilities for life.

  She activated the small holodais that projected recent images of her children. The two‑year‑old twins, Jacen and Jaina, played inside a colorful sculptured playground artifact. In another image Leia's personal servant Winter held the new baby, Anakin, smiling at something out of view. Leia smiled back, though the static images couldn't see her.

  Part of that long loneliness would soon be over.

  Jacen and Jaina could now use some of the Jedi powers to protect themselves, and Leia could shield the twins as well. Within little more than a week‑‑no, it was exactly eight days‑‑her little boy and girl would be returning home.

  Knowing that the twins were coming to stay lightened her mood. Leia eased back into the self‑conforming chair as she turned on the entertainment synthesizers, playing a pastorale melody written by a famous composer from Alderaan.

  The door chime sounded, startling her from her reverie. She glanced down to make certain she had remembered to dress herself, then went to the entryway.

  Her brother Luke stood in the shadows, cowled in his brown hood and cloak. "Hello, Luke!" she said, then gasped. "Oh, I forgot completely!"

  "Developing your Jedi powers is nothing to take lightly, Leia." He frowned, as if scolding her.

  She gestured him to come inside. "I'm sure you'll have me make it up with extra practice sessions."

  When seen from a distance, the huge construction droid moved at a plodding pace, lifting its immense support pods only once every half hour to shuffle a step forward. But standing right beneath it, General Wedge Antilles and his demolition teams saw the construction droid as a blur of motion, its thousands of articulated arms working on structures to be disassembled. The walking factory plowed deeper into the morass of collapsing and half‑destroyed buildings in an old sector of Imperial City.

  Some of the droid's limbs ended with implosion wrecking balls or plasma cutters that sent explosive jolts into the walls. Collector arms sorted through the rubble, yanking out girders, shoveling boulders and steelcrete into dispensing receptacles. Other raw wreckage was scooped directly into the churning mandibles and conveyor belts that brought the resources down to elemental separators, which in turn pulled out the useful substances and processed them into new building components. The heat rising from its internal factories rippled in mirage-like waves, making the immense machine glow in Coruscant's star‑filled night.

  The construction droid continued to work its way through the buildings damaged from the devastating firefights during the recent civil warfare. With so much to repair or destroy, sometimes the droid's collector arms and debris nets were not sufficient.

  Wedge Antilles looked up just in time to see a packed receptacle split from its moorings. "Hey, keep back, everybody! Under cover!"

  The demolition team scrambled under the protection of an outcropping of wall as the debris fell twenty stories. A rain of boulders, transparisteel, and twisted rebars crashed with explosive force into the street below. Someone yelped into the comlink, then promptly silenced himself.

  "Looks like this main building is going to go any minute," Wedge said. "Team Orange, I want you to keep at least half a block away from that thing. There's no telling what that droid's going to do, and I don't want to shut it down. It takes three days to reinitialize and get it working again." Wedge had not been thrilled with using the outdated and unpredictable technology of the construction droids, but they did seem to be the fastest way to clear the wreckage.

  "I copy, Wedge," the Orange Team Leader said, "But if we see any more of those feral refugees, we're going to have to try and rescue them‑‑even if they are faster and hide better." Then the comlink channel broke into chatter as he ordered other team members to move.

  Wedge smiled. Even though he, like Lando Calrissian and Han Solo, had been promoted to the rank of general, Wedge still felt like "one of the guys." He was a fighter pilot at heart, and he liked it that way. He had spent the last four months in space with the salvage crews there, hauling wrecked fighters into higher orbits where they would pose no risk to the incoming ships. He had salvaged the vessels not too badly damaged and self‑destructed those that posed too great a hazard in the orbital traffic lanes.

  Last month Wedge had requested a ground assignment for a change, though he loved to fly in space. Now he was in charge of almost two hundred people, supervising the four construction droids that churned through this section of the city, restoring it and erasing battle scars from the war against the Empire.

  The construction droids each had a master plan deep in their computer cores. As they repaired Imperial City in swaths, the droids checked the buildings in front of them, fixing those that needed minor repairs, demolishing those that didn't fit into the new plan.

  Most of the sentient life forms had been evacuated from the deep underworld of the ancient metropolis, although some creatures living in the darkest alleys could no longer be classified as fully human. Shabby and naked, with pallid skin and sunken eyes, they were the descendants of those who had long ago fled to Coruscant's darkest alleys to escape political retribution; some looked as though they had not seen the sun their entire lives. When the New Republic returned to Coruscant, an effort spearheaded by the old veteran of Yavin 4, General Jan Dodonna, had been to help these poor souls, but they were wild and smart, and eluded capture every time.

  The streets‑‑or what had been streets centuries ago‑‑were covered with dank moss and a lush growth of fungus. The smells of decaying garbage and stagnant water swirled around them anytime Wedge's team moved. Microclimates of rising air and condensing moisture created tiny rainstorms in the alleys, but the dripping water smelled no fresher than the standing pools or gutters. Wedge's teams deployed floating repulsor‑lights, but clouds of settling dust from the demolition work filled the air with thick murk.

  The construction droid paused in its work for a moment, and the relative silence sounded like a thud in Wedge's ears. He looked up to see the droid extending two of its big wrecking‑ball arms. It swung the balls with mammoth force, toppling the wall in front of it. Then the droid levered its support‑pod legs forward to take a step into the collapsing building.

  But the side of the wall did not slough inward quite as Wedge expected; something inside had been reinforced more than the rest of the building. The construction droid tried to step down, but the wall would not yield.

  The titanic droid began making loud, hydraulic sounds as it attempted to regain its balance. The forty‑story‑tall mechanical factory tilted sideways and hung poised on the verge of toppling. Wedge jerked out his comlink. If the construction droid fell, it would take out half a block of buildings with it, including the area where he had just sent Team Orange to take refuge.

  But then a dozen of its arms locked together and extended to the adjacent wall of buildings, splaying out, breaking through in places, but steadying the droid's weight just long enough for it to regain its balance. A rustling noise came over the comlink as Wedge's teams let out a collective sigh of relief.

  Wedge tried to see by the light of the shimmering aurora overhead and the floating lights they had strung. Hidden behind an edifice indistinguishable from the rest of the buildings stood solid metal walls, heavily reinforced but buckled and ruptured by the enormous foot of the construction droid.

/>   Wedge frowned. The demolition teams had encountered a lot of ancient artifacts in the ruined buildings, but nothing that had been so powerfully shielded and hidden. Something told him this was important.

  He looked up with a start to see that the construction droid had reoriented itself and returned to the reinforced building that stood in its way. Bending down its scanner‑dome head, the droid inspected the tough walls of the shielded room, as if analyzing how best to rip it to shreds. Two of the explosive electrical claws extended downward.

  The construction droid knew nothing about what secrets these buildings might contain. The droid merely followed the blueprint in its computer mind and carried out its programmed modifications.

  Wedge felt an agonized moment of indecision. If he shut the droid down to inspect the mysterious building, it would take three days to reset all the systems and power it up again. But if the droid had indeed uncovered something important, something the Cabinet should know about, what would a few days matter?

  Blue‑white lightning flickered on the ends of the construction droid's explosive claws as it reached toward the shielded walls.

  Wedge picked up his comlink and made ready to shut down the droid‑‑and then his mind blanked. What was the code?

  Beside him Lieutenant Deegan saw his moment of panicked confusion and snapped the answer. "SGW zero‑zero‑two‑seven!" Wedge instantly keyed it into the comlink.

  The droid froze just as it was about to discharge its electrical claws. Wedge heard the hissing rumble as the factories inside went into standby mode, powering down and cooling off. Wedge hoped he had made the right decision. "Okay, Purple and Silver Teams come on in with me. We're going to do a little exploring here."

  Summoning a cluster of floating lights to follow them, the teams converged at the foot of the construction droid and then moved into the wreckage. Loose dust flickered down.

  They scrambled over the rubble, careful not to cut themselves on shattered transparisteel and protruding metal. Wedge heard the skittering sounds of small life‑forms hiding in the new cracks. The patter of falling stones continued to fall as the collapsing walls shifted and re-shifted. "Watch your backs‑‑this place is still falling apart," Wedge said.