The Jedi Academy Trilogy_ Jedi Search Part 7

"What the--" Han drew a sudden deep breath. The blackness was palpable. He couldn't see a thing. Beside him Chewbacca groaned in alarm.

He heard the other workers moving, shuffling. Han's ears strained as his imagination tried to understand what was going on. He heard a clunking, sliding sound. "Hold on, Chewie," he said.

A metal door at the opposite side of the chamber opened up. The sound of its movement along rough metal tracks echoed in the enclosed s.p.a.ce. Wind rushed around their ears as the air spilled outward into the mine tunnels of Kessel.

In a sudden panic Han pushed his breath mask tighter against his face just as he felt the atmosphere grow thin. The fleeing air took with it whatever heat had remained, making his exposed skin tingle with cold.

The mine cars lurched on their repulsorlifts, picking up speed. Acceleration slammed Han into his hard, uncomfortable seat. He could hear the air roaring past his head, feel the tunnel walls around him. The transport whipped around a curve, and Han grabbed the cold metal railing to keep himself from flying out of his seat. The mine cars whisked along, tilting downward, then lurching sideways. He had no idea how Boss Roke could possibly see where he was going unless the whole system was computer controlled.

Behind them, just after they had pa.s.sed under an echoing archway, a heavy metal door slammed shut with a sound like an avalanche of sc.r.a.p metal.

Han couldn't understand why the spice miners didn't string up at least some cheap illuminators as guideposts along the tunnels. But then it came to him like a slap in the face: the realization that since glitterstim spice was photoactive--made potent in the presence of light--it obviously had to be mined in total darkness or else it would be ruined.

Total darkness.

Han and Chewbacca would spend their days at hard labor in the mines without ever being able to see each other, or where they were, or what they were doing. Han had to blink his eyes just to make sure they were open instead of closed--not that it made any difference.

A shiver went down his back. Boss Roke had said that some unknown thing deep in the mines was preying on helpless workers, s.n.a.t.c.hing them unawares. How could anybody run from a carnivorous attacker while surrounded was complete darkness?

The quality of the sound changed off and on. As Han's mind grew accustomed to processing information through his ears, it became obvious whenever the rushing mine car pa.s.sed side tunnels, because of the sudden hole in the wind. Breathing through the mask, he could smell nothing other than flat recycled air.

The mine car wobbled from side to side, rocking as somebody moved about in the seats, climbing over the individual cars. The person slowly clambered over one seat back, then another, approaching their position.

Han thought he heard someone breathing, straining, growing nearer.

"You there! Number fourteen! Sit down!" a guard shouted.

Number fourteen? Han thought. How could the guard possibly see which one had been moving about? Then he remembered the infrared goggles.

The guards could probably see everyone, bright silhouettes against the backdrop of blackness.

The car stopped jostling for a few moments, but then the rocking started again. The mysterious person kept moving toward them. Somebody heaved himself over the seat to the empty spot right behind Han and Chewbacca.

"Hey, I told you to sit down!" the guard shouted.

"This is my new seat," a voice said.

"That's your new seat!" the guard said, strangely repeating the words before he fell silent.

Han forced himself not to speak. Since he couldn't see anything himself, the intruder must be just shifting about, unable to tell where he was going. Or could he have his own set of infrared goggles? Had Skynxnex or Moruth Doole hired some a.s.sa.s.sin to get rid of Han and Chewbacca while no one was watching?

A quick slash from a vibrator knife? A shove that knocked him off the floating transport, abandoning him down in the empty labyrinth of tunnels? In the darkness Han would never be able to find his way back. He wondered if he would starve, freeze, or suffocate first. He didn't want to find out.

He heard the faint, echoed breathing of someone speaking behind a breath mask, leaning closer. Beside him Chewbacca bristled in antic.i.p.ation.

"Are you really from the outside?" the voice said. "I haven't been above ground for years." It seemed hopeful, soft, and tenor, but m.u.f.fled behind the breath mask and the rushing wind. Han couldn't tell if it was the voice of an aged man, a deep-voiced woman, or a quiet and meek clerk from the former Imperial prison.

Han's mind pictured a skeletal old man with long scraggly hair, tattered beard, and ragged clothes. "Yeah, we're from out there. A lot of things have changed."

"I'm Kyp. Kyp Durron."

After a moment's hesitation Han introduced himself and Chewbacca. Suspecting some kind of trap, he decided not to give too much information. Kyp Durron seemed to sense this and talked about himself without asking too many prying questions.

"You'll get to know everybody here. That's just the way of it. I've lived most of my life on Kessel. My parents were political prisoners, exiled on this planet when the Emperor started cracking down on civil unrest. My brother Zeth was taken off to the Imperial military training center on Carida, and we never heard another word from him. I got stuck here in the spice mines. I always thought they'd come back and haul me to Carida too, but I guess they forgot."

Han tried to imagine Kyp's life going from bad to worse. "How come you're still down in the mines?"

"During the prison revolt they didn't much care who ended up here.

Now most of the workers are the old Imperial prison guards. n.o.body thought to let me out when they changed everything up top. I've never been important enough."

Kyp made a sound that must have been a bitter laugh. "People say I have good luck in all sorts of things, but my luck has never been good enough to let me have a normal life." He paused, as if gathering hope. In that moment Han wished he could see the stranger's face. "Is it really true the Empire has fallen?"

"Seven years ago, Kyp," Han said. "The Emperor was blown up with his Death Star. We've been fighting battles ever since, but the New Republic is trying to keep everything together. Chewie and I came here as amba.s.sadors to reestablish contact with Kessel." He paused. "Obviously the people of Kessel weren't interested."

Han snapped his attention to the front as he heard something happen to the cars ahead. The front car split off; he could hear it echo with a diminishing swoosh down one of the side tunnels. A few moments later another two cars separated themselves and went down another side tunnel as their sounds diminished in the hollow distance. The rest of the floating mine car continued down the main tunnel.

"They're separating the mining teams," Kyp said. "I wanted to be with you. Tell me everything."

"Kyp," Han said with a sigh, "it looks like we'll have plenty of time to give you the details."

The audio hum of the mine cars' repulsorlifts deepened. Han felt the breeze on his face dwindle as they slowed. His hands and face were numb; his ears tingled with the cold, but the rest of his body seemed comfortably warm in the heated thermal suit.

The guard who had shouted at Kyp spoke when the floating cars stopped. "Everybody out. Link up. March to the work area."

The remaining cars swayed as the prisoners climbed off and stood in silence on the crumbled ground. Their equipment grated against each other in the darkness, and their boots scuffed the dirt. A pandemonium of little sounds echoed in the claustrophobic tunnel, making the blackness press in even more heavily.

"Where are we going?" Han said.

Kyp grabbed a loop on Han's belt. "Just hold the person in front of you. Believe me, you don't want to get lost down here."

"I believe you," Han said. Chewbacca made his own noise of agreement.

When the work detail had lined up, the front guard began to march them along. Han took small shuffling steps to keep from stumbling over rubble on the floor, but he still tripped into Chewbacca several times.

They turned to pa.s.s through another tunnel entrance. Han heard a faint thump and a yowl of pain from the Wookiee. "Watch your head there, buddy," he said. He heard the rustle of fur inside a thermal suit as Chewbacca bent down to pa.s.s through the arch.

"Here's the rail," the guard said. "Stop here, take your time, and go down."

"What's a rail?" Han asked.

"Once you touch it, you'll figure it out," Kyp answered.

The noises he heard made no sense to Han. He couldn't determine what was actually happening. He discerned sliding sounds of fabric, bitten-back outcries of surprise or fear. When Chewbacca shuffled up, he voiced a guttural complaint, shaking his entire body in refusal.

The guard lashed out with something hard that struck Chewbacca. The Wookiee roared in pain and swung his arm trying to hit the guard, but apparently smacked only the rock wall instead. Chewbacca grew more upset, flailing right and left. Han had to duck to keep from being battered.

"Chewie! Calm down! Stop it!" The Wookiee slowly regained control of himself at the sound of Han's voice.

"Do what I tell you!" the guard shouted.

"It's okay," Kyp added his own encouragement. "We do this every day."

"I'll go first, Chewie," Han said, "whatever it is."

"Down there," the guard snapped.

Han bent over, fumbled with his hands, and felt a big hole in the floor like a trapdoor to lower tunnels, with piled rubble all around it.

His fingers found a cold metal railing about the size of a typical steel girder, polished smooth and plunging downward, like a slide or a metal banister.

"You want me to ride that?" Han asked. "Where does it go?"

"Don't worry," Kyp said again. "It's the best way down."

"You've got to be kidding!"

Then he heard Chewbacca laughing, a nasal, chuffing sound. That made up Han's mind for him. He sat down on the metal rail and wrapped his legs around it, placing his hands behind his hips and gripping the rail as best he could. The slippery fabric of the thermal suit immediately started him sliding. The darkness grabbed at him as he picked up speed.

Han imagined sharp stalact.i.tes just centimeters above his head, waiting to take off the top of his skull if he sat up at the wrong moment. He continued to accelerate. "I don't like this!" he said.

Suddenly the rail disappeared beneath him, and he tumbled onto a mound of powdery sand. Another two workers scrambled forward to yank him clear of the end of the rail. He brushed dust off his thermal suit, though he couldn't see the dirt anyway.

A few moments later Chewbacca came down with a long, echoing howl, and shortly after that came Kyp Durron and the guard. "Line up again!"

the guard said.

Chewbacca grunted and huffed a few words. Han snorted. "Don't tell me it was fun!"

The guard marched them ahead. When the ground dropped out from under them, they splashed into a shallow lake. The pressure of the water pushed against the legs of Han's suit. The captive miners sloshed ahead, holding on to each other in their blindness.

The water had a sour, brackish smell, and Han's stomach clenched, antic.i.p.ating a drop-off that would plunge him in over his head. Chewbacca whined but kept his comments to himself.

Under the water something soft and fingerlike poked against Han's legs. Other contacts nudged at his feet, prodding and coiling around his calves.

"Hey!" He thrashed about with his feet. The ghostly, touching things swarmed about him. Han pictured soft blind grubs, hungry in the darkness; their mouths would be filled with fangs, waiting for something to eat, something helpless in the dark--as he was. He splashed again to drive them away.

"Don't call attention to yourself," Kyp Durron said in a low voice.

"That will only bring more of them."

Han forced himself not to overreact, to walk with gliding, even strides. None of the other prisoners cried out; apparently, no one had been eaten alive yet, though the small probing fingers or suckers or mouths continued to play around his legs. His throat felt very dry.

He wanted to drop to his knees when they finally reached the tunnel on the other side of the subterranean lake. Behind them dripping water and tiny splashing sounds echoed in the grotto.

An unknown time later they arrived at the actual spice-mining area.

The guard withdrew an apparatus from his pack, making shuffling and clinking noises as he did so. Unseen, he set it up along the walls of the tunnel.

"We have to go deep to get the good spice deposits," Kyp said.

"Down here the glitterstim is fresh and fibrous, instead of old and powdery like in the higher mines. The spice veins are laid in crisscross patterns along the walls of the tunnel, never going much below the surface of the rock."

Before Han could say anything else, a high-pitched, teeth-jarring hum pounded against the tunnel. Chewbacca roared in pain. Then a skin of rock along the inner tunnel sloughed off. The guard had used an acoustic disruptor that penetrated only a few inches into the rock, crumbling it down. "Get to it!" he said.

Kneeling on the rubble-strewn floor, Kyp showed Han and Chewbacca how to sort through the crushed rock, feeling with cold-numbed fingers through the broken pebbles and debris to pluck out strands of glitterstim, like tufts of hair or asbestos fiber.

Han's hands felt raw from the work and the biting cold, but none of the other prisoners complained. They all seemed beaten. He could hear them breathing and gasping as they continued to exert themselves. Han stuffed fragments of glitterstim into the gathering pouch at his hip. He felt a sinking feeling, like a knife twisting inside him. He could be at this job for a long, long time.

After the team finished sifting through the rubble, the guard moved them farther down the tunnel, then activated his acoustic disruptor to bring down another section of the wall.

As they huddled in the tunnel, picking at broken rock, Han could think only of his aching knees, his burning fingers. Of how nice it would be to be back with Leia again. No one had told him how long a shift was--not that he had any way of telling time in the darkness. He grew hungry.

He grew thirsty. He kept working.

During a lull Han felt a tingle go up his spine. He looked, knowing he could see nothing in the dark. But his ears, now attuned as his primary sense, picked up a distant rustling, a thousand whispering voices growing louder, picking up speed like a hydrolocomotive bulleting down a tube. A pearly glow seemed to seep out of the air.

"What--his"

"Shhh!" Kyp answered. The prisoners had stopped working. A faint glittering dazzle like a dense cloud of faint fireflies shot through the tunnel, humming and chittering.

Han ducked. Around him he heard the others also falling flat on the debris-covered floor.

The glowing thing shot down the hollow tube, rolling and roiling.

Once it pa.s.sed them and went beyond the point where they had mined spice from the walls, the glowing thing suddenly curved right and plunged straight into the solid rock, vanishing like a fish falling back into a dark pool.

Behind them, along the curving lengths of the tunnel, tiny blue sparks flickered from the exposed spice that had been activated by the light source whizzing past. The blue sparks sputtered and flickered, and quickly faded.

Han's eyes ached from the sudden barrage of light--a light that was probably too dim for him to have seen under normal circ.u.mstances, but his eyes had been yearning in blackness for hours now. "What was that?" he shouted.

He heard Kyp panting beside him. "n.o.body knows. It's about the fifteenth one I've seen over the years. We call them bogeys. They've never hurt anybody, or so we think, but n.o.body knows what's grabbing those people down in the deep mines."

The guard himself seemed shaken, and Han could hear a quaver in his voice. "That's enough. End of shift. Let's make our way back to the cars."

That sounded like a good idea to Han.

When the string of mine cars returned to the long holding grotto and the metal door closed behind them, Han heard the sound of weapons being drawn. All workers were ordered to strip out of their thermal suits. Han could understand the precautions--with a brief mental boost from stolen glitterstim, a prisoner might be able to stage an escape...

although Han had been to the barren surface of Kessel and wondered where an escapee might go.

When the standard lights finally came back on, the blinding glare was enough to make Han crouch over, as if someone had punched him in the gut. He shielded his eyes.

He felt a hand take him and lead him into the muster room. "It's okay, Han. Just follow me. Let your eyes get used to it. There's no hurry."

But Han was in a hurry to see what Kyp Durron looked like. He kept blinking away tears and forcing his pupils to contract enough that he could make sense out of the brilliant images showering around him. But when he finally discerned Kyp's form, he blinked again--this time in surprise.

"You're just a kid!" Han saw a dark, tousle-headed teen who looked as if he cropped his own hair with a blunt object. He had wide eyes surrounded by dark rims, and his skin was pale from years of living in the darkness of the spice mines. Kyp was wiry and tough looking. He stared at Han with hope and a little intimidation.