Return to Ord Mantell

12

From the corner of her eye, sitting in the Falcon’s copilot’s seat, Jaina observed the change in Anja’s demeanor after the run-in with the weapons smuggler. It seemed the thin, angry girl had gained a small measure of respect for Han Solo, though it was clear she still carried an enormous chip on her shoulder.

Then, as Han brought the ship down through the atmosphere of Anobis toward the war-scarred inhabited areas, something happened to fire up Anja’s temper all over again.

She pointed to a wrinkled ridge of mountains in a temperate zone. “My mining village is down there. The leader of the town, Elis, holds great power in the loose federation of mountain villages. We should talk to him. He’ll confirm everything I’ve said.”

“But aren’t they the Imperial sympathizers?” Zekk said.

Anja bristled. “That’s what the original debate was about, over twenty years ago. Now the war has become… something more.”

But instead of heading for the mountains, Han arced the Falcon away toward the flat fertile ground embroidered with rivers and green forests, square patches that had once been fields, and small clusters of homes. The farmland, now brown and abandoned, was dotted with small craters.

“I want to try talking to the people of a farm village first,” Han said. “We’ve already heard Anja’s side of the story. Let’s get a little perspective.”

Anja fumed. She jutted her chin forward. “You don’t believe me? You think I lied to you?”

“I didn’t say that at all,” Han said.

“He just wants to get a different point of view now,” Jacen said. “Don’t worry. We’ll talk to both sides.”

Anja lowered her voice. “Right. More than twenty years of war and a former spice smuggler is supposed to trot in, talk to a few people, and put an end to the fighting.”

Tenel Ka’s voice became gruff, matching Lowie’s deep growl. “Perhaps it is time someone did something to prevent your people from continuing their fighting.”

“You’re asking for trouble,” Anja said bitterly. “Those farmers down there can’t be trusted. They’ll probably try to blast you out of the skies as you come in for a landing.”

“Good thing we just upgraded the Falcon’s shields, then,” Han said.

Jaina grimaced. “If we can’t even land safely, how did you expect us to survive in the midst of a whole civil war?”

Anja narrowed her eyes as if this exact question had occurred to her already. Somewhat unsettled, Jaina turned back to the copilot controls and scanned the ravaged landscape that rolled past beneath them.

Anobis had been an agricultural and mining colony world, never heavily populated and somewhat off the beaten path, despite its easy access to Ord Mantell. It seemed that the colonists managed to survive well enough to build their homes and live their lives, but no one ever became rich here. Except maybe the gun runners, Jaina thought, since the war had continued for so many years.

Even before the days of the Empire, the miners and the farmers had traditionally been separate groups with different needs and distinctly different outlooks. From the sketchy background files her mother had sent, Jaina knew that the miners and farmers had once cooperated with each other, exchanging metals and raw materials for produce.

But the two groups had been divided by their political leanings during the Rebellion. The miners, more dependent on offworld trade, worked to maintain the status quo of the Empire. The farmers had wanted freedom instead—the ability to succeed or fail on their own merits without the angry yellow eyes of the Emperor watching them.

As galactic struggles had raged and resolved themselves independently around Anobis, the colonists had battered each other, continuing to fight long after the New Republic had won its victory.

As Jaina looked out the Falcon’s cockpit windows, she saw a world with the potential for beauty, but with so many scars that a long time of peace would be needed for complete healing. A large forest fire burned in the hills, far from the nearest farming village. It might even have been a natural fire.

“Jacen,” Han said, “try the comm system; see if you can talk to anybody down there. Let them know we’re here to help, not to fight.”

Anja rolled her eyes and sat back, crossing her arms over her chest.

Jacen sent out repeated calls on the comm system, but received no answer.

“Doesn’t mean they don’t hear us,” Jaina pointed out. “They might just have a receiver and no transmitter.”

“Or they might be setting a trap,” Anja said.

Han brought the ship in low over the largest farming village he could find. Jaina maneuvered the Falcon to a smooth landing not far from the cluster of rickety homes. The boarding ramp extended, and the group climbed out, blinking in the hazy sunlight of the war-torn world.

In the distance, the smoke from the distant fire curled up from the hills.

The timid villagers slowly crept out of their huts, heads lowered and shoulders hunched. They gaped in astonishment and fear at the strange spaceship. Jaina and her companions lifted their hands in a wave of greeting.

Han Solo said, “I’m an official representative from the New Republic, come to investigate your civil war and to offer any assistance we can.”

The people remained quiet and did not venture any farther out of their shelters.

“You’d think they’d have some kind of welcoming committee,” Zekk muttered. He stepped close to Jaina.

“Maybe they can’t afford one,” Han mused aloud.

The buildings needed a great deal of work. Every one of them had obviously been patched and rebuilt numerous times in the wake of repeated battles. Some of the walls were new; others were composed entirely of salvage and scrap. A rickety grain-storage tower barely managed to stand upright at the rear of the village.

The hazy sky was bright, the air humid and warm, smelling of smoke.

Cleared flatlands extended into the distance toward a thick forest that separated them from the rugged mountains. From what little Jaina knew about farming, she suspected this should have been the peak of the growing season—but she saw only a few skittish figures out working in the fields, hopping and dodging about in a strange way that made no sense to her. No crops grew in the barren fields, only a few patches of greenery that had sprouted all on their own.

Jacen bowed and flashed a friendly smile, trying to charm the villagers. “Take us to your leader?”

Finally, several of the farmers came out. Their eyes were sunken, their faces gaunt. Some looked angry; many wore bandages from injuries.

Anja hung back, scowling, and muttered to Jacen, “I can’t believe we were ever afraid of these people. They look too skittish to fight a nerf colt.”

“They’ve probably been through a lot,” Jacen said.

“So have my people in the mountains,” Anja retorted.

The other villagers faced one of the central dwellings and waited until a door swung open and a broad-shouldered man hobbled out. He had obviously once been a muscular person, perhaps a great farmer who could lift his own weight in punja grain or fight herd beasts bare-handed.

But now the man’s skin had a pale appearance, as if he spent all his time indoors.

As he stepped forward, the man’s left foot clanked on the ground.

Jaina saw that his real leg had been amputated just below the knee; he wore a makeshift replacement limb, cobbled together from secondhand droid parts that didn’t quite fit together. Although the servomotors no longer functioned, the man used his droid limb as a peg leg to help him walk about as he needed.

“We don’t get many visitors here,” the man said, “except for people wanting to sell us weapons… or to prey on us.”

“We’re not trying to do either,” Han Solo said. “We want to help.”

“Then I don’t know what you think you can do for us.” The man sighed and clomped forward, extending a callused hand. Han Solo took it gratefully. Jaina also shook the man’s hand while the others greeted him in their own ways. Anja remained at a distance, her face a mask of distrust.

“My name is Ynos,” the man said. “I’m what passes for a leader in this group of villagers, though we’re mostly starving and we don’t amount to much of anything.”

“If you’re starving then why aren’t you out working the fields?” Jaina asked. “There seems to be plenty of cropland, and it’s a beautiful day.”

“Because we’re afraid to,” Ynos said, his lips twisting in an angry snarl. “The mountain miners have ruined all of our fertile land. There was a time when we harvested enough to keep us fat, with plenty left over for trading with the miners, as well as for export offworld. Now we barely scrape by with our tiny gardens here.” He gestured to small patches of plants outside the ramshackle homes. “A few of our people have tried to clear some of our old acreage, but it’s a dangerous task. The cursed miners plant burrowing detonators everywhere.”

Jaina shuddered. She had heard about mobile robotic explosives that tunneled into the ground and waited there for someone—anyone—to unwittingly step on them.

“Some of our braver young men and women venture into the forests to hunt for food, but even the trees and shrubs are booby-trapped with deadly pits and trip wires. Sometimes our hunters don’t come back.”

Several villagers sighed or smothered soft moans of despair.

“It is only a matter of time before we’re all wiped out,” Ynos said. “Then the mountain villagers will have won the war.”

“Unless we kill them first,” said one brash young helper.

“And then we will all be dead anyway,” Ynos replied in a heavy voice.

Tenel Ka looked at the man and studied his stump of a leg. She seemed to feel a camaraderie with Ynos, though her injury had been caused by an accident, and his by an act of war. “There is no honor in such destruction. Only cowards kill those they cannot see. And only a fool kills when there are other options.”

Ynos sighed and looked around at the squalid village. Jaina followed his gaze. Her heart went out to the desperate workers in the nearby fields. She saw a few figures moving slowly, taking each step with meticulous care.

A sudden wash of dread flooded through her. All the young Jedi Knights whirled and focused on the same field, sensing the danger just as one of the distant farmers stepped forward. An explosion ripped under his feet, sending up a cloud of dust and dirt shards, along with an incinerating heat.

The scattered workers in the fields screamed. Some froze in utter terror, while others ran blindly back along the narrow, well-packed trails that led safely through the cropland. The villagers lurched into motion, rushing toward the field.

Anakin popped back into the Falcon and emerged a moment later carrying the medikit. Tenel Ka ran like a hunting cat, with Anja pacing her step for step, as if it were some kind of a competition rather than a race to rescue an injured man who had stepped on a burrowing detonator.

“Be careful!” Ynos shouted, limping behind them as the other young Jedi ran. At the edge of the fields, many of the farmers stopped to embrace those who had successfully made it onto safe ground. The young Jedi Knights followed the narrow footpaths. Jaina could see where other detonators had left craters and pockmarks in the fields, uprooting precious crops, leaving their poisonous residue as a chemical stain on the once-fertile dirt.

Ahead, Jaina saw the mangled body of the man who had been hurled high by the explosion and dropped back down among the rocks and clods of dirt. His clothes were torn, his face and limbs scorched from the blast. Blood seeped from massive injuries in his legs and chest. The man groaned. Jaina and her companions rushed to his side.

“Saw it……” the man groaned, “saw it coming toward me… jumped.” He gasped for breath, and Jaina thought she could hear his ribs cracking as he inhaled. “Not fast enough. This place… infested with burrowers.”

Han came up, panting. “Looks bad. Can we get him back to the Falcon’s medical bay?”

Anakin opened the medikit, but the mangled man shuddered. Blood still oozed from his wounds. A moment later, he collapsed backward with a convulsion. Jaina could tell without checking that he had died.

Just then Ynos hobbled up on his mechanical leg and looked down at the dead man. He assessed the injuries with narrowed eyes and nodded grimly. “Perhaps it’s best he died quickly. He’d never have recovered, and he would have hated being crippled.”

“That is not for us to judge,” Tenel Ka said. “We cannot know what he might have contributed—even with a handicap—had he survived.”

Ynos shook his shaggy head in despair. “There will be more deaths and injuries like this. Many more, and there’s nothing we can do about it. The miners buy burrowing detonators and turn them loose in our fields faster than we can clear them. We’ll never have happy lives again. We’ll all starve.”

Han Solo forced an optimistic expression and put a hand on the old man’s shoulder as three farmers gently carried their friend’s body away. “You won’t starve tonight. The Falcon has plenty of food packs in its prep unit. I can make you all a decent meal, something to give you strength. It’s not much, but it’s the best we can do right now.”

Ynos looked at them, hunger in his eyes. Jaina could see he desperately wanted to accept the offer.

“No argument,” Han said, before the limping man could think of anything to say.

One by one, the other villagers approached, eyes still wide with horror at the death they had witnessed, but ready to see how Han and the young Jedi Knights intended to help them.