Shards of Alderaan

11

When the Rock Dragon reached the graveyard of Alderaan, Jaina stared out the front windowport, sensing the forever-magnified instant of despair that had accompanied the destruction of an entire planet.

Only this jagged, broken rubble remained of her mother’s homeworld. Princess Leia had grown up here, living in a sparkling white city on an island in the middle of a crater lake, soaring in giant repulsorfreighters across the peaceful grasslands, resting in solitude in the ancient organic structures built by a long-extinct insect race….

Sitting in the pilot’s seat of the Hapan passenger cruiser, Jaina surveyed the countless flying splinters of rock scattered in space before her: huge boulders, small pebbles, congealed lumps of pitted metal. Each piece of debris was like a tombstone for the dead of Alderaan.

In the copilot’s chair, Lowie chuffed and growled, pointing at the dangerous swarms of rocks. Their navigation console displayed a thickly interwoven web of projected orbital paths.

With her rudimentary understanding of his Wookiee dialect, Jaina was able to decipher some of the words Lowie spoke, but Em Teedee translated anyway. “Master Lowbacca feels this asteroid field will be most challenging to his navigational and piloting abilities. Personally, I feel it my duty to point out the potential hazards, should you choose to proceed. Asteroid fields can be extremely dangerous.”

Jaina pressed her lips together, her expression grim. “This isn’t just any asteroid field, Em Teedee—this isn’t natural. This used to be a planet, but it was blown to bits by the Death Star. It was my mother’s planet.”

The other young Jedi Knights fell silent, feeling the intangible grief that surrounded the place, mourning those peaceful millions who had died here because of the Empire’s brutality.

Jaina stared at the crumbling shards, knowing that the bones of Alderaan’s population drifted out there somewhere, as well, now little more than cosmic dust. All the great buildings and cities: the revered Alderaan University; Crevasse City, built right into canyon walls; Terrarium City, famed as a metropolis under glass….

Jaina had seen images of Alderaan in its glory. Her mother kept a gallery of paintings that showed her beloved homeworld. Han Solo had given them to Leia around the time of their wedding.

She had heard her mother tell the story many times of how she had been a prisoner aboard the Death Star, forced to watch as Grand Moff Tarkin used the deadly battle station to obliterate the peaceful planet. Tarkin had given no warning, allowed none of the population to escape.

Now only this rubble field remained.

As far as she knew, Leia had never returned to the Alderaan system. Jaina guessed that the sight would always be too painful, but hoped that a special shard of her mother’s destroyed home would make a fine memento.

She gripped the controls of the Rock Dragon. “You ready, Lowie?” she said. “We’re going inside.”

“Oh, do be careful,” Em Teedee said.

Jacen and Tenel Ka quietly checked their crash webbing, but did not interrupt the two pilots as they cruised into the scattershot storm of planetary debris. Around them, the rocks coursed and ricocheted, spinning about to display jagged edges, raw craters. Over two decades, the debris had collided again and again, slowly settling into an organized cloud. Some of the shards clung together through their own gravity, gradually fusing into clusters of rock.

“This place has a strong … feel to it,” Tenel Ka said. “As if I sense the ghosts of … many life forces obliterated at once.”

Jacen nodded. “Uncle Luke talks about how there was a great disturbance in the Force when Alderaan was destroyed.”

“I still feel a disturbance,” Tenel Ka said. “Like echoes.”

Jaina scanned the debris with the ship’s sensors. Some of the meteoroids were composed of rock, others of metals from different portions of the planet—the crust, the mantle, the core.

Lowie barked a comment, and Em Teedee translated. “Master Lowbacca wishes to know what, exactly, he should be searching for.”

“Something… special,” Jaina answered.

Jacen added, “But we don’t know what it is yet.”

The asteroids grew denser around them. Lowie flicked his yellow gaze down to the labyrinth of orbital paths diagrammed on the screen. Jaina saw the lines tightening up, the paths becoming more congested.

“Time for some fancy flying, Lowie,” she said, then smiled back over her shoulder at Tenel Ka. “Let’s see what the Rock Dragon has to show for itself.”

“Oh, my,” Em Teedee said.

The Hapan passenger cruiser skimmed between two of the larger asteroids and circled back, curving below the plane of the debris cluster and then arrowing back through again. While simultaneously flying, watching out for obstacles, and studying the navigational diagram, Jaina continued to glance at the sensors, searching for exactly the right place to go. She felt she would know the place by instinct, as soon as she laid eyes upon it.

When she let her attention flicker for just a moment, Lowie bellowed in surprise and wrenched the copilot controls, spinning the Rock Dragon in a backward loop to avoid a jagged splinter of stone. He arced back in a U-turn and returned the way they had come. Their ship plunged once more through the rubble field.

“Hey, Jaina, are you sure you know where you’re going?” Jacen said.

Lowie growled something reassuring, then performed another U-turn to head back through the rocks.

“This is kind of fun,” Jaina said, accelerating as she circled around one of the larger chunks so that they could see the cratered landscape below them.

“I am glad you approve of our Hapan technology, Captain,” Tenel Ka said. “My grandmother assured me you would approve of the special modifications she ordered to this ship.”

“I’m not sure I understand ail the features of the engines and their subsystems yet,” Jaina answered, “but that leaves more for me to tinker with. A pilot’s duty, you know. Thanks for giving me the chance to fly this, Tenel Ka.”

Jacen kept peering out the side window, shaking his head. “It’s amazing to think this was once a whole planet…. Alderaan. I heard that some smugglers or pirates had been using this rubble as a relay station or a hideout, just like the asteroid field around Hoth.”

Tenel Ka grunted. “There will always be such stories. Some are true, others are not. I doubt we will find pirates here.”

Jaina let Lowie handle the flying while she studied the sensors again, hoping to spot that special something she was looking for. The Hapan ship had plenty of unusual diagnostic devices; it seemed as if Tenel Ka’s grandmother had installed every imaginable system. But Jaina used only the diagnostics with which she was most familiar, analyzing rocks, looking for something out of the ordinary.

A special gift for her mother.

When the bizarre asteroid showed up on her screens, Jaina knew instantly that she had found their target.

“Lowie, here’s our new course,” she said, highlighting one of the blips among the green lines on the navigational projection panel.

The large asteroid reflected light from the Alderaan system’s distant sun. Its surface was pockmarked and pitted, but it gleamed with a metallic sheen. The readings indicated that this asteroid was almost pure metal, with a higher concentration of precious elements than any other in the asteroid field.

They had discovered a lump from the true core of Alderaan, the heart of her mother’s world. The other young Jedi Knights leaned forward to see as the Rock Dragon approached the asteroid.

“That’s the one,” Jaina said.