Shadow Academy

20

During the Shadow Academy’s sleep period, all students were locked in their individual chambers and told to rest and meditate, to recharge their energies for further strenuous exercises. It was just part of the Imperial rules, and most students followed them without question.

Jacen sat alone in his small cubicle, bruised and aching from the training ordeal. He dampened one of his socks and used it to soothe the many cuts and scrapes he had received from the sharp rocks and knives.

He and Jaina had requested simple pain relievers, but Tamith Kai had flatly refused, insisting that the aches would serve to toughen them up. Each twinge of pain was supposed to remind them of their failure to deflect a ball or stone. He used what he knew of the Force to dull the worst of the pain, but it still hurt.

Jacen sat cross-legged, trying furiously to figure out some escape before Brakiss launched another raid on Yavin 4 to grab more of Uncle Luke’s trainees.

His sister Jaina was always best at making complicated plans. She understood how things worked, how pieces fit together. Jacen, on the other hand, who liked to live in the moment and enjoy what he was doing, was a bit more disorganized. He managed to get things done—but not always in the same order he had originally planned.

Maybe the most important step was to free Jaina and Lowie. After that, they could decide what to do next. Of course, the biggest question was how Jacen could free them all from their cells.

Then he remembered his Corusca gem.

Jacen nearly laughed out loud—why hadn’t he thought of it before? He grabbed for his left boot, shook it, and was startled to hear nothing. Then he recalled he had put the stone in his other boot. He picked it up and dumped the precious jewel into his cupped hand. Smooth on one side, with sharp edges and facets on the other, the Corusca gem glowed with internal fire—trapped light from when it had formed deep in Yavin’s core ages ago.

Lando Calrissian had said a Corusca gem could slice through transparisteel as easily as a laser through Sullustan jam. But then, Lando said a lot of things that couldn’t entirely be believed. Jacen hoped this wasn’t one of them.

Jacen held the jewel between his thumb and his first two fingers and went to the sealed door. When Tamith Kai and her Imperial forces had stormed GemDiver Station, they had used a large machine fitted with industrial-grade Corusca gems to cut through the armored walls. Surely Jacen’s little gem could cut through a thin wall plate….

He ran his fingers along the smooth metal near where the door sealed. Jacen wished he understood machinery and electronics like his sister did, but he would do his best.

He didn’t think that he could cut through the whole door using only the strength in his fingers, but Jacen knew where the control panel was. Perhaps he could peel back this side of the plate, get to the wires, and somehow trigger the door to open—though he hadn’t the slightest idea how to do it. Still, he took the gem, found where the control box should be, and probed lightly with the Force. He sensed a power source here, tangled controls. This was it.

Jacen drew a generous rectangle with the gem, easily scratching a thin white line in the metal plate. A good start, he thought.

Pressing harder this time, Jacen retraced the rectangle, feeling the sharp edge of the gem gouging deeper into the metal. After his third effort, his fingers hurt, but he could see that he had made a substantial cut through the plate. His pulse raced, and excitement gave him new energy. He forgot all about his aches and pains.

One side cut through and bent inward. Jacen gasped. Almost there. He sawed away at the long side of the rectangle. With a clink, the metal parted. The last two sides were easier, and he sliced through them quickly.

The metal rectangle slipped from Jacen’s sore fingers and fell to the floor with a loud clatter. “Oh, blaster bolts!” he muttered. He was sure the other Shadow Academy students would wake up and that stormtroopers would come running.

But outside, the halls remained utterly silent, as if a cloth gag were bound around the station, muffling all sound. Everyone remained locked in their quarters. Only a few guards wandered the halls at night.

Jacen was safe for the time being. He peered into the hole he had cut, looking with dismay at the mass of wires and circuits that controlled the door. Okay, what would Jaina do? he wondered. He closed his eyes and let his mind open up, tracing the lines of the wires and circuits. Some ran to communications systems, or computer terminals mounted at regular intervals along the corridors, or lights, or thermostats. Some ran to alarms, and others … connected to the door mechanism!

Jacen took a steadying breath. Now, what to do with those wires? He probably needed to cross them, but in a particular way. There was nothing to do but try it.

With aching fingers, Jacen disconnected one of the wires in the cluster he had isolated and touched it to another, careful that the exposed, electrified ends didn’t touch his bare skin. A little spark flashed, and the lights in his room flickered—but nothing else happened. He tried with the second wire and got no response at all.

Jacen hoped he wasn’t setting off silent alarms in the guard stations. He sighed. What if none of this worked? Well, he reasoned, then he might have to slice directly through the door after all. He shook his stinging fingers, anticipating the pain. First, he decided, he would try the last set of wires.

As if sensing Jacen’s impending despair, the door slid quietly open when he touched the wires together.

Jacen laughed aloud and looked out into the empty corridor. He glanced from side to side, but saw only a string of sealed, featureless doors. Glowpanels lit the metallic corridors at half illumination, conserving power during the academy’s sleep period.

The door controls looked much easier from the outside, and he didn’t think he would have any trouble freeing Jaina and Lowie—once he found them.

It proved less difficult than Jacen had feared. He had seen the corridors down which the guards usually led Jaina and Lowie, so he went in that direction, calling with his mind. Jaina will be the easiest, he thought. He tiptoed along, afraid that at any moment stormtroopers would come marching around the corner.

But the Shadow Academy remained silent and asleep.

Jaina, he thought. Jaina!

Jacen walked along, listening at each of the doors. He didn’t want to cause too much of a disturbance, because the Dark Jedi students might sound an alarm if they noticed him.

At the seventh door he found her. Jacen sensed his sister, awake and excited, knowing he was out there. He worked the controls until her door slid open. Jaina burst out, hugging him. “I’ve been expecting you,” she said.

“Used my Corusca gem,” he explained, pointing toward his boot, where he had stashed the stone again.

Jaina nodded, as if she had known all along what her brother would do.

“We’ve got to find Lowie and free him, too,” Jacen said.

“Of course,” Jaina agreed. “We’ll escape and warn Uncle Luke before Brakiss makes his raid on the Jedi academy.”

“Right,” Jacen said with a lopsided grin. “Uh, since I got us this far, I was hoping you could figure out the rest of the plan.”

Jaina beamed at him as if he had paid her the highest compliment she could imagine. “Already have,” she said. “What are we waiting for?”

They managed to find Lowie, who was excited to see them, and Em Teedee, who was not. “I feel obligated to warn you that I simply must sound an alarm,” the translating droid said. “My duty is to the Empire now and it’s my responsibility—”

Jaina gave the little droid a rap with her knuckles. “If you make so much as a peep,” she said, “we’ll rewire your vocal circuits so that you talk backwards and they’ll toss you in the scrap heap.”

“You wouldn’t!” Em Teedee said in a huff.

“Wanna bet?” Jaina asked in a dangerously sweet voice.

Jacen stood next to her and glared at the miniaturized translating droid. Lowie added his own threatening growl.

“Oh, all right, all right,” Em Teedee said. “But I submit to this only under stringent protest. The Empire is, after all, our friend.”

Jaina snorted. “No it isn’t. Think we may need to arrange for a complete brain wipe when we get you back to Yavin 4.”

“Oh, dear me,” Em Teedee said.

Jaina looked around, casting her gaze from one end of the silent corridor to the other. She rubbed her hands together and bit her lower lip, considering options. “All right, this is the plan.” She pointed to one of the corridor terminals.

“Lowie,” she said, “can you use that computer to slice into the main station controls? I need you to drop the Shadow Academy’s cloaking device and also seal all the doors so that no one gets out of their quarters. No sense inviting trouble for ourselves.”

Lowie made a sound of optimistic agreement.

“Lowbacca, you aren’t capable of accomplishing all of that,” Em Teedee said, “and I’m certain you know it.” Lowie growled at him.

“If we can all get to the shuttle bay,” Jaina continued, “I think I can pilot one of the ships out of here. I’ve trained in simulators for various craft, and you know I was ready to fly that TIE fighter before Qorl took it.”

Lowie tapped the keyboard of the computer terminal with his long hairy fingers. He hunched low to stare at the screen, which was not mounted for someone of Wookiee stature. Lowie called up the screens he needed, showing the status of the Shadow Academy’s shuttle bay.

“Perfect,” Jaina said. “A new ship just came in, still powered up and ready to go. We’ll take that one, as soon as Lowie locks everyone in their rooms.”

Lowbacca grunted in agreement and kept working, but he soon encountered an impenetrable wall of security passwords. He groaned in frustration.

“Well, there now, you see?” Em Teedee said. “I told you you couldn’t do it by yourself.”

Lowie growled, but Jaina brightened as an idea struck her. “He’s right,” she said. “But Em Teedee was reprogrammed by the Empire. Why not plug him into the main computer and let him get through for us?” She plucked the small translating droid from the clip at Lowbacca’s waist and began opening Em Teedee’s back access panel.

“I most certainly will not,” Em Teedee said. “I simply couldn’t. It would be disloyal to the Empire and completely inappropriate for me to—”

Lowie made a threatening sound, and Em Teedee fell silent.

Working rapidly, with nimble fingers, Jaina pulled wires, electrical leads, and input jacks from the droid’s head case and plugged them into appropriate ports on the Shadow Academy’s computer terminal.

“Oh, my,” Em Teedee said. “Ah, this is much better. I can see so many things! I feel as if my brain is full to overflowing. A wealth of information awaits me—”

“The passwords, Em Teedee,” Jaina said, reaching toward the recalcitrant droid.

“Oh, dear me, yes. Of course—the passwords!” Em Teedee said hastily. “But I remind you, I really shouldn’t.”

“Just do it,” Jaina snapped.

“Ah, yes, here it is. But don’t blame me if the whole lot of stormtroopers comes after you.”

The screen winked, displaying the files Lowbacca had been trying to access. Jacen and Jaina sighed with relief, and Lowie made a pleased sound. His ginger-furred fingers were a blur as he descended rapidly through menu after menu, finally penetrating all the way into the station computer’s main core.

With two swift commands Lowie shut down the Shadow Academy’s cloaking device. Then, with a resounding clunk that echoed throughout the station, he closed and sealed every door except those the three of them would need to escape. He yowled in triumph.

Belatedly, the station alarms went off, screeching and grating with a harsh, piercing sound, unpleasant as only Imperial engineers could make it.

Lowie unplugged Em Teedee. “There, I tried to warn you,” the silvery droid said. “But you wouldn’t listen, would you?”