Heirs of the Force

10

Over the next few days, Tionne increased the complexity of the young Jedi trainees’ assignments, and the four companions practiced fine-tuning their control of the Force.

Jaina, Jacen, Lowie, and Tenel Ka found excuses to return again and again to the site of the crashed TIE fighter. With Jaina as the driving force, they took on the repair project as a group exercise—but they always managed to work in any assigned practice sessions during their jungle expeditions.

Although the idea was not flattering, Jaina was forced to admit that part of her motivation for this work was her envy of Lowbacca’s personal T-23—she wanted her own craft to fly over the treetops. But she was also drawn by the challenge the wrecked TIE fighter represented. Its age and complexity offered a unique opportunity for learning about mechanics, and Jaina could not turn it down.

But the strongest reason for taking on the project—and perhaps the one that kept them all working without complaint—was that it forged a bond among the four friends. They learned to function as a team, to make the most of each person’s strengths and to compensate for each other’s weaknesses. The strands of their friendships intertwined and wove together in a pattern as simple as it was strong. This bond included even Em Teedee, who learned to make verbal contributions at appropriate times and was gradually accepted as a member of their group.

Jaina spent most of her time overseeing the mechanical repairs, while Lowbacca concentrated on the computer systems. Jacen had ample opportunity to explore and to observe the local wildlife as, officially, he “searched” through the nearby underbrush for broken or missing components; he also made quick supply trips back to the academy in the T-23 for parts that Jaina or Lowbacca needed. Tenel Ka worked with quiet competence on any task that needed doing and was especially valuable in lugging new metal plates to patch large breaches in the TIE hull.

“Hey, Tenel Ka!” Jacen said. “What goes ha-ha-ha … thump!”

Her gray eyes looked at him, as lustrous as highly polished stones. “I don’t know.”

“A droid laughing its head off!” Jacen said, then started giggling.

“Ah. A-hah,” Tenel Ka said. She considered this for a moment, then added without the slightest trace of mirth, “Yes, that is very funny.” She bent back to her work.

From time to time Lowie climbed to the top of the canopy to meditate and absorb the solitude; the young Wookiee enjoyed his time alone, sitting in silence. Tenel Ka occasionally took short breaks to test her athletic skills by running through jungle under growth or climbing trees.

But Jaina preferred to stay with the downed TIE fighter, examining it from every angle and imagining possibilities. She considered no bodily position too difficult or undignified to assume while repairing the craft.

Jaina tucked her head under the cockpit control panel, with her stomach supported by the back of the pilot’s seat. Her backside was sticking high in the air and her feet were kicking as she worked, when she felt a playful poke on the leg.

She extricated herself from the awkward position. Lowie handed her a datapad into which he had downloaded the schematics and specifications for a TIE fighter, taken from the main information files in the computer center back at the Great Temple. Jaina studied the data and looked over the list of computer parts Lowbacca needed.

“These should be pretty easy for Jacen to find,” she said. “I have most of them right in my room.”

Em Teedee spoke up. “Master Lowbacca wishes to know which systems you intend to concentrate on next.”

Jaina’s brow furrowed in judicious concentration. “We’ve already decided we won’t be needing the weapons systems. I think the laser cannons work fine, but I don’t intend to hook them up. I suppose the next step might be to work on the power systems. I haven’t done much with them yet.”

Jacen and Tenel Ka trotted up to join the discussion. “You will need the other solar panel,” Tenel Ka said. “Up in the tree.”

Jacen cocked an eyebrow at her, using Tenel Ka’s own phrase. “This is a fact?” Tenel Ka did not smile, but nodded her approval.

Jacen folded his arms across his chest and looked pleased with himself. “Does anyone remember the assignment Tionne gave us for today?”

“Cooperative lifting with one or more other students,” Tenel Ka stated without hesitation.

Jaina clapped her hands and rubbed them together, scrambling out of the cramped cockpit. “Well, then, what are we waiting for?”

The process was much more difficult than they had anticipated, but in the end they managed it. Lowie and Tenel Ka climbed up into the tree to clear away the moss and branches that held the panel in place. Tenel Ka secured it with the thin fibercord from her belt, while Lowbacca added sturdy vines to help support the heavy slab. Jaina and Jacen watched from the lower branches of the tree, craning their necks to see.

“Everyone ready?” Jaina asked. “Okay—now concentrate,” she said. She gave them a moment to observe the solar panel glittering in scattered light from the sky. They studied the piece of wreckage, grasping it with their thoughts.

“Now,” Jaina said.

With that, four minds pushed upward, nudging. In a gentle, concerted motion they lifted the panel free of the branch where it had rested for decades. The large, flat rectangle wobbled in midair for a moment and then began to slowly descend. Tenel Ka kept her fibercord taut, easing the Force-lightened object down.

Together, they brought it to rest a few branches below where it had been. Tenel Ka and Lowbacca untied the vines and the fibercord from the higher branch, climbed down, and retied the strands to the branch on which the panel now rested.

The process was not perfect. Mental coordination among the four friends proved difficult, and they each lost their grip more than once. But the vines and fibercord held, preventing a disaster.

By the time the exhausted companions brought the panel to the jungle floor and carried it to the crash site, all of them were panting and perspiring from the mental exertion.

Jaina sank down beside the TIE fighter with a weary groan. She flopped backward in the dirt and leaves, not caring for the moment that her hair would become as disheveled and full of twigs as her brother’s usually was.

Lowie tossed them each a packet of food from the basket of supplies they brought with them every day. Jaina’s packet landed on her stomach, and she rolled onto her side with a mock growl of indignation. As she faced a hole in the side of the broken TIE fighter, a sudden thought occurred to her.

“You know,” she said, chin in hands. “I’d be willing to bet there’s enough room in there to install a hyperdrive.”

“You said that TIE fighters were short-range craft,” Tenel Ka said.

Lowie responded with a contemplative sound as he thought this over. Jacen merely moaned at the mention of more work.

“They were designed to be short-range,” Jaina said. “Never equipped with hyperdrives because the Emperor didn’t want to sacrifice the maneuverability.”

Jacen snorted. “Or maybe he didn’t want any of his fighter pilots making a quick escape.”

Jaina turned toward him and grinned. “I guess I never thought of it that way.” Her face lit with enthusiasm as she looked at her friends. “But there’s nothing to stop us from equipping this TIE fighter with a hyperdrive, is there? Dad gave me one to tinker with.”

“It is a possibility,” Tenel Ka said, without much enthusiasm.

They were all tired, Jaina knew. But her mind raced with the excitement of this new thought. She made a quick decision. “Okay, let’s go back to the academy. I want to make some measurements. We’ll call it a day.”

Jacen sighed with relief. “I think that’s been your best suggestion in hours.”

Back again the next afternoon, Jacen lay flat on his stomach, his chin resting on one clenched fist as he surveyed the moist ground beneath a tangle of low, thick bushes. He left his feet sticking out from beneath the bushes so that the others could locate him easily should they look up from their work—though there was little chance of that. From behind him he could hear thumping and clinking as Jaina labored to install the hyperdrive in the TIE fighter.

A thick splat told him that Tenel Ka and Lowbacca were applying sealant over the hole patch at the base of the reattached solar panel. The others were all busy, leaving Jacen free to hunt for “missing parts” again.

He watched, fascinated, as a leaf-shaped creature that matched the blue-green color of the foliage around him attached itself to a branch. It extended a long mottled brown tongue that flattened against the twig in a perfect camouflage. Jacen could sense the leaf creature’s anticipation. Soon a crowd of minute insects, drawn by a smell Jacen could not discern, landed on the “branch” and became stuck fast. Jacen chuckled and shook his head as the leaf creature retracted its tongue with an audible fwoookt.

With nothing interesting to be seen on the ground, he gave the bush a small shake once the leaf creature departed. He was rewarded with a hissing rustle as a dislodged object fell near his elbow. He picked it up.

It was an Imperial insignia.

He turned the metallic object over in his hand, but then he saw a familiar shimmer at the edge of his gaze, and he reflexively grabbed for it. Jacen wriggled backward out of the bushes, stood, and bounded over to the TIE fighter.

“Look what I found!” he crowed. His sister’s lower half protruded at an awkward angle from the cockpit, while she was apparently attempting to connect some part of the hyperdrive behind the pilot’s seat.

Her muffled voice drifted out to him. “Just a moment. I need a flash heater.”

Tenel Ka passed a small tool in from the other side of the open cockpit. She and Lowbacca, wiping sealant from their hands, came around to see what Jacen had discovered.

“A brooch of some sort?” Tenel Ka asked, examining it closely.

Jacen shook his head. “An Imperial insignia. Came off a uniform of some kind.”

“There,” Jaina said, extracting herself from the cockpit of the TIE fighter and jumping down beside them. “That should do it.”

Jacen handed her the insignia, and she nodded absently. “Look what else I found,” he said, holding up his left arm, which was wrapped in a glowing shimmer.

Jaina made a sound somewhere between a growl and a laugh, and backed away. “Great. Just what we need—another crystal snake that can get loose.”

Jacen used a tactic he knew his sister couldn’t resist. “Oh,” he said, letting disappointment show. “It’s just that you’ve always been so good at designing things—I thought you could come up with a cage that the snakes couldn’t escape from. But if you really don’t think you can …”

He saw Jaina’s face light at the challenge, but then her brandy-brown eyes narrowed shrewdly, and he knew that she had caught on. “That,” she said, “is a dirty trick. You know I could—” She shook her head, sighed in mock exasperation, and seemed to resign herself to the inevitable. “Oh, all right! I’ll build you a new cage for your crystal snakes—”

“Thanks,” a grinning Jacen cut her off before she could change her mind. “You’re the best sister in the whole galaxy!”

Jaina huffed indelicately. “But don’t bring this new snake back to your quarters until I have the cage ready.”

“Okay,” Jacen said, “I’ll keep it someplace safe—maybe in the cargo compartment. Can I have the Imperial insignia back, please?” Jaina tossed it to him, and he began to polish it against the sleeve of his jumpsuit. “I wonder if it belonged to the pilot.”

Lowbacca looked at the crashed TIE fighter and then back at Jacen and rumbled a question. “Master Lowbacca suggests it is unlikely that the pilot survived the crash, even if his fall was cushioned by the Massassi trees,” Em Teedee said.

Tenel Ka looked around the site with unblinking eyes. “No bones.”

Jacen shrugged. “After twenty years, that’s not surprising. Lots of scavengers in the jungle. I’ve been assuming he was thrown clear.”

Tenel Ka’s cool eyes looked troubled, but she nodded. “Perhaps.”

The four worked in companionable silence as they attached the final hole patch to the damaged hull. Then, while the other three applied the slow-drying sealant, Jacen hunted around in the underbrush. He knew he shouldn’t be out of sight for more than a few seconds, but he had already searched all of the thickets in clear view of the crash site.

Promising himself that he wouldn’t be gone long, Jacen pushed through a particularly thick tangle of dense, dark-leaved plants and emerged into a small clearing no wider than his outstretched arms. The dirt was completely devoid of plant life, as if some animal trampled it so often that vegetation no longer grew there. It extended deeper into the jungle—a path! It was narrow, but the hard-packed trail was unmistakable.

Forgetting his earlier promise to stay close, Jacen plunged through the bushes and followed the trail. The grove of Massassi trees was younger, their branches lower to the ground. Perhaps that was why none of the companions had seen this path from up above.

The jungle grew darker around him as he trudged on. The chitters, growls, and screeches of forest animals seemed more menacing.

Just as he began to realize that he was much too far away from the others, he came upon a clearing beside a small stream.

Some creature had built a dam across the stream, diverting some of the water into a depression beside it to form a wide, shallow pool. Against the burn-hollowed trunk of a huge Massassi tree at the water’s edge leaned a number of long, fat branches covered with moss and ferns to form a crude shelter—perhaps the lair of the creature whose path Jacen had been following.

Jacen reached out toward the little hovel with his mind, but sensed nothing larger than insects living around it. Skirting the small pond, he approached the low shelter, his heart pounding loudly in his chest. He knew he should be more cautious. But what was this place?

What if the beast that lived here was a predator? What if it returned as he was investigating?

Jacen jumped as he heard a loud crack—but it was only a twig snapping under his own foot. He bent forward to look into the branchy opening of the shelter, and gasped at what he saw there.

Fully a third of the Massassi tree’s trunk had been hollowed out to form a sturdy, dry cave, tall enough for a man to stand in. A makeshift wooden chair stood beside a low mound of leaves that might have been a bed, partially covered by a ragged piece of cloth. A cache of equipment, vines, fruits, and dried berries lay piled against the back of the cave. Perched atop the pile was a nightmarish black helmet with triangular eyeplates and a breathing mask connected to a pair of rubber hoses that Jacen figured had once been linked with an air tank.

An Imperial TIE fighter pilot’s helmet.

Jacen stumbled backward, away from the shelter, his breath coming in shallow gasps. He tripped and fell, and found himself inside a ring of low stones and ashes. A fire pit. He scooped away some of the dirt that covered the pit and felt around with trembling fingers. The ground was still warm.

Jacen jumped to his feet and raced toward the little trail at full speed. He ran along the narrow path, heedless of the branches that slapped his face or the thorns that tore at his jumpsuit, oblivious to the animals he startled from their hiding places. He didn’t slow as he approached the bushes that surrounded the crashed TIE fighter.

He burst into the tiny clearing and ran up to the wreck, yelling, “Jaina! Tenel Ka! Lowie! He’s here. He’s alive. The TIE pilot isn’t dead!”

The three of them looked up in astonishment just as Jacen heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. He turned to see a haggard, grizzled-looking man step through the bushes. The stranger’s face was deeply lined, and he wore a tattered flight suit. His left arm was bent at an awkward angle, and was wrapped in an armored gauntlet of black leather. But in his glove he held an ugly, old-model blaster. And the weapon was leveled directly at the young Jedi Knights.

“Yes,” said the Imperial fighter pilot. “I am very much alive. And you are my prisoners.”