Shards of Alderaan

13

Nudging the Rock Dragon’s controls, Jaina and Lowie worked together to land the Hapan passenger cruiser on what had once been the core of Alderaan. Em Teedee added his tinny voice of encouragement. “Steady, steady … oh, very well done, indeed!”

Jacen glanced out the windowport, his fingers pressed against the transparisteel. “Looks like you picked the right one, Jaina.”

The surface of the asteroid had a rippled appearance, pitted from the rigors of space and dusty from the powdery debris that flew like a storm through the rubble field. Craters had been gouged out by smaller rocks that had slammed like orbiting bullets into the asteroid.

The Rock Dragon shuddered as its landing pads settled onto the surface. “We’re secure,” Jaina said. Lowie rumbled his agreement.

“Time to get into our gear,” Jacen said. He rushed back to the storage compartment to prepare for their outside expedition, slid open the sealed door, and inspected the environment suits dangling there. “Never seen this design before. Tenel Ka, are you sure these suits are going to work for us?”

“My grandmother packed them herself,” Tenel Ka answered. “She would naturally be most concerned for our safety.”

“Yeah, that’s a fact,” Jacen said with a faint grin, thinking of the hard old woman and her unbridled ambitions.

The Hapan environment suits were sturdy but flexible, a tightly woven and completely sealed fabric that would protect them from the vacuum of space while allowing them freedom of movement. The helmets that locked to the collars reminded Jacen of exotic seashells, curved and swirled to accommodate air tubes, outside spotlights, and coolant piping. Jacen slid one helmet over his head and turned, looking through the round faceplate at the red-haired warrior girl. “How do I look?” he said.

“Would you prefer an honest answer?” Tenel Ka replied.

“It was just a rhetorical question,” he mumbled, handing one of the suits to Tenel Ka as he climbed into another. “It looks like your grandmother even remembered an extralarge one for Lowbacca.”

“My grandmother paid careful attention to all such details before she allowed my parents to send me this ship,” Tenel Ka said.

The companions checked each other’s fastenings to verify that the suits were secure. Jacen stood back to look at his friends in their seashell-shaped helmets, head lamps, and silvery suits; they appeared sinister and ominous.

“We look like a crew of alien invaders,” he said. “Like those legendary pirates of the asteroid belt, Tenel Ka.”

Jaina picked up her sample packs and cutting tools and went to the magnetic hatch of the Rock Dragon. “What are we waiting for?” she said. “Let’s go.”

Stepping out onto the surface of the asteroid, Jacen felt light as a feather, ready to fly. The ships on which he had traveled had been equipped with artificial-gravity generators, but the pull from this metallic mountain in space was insufficient to hold them with more than a frail grasp.

The surface beneath his booted feet was like hardened slag. He used his boot heel to scrape away the tarnish and space dust, exposing bare metal that shone in the faint starlight. Tilting his helmet upward, he saw the other rocks overhead, boulders like clouds casting random shadows across the core asteroid.

Tenel Ka strode beside Lowie, who stood tall and hulking in his environment suit. Tenel Ka’s grandmother had ordered a specially tailored suit for the young warrior girl, sealing off the extra sleeve for her missing arm so that the empty fabric would not get in her way.

Jaina trudged forward, toolkit in hand, pointing her facemask downward as she studied the pocked metal surface. She stepped to a fissure in the rock and squatted to let the light in her helmet shine into the fissure like a beacon.

“Look here,” she said, her voice echoing through their helmet comm system.

Jacen hurried forward with Tenel Ka and Lowie to see delicate crystalline growths sprouting like feathers made of ice chips. Transparent needles branched in random directions, beautiful and glistening in the glow from Jaina’s helmet light.

“What are they?” Jacen said, breathless with wonder. “Are they alive?”

“Some kind of silicon formation,” his sister answered.

“Ah. Aha,” Tenel Ka said. “Crystal ferns. I have heard of them in other asteroids. Some prospectors search for them. They are quite fragile and therefore are considered great treasures.”

“Should we take one of those for Mom?” Jacen asked.

“No, let them keep growing,” Jaina said. “I want something more … special. Something less fragile.” She hopped across the broad fissure, but misjudged the low gravity and ended up flying many meters beyond the edge.

“Hey, that looks like fun.” Jacen took a flying leap and soared over his sister’s head, tumbling in the air, and then gradually drifted back down to the surface.

“Be careful,” Jaina said. “It wouldn’t take too much to reach escape velocity on this little rock—you’d fly off into space, and we’d have to go through the trouble of capturing you again.”

“Oh,” Jacen said. “I guess that would be something to avoid.”

Jaina found a polished lake of pure solidified metal and knelt down, pulling her lightsaber free from its clip at her belt. “Looks like a good spot,” she said.

She switched on the lightsaber and scribed a rough octagon in the surface, cutting deep and angling toward the center. Tenel Ka and Lowie went to help. The pure metal vaporized, sizzling and popping in the cold vacuum as Jaina worked with slow precision to cut free a piece of what had once been the core of Alderaan.

While his sister continued her careful excavation, Jacen went to look at a series of small holes no wider than his leg punched into the surface of the asteroid. He ducked down, shining his helmet beacon into one of the deep round craters.

When his light gleamed on an open mouth and set of sharp teeth, he stumbled backward with a panicked cry. “Blaster bolts!” Just then, something lunged out—long and snakelike, with a body like a fat worm and a mouth that held much more than its share of teeth..

In the low gravity Jacen’s quick reaction sent him tumbling backward, end over end. When he finally righted himself, he saw a larval space slug still thrashing and snapping for victims, rooted inside its little crater tunnel.

“Friend Jacen, are you all right?” Tenel Ka had bounded over immediately upon hearing his outcry through their helmet comm systems.

“Just surprised, that’s all.” He gestured with a gloved hand toward the writhing space slug. “I didn’t expect anything alive out here—we’re in open space and hard vacuum.”

Jaina came over, laughing more with relief that her brother was safe than from any outright mirth.

Jacen took a deep breath. “Dad told us that when he and Mom were in the Hoth asteroid belt, what they thought was a cave turned out to be the gullet of a huge space slug. Those creatures are rare, though—I’ve never seen one before. Especially not a baby.”

Curious, he crept forward to look at the specimen as it withdrew slowly back into its hole. “This must be a young one. They feed on metal, I think, so this core asteroid would be a good place to raise larvae.”

Tenel Ka agreed gruffly. “The asteroid would provide nourishment for a very long time.”

As Jacen bent closer, his light startled the young space slug, and it lunged out again, snapping its teeth. The creature seemed blind, unable to locate its exact target. Jacen backed off. “I guess it doesn’t want to be disturbed,” he said dejectedly.

Jaina returned to her work and a few moments later lifted out a beautiful solid chunk. The heavy metallic prize glittered and shone in the soft light. The lightsaber cutting had given it polished sides and clean edges, so that the metal looked like a bright faceted gem.

“All right, we’ve got what we came for,” she said, delight and excitement pouring through her voice. “We promised Dad we’d head right home.”

The young Jedi Knights followed her back to the Rock Dragon, and Jacen cast one brief glance toward where the space slug had gone back to its lair.

Inside the ship again, their suits removed, Jacen powered up the comm system to send a message to Yavin 4. Raynar answered the signal, apparently assigned to communication duties again at the Jedi academy. “Hey, Raynar,” Jacen said, “we just wanted to report in.”

“Good. Han Solo’s been in here a dozen times, waiting to hear from you,” Raynar said. “He’s getting anxious.”

Jacen laughed. “You can tell Dad that we found what we wanted. Our mission is a complete success.”

“I’ll tell him that,” the young man from Alderaan said. “You’re being very mysterious.”

“Well, we are on sort of a secret mission, you know,” Jacen said with a grin. He signed off and sat back in his chair as the others fastened their crash webbing and Jaina powered up the Rock Dragon’s engines.

Time to go back to Yavin 4, before anything went wrong….