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 a.n.a.lyzing 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 cl.u.s.ter 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.
Ahead a wide cave-like gash had opened in the heavily shielded room, showing only a lightless interior. "Let"s go in. Nice and easy."
Wedge narrowed his eyes at the shadows around them. "Be ready to retreat at a moment"s notice. We don"t know what"s in there."
A deafening screech sounded far above, reverberating in the night.
The demolition teams jumped, then forced themselves to relax when they found it was only the cooling construction droid venting waste heat.
Wedge stepped to the edge of the darkened hole. The buckled crack in the wall was completely dark, showing nothing.
The moment he poked his head into the darkness, the monster lunged forward, all fangs and spewing saliva.
Wedge cried out and stumbled back, bouncing against the jagged edge of the opening as the locomotive of claws and fur and armored body plating charged at him. Before he could straighten his thoughts--before he could even imagine shouting an order to his troops--a spiderweb of crisscrossed blaster fire erupted into the night. Most of the beams struck home with a smoking hiss into the creature"s body. A second round of blaster fire lanced out.
The monster roared in explosive surprise and pain before collapsing with enough force to start a small avalanche in the debris. Its death sigh sounded like steam escaping from a furnace.
Wedge slumped to the ground and suddenly felt his heart begin beating again. "Thanks, guys!"
The rest of them stood, frozen in surprise and terror, gawking at their own reflexively drawn blasters and at the heaving, dying hulk of the monster that had dwelled within the shielded building.
The thing looked like a huge armored rat with spines along its back and tusks coming out of its mouth. It had the tail of a krayt dragon, flicking in its final convulsions as black-purple blood oozed around burned craters of blaster wounds in its hide. "Guess it got hungry waiting in there," Wedge said. "Your fearless leader needs to be a little more careful from now on."
He sent the bobbing lights through the opening to illuminate the chamber ahead. Nothing else seemed to be moving inside. Behind them the giant armored rat shuddered with a last groaning sigh, then sagged.
In pairs they pushed through the opening into the isolated chamber.
The metal-plated floor was strewn with cracked bones and skulls from the sub-humans that lived in the city"s lower levels.
"I guess it found something to eat after all," Wedge said.
On the far side of the dark room, they found another tunnel from deeper underground where a grate had been peeled aside. The grate was rusted, but bright score marks from large claws showed where the rat-thing had torn its way through.
"Not it--a she," Lieutenant Deegan said. "And now you can see why she was so upset." He pointed to the corner where the worst damage had occurred.
Broken blocks of building material lay piled on the rat-thing"s nest. Bright smears of blood showed where three of the creature"s young--each one the size of an Endorian pony--had been crushed by the boulders.
Wedge stared for a moment before he looked around the rest of the gloomy room. Adjusting the light-enhancers on his visor, he could see dark gadgets, consoles, bed-platforms with manacles and chains. Parked and dormant on two stands were glossy black Imperial interrogation droids; secret computer ports stared gray and dead like amphibious eyes.
"Some sort of torture center?" Lieutenant Deegan asked.
"Looks like it," Wedge answered. "Interrogation. This could yield a lot of information the Emperor didn"t want us to have."
"Good thing you shut down the construction droid, Wedge," Deegan said. "It"s worth the delay."
Wedge pursed his lips. "Yeah, good thing."
He looked at the cruel interrogation droids and the torture equipment. A part of him wished he had never found this place.
The sculpture on Leia"s crystal table jittered forward, stopped, then rose into the air. The figure was a fat man with spread palms and a grin wide enough to swallow an X-wing fighter.
The dealer had a.s.sured Leia that it was a genuine Corellian sculpture, that it would make Han think fond memories of his own world just as Han"s images of Alderaan did for her. Upon receiving the anniversary gift, Han had thanked her profusely, but could barely control his laughter. He finally explained that the statue was a trademarked figurine stolen from a chain of cheap Corellian eating establishments.
"Keep concentrating, Leia," Luke whispered into the silence, leaning closer. He watched her intently. Her eyes were focused in the far distance, not seeing the sculpture at all. The statue continued to levitate, rising higher off the table; then suddenly it b.u.mped forward to topple onto the floor.
Leia heaved a sigh and slumped back in the self-conforming chair.
Luke tried to cover his disappointment as he remembered his own training.
Yoda had made him stand on his head while balancing rocks and other heavy objects. Luke had received other training from the twisted Joruus C"baoth, and he had learned the depths of the dark side from the resurrected Emperor himself.
His sister"s training had been much less rigorous, and more haphazard as she continually rescheduled lessons to accommodate her increasing diplomatic duties. But Leia concerned him: he had been working with her for more than seven years now, and she seemed to be blocked, having reached the limit of the powers she could master. Given her heritage as the daughter of Anakin Skywalker, Leia should have been easy to train. Luke wondered how he would manage to instruct a large group of students at his proposed Jedi academy if he could not succeed with his own sister.
Leia stood and picked up the fallen statue from the floor, setting it back on the table. Luke watched her, keeping his face free of any downcast expression. "Leia, what is it?" he asked.
She looked at him with her dark eyes and hesitated before answering. "Just feeling sorry for myself, I guess. Han should have arrived on Kessel two days ago, but he hasn"t bothered to send a message.
That"s no big surprise, considering him!" But Luke saw more wistfulness than sarcasm in her eyes.
"Sometimes it wears on me not to have my own children here. I"ve been with the twins for only a fraction of their lives. I can count on one hand the number of times I"ve visited the baby. I haven"t had time to feel like a mother. The diplomatic ch.o.r.es won"t give me a rest." Then she looked directly at him. "And you"re about to go off on your great Jedi hunt. I feel like I"m missing out on life."
Luke reached out to touch her arm. "You could become a very powerful Jedi if you would only devote some concentration to your work.
To follow the Force, you must let your training be the focus of your life and not become distracted by other things."
Leia reacted more strongly than he had antic.i.p.ated, drawing away.
"Maybe I"m afraid of that, Luke. When I look at you, I see a haunted expression in your eyes, as if a vital part of you has been burned away by the personal h.e.l.ls you"ve walked through. Trying to kill your own father, dueling with a clone of yourself, serving the Dark Side for the Emperor. If that"s what it takes to be a powerful Jedi, maybe I don"t want the job!"
She held up her hand to stop him from saying anything until she had finished. "I am doing important work for the Council. I"m helping to rebuild a whole republic of a thousand star systems. Maybe that is my life"s work, not being a Jedi. And maybe, just maybe, I might want to fit being a mother in there, too."
Luke looked at her, unmoved. No one could read his expressions anymore; he was no longer innocent. "If that is your destiny, Leia, it"s a good thing I"ll start training other Jedi soon." They stared at each other in an uncomfortable silence for a few moments. Luke looked away first, retreating from that line of conversation.
"But you still need to protect yourself from the Dark Side. Let"s work a little more with shielding and your inner defenses, and then we"ll call it a night." Leia nodded, but he could sense that her spirits had sunk further.
He reached out with his fingers to touch her dark hair, drifting over the contours of her head. "I"m going to try to probe your mind. I"ll use different techniques, different touches. Try to resist me, or at least pinpoint where I am."
Luke let his eyes fall half-closed, then sent faint tendrils of thoughts into her mind, deftly touching the topography of her memory. At first she didn"t react, but then he could feel her concentrating, building an invisible wall around his probe. Though slow, she succeeded in blocking him off. "Good, now I"m going to try different places." He moved his touch to a different center. "Resist me if you can."
As he kept probing deeper, Leia became better at fending him off.
She parried his attempts with greater speed and stronger force as he guided her to put up barriers. He grew more pleased as he worked with her, touching random spots in her mind, trying to take her by surprise.
He could feel her own delight with her improving abilities.
Luke reached to the back of her mind, an area of deep primal memories but little conscious thought. He doubted he could get any defensive reaction there, but no attacker would be likely to strike at such places. Her thoughts were like a map laid out in front of him, and Luke touched inward to an isolated nub in her mind. He pushed--And suddenly felt as if a giant invisible palm had planted itself on his chest and shoved backward. Luke stumbled to keep his balance, taking two steps away from her. Leia"s eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped open in surprise.
Luke said, "What did you do?" in the same moment Leia said, "What did I do?"; then both answered, "I don"t know!" simultaneously.
Luke tried to reconstruct what he had done. "Let me try that again.
Just relax."
She seemed anything but relaxed as he probed her again, reaching to the back of her mind, finding the isolated nub among her instinctive centers. Touching it, he found himself knocked away again with physical force.
"But I didn"t do anything!" Leia insisted.
Luke allowed himself to smile. "Your reflexes did, Leia. When a medical droid taps your knee, your leg jerks whether you want it to or not. We may have just stumbled upon something a potential Jedi has that others don"t. I want you to try it on me. Here, close your eyes and I"ll give you an image of what I did to you."
"Do you think I"ll be able to?" Leia asked.
"If it truly is instinctive, all you need to do is find the right spot."
"I"ll try." Her face wore a skeptical expression.
"Do, or do not. There is no try. That"s what Yoda always said."
"Oh, stop quoting him. You don"t need to impress me!"
Leia touched her brother"s temples, and he took a deep breath, using Jedi relaxation techniques to drop his guard. He had erected so much mental armor in the past seven years that he hoped he could still let her inside. He felt the touch of her thoughts, delicate mental fingers tracing the contours of his brain. He directed her search toward the back, where primitive thoughts slept. "Can you-" Before he could finish his question, Leia stumbled backward into the self-conforming seat. "Wow! I found the nub, but when I touched it, you knocked me off my feet."
Luke felt wonder tingle through him. "And it was completely unconscious on my part. I wasn"t aware of doing anything." Luke touched his lips as new thoughts raced through his mind. "I need to try this on other people. If it"s completely a reflex reaction, this could be a very useful test for finding people who have latent Jedi powers."
Next morning, the metropolitan shuttle skimmed over the rooftops of Imperial City, like a bus on the thermals rising from chasms between the tall buildings. The strip of buildings newly erected by the construction droids looked like a gleaming stripe through the ancient city.
Admiral Ackbar piloted the shuttle himself, holding the controls in his articulated fin-hands as he watched the skies with his widely set fish eyes. Behind him, strapped into their seats, rode Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa Solo. The bright dawn spread long shadows in the lower levels of the city.
Ackbar leaned forward to the comlink. "General Antilles, we are on approach. I can see the construction droid up ahead. Is everything cleared for our landing?"
"Yes, sir," Wedge"s voice sounded clearly from the speaker.
"There"s a good spot just to the right of the droid that should be perfect for landing."
Ackbar c.o.c.ked his head to peer through the curved viewplate, then brought the metropolitan shuttle in, aligning it with gaps in the buildings, descending to the unexplored street levels.
Wedge came out to meet them after Ackbar had settled the shuttle beside the powered-down construction droid.
Ackbar emerged first into the rubble-strewn clearing, tilting his domed head up to look at the strip of sunlight coming from high above. Luke and Leia stepped out side by side as the vehicle hummed into it"s standby-cooldown mode.
"Hi, Wedge!" Luke called. "Or should I say, General Antilles?"
Wedge grinned. "Wait until you see what the demolition crew found.
I just might get promoted again."
"I"m not sure you"d want to," Leia said. "Then you"d be stuck with diplomatic duties."
Wedge motioned for them to follow. The construction droid blocked out the sun. Luke could hear teams scrambling up access ladders and automated lifts on the outer sh.e.l.l of the droid. Maintenance crews were taking advantage of the shutdown time to check the internal factories and resource processors, to modify some of the programming inside the droid"s computer blueprint.
The stripped carca.s.s of a large beast lay in the rubble just outside the opening of the shielded room. Wedge gestured to it. "That thing attacked us last night, and my team killed it. Sometime when we were up in the construction droid"s pilot lounge, napping and cleaning up, other scavengers came out and stripped the meat off its bones. Too bad. The xen.o.biologists might have wanted to cla.s.sify it, but now there"s not much left."
Wedge ducked inside the breached metal walls of the shielded room.
Luke could hear people shuffling and banging inside. He saw Leia wrinkle her nose at the strange smells wafting out.
Luke"s eyes took a moment to adjust to the glowing yellow illumination of the floating lights posted around the chamber. Something powerful had gone berserk in here. At first he saw broken equipment scattered on the floor, wires torn out, smashed computer terminals. Long claw marks gashed the walls. A black spherical Imperial interrogation droid lay split open in one corner. He saw Leia"s eyes fix on it, and he sensed a wave of revulsion pa.s.s through her.
Several people from Wedge"s team had wrestled a heavy metal grate back into place against one wall and were now laser-welding it into it"s channel. The grate had been horribly bent.
"More excitement last night," Wedge said. The welders looked up from their work, waved to Wedge, then bent back to their beams. "The mate of that rat-creature came back up through the tunnels, found its companion killed, and smashed everything it could." He frowned. "Ruined most of the old equipment here, but we still might be able to salvage something. The Emperor kept the place under tight security. Seems to be some kind of deep interrogation facility."
"Yes, indeed," Ackbar said, striding through the wreckage. Broken circuit boards crunched under his wide feet. "We wouldn"t want any of this to fall into the wrong hands."
Luke"s attention drifted over to a tangle of wires and flat sheet-crystal readers on the floor. His forehead furrowed with concentration as he went to look more closely. "Is that what I think it is?" he mumbled.
"What did you say, Luke?" Leia asked, following him.
He didn"t answer her as he bent over the equipment, pulling wires and cables and trying to sort through the mess. "It looks like there were three separate units here. They"re probably all destroyed." But he felt a growing excitement within him. Maybe they would be able to piece the components together.
"What is it?" Leia asked again.
Luke uncoiled one of the cables and found an intact sheet-crystal reader at the end. It looked like a gla.s.sy silver paddle longer than his hand. "I"ve read about this in my research on the old Jedi Knights. The Emperor"s hunter teams used it to seek out Jedi who were hiding during his great purge."
He found a second intact sheet-crystal paddle, then picked the control pack that looked the least damaged. With his cyborg hand, Luke brushed aside some of the dust, then jacked the cables into either side of the pack, holding the paddles, one in each hand. He flipped the power switch on the control pack and was gratified to see a warm flurry of lights as the unit went through its initialization diagnostics.