The Jedi Academy Trilogy_ Jedi Search Part 15

Skynxnex smiled back at him and turned to leave. His black eyes glittered. "Only as much as necessary," he said.

The mine car roared through the tunnels in total blackness. Han had no choice but to trust the computer guidance system.

Chewbacca had found the accelerator b.u.t.ton and punched it repeatedly, trying to get farther away from the multi-legged horror deep in the mines.

Han gripped the sides of the car with hands gone white from cold and terror. Each time they shot past a gaping side tunnel, his imagination heard noises of skittering legs and scythe-like claws reaching out to pluck them from the pa.s.sing car.

"Our course is taking us back to the muster room," Kyp said. "This could be our chance to escape."

"Where else should we go?" Han asked. He felt his heart pounding.

Chewbacca groaned a question, and Han translated it. "Do you know any other way out of these tunnels?"

"I don't," Kyp said, "but maybe I could find one."

Han fought to contain a sudden fit of shudders. "I don't know about you, but I'm in no mood to go wandering through dark tunnels feeling for a way out--not with that thing chasing after us." The thought of a freezing death in the energy-draining fangs of the monster made the option of imprisonment in the spice mines seem not so terrible after all.

Before they could form some sort of alternative plan, the floating mine cars coasted to a halt in the long holding chamber. The metal door at the far end slammed shut behind them. With his infrared goggles, Han could see the activation controls on the wall next to an inner door. His knees were weak; his hands trembled as he punched access for the muster room.

Light flooded around them, and the three survivors staggered inside, holding each other. Chewbacca used his hairy arms to keep both Han and Kyp on their feet.

Dazzled, Han cupped his hands over his eyes and let the infrared goggles dangle on his neck. "Boss Roke is dead," he croaked to no one in particular. "There's a monster in the tunnels. It attacked the guard. We barely got away."

"Han--" Kyp said.

Chewbacca sniffed, then roared in anger.

Han fought to focus his vision. He heard people rustling in the muster room. He saw only shadows in the glare. Finally, he could make out a tall, gangly form with dark hair and sunken eyes on a skull-like face.

"Glad you're back, Solo," Skynxnex said from the other side of the room. He drew the double-blaster at his hip.

Everything seemed to move slowly for Han. He had not yet come down from the boost of adrenaline caused by utter terror. Han saw the gun, saw Skynxnex, saw the man's cadaverous face. Doole had sent his henchman to kill them.

Han wasted no time, shoving Chewbacca backward. "Back in, Chewie!

We've got to get out of here!" He yanked Kyp through the open doorway.

Chewbacca let out a yowl and lunged into the dark chamber where the floating mine cars waited.

"Hey!" Skynxnex began to run in long, leaping strides that carried him across the muster room. Han sealed the door in his face, scrambling the lock mechanism.

"It'll take him a second to figure the access code. Get in the car, now!" Han leaped onto the swaying pilot seat. "Looks like we're going to try one of those alternatives you wanted, Kyp."

He powered up the rocking vehicle. From the other side of the door came pounding and then the sounds of blasters striking the metal.

Skynxnex was going to disintegrate his way through. They had to get to the relative safety of the tunnels right away.

Han punched up the computer guidance system and let the vehicle go.

The great metal door on the far side of the long holding tunnel slid open with a grinding sound as the mine car accelerated back down the central tunnel from which they had just come.

"I hate to go back there," Han said. Chewbacca roared a comment, and Han nodded. "Yeah, I hate even worse to be blasted."

"Do you know Skynxnex?" Kyp asked, regaining his breath.

"We're old buddies," Han said. "That's why he wants to kill us."

The floating car rushed through the half-open metal gate just as the door from the muster room melted open, spilling a wedge of light into the tunnel.

"They're only going to be a minute behind us," Han said. With his infrared goggles he could see the pilot controls now--but none of the coordinates meant anything to him. The only exit he knew of was back through the muster room. "Any ideas, Kyp?"

"It's an automated course," Kyp said. "If I had time to think and get my bearings, I might be able to figure out something."

"We don't have that luxury right now."

The great metal door did not close behind them after they pa.s.sed through. Wind whipped past their ears as Han kept his finger on the accelerator b.u.t.ton. From behind they heard shouts, other people climbing into waiting mine cars. Han leaned over the controls, but the repulsorlifts could go only so fast.

Unable to see, and without any knowledge of the labyrinth of underground tunnels, Han did not dare fly the car manually. He would have to hope he could get far enough ahead so that Skynxnex could not follow ... but then what? They would be lost in the cold, dark maze. How many other multi-legged monsters waited for them in the shadows?

The sound of another mine car came roaring up behind them. Han had three cars linked together, hauling three riders with only one engine. If Skynxnex and the others took one car each, they would travel faster. They would be in blaster range within moments.

"Solo!" Skynxnex bellowed.

"Hold on!" Kyp said.

Han instinctively braced himself as the computer guidance system yanked them to the left-hand fork in an unseen tunnel, then plunged them steeply downward. Before Han could wonder if they had lost their pursuers, he heard the echoing whine of repulsorlift vehicles soaring down the tunnel after them.

"I'm open to suggestions," Han said. He looked behind them with his infrared goggles and saw the glowing target of Skynxnex and two other piloted vehicles. In the cold darkness his own body heat would be just as apparent to the pursuers.

Chewbacca held on to Kyp, pus.h.i.+ng him down to safety in the second car. The Wookiee reached behind him, fumbling with the catch to the empty third car. Skynxnex and the two guards closed the gap. With a growl at the pursuers, Chewbacca decoupled the magnetic bearing from the third car.

Suddenly released, the empty car swung out behind them, dropping toward the ground. Skynxnex cried out as he swerved up to avoid a collision.

The other two guards both curved to the left, battering into each other, but somehow all three pursuers kept their balance. They roared after Han.

"Nice try, Chewie," Han said.

Skynxnex pulled out his modified double-blaster, powered it on, and aimed. When he fired, the two barrels sent their beams out at slight intersecting angles to each other. A short distance beyond the muzzle, the two beams coalesced and phased, forming a staccato series of bursts, each one containing a brief impulse of power ten times that of a single blaster beam. Though the weapon looked impressive, it was almost impossible to aim, and most other users--even hardened criminals--had dropped them in favor of more reliable weapons.

The phased double beam poured out, striking the ceiling of the tunnel ahead of Han. The explosion of heat and light blinded him through the infrared goggles. Somehow Kyp reacted with molten speed and yanked the floating car sideways. Miraculously, they swerved around the debris that fell from above, struck only by the patter of small pebbles.

"Everybody okay?" Han said.

Chewbacca grunted. "So far," Kyp said.

Han turned to look as Skynxnex zoomed safely through the tiny avalanche he had caused. Falling rocks and debris pelted the next car, though, making it spin out of control. The car struck the rough tunnel wall in a shower of sparks, then exploded, spewing shards of metal everywhere.

"One down," Kyp said.

Echoing sounds came from the open tunnel mouth ahead. Through the infrared goggles Han could see other spots of warmth, a caravan. They shot past the side tunnel just as another train of floating mine cars emerged.

"They've got reinforcements!" Han said in dismay. But then he saw the cars were all linked together--another mining party on its way back to the muster room at the end of a s.h.i.+ft.

Skynxnex and the other guard plowed right into them. Their accelerating cars rode up and over, knocking three hapless workers out of their seats and leaving them blind and lost in the tunnel. The driver of the work train slewed out of the way, ramming into the rocky wall of the tunnel.

Skynxnex spun in the air but somehow kept his seat. The second guard fared even better, pulling up beside Skynxnex as they zoomed away from the site of the wreck and the shouting work crew.

Han had no idea where they were going, but they were getting farther and farther away from anyplace good. With Skynxnex and his double-blaster behind them, they had no choice but to keep fleeing deeper into the tunnels.

Ahead in the inky blackness a sudden clump of pearlescent glitters sprang out of a bare rock wall, wavering in the air. Then the luminescence started traveling down the tunnel away from them, as if trying to outrun the approaching cars.

"Another bogey!" Kyp cried.

Their floating car followed the bogey, closing the gap. But as they neared, the swirling glowing thing accelerated, as if taunting them by flying ahead, whipping around curves just in front of them. By the faint glow Han could actually see the winding curves of rock.

Skynxnex and the other pursuer zoomed along in their wake.

"Uh-oh," Kyp said. "I think I just figured out what course we're on. All this feels very familiar."

"What?" Han said. "How can you tell?"

"The most recent set of destination coordinates in this navigation computer was programmed by Boss Roke. We're going back down to where that monster was!"

The glowing bogey roiled ahead of them, dipping up and down but refusing to pop back into the spice-covered walls. As it rushed along, the bogey's bodily illumination activated threadlike veins of glitterstim, leaving a patchwork of blue sparks in their wake.

In a long, straight stretch of tunnel Skynxnex fired his double-blaster again.

As if he could sense the blast coming, Kyp rocked the car to one side as the intense pulsed bolt shot down the tube, pa.s.sed through the bogey without harming it, and struck a distant wall. The impact blew open a huge aperture into another grotto.

Seeing an escape, the bogey ducked through the new opening.

"Put it on manual," Kyp said. "Let me fly it." By now their eyes had grown accustomed to the bogey's glow, and they could actually see where they were going.

"I don't want a free return trip to where that monster is waiting."

Han relinquished the controls. Without a moment's pause Kyp launched the car into the wide-open section of wall that led to an unknown maze.

"This is the same series of tunnels," Kyp said.

As they plunged into the new grotto, something long and fibrous stung Han's face like a sharp wire whipping past him.

The bogey shot into the vast chamber, flying across the darkness to the far wall. Upon striking the rock face, though, it did not melt through and vanish as the first bogey had done days earlier. Instead, the glowing ball stuck on the rough rock surface. It glittered and spangled and pulsed, as if struggling.

Another whip-like strand struck Han's face as they flew through the air. Around the bogey in the glow, wide veins of spice fizzled blue as the illumination activated them. The light crackled and spread outward in a network, geometrical criss-crossings along the wall. All of the spice in the chamber began to race around in long lines as the light increased in a chain reaction. The pattern looked familiar.

"Like a web!" Han said.

The bogey struggled frantically as the spice around it grew brighter and brighten. Han saw long fibers of free-hanging glitterstim draped through the open air of the grotto. From behind them Skynxnex fired again in a long continuous blast that missed them in the wide s.p.a.ce. The powerful pulsed beam struck the far ceiling of the chamber, making it erupt with hot broken stone that poured down from the roof of the tunnel. The images in Han's infrared goggles were blindingly bright.

The bogey stretched and struggled as parts of the spice web tore away in the avalanche, yanking portions of the glow with it.

Then Han saw the monstrous creature rise up from its lair on the grotto floor--a huge spider made of blown gla.s.s, all sharp edges, with a hundred legs and a thousand eyes. The bristling legs moved in a blur as it clambered up the debris toward the glowing bogey struggling in the spice web.

Han wrenched the floating car around, ready to plow his way out and away from the monster that had almost captured him in the tunnels--even if he had to fly right down Skynxnex's throat.

On the rocks below, tossed aside like wadded sheets of used paper, lay the crumbled forms of Boss Roke, Clorr, and the guard, frozen solid and drained of every drop of their bodily energy.

The creature must lay down deposits of spice as its web to capture bogeys, Han thought, or any other warm creature it can find down in these tunnels. That was why light activated the glitterstim spice--to trigger the bogeys' capture in the trap.

Skynxnex and the pursuing guard roared into the grotto. The scarecrow fired again, paying little attention to where he was going. His blast ricocheted off the wall, activating more spice.

The spider-thing glowed a dull blue with electric arcs crawling up and down its needlelike limbs, as if the creature itself were made out of activated spice. Attracted to the approaching heat source, it reared up.

Skynxnex did not see it until he had driven his floating mine car nearly into the grappling-hook claws. In the last instant Skynxnex pointed his hot double-blaster down and fired at the voracious creature--but the energy spider absorbed the blaster's power and s.n.a.t.c.hed out with a dozen limbs.

Skynxnex tried to leap out of the doomed car, but the spider thing speared him with a sharp leg, raising his scarecrow body higher. With the last of his strength, Skynxnex flailed his arms as his body grew cold.

The multi-legged creature began to feed.

The pursuing guard rebounded sideways as he struck a thick ma.s.s of spice fibers dangling from the ceiling. The glitterstim sparked and glowed in the growing illumination. As the guard saw Skynxnex captured, saw the huge energy spider and the collapsing ceiling of the grotto, he whirled his floating mine car around and fled back out the cavern entrance as fast as he could go.

Han, though, saw an open pa.s.sage in the ceiling and noticed a dim trickle of light coming from it. He wanted only to be out of there before the thing came scrambling after them, clawing its way up gla.s.slike strands of glitterstim. ...

"Up there!" Han urged.

Kyp plunged the car upward into the ceiling opening and suddenly came upon another network of tunnels. But these catacombs looked man-made. At last, one of the illicit mining shafts dug by spice smugglers searching to find active veins.

Han let out a whoop of delight. "This is it! We're out of here now!" Chewbacca clapped him on the back, nearly belting Han out of the pilot's seat.

They raced upward. The distant daylight pierced through the jagged obstacles of the pa.s.sage. Han did not want to slow down. Kyp accelerated toward the light.

The floating car burst into the thin open air of Kessel, where watery light blinded them like a supernova. Blinking and struggling to see, Han yanked off his goggles and took back the pilot controls. He evened out their trajectory above the flat, desolate surface of the small planet.

Off to their right he saw the towering stack of an atmosphere factory gus.h.i.+ng white steam and air vapor into the sky. "That way," Kyp said. "We'll be able to find a s.h.i.+p."

"Good idea," Han said.

As they approached the enormous construction, flying low enough to avoid notice, he kept an eye out. Moruth Doole would not know of their escape until the lone surviving guard returned to the muster room and made his report. Han, Kyp, and Chewbacca would have a few moments to get a head start, but not very long.

Adjacent to the atmosphere factory, Han did indeed see a broad landing pad with four craft on it. Two of the s.h.i.+ps were local landskimmers and useless to them--but the others were small supply shuttles, s.p.a.ceworthy enough, though they wouldn't go fast.

Holding the breath mask against his face, Han pointed with his other hand. "Down there. Get one of those s.h.i.+ps and we're away from Kessel." He grabbed Kyp's shoulder. "We can go home."

When Luke returned to Coruscant, he had a joyous reunion with Han and Leia's two-year-old children, whom he had not seen for some time, not since he and Ackbar had set up the secret, protected planet for them.

He waited in Leia's living quarters, playing with the twins, tossing them in the air and juggling them using his Jedi powers. Jacen and Jaina squealed in delight, giggling and intuitively trusting that their Uncle Luke would never let them fall.

Children were a wonder to him. Raised with his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru on the parched world of Tatooine, Luke had had little time for playing with children because the life of a moisture farmer was wrapped up in such hard work.