Young Jedi Knights_ The Lost Ones Part 11

"I should be able to pinpoint the signal to within a radius of ten meters."

"Close enough," Leia said.

Anakin gave a sigh of relief. "Let's just hope both Jacen and Tenel Ka are still somewhere near the comlink."

"We'll worry about that when we get there," Leia said, grabbing a medkit and dashing toward the door. Guards rushed into position, still not clear on what the emergency was. "Let's go, Anakin. You're part of this rescue, too. Which way, Threepio?" Leia called.

The protocol droid followed as fast as his mechanical legs could move.

"To your left, Mistress Leia. We'll need to find a turbolift and take it down forty-two levels."

Anakin tried to picture in his head where they were going, but with little success. "Maybe you'd better lead, Threepio."

Leia, the guards, and Anakin followed See-Threepio as he picked his way across another rickety walkway between two gigantic buildings. The protocol droid seemed to be enjoying his new importance immensely.

The buildings stretched out of sight above and below them. Once, at a spot where the side rail was missing, Anakin lost his footing and nearly fell off the bridge, but Leia instinctively grabbed him. She looked at her son with shock, then hugged him quickly. "Be careful," she urged.

"We've all got to be careful."

Anakin shuddered. This area had not looked so dangerous on the map. As they homed in on the comlink signal, working through abandoned levels and empty, ominous halls, he noticed a design that appeared with increasing frequency on the grimy walls: an equilateral triangle surrounding a cross.

"I wonder what that symbol means," he said, pointing.

"I am fluent in over six million forms of communication," Threepio said.

"Unfortunately, that design is not in any of my databanks. I'm afraid I cannot offer any enlightenment, Master Anakin."

Leia looked at the guards. "Do any of you recognize the symbol?"

One of them cleared his throat. "I believe it's a gang marking, Madam President. Several... unpleasant groups make a habit of living down in the untended lower levels of the city. They are very difficult to catch."

"I heard Zekk talking with Jacen and Jaina about a gang called the Lost Ones," Anakin supplied. "I think the gang wanted Zekk to become a member."

Leia's mouth formed a grim line, and she nodded, filing away the information for future reference. Right now, she just wanted to find Jacen and Tenel Ka.

See-Threepio paused to study his readings. "Oh, curse my inadequate sensors-I'm certain my counterpart Artoo-Detoo could have been much more accurate-but I believe that we are now within two hundred meters of their location."

As the group walked deeper into the dilapidated level, the hall became darker and darker. The guards held their weapons ready, glancing at each other uneasily. Leia held her chin up and bravely pushed ahead with greater speed.

Threepio increased the brightness of his optical sensors, shedding a soft yellow light directly ahead of them. Anakin kept his glowrod out and ready; it made him feel safer somehow, as if it were an imitation lightsaber. Threepio made a sharp right turn into a low, narrow pa.s.sageway, ducking under a half-fallen girder. Even Anakin had to stoop to get under it.

"Are you sure this is the right direction, Threepio?"

"Oh yes, absolutely certain," Threepio replied. "Remember, we are following a direct path, homing in on the signal. Young Master Jacen may have taken a more roundabout way. We are within thirty meters now."

They finally emerged into a large, eerily lit room with flickering glowpanels mounted haphazardly on the walls. Anakin looked around at the set of rickety stairs leading nowhere, the food wrappers, cushions, and broken-down furniture, and the odd a.s.sortment of sealed doors on the other side of the room. "This must be the meeting place of the Lost Ones."

"Oh dear," Threepio said. "Didn't Master Zekk say those gang members were rather unpleasant sorts?"

The room was deathly silent, and the flickering lights made Anakin uneasy. The guards hesitated at the low doorway, pushing their weapon barrels inside. Even though the room was empty, Anakin sensed a lingering feeling of darkness as he entered and began to look around. He nearly jumped out of his skin when See-Threepio cited out, looking down at the floor in horror.

"Ifs all my fault!" Threepio wailed again. "Oh, curse the slowness of my processor. We should have come looking for them much sooner."

"In a heartbeat Anakin had scrambled over the makeshift furnishings to where Threepio stood berating himself. Leia and the guards rushed over to join him.

Jacen and Tenel Ka lay crumpled on the floor, side by side, unconscious..

. or perhaps dead.

Quickly unstrapping the medkit, Leia pulled out a mini-diagnosticator and examined the two young Jedi Knights. "It's all right," she said. "They're alive-just knocked out." She ran her cool palm over Jacen's forehead, brushing aside his tousled hair.

Anakin and Leia slowly nursed the two back to consciousness. Jacen came around first, and Anakin could tell from the look in his brother's eyes that the news was grim.

"Are you all right?" Anakin asked. He shifted gears as he began to put the pieces of a puzzle together in his mind.

Jacen swallowed hard. "Tenel Ka?" he asked, his voice shaky.

"... is just fine," Leia said rea.s.suringly. "Looks like you two got stunned. What happened?"

Jacen shivered, as though the room had suddenly become colder. "Tamith Kai was here-the Nightsister from the Shadow Academy - - along with two of her friends." His brandy-brown eyes squeezed shut, as if he had just remembered something too painful to bear. He groaned. "And they've got Zekk! I think... I think he's gone over to the dark side."

Anakin's breath could not have come out in a greater rush if a bantha had just kicked him in the stomach.

"They're going to train him to be a Jedi," Jacen continued. "A Dark Jedi.

Tenel Ka grunted and sat up. "This is a fact."

"There were other kids here, too," Jacen said. "The Lost Ones. I think the Nightsisters took them all-to the Shadow Academy."

Leia shook her head, her dark eyes flashing. "I think it's about time we did something decisive about that Second Imperium!" she said. "That's twice now they've hurt my children."

"Yes, indeed, Mistress Leia! That's all well and good, but we simply must get back home where it's safe," Threepio said in alarm. "Mistress Tenel Ka, are you capable of walking?"

Her granite-gray eyes narrowed, as if she suspected a veiled insult. "l could carry you, if I had to."

Jacen chuckled, then groaned as he held his aching head. "Yeah, I think she's just fine.

20.

UP ON THE mirror station, Jaina worked with Lowie and Chewbacca to patch up as many of the worn-out subsystems as they could manage.

After sc.r.a.ping together the few spare components they could find, they added their own ingenuity to come up with alternative solutions. Although it was impossible for them to program the food synthesizers to create anything remotely resembling gourmet fare, Lowie and Chewbacca did manage to produce a pa.s.sable midday meal.

Jaina completed the task of reconnecting the communications systems, making it possible to send brief messages, though the transmissions were still plagued with bursts of static. Chewbacca set to work inspecting the life-support systems, the environmental controls, and the station heaters.

Peckhum watched, performing the few duties expected of him on his monitoring shift. He bubbled over with grat.i.tude, emphasizing again and again how much he appreciated all the effort Jaina, Lowie, and Chewbacca were putting in on his behalf. "If I had waited for the New Republic to get around to fixing these things, Zekk would have been an old man by the time-" Peckhum broke off with a sad shake of his head.

With the major and obvious repairs completed, the young Jedi Knights had little to do while Chewbacca continued poking around. Lowbacca devoted his energies to finishing the orbital-debris plotting that he and Jaina had volunteered to do. Jaina had helped Lowie with the task, but tracking thousands of pieces of debris was just too daunting for her at the moment. Lowie, on the other hand, had extreme patience for a Wookiee, especially around computers. He diligently plotted one blip after another, noting the more dangerous s.p.a.ce lanes in the heavily traveled orbits around the capital world.

Jaina glanced at Lowie's three-dimensional map, but soon turned back to the puzzling images on her own datapad. She reviewed file copies of the newsnet videoclips that showed the mysterious Imperial attack on the supply cruiser Adamant. On the day after the attack, she, Jacen, and Lowie had easily identified the modified a.s.sault shuttle, with its Corusca-gem teeth, recognizing the craft that had been used to kidnap them from Lando Calrissian's GemDiver Station. Admiral Ackbar had verified their descriptions.

The theft of military equipment was undoubtedly part of the evil work of the Shadow Academy. From Ackbar's description, Jaina knew that the Imperial in command of the attack had been none other than Qorl, the TIE pilot she and Jacen had tried to befriend near his crashed ship on Yavin.

She sighed and shook her head, watching the footage yet again. Jaina had hoped Qorl would see the error of his ways-and though the TIE pilot had trembled on the verge of surrender, the Imperial brainwashing had won out in the end. And now Qorl continued to cause trouble for the New Republic.

She replayed the videoclip of the Adamant's capture a third time. The film, taken by New Republic forces as they'd rushed from Coruscant to defend the supply cruiser, had low resolution. But something about the clip bothered her in an indefinable way, as it had since the first time she'd seen it.

Jaina chewed on her lower lip. "Something just isn't right." She watched the shark-mouthed a.s.sault ship appear out of nowhere, while shots from the flanking Imperial ships took out the Adamant's communication arrays and weapon systems. She turned her attention back to the replay-and suddenly sat up with a jolt. She had been watching Qorl's ship-but it was the other imperial fighters that didn't fit.

"That's it!" she cried. "It can't be."

Chewbacca growled a question as he stood up from his cramped position in the control modules for the life-support systems. Jaina focused her attention on the images of the smaller ships, pointing. "I know my Imperial fighters," she said. "Dad taught me to identify every ship ever recorded... well, almost every one." She leaned closer to the image.

"Those are short-range fighters." She jammed her finger at the image on the screen. "Short-range fighters! They had to come from somewhere nearby. Their base is close-hidden somewhere in this system!"

Chewbacca growled a surprised comment.

Lowie, wedged into a chair built for humans with his k.n.o.bby knees thrust high and his arms reaching almost to the ground, cradled his datapad in his lap, studying coordinates of the known items of s.p.a.ce debris. He roared his own question, and waved the datapad in the air.

"Attention! Excuse me!" Em Teedee shrilled. "Master Lowbacca believes he has also found something of utmost importance, an inconsistency in the positions of orbital debris. I can't see it myself since he hasn't shown me the datapad"-the miniature droid huffed-"but I trust it's something highly unusual for him to become so excited. You really must calm down, Master Lowbacca, and explain yourself."

Jaina rushed with Chewbacca to look at the thousands of dots plotted in the three-dimensional map of s.p.a.ce around the planet Coruscant.

"That can't be right, either," Jaina said immediately She was still puzzled by her own results, and now Lowie had made the mystery even deeper. "It's pretty much the opposite of what we expected."

Lowie barked his confirmation. Jaina sighed, biting her lower lip again.

The entire reason for their mapping project had been to discover uncatalogued debris that posed a danger to navigation. Instead of revealing the uncharted hazard that had destroyed the Moon Dash, though, Lowie's map of s.p.a.ce wreckage showed absolutely nothing in the marked zone. In fact, it was more like a forbidden area in s.p.a.ce, an island empty of all known debris, as if somehow it had already been swept clear.

But they knew the Moon Dash had struck something large enough to destroy it....

With a burst of static from the communications system, words filtered across the small, confined s.p.a.ce. "h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo, Mirror Station? Can anyone hear me? Jaina, are you there?"

Peckhum perked up. "Well, now we're sure the communications system works.

"That sounded like Jacen!" Jaina rushed to the comm unit and flicked a switch, but was greeted by a flash of sparks from a burnt-out fuse. The sudden heat stung her fingertips. Scrambling, she yanked off the panel face and stared at the singed wires. She probed with the Force, following the path of the short circuit, and rapidly managed to hot-wire the damaged system well enough that she could answer her brother.

The speakers crackled back to life. "-are you there? Jaina, answer me!

This is important. We've found Zekk." A burst of static disrupted his next words. "... bad news..."

"Zekk!" Peckhum hurried forward, leaning over Jaina's shoulder. "h.e.l.lo?"

he shouted into the speaker. "Where is he? Is he all right?"

Jaina tossed her shoulder-length brown hair out of her eyes. "Wait. I haven't got the transmitter back on-line yet." She plucked out a melted cyberfuse and popped in a replacement yanked from her datapad. "That should do it," she said. "Okay, Jacen-we read you. Are we coming through?"

His voice came over the speakers, sizzling and broken. "... some disruption, but... understand you."

"... What about Zekk?" she asked with an indrawn breath. "He's not?..."

"Dead?" Jacen finished for her. The transmission was clearer now, and his voice sounded stronger. "No. We found him-and then Tamith Kai and a couple of others from the Shadow Academy knocked us out."

"Tamith Kai!" Jaina gave a startled cry. Lowbacca roared, and even Em Teedee emitted a squeak of dismay. "But what would she be doing on-"

"They've recruited Zekk and a handful of the Lost Ones gang," Jacen said.

"I don't know where they took him, but Zekk seemed to be with them willingly. Tamith Kai said she was going to train him to be a Dark Jedi!

They're going to the Shadow Academy."

Lowie growled a curious question, but Jaina asked it without waiting for Em Teedee's translation. "But how could they train Zekk? He's not a Jedi- ".

"Apparently he has the potential," Jacen said. "Remember, Uncle Luke found lots of candidates who never knew they could use the Force. Zekk had a knack for finding things to salvage, even in places where other people have scavenged already We just never noticed, never put the pieces together."

Jaina hung her head, thinking of all the time they had spent with Zekk, all the fun they had had together, without her ever having recognized his true potential. "So where is he now?"

Jacen's voice became sad. "I don't know," he admitted. "They stunned me and Tenel Ka, then disappeared. Mom and Anakin came to find us, but that was hours ago. They've probably managed to get off planet by now. I have no idea where they might have gone."

Jaina covered her face with her hands. "Not you, Zekk. Not you!" Then she raised her tear-damp face and looked directly into Lowbacca's bright golden eyes. "The Shadow Academy!" she whispered.

"Remember, the cloaking device makes the whole station invisible, like a hole in s.p.a.ce-just like on your orbital map!" He snarled in agreement.

"Oh, my!" Em Teedee said, too fl.u.s.tered to provide a translation.

Jaina turned back to the comm system. "We know exactly where they are, Jacen." She glanced at Lowie's datapad and the projected map, zeroing in on the empty spot in s.p.a.ce. Jaina shouted into the voice pickup. "Tell Mom to contact Admiral Ackbar. We've got to mobilize the New Republic fleet. Lowie's going to send you some coordinates. We need to strike fast, before the Imperials realize we've caught them in the act."

"Great," Jacen said. "What are you going to do?"

Jaina smiled. "We're going to shine a little light on the subject."

Old Peckhum sat strapped into the command chair in the monitoring station as it dangled beneath the giant solar reflectors, working the outdated att.i.tude adjustment controls. Jaina crouched over the chair, whispering excitedly into his ear. "Turn the mirrors," she said. "Turn, turn, turn!"

"I'm already beyond the maximums," Peckhum said in despair. His jaw was clenched, his neck muscles taut, and beads of sweat glistened on his brow. "These are delicate sheets of reflective material. Well tear the solar mirrors if we whip 'em around too fast."

Jaina looked out the observation viewports, spotting the New Republic fleet launching from orbit and streaking toward their invisible target.

Their weapons powered up as they homed in on the mysteriously empty zone.