Heirs of the Force Page 4

  Jaina gnawed her lip, anxiously scanning the sky for any glimmer that

  might herald the arrival of the Millennium Falcon. She and Jacen stood

  at the edge of the wide clearing in front of the Jedi academy, where the

  hideous monster had appeared the day before. The area's short grasses

  had been trampled down by frequent takeoffs and landings.

  Jaina smelled the rich green dampness of the early morning in the jungle

  that surrounded the clearing. The foliage rustled and sighed in a light

  breeze that also carried the tiills, twitters, and chirps that reminded

  her of the wide profusion of animal life that inhabited the jungle moon.

  Beside her, Jacen shifted impatiently from one foot to the other, a

  frown of concentration etched across his forehead. Jaina sighed.

  Why did it seem like everything took forever when you were looking

  forward to it, and things that you didn't want to happen arrived too

  soon?

  As if sensing her tension, Jacen suddenly turned to her with a

  mischievous look in his eye. "Hey, Jaina-you know why TIE fighters

  scream in space?"

  She nodded. "Sure, their twin ion engines set up a shock front from the

  exhaust-"

  "No!" Jacen waved his hand in dismissal.

  "Because they miss their mothership!"

  As was expected of her, Jaina groaned, grateful for a chance to get her

  mind off waiting, even if only for a moment.

  Then a comforting hum built and resonated around them, as if the sound

  of their mounting excitement had suddenly become audible. "Look," she

  said, pointing at a silverwhite speck that had just appeared high above

  the treetops.

  The glimmer disappeared for a few moments and then, with a rush of

  exhaled breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding, Jaina saw

  the Millennium Falcon swoop across the sky toward the clearing.

  The familiar blunt-nosed oval of their father's ship hovered

  tantalizingly above their heads for a moment that seemed to stretch to

  eternity. Then, with a burst of its repulsorlifts, it settled gently

  onto the ground in front of them. The Falcon's cooling hull buzzed and

  ticked as the engines died down to a low drone. The scent of ozone

  tickled Jaina's nostrils.

  Jaina knew the shutdown procedures for the Corellian light freighter,

  but she wished that just for today there was some way to speed things

  up. When she thought she could wait no longer, the landing ramp of the

  Falcon lowered with a whine-thump.

  And then their father bounded down the ramp, gathering the twins into

  his arms, ruffling their hair, and trying to hug both of them at once,

  as he had done when they were small children.

  Han Solo stepped back to take a good look at his children. "Well!" he

  said at last, with one of those lopsided grins for which he was so

  famous. "Except for your mother, I'd say this is the finest welcoming

  committee I've ever had."

  "Dad," Jacen said, rolling his eyes, "We are not a committee."

  As her father laughed, Jaina took a moment to study him, and was

  relieved to note that he had not changed in the month that they had been

  gone from home. He wore soft black trousers and boots that fitted him

  snugly, an open-necked white shirt, and a dark vest-a comfortable,

  serviceable set of clothes that he sometimes jokingly referred to as his

  "working uniform." The battered, familiar shape of the Millennium

  Falcon was unchanged as well.

  "How do we look, Dad?" Jaina asked. "Any different?"

  "Well, now that you mention it . . . " he said, turning his gaze to

  each of them in turn.

  "Jacen, you've grown again-bet you even caught up with your sister. And

  Jaina," he said with a wicked grin, "if I didn't think you'd throw a

  hydrospanner at me for saying so, I'd tell you that you're even prettier

  than you were a month ago."

  Jaina blushed and gave an unladylike snort to demonstrate what she

  thought of such compliments, but secretly she was pleased.

  A loud, echoing roar from inside the ship saved her the embarrassment of

  having to come up with a response. A large form thundered down the

  boarding ramp. Huge heavily furred arms reached out to grab Jaina and

  threw her high into the air.

  "Chewie!" Jaina shrieked ' laughing as the giant Wookiee caught her

  again on the way down. "I'm not a little kid anymore!" After Chewbacca

  had repeated this greeting ritual with her brother, Jaina finally said

  what she and Jacen were thinking. "It's good to see you, Dad, but what

  brings you to the Jedi academy?"

  "Yeah," Jacen added. "Mom didn't send you to check if we had enough

  clean underwear, did she?"

  "Nah, nothing like that," their father assured them with a laugh.

  "Actually, Chewie and I needed to come out this direction to help my old

  friend Lando Calrissian open up a new operation."

  Jaina had always had a great fondness for Lando, her father's dark and

  dashing friend, but she also knew him well enough to realize that her

  adopted "uncle" Lando was always involved in some crackpot moneymaking

  scheme or another. She held up a hand to stop her father.

  "Wait, let me guess. He's-he's starting a new casino on his space

  station and he needed you to bring him a shipload of sabacc cards."

  "No, no, I've got it," Jacen said. "He's opening a new Nerf ranch and

  he wants you to help him build a corral."

  At this Chewbacca threw back his head and bleated with Wookiee laughter.

  "Not even close." Han Solo shook his head.

  "Corusca gem mining deep in the atmosphere of the gas giant." He

  pointed up to the great orange ball of the planet Yavin in the sky

  overhead. "He asked us to come and help him set up the operation."

  "Oh, blaster bolts!" said Jacen, snapping his fingers. "That was going

  to be my next guess."

  Another faint Wookiee-sounding bellow came from inside the Millennium

  Falcon.

  Chewbacca turned and strode back up the ramp.

  "What was that?" Jaina asked.

  "Oh, I forgot to mention," Han said. "When Luke found out we had to

  come here anyway, he asked us to stop by Chewie's homeworld of Kashyyyk

  and pick up a new Jedi candidate. He's going to be your fellow

  student."

  As Han spoke, Chewbacca thumped back down the ramp, closely followed by

  a smaller Wookiee, who was still taller than Jacen or Jaina. The

  younger Wookiee had thick swirls of ginger-colored fur, with a

  remarkable swirling black streak as wide as Jaina's hand that ran from

  just above his left eye up over his head and down to the middle of his

  back.

  He wore only a belt woven of some glossy fiber that Jaina could not

  identify.

  "Kids, I'd like you to meet Chewie's nephew Lowbacca. Lowbacca, my kids

  Jacen and Jaina."

  Lowbacca nodded his head and growled a Wookiee greeting. He was thin

  and lanky, even for a Wookiee, with gangly fur-covered arms and legs.

  The young Wookiee fidgeted.

  Chewbacca barked a question to Han and waved one massive arm in the

  direction of the temple.

  "Sure," Han said. "Go ahead-take him to Luke for now. The kids
can get

  to know each other later."

  As the two Wookiees headed off to find Luke, Han said, "Wait here, I

  have something for you," and ducked back into the Falcon.

  He returned in a few moments, his arms laden with a strange assortment

  of packages and greenery.

  "First," he said, tossing each of them a small message disk, "your

  mother recorded these personal holo letters for you. There's another

  one from your little brother Anakin.

  He can't wait to come here himself."

  Jaina looked at the glittering message disks, anxious to play them. But

  she slipped them into one of the pockets of her jumpsuit.

  "And now . . ." Han said, holding up a large bouquet of green fronds

  sprinkled with purple and white star-shaped blossoms.

  Grinning, he waggled the flowers.

  "Oh, Dad, you remembered!"

  Jacen ran forward ecstatically. "My stump lizard's favorite food." He

  took the leafy bundle gratefully and said, "I'll feed 'em to her right

  away. See you later, Dad." Then he ran off in the direction of the

  Great Temple.

  Jaina stood alone with her father, looking expectantly at the last bulky

  package he held in his arms. He set it on the weedy ground of the

  landing clearing and stepped back so that Jaina could pull aside the

  rags that covered it.

  "Great wrapping job, Dad," she said, smiling .

  "Hey, it works." Han spread his hands.

  Jaina gasped as she removed the coverings, then looked up at her father,

  who grinned and shrugged nonchalantly "A hyperdrive unit!" she said.

  "It's not in working condition, you understand," he said. "And it's

  pretty old. I got it off an old Imperial Delta-class shuttle they were

  dismantling on Coruscant."

  Jaina remembered fondly the times she had helped her father tinker with

  the Falcon's subsystems to keep it running in peak condition-or as close

  as they could get.

  "Oh, Dad, you couldn't have picked a better present!" She jumped up and

  hugged him, wrapping her arms around his dark vest. She could tell that

  her father was pleased-and maybe even a little embarrassed-by her

  enthusiasm.

  Her father looked down at her and raised one eyebrow. "You know,

  there's a couple more components on the ship. If you wanted to help me

  bring'em out here, your dad could show you how they all go together."

  She ran after him into the ship. ----------------IT WAS LATE that

  morning when Jacen and Jaina finally caught up with their father,

  Chewbacca, and his nephew Lowbacca. The twins, who had spent hours at

  their respective assigned duties and Jedi training exercises, arrived

  back at the students' quarters just as they saw the threesome emerge

  from a formerly empty room.

  "Hi!" Jacen called, hurrying up to Lowbacca with his sister in tow.

  "Are you tired from your trip? If not, I could show you my room.

  I have some really unusual pets. I collected most of them from the

  jungles here and Jaina made some cages for them-you should see those

  cages-and Jaina could show you her room too. She's got all sorts of

  broken-down equipment that she uses to build things out of." In his

  enthusiasm, Jacen never even paused to take a breath.

  The much taller Lowbacca looked down at the human boy as Jacen rattled

  on. "Do you like animals? Do you like to build things? Did you

  bring any pets or equipment with you from Kashyyyk? Do you like-" His

  father chuckled into the stream of questions. "There'll be time enough

  for that later, kid. We spent most of the morning with Luke, and then

  we got Lowbacca settled in his room. You two want to take him on a tour

  of the academy, get him familiar with the place? By now, you probably

  know your way around better than Chewie or I do."

  "We'd love to," Jaina answered before their father had finished his

  sentence.

  "We're the perfect tour guides," Jacen added with a confident shrug.

  "Jaina and I came to the Jedi academy for the first time when we were

  only two years old." He smiled a cocky, lopsided grin-the one their

  mother always said made him look just like his father.

  Lowbacca gave an interrogative growl. "He asked how many times you've

  given this tour," Han translated.

  "Well," Jacen sputtered, his face reddening slightly, "if you mean in an

  official capacity, as opposed toer, um His voice trailed off.

  "What he means is," Jaina put in firmly, this is our first time."

  Lowbacca exchanged a glance with his uncle. Chewbacca raised a furred

  brown arm, indicated the long corridor with a flourish of his hand, and

  gave a short bark.

  "Right," Han said. "Let's go. pp The twins led the group down a set of

  mossy, cracked stairs to the main level and out onto the grassy clearing

  in front of the Great Temple. Jacen was eager to prove him self a good

  tour guide and pointed to each squarish level of the gigantic pyramid as

  he spoke.

  "At the very top is an observation deck that gives one of the best views

  of the big planet Yavin overhead-unless of course you climb one of those

  huge old Massassi trees in the jungle," he said with a laugh. "The top

  level of the pyramid has only one enormous room the grand audience

  chamber-that can hold thousands of people."

  "That's where the Jedi trainees gather when Uncle Luke-I mean Master

  Skywalker-gives his lessons," Jaina said.

  Jacen went on to explain that the lower levels had been remodeled in

  recent years.

  The larger level directly below the grand audience chamber housed those

  who lived at the academy-trainees, academy staff, and Master Skywalker

  himself-and also contained rooms for storage or meditation, as well as

  chambers for guests and visiting dignitaries.

  The pyramid's huge ground level held the Communications Center, the main

  computers, meeting areas and offices, and common rooms in which meals

  were prepped and eaten. It also held the Strategy Center-the chamber

  that had been known as the War Room in the days when the temple had

  housed the Alliance's secret base. Underground, and completely

  invisible from where they stood, was a gigantic hangar bay that stored

  shuttles, speeders, fighters, and other aircraft.

  On two sides of the Great Temple and along the landing area flowed broad

  rivers, and beyond them lay the lush and mostly unexplored jungles of

  the fourth moon of Yavin. "The temples were built by the Massassi, a

  mysterious ancient race. There are actually lots of structures

  scattered throughout the jungles," Jacen said. "Some of them are just

  ruins, really-like the Palace of the Woolamander across the river

  there."

  He described the power-generating station next to the main temple, a

  series of plateshaped wheels, twice as tall as Jacen himself, standing

  on edge and connected through the center by a long axle.

  "So you see," Jaina said, picking up the narration where her brother had

  left off, with the power station, the river, and the jungles, the Jedi

  academy is fairly selfsufficient. Come on, let's go inside."

  The tour concluded at the twins' quarters, where Jacen and Jaina


  delighted in showing their father and the two Wookiees their respective

  treasure troves of pets and salvaged bits of machinery. Han Solo beamed

  with fatherly pride. Lowbacca displayed a gratifying if subdued

  interest in the creatures in Jacen's menagerie.

  When the group moved into his sister's room, Jacen quickly slid the

  crystal snake he had been showing off back into its cage and hurried

  after them. By the time he bounded through the door, Lowbacca was

  already engrossed in an assortment of gadgets and wiring that he had

  spread out across Jaina's floor. He was far more interested in the

  electronics than in the wild jungle creatures.

  "Do you like working on machines, Chewie-uh, I mean, Lowbacca?" Jaina

  asked, bending next to the gangly Wookiee.

  The hairy creature expressed his fascination with such a long series of

  grunts, growls, and rumbles that Jacen was at a loss to understand how a

  simple yes-or-no question could produce such an animated answer.

  As usual, their father translated. "First of all, Lowbacca would take

  it as a great sign of friendship if you would call him Lowie."

  Jacen gave a pleased nod. "'Lowie," huh? I Han continued, 91 well,

  I'm not sure I followed it all. The thing he really gets excited about

  is computers."

  Jaina patted the young Wookiee on the shoulder. "We can do a lot of