Return to Ord Mantell

20

When the young Jedi Knights began cleanup operations on Anobis, they realized it wasn’t exactly the type of battle they were accustomed to fighting… but it was a battle nevertheless.

The nondiscriminating weapons planted by both sides had taken countless victims, and not just soldiers in battle. Many of the deadly traps had been set years, even decades before, and continued to take their toll, as much in terror as in blood.

Jacen doubted the planet’s scars would ever vanish—completely, but with the temporary cease-fire brought on by grief and despair, the wounds might at least begin to heal.

Han Solo came back from the Millennium Falcon in the landing grotto. He rubbed his hands briskly together and smiled at his children. “Well, I just sent out a message, summoned a little help from a few friends.”

“We can use all the help we can get,” Zekk said.

Han gave one of his famous wry smiles. “You saying a couple of Jedi Knights can’t handle everything?”

Lowie stood tall among them, chuffing a suggestion. Em Teedee translated. “Master Lowbacca believes that perhaps some of the key commandos from each side could help us locate the booby traps that were planted.”

“If they can remember,” Jacen said. “There are so many of them.”

“Then we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Jaina observed. “What are we waiting for?”

While the others went off on separate missions, Jacen and Zekk made their way to the dangerous mining tunnels. Accompanied by Anja and two downcast farmers they searched for hidden sonic punchers.

Many times, farmers had slipped into the mining tunnels from the cliff face, and so Jacen, Zekk, and Anja, and the others climbed down the steep mountain path outside and entered through the boarded-up entrances to played-out shafts.

They moved along holding shining glowsticks that bore an eery resemblance to miniature lightsabers. The pale, cold light spilled ahead of them into the passageways. The farmers blinked, warily looking in both directions. Anja followed, tense and seething, lips pressed together, as if she could barely resist the urge to pull out her ancient lightsaber and strike these enemies down. But she contained her anger and focused on disarming the hidden traps.

“We haven’t worked these tunnels for years.” Anja narrowed her sad eyes at the farmers. “It would have been foolish to plant a sonic puncher here.”

The two young men looked sheepishly at each other. “We don’t know much about your work,” one said. “We just planted the punchers wherever we could.”

They turned a jagged corner to a branching of dark tunnels. The glowsticks shone ahead, but pushed back the shadows only a small distance.

“Wait,” Zekk said, holding up his hand.

Jacen felt his senses tingling. “Down there,” he said, pointing to the left.

One of the farmers shook his head. “No, we didn’t go down there. I’m sure of it.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Zekk said. “We sense danger down there.”

“Could be an older trap,” one of the men suggested.

“Old or new, we have to get rid of them all,” Jacen said. “You three stay here.” He and Zekk edged forward, pushing the glowsticks into the ominous tunnel.

“Quiet,” Zekk cautioned in a whisper. “Sonic punchers are activated by disturbances in the air. If we get too close, we’ll set it off.”

Despite their warning to stay back, Anja came up behind them. “How are you going to get rid of it? Once a puncher is activated, no one can get close without blowing it up.”

“Maybe we can,” Jacen murmured, raising an eyebrow. For some reason, he wanted to impress Anja. He saw sweat darkening the leather headband she wore and heading on her forehead. He and Zekk stood shoulder to shoulder, looking deeper into the darkness.

“Our Jedi senses can do the searching for us,” Zekk said in a low voice. He turned to his friend. “Are you up to it?”

Jacen nodded. Calming himself, he reached out with his mind, and used the extra eyes and ears the Force gave him. He could tell Zekk was doing the same. They scanned into the dimness of the tunnel, locating rocks, crystalline formations, rubble piled at the bottom of the channel. His mind moved in farther. He breathed slowly, feeling his heartbeat. Blood pounded in his temples.

There. He sensed something wrong, an object out of place… a device that didn’t belong in the rocky debris.

“Found it,” Jacen said.

“Me too,” Zekk answered.

With his mind Jacen ran invisible fingers over an outer metal casing, glittering controls, and finely tuned sensors just waiting to be triggered by an unexpected motion in the air.

“Careful,” Jacen whispered. “Help me lift it out.”

They used the Force, stretching out together with their minds, to move the rubble gently away from the weapon. This small device contained enough power to crack open fissures in the tunnel walls and bring the entire ceiling down.

Anja came up close behind them. “Maybe you should just detonate it in there,” she said. Her soft words startled Jacen, nearly making him lose control of his concentration. He could feel her warm breath on the side of his face and neck. “Throw a few rocks down the tunnel and set it off.” Zekk glanced back over his shoulder toward her. “No. We may need to explode some of them, but I think we can do most of the punchers our way. There’s been enough damage already.”

Working as a team, they used a silent Jedi mind grip to lift the sonic puncher, carefully raising it off the floor. Just then, a loose rock fell from a pile and clattered to the floor. The sound was like thunder, and the vibration was enough to activate the trigger.

“No!” Jacen cried. With his mind he clamped onto the distant controls, freezing the mechanism.

Zekk reacted in a different way, lashing out with the Force to rip circuits free inside the detonator, deactivating it forcibly. An instant later his face fell, as if he was ashamed of himself “You found a better way, Jacen.”

“Either one would have worked,” Jacen said. “Just let the Force guide you, and stay calm inside.”

Together they walked into the tunnel and picked up the now-inert sonic grenade. Jacen handed it to Anja. “A souvenir for you. Our first success.”

“Fine,” she said, and looked skeptically at it. “But don’t get cocky. I hear we’ve still got about forty to go.”

Lowbacca reveled in being in the forest again, despite the hidden traps and dangers he knew waited for them there. Tenel Ka trotted at his side among the silvery trees. A few miners and farmers came with them, trying to recall where each group had planted weapons.

They stopped at the edge of a pristine-looking meadow, with its colorful wildflowers like fireworks among the grasses. Tenel Ka marched immediately to where the holographic generator covered a spike-filled pit. She picked up a rock and threw it. They all watched as it vanished into the lush grasses. The camouflage hologram rippled with a flicker of static, then returned to its serene appearance.

The miners gasped. Lowie went over to a stout tree and with his bare hands ripped the controls away, shorting them out. The hologram flickered and faded, revealing the open pit and its sharp spikes.

The miners looked furious at the thought of the cowardly trap the farm villagers had set. But one farmer snarled, “Is that any more vicious than your monofilament wire that can butcher us into pieces as we walk?”

The miners took the lead, showing where they had strung their wires between trees. Lowie could barely see the laser-sharp lines, but he knew they were there. He and Tenel Ka drew their lightsabers and swept through the air, as if fighting invisible spiderwebs. The scaring blades severed the monofilament wire, making the passage safe again.

Lowie sniffed. On the forest floor below where the cutting web had been strung, he saw numerous dead animals: birds whose wings had been neatly amputated when they flew between the wrong trees, and larger forest animals, cut down as they walked, left to decay in the forest mulch, surrounded by the bodies of carrion eaters who’d also ventured into the deadly trap.

Both sides were subdued now, resentful but cowed.

“Come,” Tenel Ka said gruffly, marching forward. Her pale skin and glittering lizard-hide armor looked out of place in the silent, primeval forest. “We have much ground to cover, and years of accumulated dangers to eliminate.”

Jaina once again took her place as the Millennium Falcon’s copilot.

She felt very comfortable in the position, though she realized that as soon as they left Anobis, her father would travel with Chewbacca again.

She didn’t feel sad, however. Being her father’s copilot was a wonderful experience and had taught her much, but she preferred flying the Rock Dragon. Even though the Hapan passenger cruiser technically belonged to Tenel Ka, Jaina knew that once her skills were sufficiently advanced, she would get a cruiser of her own, perhaps an old ship like Zekk’s Lightning Rod, or maybe something newer and faster…. She grinned at the thought.

Han looked over at her, wondering what she was thinking. “Don’t get distracted now, Jaina,” he said. “This is a touchy operation.”

The Falcon cruised over the treetops and suddenly burst out above the open cropland. Jaina could see where the land had long ago been cleared for farming. Green weeds showed how fertile the dirt could be, but first the deadly harvest planted beneath the soil, the burrowing detonators that waited for any unsuspecting footfall, would have to be removed.

“All right, kids,” Han said. Anakin came forward to stand between Jaina and his father. “I need something that not even the Falcon can do for me. Use your Jedi senses to help your old man find those detonators and get rid of them.”

Anakin nodded, squinting his eyes in concentration. Jaina recalled how she had avoided the buried explosives during their desperate flight from the knaars. In her mind she saw a dotted pattern of ripples below, like a scrambled checkerboard of targets on the ground.

“There’s an awful lot of them, Dad,” Jaina said.

“Swarms,” Anakin added.

“Well, let’s get started then. Give me some coordinates.”

“Just fly in a slow zig-zag across the field, Dad,” Jaina said.

“It will be hard not to find a detonator,” Anakin agreed. He helped his sister aim one of the ship’s laser cannons.

Jaina fired from the copilot’s controls, and was rewarded with a large explosion, much greater than the laser should have made. “Got one!” she cried.

“There are hundreds more,” Anakin said.

Jaina targeted another detonator, and the laser cannon eliminated that one as well. After she blew up three more, Han asked, “We getting close?”

“Not in the least,” Jaina said. “This’ll take all day.”

“A single footstep could set one off at any time,” Anakin said. “But they move around a bit. We’ll have to target each one precisely.”

“You kids are doing great.” Han patted the Falcon’s control panel. “But I think I’ve got a faster way.”

“We can’t miss a single one,” Jaina warned. “It could start the fighting all over again.”

“Don’t worry, I think we can get full coverage.” Han activated the ship’s deflector shields, which had blasted comets out of the way during their final trial run of the Derby. Now, as he cruised low, the force field pressed down, like a heavy unseen hand, on the ground.

“We’ll just cruise over the fields. The force field will push down and pop any of those land mines we encounter.”

The Falcon moved slowly, its deflector shields placing pressure on the dirt. As the deflectors ruffled the soil, one of the burrowing detonators exploded directly beneath them, rocking the craft from side to side.

Jaina and Anakin looked at their father.

“Not to worry,” Han said. “This ship can handle a lot more than that.”

They flew in a straight line as Anakin marked the pattern of their flight on a holochart he called up. Three more detonators exploded.

Clouds of suspended dust and smoke looked like phantom trees growing from the barren field.

“Ah, looks like our reinforcements have arrived,” Han said.

Jaina looked into the sky to see the fleeting shape of another ship—a familiar ship. The Hapan passenger cruiser circled low, coming in to pace them. “But—we left the Rock Dragon on Ord Mantell.”

Han shrugged. “I asked somebody to pick it up for us.” He toggled the comm switch. “Hey, Kyp. That you, kid?”

“You bet,” Kyp Durron said. “With Streen—and I brought some more assistants from the Jedi academy, in case you could use an extra hand.”

“Or hoof,” another voice broke in.

“Is that Lusa?” Jaina asked, suddenly recognizing the voice of the centaur girl who had come to Yavin 4 after escaping from the Diversity Alliance.

“Yes, we’ve got Lusa here, and young Raynar, another friend of yours,” Kyp continued. The young man from the Bornaryn trading fleet greeted them.

“Looks like we’re going to have quite a reunion tonight,” Kyp said. “But for now, we’ve got some land mines to clear.”

“Hey, I’m just a good pilot who happens to be here on a diplomatic mission,” Han Solo said. “I’m trusting all of you to use your Jedi powers to make sure we do a thorough job.”

The two ships parted and began to crisscross the vast acreage that had once been cropland. It was clear that the fields of Anobis could grow food enough to feed all its inhabitants, once the land was made safe again.

The rumble of repeated land-mine detonations sounded like rapid gunshots in the empty sky. The Rock Dragon and the Millennium Falcon continued without pause. Their deflector shields pushed down on the fertile ground, at the same time smoothing out many of the jagged holes and pits left from earlier explosions.

“Never thought we’d be using our spaceships to harvest bombs,” Jaina said.

Han smiled at her. “The Falcon’s good for just about anything,” he said. “ ’Course I prefer to give her more glamorous duties.”

Both ships left their comm systems open. Jaina chattered with Raynar and the centaur girl Lusa, catching up on news as they continued their work. Toward the end of the afternoon, Lowie and Tenel Ka emerged from the dense forest and waved up at the ships crisscrossing the air.

“Looks like they’re finished,” Jaina said. “But I have the feeling we just did the easier parts of the job. We can go home once these weapons are cleaned up. But the people of Anobis still have to come to terms with all their hatreds and prejudices. They’ve got a long history to overcome.”

Han looked at his daughter. Another burrowing detonator exploded behind them, but he didn’t even seem to notice. “The rest is going to be up to them,” he said. “Sure, your mom’ll send in some New Republic peacekeepers and inspection teams, but these people have to determine in their own hearts whether this war will ever end.”