The Lost Ones

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 scraping 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 passable 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 gratitude, 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 space 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 assault 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 4.

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 assault 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 knobby knees thrust high and his arms reaching almost to the ground, cradled his datapad in his lap, studying coordinates of the known items of space 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 space 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 space wreckage showed absolutely nothing in the marked zone. In fact, it was more like a forbidden area in space, 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 space. “Hello! Hello, 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. “Hello?” 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 space—just like on your orbital map!”

He snarled in agreement. “Oh, my!” Em Teedee said, too flustered 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 space.

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 attitude 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. We’ll 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. Before they arrived, Jaina and the others had to expose the Shadow Academy.

Lowie groaned a question, which Em Teedee translated. “Master Lowbacca wishes to inquire if the focusing apparatus has condensed the beam of reflected sunlight to its full-power configuration.”

“That’s for sure,” Peckhum said. “Once we get this thing turned, we’ll really make them hot under the collar.”

Hanging in orbit over Coruscant, the big mirrors finally swung into position, focusing their bright beam of condensed sunlight into the empty void. The mirror beam cut a swath through space like a searchlight.

The light should have kept flying across the solar system, but when it struck the empty coordinates, space itself seemed to shimmer like golden smoke. The high-intensity flood of sunlight continued to bombard the cloaked area, finally overwhelming the invisibility shields around the Shadow Academy.

“There!” Jaina cried triumphantly.

The Imperial station rippled into view and then snapped into perfect focus, a large circular ring bristling with spiked gun emplacements and observation towers.

Lowie and Chewbacca roared in unison, and Jaina shook her head. “They were hiding right on our doorstep all along. That’s why they could use short-range fighters to attack the Adamant. That’s how Tamith Kai and her companions could slip down to the city and steal Zekk away.”

“Zekk must be aboard the station then,” Peckhum whispered. “That’s where they’ve taken him.”

“And the Lost Ones,” Jaina added.

Chewbacca snarled, then pointed as the exposed Shadow Academy began to move. Thrusters along the equator of its donut shape burned blue-white on one side, nudging it away from the bright beam of concentrated sunlight.

“Turn the mirrors,” Jaina said. “We can’t let them get away before the ships arrive.”

“Oh dear,” Em Teedee said. “I do hope our fighters manage to apprehend that Shadow Academy. I’m still exceedingly vexed with them for reprogramming me when we were all taken prisoner there.”

Peckhum punched new coordinates into the mirror directional systems, but the sudden acceleration and the change in direction proved too much for the already-stressed silvery sheeting. The long webs of cables that held the great mirror in position tore free, and a wide gash began to open up, spilling a seam of stars and black night through the glittering reflector.

“We can’t hold it,” Peckhum shouted. “It’s too much!” He shook his head. “We could never target a moving object anyway.” Then he looked up and moaned. “My mirrors!”

The Shadow Academy continued to accelerate, and Jaina watched the approach of Admiral Ackbar’s vengeful fleet, silently urging them to greater speed. But she could see they would not arrive in time.

“The Shadow Academy must already have been preparing to leave,” she said. “Of course. They’ve got Zekk and some other recruits. They’ve stolen a shipment of hyperdrive cores and turbolaser batteries. They were only increasing their danger by staying here.”

Though its ringed shape made it appear unwieldy, the Shadow Academy picked up speed as it headed toward its appropriate hyperspace jump point.

The first of the New Republic ships soared ahead, firing laser bursts at the Shadow Academy. Several shots struck home, leaving dark blaster scoring on the outer hull; the intensity of the solar mirror must have burned out some shields.

Jaina reached out with her mind, searching for Zekk, still marveling at the thought that the handsome, dark-haired street boy might have the potential to be a Jedi Knight. Or a Dark Jedi. She muttered to herself, feeling guilty, “He was our friend, and we never even imagined he might become a Jedi, too. Now it’s too late.”

As the New Republic ships arrowed toward their target, firing numerous laser bursts, the Shadow Academy suddenly shot forward with a bright flash of light. Its acceleration stretched space and bent starlines, then it vanished to its unknown hiding place deep in Imperial territory.

The Shadow Academy was gone. Again.

Jaina swallowed a lump in her throat. And this time the Imperials had taken a friend with them.