Lowbacca answered with only a halfhearted growl as he carried his food into the eating area. Without even looking for his friends among the other Jedi trainees, he sat by himself at a small table against the stone wall.
“Lowie!” Jaina got up and hurried over to the ginger-furred Wookiee. “We were worried about you. You didn’t come join us for the meal.”
Lowie grunted something too brief for Em Teedee to translate.
Jaina pulled up a wooden chair across from their Wookiee friend and straddled it. Tucking a long strand of straight brown hair behind her right ear, she looked with concern at Lowie’s shaggy head. The Wookiee turned his golden eyes down and studied the fruits and greens on his platter.
“Lowie, will you please tell us what’s wrong?” Jaina said. “You can talk to us. We’re friends, remember? Friends help each other.”
Em Teedee spoke before Lowbacca could respond. “He won’t answer you, Mistress Jaina. Even I can’t get a response out of him. I’m afraid I’ll never understand Wookiee behavior. Do all biological creatures have these unpredictable moods?”
Jacen sat down beside his sister. “Hey, maybe Lowie just wants to be left alone.”
The young Wookiee groaned and nodded dejectedly. Jaina sighed, gradually realizing that perhaps the best thing she could do for her friend would be to respect Lowie’s wishes and let him solve his problems on his own. He knew he could talk to Jaina or Jacen anytime he wanted—but right now he didn’t want to.
“All right,” Jaina said, maintaining her deeply troubled expression, “but remember we’re here for you, whenever you need us.”
Lowie nodded, then stretched out one hairy arm to clasp Jaina’s hand in his. The Wookiee’s large grip engulfed her entire hand. During the brief touch, she reached out with the Force, hoping to find a clue to Lowie’s strange behavior, but all she sensed was warmth and friendship.
Jaina stood up and gestured to her brother. “Come on, Jacen. Let’s have a look at that crystal snake cage.”
Lightsabers flared into the night, reflecting off the ancient stone walls of the Great Temple. Tenel Ka gripped the carved rancor-tooth handle of her new weapon as its brilliant turquoise beam pulsed through the activating crystal, a precious rainbow gem of Gallinore she had taken from her own royal tiara.
The warrior girl stood in the flagstoned courtyard at the side of the ziggurat temple, a newly refurbished training area the students had reclaimed from the ever-encroaching jungle. The hardworking Jedi candidates had cleaned and polished the carefully set stones for exercises just such as this.
Tenel Ka gazed across at the alien mother-of-pearl eyes, elven features, and long quicksilver hair of her opponent—Tionne, the Jedi trainer and historian who often assisted Master Skywalker. The Jedi woman used her lightsaber with precision, matching Tenel Ka’s moves stroke for stroke.
During an earlier training accident, Tenel Ka’s poorly constructed lightsaber had exploded, and her friend Jacen’s lightsaber blade had severed her left arm. Now Tenel Ka lived and fought with only one hand. But she wielded her glowing energy blade with strength and confidence.
Although skilled biotechnicians had offered her the best prosthetic arm replacement in the Hapes Cluster, Tenel Ka had turned them down. She prided herself in being herself—relying on her own abilities, her own strength and prowess. She did not want the artificial assistance of a biomechanical limb. Instead, she chose to alter her means of achieving her goal. She was determined to be as strong and as capable as ever before.
And when Tenel Ka determined to do something, she usually accomplished it.
Bright lights on the cleared landing grid in front of the temple illuminated the jungle, attracting thousands of nocturnal insects and the flying predators that fed on them. In the flagstoned courtyard, though, only the flares and flashes of intersecting lightsaber blades disturbed the night, bathing the area in a dazzling multicolored glow.
Tionne countered the warrior girl’s stroke. “Very good, Tenel Ka,” the teacher said. “You are learning to focus on precision rather than brute strength, to anticipate my moves and your own reactions using the Force.”
Tenel Ka nodded, and her heavy red-gold braids danced around her head. The beads she had woven into the braids jingled and clacked together. She fought harder, sensing the control and skill of this older Jedi, who had been training for more than ten years now.
Several other students had come out to watch the exercises. All of Master Skywalker’s Jedi candidates had intensified their training efforts, now that the New Republic was sure of the growing threat posed by the Shadow Academy and the Second Imperium. For more than a thousand generations, Jedi Knights had been the forces of light throughout the galaxy, and Luke Skywalker intended to continue the tradition.
Tionne swung her weapon with a calm, smooth gesture so unexpected that Tenel Ka barely reacted in time. She had sensed no intention of a counterattack from the silver-haired scholar, and so Tionne had surprised her. Their blades locked and sizzled—and then Tionne pulled her lightsaber back.
“Halt,” she said, and switched off her weapon, leaving the warrior girl to stand with her own lightsaber blazing in her hand.
Tionne gestured up into the night sky of Yavin 4. The other students around the flag-stoned courtyard stood up to watch. Just then, the twins Jacen and Jaina emerged from a low stone arch in the side of the Great Temple, hoping to observe Tenel Ka at her exercises. Instead, they all saw a glowing light streaking toward them like a tiny meteor.
“Hey, it’s a ship!” Jacen said.
“Not just any ship,” Jaina added. “I’d recognize it anywhere!”
Jacen blinked. “Hey, Dad never told us he was coming!”
Within a few moments the ship swooped down with a roar of its sublight engines and powered-up repulsorlifts. The flat, pronged disk of the Millennium Falcon settled with a loud hiss onto the landing pad.
Talking excitedly with each other, Jacen and Jaina rushed from the courtyard out onto the close-cropped weeds of the landing field to greet their father. The modified light freighter’s boarding ramp extended, and Han Solo strode down it. A lopsided grin appeared as his children greeted him with wild enthusiasm.
When Chewbacca bounded down the ramp, Tenel Ka heard a bellow of greeting from behind her. She turned to see Lowbacca on one of the pyramid’s stone ledges above the training area. He swung himself over the ledge and scrambled down the sloping temple blocks to reach the ground. Chewbacca roared a response to his nephew.
Lowbacca had been very troubled recently, and Tenel Ka could sense many deep thoughts working through his brain. She had decided to honor her Wookiee friend by letting him fight his own battles … unless he asked for help. But when she saw the expressions on Chewbacca’s and Lowie’s faces, Tenel Ka grasped a strange and interesting fact.
Although the twins had been surprised by the unexpected appearance of the Millennium Falcon, Lowbacca had known full well that the ship was coming.
2
Jaina realized she was grinning like an idiot as she hugged her father. “What are you doing here? We didn’t even know you were coming.”
Beside her, Jacen gaped at Han Solo’s unfamiliar costume of tattered cloth and furs. His hair had been cut raggedly, and he looked much tougher. “Blaster bolts, Dad! Why are you dressed like that?”
Before Han Solo had a chance to reply, Jaina glanced behind him. Even in the dimness she could see that some of the Millennium Falcon’s plating had been replaced with dark anodized hunks of metal, new storage pods had been mounted on the bow, and a second transmitting dish was attached to the rear. Her jaw dropped. “And what did you do to the Falcon? It looks so … different!”