Shards of Alderaan

17

Falling boulders sounded like thunder outside the Rock Dragon. All the ship’s systems went dark, plunging them into blackness.

Buried alive.

Jaina braced herself at the controls, but knew she could do nothing—not yet.

Gradually, backup systems kicked in. Em Teedee, working frantically to tap into their emergency power, restored a low glow to illuminate the cabin of the Hapan passenger cruiser.

Jaina’s head ached, but she drove away thoughts of pain as she got to her feet to make sure her friends were all right. As soon as the lights flickered back on, she swept her gaze over the others. Lowbacca, Jacen, and Tenel Ka all appeared to be stunned but uninjured.

Jaina scrambled back into her seat, suppressing a groan. “Em Teedee, is our hull integrity still intact?” She rubbed her left temple. “Any leakage?”

“Oh, Mistress Jaina! The diagnostic systems have simply gone mad,” the little droid wailed. “This is terribly distressing. Why, I—”

“Em Teedee,” she snapped, “are we leaking air or not?”

“No, Mistress Jaina—we seem to be intact.”

Jacen, who lay on the floor of the cockpit, snorted and ran his fingers through his tousled hair. “I’ll bet we wouldn’t win any prizes for best-maintained ship in the galaxy,” he said. He moaned. “Guess I should’ve buckled my crash webbing before we started to move, huh?”

“Prizes for ship maintenance are not our concern at the moment,” Tenel Ka answered, offering her hand to help him to his feet.

“Looks like we’ll have to make some of the same repairs again,” Jaina said, scanning the other cockpit systems. “And a few new ones, too. I wonder if that other ship has given us up for dead.”

“I hope so,” Jacen said. “Then he’d just leave, wouldn’t he?”

Tenel Ka shook her head. “No, I believe his strategy was to trap us, not to kill. He wants something from us … though he refuses to communicate directly.”

Rigged up at the control panels, Em Teedee let out a bleep of surprise. “Oh, alarm! Alarm! Emergency! Dear me, this is dreadful!”

“What is it, Em Teedee?” Jaina said, swivelling in the pilot’s chair to look at him. “A hull breach?”

“No, I can’t bear it! We are being violated—scanned! Someone is copying everything in our memory banks.”

“Scanned? How can anyone scan us? That would take a …”

“Indeed, it is a remote slicer, Mistress Jaina—a highly illegal piece of equipment, if my memory circuits are functioning properly. I should think he’d be ashamed!”

“I guess he hasn’t given us up for dead, then,” Jacen said.

Lights flashed on the control panels as the enemy ship linked up to their computers, skimming through their files. “If he reads our navigation history and our ship’s log entries,” Tenel Ka said, “he will know who we are.”

Scrambling with the controls, Jaina and Lowie were unable to block their enemy’s computer access probe. “Not a thing we can do about it, either,” Jaina said. Lowie growled.

“Well, we would have introduced ourselves by now, if he’d just given us the chance,” Jacen said.

Jaina pounded on the control panel in frustration. She seemed to be entirely out of options. “I don’t believe this! Remote slicers are completely illegal—not to mention expensive. Never even seen one myself. Only the most powerful high rollers can afford them.”

“Of course,” Tenel Ka said, raising her eyebrows and tossing her head to fling her reddish-gold braids behind her, “a certain powerful high roller helped to outfit this ship—and my grandmother always plans for many … contingencies.”

Jacen, Jaina, and Lowie all looked at her, comprehension dawning on their faces.

“Em Teedee,” Jaina said breathlessly, “see if the Rock Dragon has one of those remote slicers.”

“But Mistress Jaina, there is such an unusual combination of systems on board that I—”

“Just check, Em Teedee!”

“Yes, very well,” the little droid said. “Amazing! Why, I do believe I have found one. I’m quite astonished, since upstanding citizens could hardly be expected to deal in such illegal and unorthodox equipment.”

“That means we can use our own remote transmitter to pull data from our friend’s memory banks, see who he is and what he’s after,” Jaina said, feeling her heart pound with new optimism. “Turnabout. Give this guy a taste of his own medicine.”

“Shall I begin now, Mistress Jaina?” Em Teedee said hopefully. “I’m certain I can perform the appropriate slicing functions. I feel so … useful here in my position. Almost like the captain of a ship.”

“Don’t get delusions of grandeur, Em Teedee,” Jacen said, and Lowie chuffed with laughter.

“Using the Rock Dragon’s remote slicer would not be a wise idea at the moment,” Tenel Ka said. “If we did, our enemy would know we were alive—and that we had background information—just as we can see he’s probing us now.”

“Good point,” Jaina said. “Wait a while, Em Teedee. Meantime, we should go out and check over our situation, move a few rocks, see how bad it is this time.”

“Yeah,” Jacen said, “before our friend figures out what to do with the information he’s stolen from us.”

Carrying portable high-powered glow-rods, the young Jedi Knights put on their breathing masks and ventured out into the collapsed cavern to look over the battered exterior of the ship. Rock shards had pounded the Rock Dragon’s hull, smashing the already-damaged engines, the stabilizers, and some of the external communications systems.

“We’re banged up—but it could have been a lot worse,” Jacen said optimistically.

“The Force was with us,” Tenel Ka said.

Lowie groaned and gestured toward what had been the opening of the crater cave. A collapsed wall of rock completely blocked the exit. Boulders piled in a jumbled wall sealed them inside like a tomb. The Wookiee’s shoulders slumped.

Jaina patted his ginger-furred arm. “With our lightsabers and the Force, I’m sure we can clear that away … given time.”

“But how much time do you think we have?” Jacen said. Nobody hazarded a guess.

Jaina cleared the rubble from the top of the ship and climbed up onto it. Kneeling, she inspected the hull plates, brushing away dust with her fingertips. “Like Em Teedee said, no evident ruptures. The worst news, though, is that our communications array is smashed. We can’t send out a distress signal.”

“Not that we’d want to,” Jacen said.

“My friend Jacen is correct,” Tenel Ka said. “A distress signal would only lure others into the ambush. We do not know how many more pirates may be hiding in this asteroid field.”

“There’s already one too many,” Jacen said. Bending over, he hefted one of the boulders that had wedged itself between a flight fin and a starboard stabilizer, and tossed it aside. The young man grinned as he saw the rock fly farther than he had anticipated in the asteroid’s low gravity. “Hey, it’s easier than it looks!”

“I wish we knew who our enemy is, and why he shot us down,” Jaina said. “Maybe it’s all a mistake.”

Then they whirled as blasting sounds came from the rubble wall that had sealed them into the cramped chamber.

Lowbacca growled, his fur fluffing in anger as he bared his fangs.

“Our enemy has come for us,” Tenel Ka said.

“Blaster bolts—we left our lightsabers in the ship!” Jacen cried.

Stone shards exploded into powder at the center of the avalanche wall. Then, as the smoke settled and the incinerated rock cooled, a figure stepped through the opening, holding his blaster out and ready to fire. He wore scratched armor and a helmet like the ancient Mandalorian warriors had once used.

Boba Fett.

“Children of Han Solo,” the bounty hunter said in a gruff, threatening voice.

Jaina sucked in a shocked breath. “My father told us about you,” she said, straightening to kneel on one knee on top of the ship. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why have you attacked us? There’s no bounty on our ship.”

“Hey, there’s not even a bounty on our dad anymore,” Jacen added.

“I am not hunting Han Solo,” Fett answered. “I have moved on to other assignments. Where is Bornan Thul?”

Bornan Thul? Jaina couldn’t understand why the bounty hunter would be interested in Raynar’s father, or why Fett had attacked them to get that information.

“Bornan Thul! How would we know where he is?” Jacen said.

“I intercepted your transmission to his son. You reported that your mission was a complete success. Since Bornan Thul was a noble of Alderaan, it makes sense that he might have chosen to hide here. You must have come here to meet him. Where is the man, and where is his cargo? I must find him.”

“Well, happy hunting then,” Jaina said, scowling. “We don’t know where he is, and that’s not at all why we came to this system.”

“Now will you let us go?” Jacen asked.

“You will be bait, then,” Fett said. “Perhaps Han Solo knows where Bornan Thul has gone.”

“No!” Jaina cried. Lowie growled.

The armored bounty hunter turned, strode through the small opening he had blasted through the rock wall. Before he disappeared back to his own ship, the bounty hunter fired his blaster at the roof of the small tunnel, bringing down a new rock slide and fusing its core.

“Not very talkative, is he?” Jacen said.

Tenel Ka looked around, an expression of deep concern on her face. “Who would set a bounty on Raynar’s father—and why?”

“And why would he want us as bait?” Jacen asked.

“If he sends out a fake message, he’ll lure Dad here into an ambush,” Jaina said. “Unless we can get out first. Come on!”

Back inside their ship, the miniaturized translating droid was immensely pleased to see them. “I have excellent news, Mistress Jaina and Master Lowbacca! When I realized that dreadful bounty hunter was outside with you, I took the opportunity to use our remote slicer to tap into his computer.” Em Teedee seemed immensely pleased with himself. “I assumed he wouldn’t notice, since he was no longer aboard his ship. I’ve succeeded in retrieving all of his data files!”

“Great work, Em Teedee!” Jacen said. Lowie made an appreciative noise and patted the droid’s silvery external shell with his big hairy hand.

“Good,” Jaina said. “Now that we have Boba Fett’s information, maybe we can find a way to get out of this alive.”