Crisis at Crystal Reef

15

Huddled in the wall channel of a dormant atmosphere factory, Jaina and Lowie set about determining the best way to fight Black Sun’s invasion force.

The rock walls all around them were cold, and the air was thin—but the environment would be far worse if they traveled up the long-rusted stairs to reach the open surface.

No matter how harsh the conditions they faced, though, Jaina knew they had to do something, anything to prevent Czethros from enacting his terrible schemes. The New Republic depended on them.

Lowie looked out of the tunnel entrance into the shadows of the broad pit that rose vertically toward the surface. In the past, the miners on Kessel had constructed gigantic factories to chemically release gases frozen in the rocks and spew them upward to thicken the atmosphere. But such extravagant efforts had been only a temporary solution, and in recent years the small planet had rapidly reverted to its natural state of frigid cold with a rarefied atmosphere.

Next to the rock wall, the Wookiee took a deep breath. Fine threads of frost laced his ginger fur, and the lanky young Jedi looked miserable—but a fire of determination burned in his golden eyes. He growled.

Jaina understood much of the Wookiee language, but Em Teedee translated anyway. “Master Lowbacca suggests that our primary mission should be to cause a serious malfunction to the sophisticated transmitter Czethros intends to use.”

“Agreed,” Jaina said, looking at Lowie. “If we get rid of that transmitter, Czethros can’t send his signal. His coordinated plan fails.”

“Yes, but Mistress Jaina,” Em Teedee chimed in, “however are we to disable such a large piece of equipment?”

Jaina shrugged and then smiled at the shiny little translating droid. “First thing is to find some sort of explosives…. Then we may just need you to sneak in there, Em Teedee.”

The floating little droid’s electronic squawk reverberated through the tunnels.

Each of the control rooms in the spice mine catacombs was sealed with a heavy door, code-locked and computer-controlled. Lowie used his programming expertise, with an occasional assist from the little droid, to crack the codes and force their way into one of the equipment lockers.

It wasn’t difficult to find a supply of shaped explosives of the sort used for blasting mine tunnels. Kessel was, after all, an industrial excavation area. Lowie found small packaged cylinders marked with red hazard labels. He hefted them in his hands and looked over at Em Teedee’s microrepulsorjets. He gave a growl of satisfaction.

“You can handle these, Em Teedee,” Jaina said. “They don’t weigh much.”

“Oh, my!” the little droid replied. “But I’ve never carried explosives before.”

“Not much different from a rock,” Jaina said encouragingly, “except that these’ll explode if you bump against anything.”

“I appreciate your support, Mistress Jaina, but I find your optimism … unsettling.” She patted the floating silvery ovoid as it hovered in the air.

The tunnels were empty. The spice mine loading docks were shut down, denying access to any cargo ships, since Black Sun had taken over. Czethros could not keep up this charade for long, but security threats against Kessel oftentimes required such random crackdowns, and the merchants waiting in orbit would just have to wait longer. No complaints or unusual-occurrence reports would be filed for at least another standard day.

Czethros would no doubt launch his widespread takeover before then. Therefore, Jaina and her friends needed to complete their sabotage before that could happen.

Most of the dusty tunnels were silent and abandoned. The actual numbers in the Black Sun occupation fleet were quite small, but they had placed armed guards in key positions. Nien Nunb and his loyal followers had been sealed in the slave barracks left over from the days when Kessel had been a prison facility. Many other workers, along with a few unfortunate cargo ship pilots, were being kept under guard behind force fields. It was an unstable situation, and Jaina knew it wouldn’t take much to turn the tables.

But first, they had to get rid of that transmitter.

They climbed up through air shafts, avoiding lift platforms for fear of whom they might encounter. Finally, they reached the upper main loading dock on the surface. Access doors would be closed but not locked. No one in their right mind would go for a casual walk on the surface of Kessel.

According to maps and diagrams of the spice mine and its comm station, they had a good idea where Kessel’s sophisticated transmitter—currently being modified by Black Sun—must be located. The powerful antenna was large … and probably well guarded. Two human-sized intruders could not possibly remain hidden as they made their way across the bleak, rugged surface.

But a small silvery droid might just be able to slip in undetected….

The ships in the cargo bay sat quiet and empty, as if the place was abandoned. Jaina recognized one of the familiar craft, though. A small man worked furtively beneath the engines.

“Lilmit’s still around!” Jaina said. While the other pilots were taken prisoner, Lilmit had probably been allowed to remain here because he worked for Black Sun.

The strange man looked up, and his eyes went wide as he noticed the Wookiee and the young woman. The hapless smuggler raised his webbed hands in panic. “Oh, no! But you’re gone. Your ship left. I saw the docking records. Go away—there’s nothing more I can tell you.”

“Great,” Jaina muttered. “Now we’ll have to take him hostage.”

Lilmit wailed. “Please, I didn’t have anything to do with this. I just wanted to get off Kessel before the Black Sun takeover. Czethros will be furious if he sees that I’m still here.”

Jaina looked at Lowie, wondering how they would ever manage to keep Lilmit quiet. If the little man caused a scene and got them noticed, they were sunk. But instead, the frantic smuggler ran into his ship to hide and sealed the hatch.

“I do believe our diminutive friend has panicked,” Em Teedee said.

“Let’s hope he stays quiet for just a little while,” Jaina said.

Lowie growled and gestured toward the outer doors of the cargo bay. If they could complete their mission quickly and hide again in the tunnels, they wouldn’t be found, no matter what Lilmit did. Jaina suspected that the terrified smuggler would not want to call anyone’s attention to his presence. But then again, the little pilot’s fear of Czethros might just prompt him to report the presence of two unauthorized young Jedi….

Lowie chuffed something again, and the translating droid replied, “Indeed, Master Lowbacca, ‘What are we waiting for?’”

Together, Jaina and Lowie reached the door, grabbed a pair of breath masks from a locker, and slapped them over their faces. The slow trickle of oxygen would be enough to keep them alive in the harsh environment, though the freezing temperatures and the crackling dry air would take its toll before long. They didn’t have much time.

Jaina unsealed the hatch, and they passed through. Gusts of wind roared after them as air flowed out of the pressurized cargo bay. They stood out on the bleak, white alkaline desert of Kessel’s surface.

“Lovely place,” Jaina said, her voice muffled by the breath mask.

Frost clung to the rocks, and steam rose into the air from heating and recirculation vents deep in the spice mines. Near the foreshortened horizon they saw the metal and wire-mesh flower of the massive transmitter. Czethros would use it to send his coded, high-powered signal burst announcing that now was the time for Black Sun’s ultimate takeover.

The flat, broken land was strewn with boulders and chunks of powdery white salt dried into lumps and low pillars. Cracks split the landscape. Jaina saw very few places for them to hide; her jumpsuit, along with Lowie’s ginger-brown fur, would stand out like a striking beacon.

They had no choice but to send Em Teedee.

His fingers already numb with cold, Lowie bent down to manipulate the tiny cords. Using a special quick-release knot, he attached the two canisters of explosives below the hovering droid’s casing. With her hands, Jaina showed Em Teedee the distance he needed to keep between his casing and the rough surface of the planetoid.

“You have this much play between the explosive and the ground right now,” she said. “We’ll need you to fly as low as possible to keep from being seen, but don’t let the explosives hit a rock.”

“Indeed, Mistress Jaina. I assure you that I won’t.”

Lowie grunted something, and Em Teedee snapped, “What do you mean by ‘famous last words’? I intend to follow our plan exactly!”

Lowie touched the buttons on the shaped charges with his claws and chattered to the droid.

Em Teedee answered in alarm, “Six standard minutes? Do you think that will be sufficient time?” The Wookiee shrugged.

“These aren’t high-capacity charges, Em Teedee,” Jaina said. “I don’t think they’re made with long timers.”

“Very well, I shall do my best.” The little droid hovered off the ground and then, with a burst of his microrepulsorjets, skimmed across the powdery surface of Kessel like a glinting silver bullet. Keeping low, he wove around rocks, over fissures, across the broken and rugged terrain.

A troop of guards would likely be stationed in a protective hut near the transmitter, just waiting for Czethros to send his signal. The droid had to get there before they saw him.

Em Teedee increased speed, still painfully aware that he could not allow the canisters of explosives to strike against a hard rock or a projection of encrusted salt. His internal clock counted down the seconds that remained on the bomb timers. The transmitting dish seemed very far away.

Em Teedee pushed his microjets faster and faster, drawing closer. Finally, the structure loomed up ahead of him: scooped amplifiers and curved screens to focus the communication beam. The miniaturized droid rose like a tiny satellite over the lip, then dropped toward the center of the flower. There, an aiming antenna would direct the signal while the pulse ricocheted off the parabolic petals and increased its power, sending it out to all secret receiving stations attuned to the Black Sun’s command frequency.

After he landed in the center, Em Teedee gently touched the explosive canisters to the central control point, jerked upward against the quick-release knots to detach the short cables, then rose into the air. He had very little time left, and he was anxious to get away. Stealth had required him to take longer than anticipated reaching the station, and now that there was nothing to delay him, the droid shot upward and sped away.

He must have made a fine glittering target, because two guards barreled out of a small hutment beside the transmitting station. They were curious at first, gazing up at him, then began shouting. One of the men turned back to the transmitting station as if he realized something must be wrong. The other guard grabbed for his weapon, but didn’t seem to know what to shoot at.

Em Teedee streaked across the rocky landscape and vanished into the distance.

Jaina and Lowie stood up, waving him on toward the doorway that would lead back into the pressurized docking bay.

When the translating droid was only a hundred meters away from them, the transmitter erupted in a blossom of orange fire. Shrapnel blew sky-high—some of it perhaps even into orbit, because of Kessel’s low gravity.

Jaina and Lowie watched as the fires from the explosion slowly sputtered out for lack of oxygen. Huge sections of the antenna fell, teetering before they collapsed. A few seconds later, the shock wave and the sound reached them at the docking bay doors, high-pitched and tinny due to the thin air.

“Let’s go!” Jaina said. “They’re really going to be after us now.”

They ducked back inside the spice mines of Kessel, hoping they could find a safe place to hide.

When Czethros learned of the disaster, his roar of rage was almost as loud as the explosion itself. His blazing cyber-eye scanned back and forth, looking for someone to blame.

“Timing is everything!” he bellowed. “If I don’t send my signal, the uprising will never commence—and unless we do this all at once, the New Republic will find a way to crush each separate little brush-fire.”

A guard nodded. “I understand, my Lord Czethros.”

“Of course you understand! An idiot could understand. But what can you do about it?”

“Nothing that I know of, my Lord Czethros.”

The Black Sun lieutenant stormed back and forth in Nien Nunb’s office, which he had commandeered. He knew his superiors were counting on him, and he knew that the leaders of Black Sun were not very forgiving when something went wrong.

“I thought you had imprisoned everyone who could cause problems for us,” Czethros said, whirling about. “What did you forget to take into account? Who is still missing?”

“I don’t know, my Lord Czethros.”

“Of course you don’t know, or the situation would already be under control!” He pounded a hand on the Chief Administrator’s low tabletop. He wished the Sullustan were taller so that his office and its furnishings would have been a bit more comfortable for a man of his size.

Czethros glared at the guard. The other armed mercenaries milling about in the hall nervously awaited their turn for a reprimand. Each hoped he would survive the wrath of Czethros.

“It’s safe to say we have some sort of little rodents unaccounted for. The saboteurs know what they’re doing, and they intend to ruin my plans. Make sure all our prisoners are securely locked away. Then I want full teams to comb every inch of the spice mines. We must find whoever is responsible for blowing up my transmitting station. I want them—dead or alive. I don’t care which.”

He turned, not deigning even to look at his crew anymore, then slowly glanced back over his shoulder. “Of course, if you don’t find them for me to torture”—his cracked lips curled in a faint smile—“I’ll be forced to take out my frustrations on some of you instead.”