“What is happening?” Tenel Ka said.
Ahead in the cockpit, Lowie and Chewbacca roared to each other, fighting the controls.
“An ion storm?” Em Teedee chimed in with an electronic wail. “Are you absolutely certain? We’re doomed!”
Jaina’s lips pressed into a tight, grim line. “It’s an ion storm, all right. Just bad luck. Couldn’t predict this. We plotted the shortest path to Kashyyyk using the navicomputer. The on-line catalogs only display stable astronomical hazards—star clusters, black holes, and high-energy nebulas—but ion storms come and go. They don’t have any set position, but they sure ripple up hyperspace when you pass through ’em.”
“Is it serious?” Jacen asked. Droplets of sweat broke out on his brow. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“Just have to wait and see,” Jaina said.
Tenel Ka stood with her hand to her utility belt, ready to fight some tangible foe with a throwing knife, her lightsaber, even her fibercord. But none of those would do any good against an ion storm.
Chewbacca and Lowie grappled with the controls, hairy fingers flying over panels, yanking levers. The Shadow Chaser winked out of hyperspace and lurched back into the fringes of the furious ion storm.
“Uh-oh,” Jacen said. “I forgot to tell you that we might have some damage to our ion shield generator.” He held up the nested bundle of wires and insulation.
Jaina whirled, more worried than ever. “Oh, no! That could—”
As the Shadow Chaser plummeted into the space storm, they were immediately surrounded by a spiderweb of high-energy lightning bolts, powerful discharges that arched across the seething knot of hot gas that formed the unexpected interstellar hurricane. The ship thrashed like a mad bantha, throwing its passengers about.
Jacen braced his shoulder against a control bar, and Tenel Ka fell into him. He held the warrior girl upright, pinning both of them against the wall, still cradling his newfound pet in one hand. Jaina, trying to struggle toward the cockpit, fell flat on her face.
The Shadow Chaser’s rear engines kicked in, and the sublight drive heaved them away from the rippling ion cloud. In the pilot seat Chewbacca groaned, gripping the controls and wrestling to keep them on a straight course, the shortest path out of danger.
Lowie cried out as fingernails of icy blue electricity skittered across the control panels, burning out subsystem after subsystem.
Behind the back bulkheads, the straining ion shield generators squealed loudly in surrender. Then, with a loud bang, they fell silent.
The rippling colors dwindled outside the cockpit window, and the Shadow Chaser careened onward, spiraling out into open space, safe at last from the storm. Still, Jaina shuddered to think of how much damage the stray ion bursts must have caused.
Jacen brushed himself off and forced a lopsided grin. “Now, uh, as I was saying about that damage to the ion shields …” He held out the eight-legged rodent, which cowered in her nest, as if she comprehended the trouble she had caused. “I found this critter’s nest in the machinery. I took her out, but I needed one of you to fix the damage.”
“It would appear that we now have plenty of time to fix it,” Tenel Ka said. “We are capable of fixing it, are we not?”
From the cockpit Lowie and Chewie consulted in growling voices.
“Oh, excellent!” Em Teedee said. “Master Lowbacca says we have been quite lucky. Our propulsion and life-support systems are largely intact and can be repaired quite easily. My, that is wonderful news.”
Em Teedee fell silent as the Wookiees continued, and then the little droid piped up. “Excuse me—what did you say, Master Lowbacca? Oh dear! It seems, however, that our navicomputer has been completely disabled. We have lost all coordinates for getting from here to anywhere else. Oh my. We’re … we’re lost in space.”
Chewbacca and Lowie both roared in outrage at the translating droid, and Em Teedee quickly fell silent. “Well, I suppose I should find it comforting that you both have such confidence in your navigational abilities,” Em Teedee muttered after a moment.
The two Wookiees busily consulted with each other and began punching and programming numerical values into the navigational control panel, double-checking each other’s calculations. Before long, after everyone had helped with temporary repairs, the Shadow Chaser was on its way again.
At first Jaina was surprised that they were back on course—then she realized that she shouldn’t have been. After all, Kashyyyk was the only Wookiee planet, and both Lowie and Chewbacca greatly revered the place.
Why should she find it unusual that they had both memorized the coordinates for their homeworld?
4
In a secluded meeting chamber at the Shadow Academy, Zekk stood proudly, struggling to hide any sign of nervousness. He raised his chin and waited to receive his long-anticipated reward. It had come to this, at last.
The air smelled cold and metallic, exhilarating. Brilliant light stabbed down from the metal ceiling, making him squint his emerald eyes; the irises were ringed with a darker corona, like the shadowy outline around his personality. Zekk tossed back his shaggy dark hair, one shade lighter than black, and looked up, blinking, as Lord Brakiss approached him in the harsh light.
The master of the Shadow Academy was wrapped in rippling silvery robes of a fabric that looked as if it might have been spun by deadly spiders. Against one wall, wearing her spined and glittering black cloak, stood Tamith Kai, the fierce commander of the new Nightsisters. Her violet eyes burned beneath a generous mane of ebony hair.
Beside Tamith Kai waited two other prominent Nightsisters—attractive and petite Garowyn and muscular Vonnda Ra, both from the planet Dathomir. In their black-spined capes and lizard-hide armor, the three Nightsisters reminded Zekk of hungry birds of prey.
Next to them, the grizzled TIE pilot, Qorl, stood at attention, surrounded by a stormtrooper escort of his most promising Imperial trainees. Beneath the white armor, one of the burliest of these was the gangleader Norys, who had led the Lost Ones on Coruscant not long ago. While the other stormtroopers stood rigidly at attention, weapons shouldered, Norys fidgeted and seemed angry and uncomfortable with the ceremony. His senses finely tuned by his own anxiety, Zekk could pick up the harsh muttering words from behind the bully’s white helmet. “Trash collector … gets all the breaks.”
Moving quietly and unobtrusively, Qorl rested his powerful droid replacement hand on the stormtrooper’s shoulder armor in a gesture that was firm and clearly meant to quiet the bully. Zekk knew Qorl’s droid arm was powerful enough to crack the white armor like an eggshell. Norys fell silent, though he obviously remained upset.
Zekk didn’t mind. This was his moment of glory, and he smiled faintly at the thought of how much had changed in only a few months—and how now he had arrived at the peak of his triumph.
For this presentation and initiation, Zekk had worn his new leather uniform; heavy round studs decorated the reinforced pads on his shoulders, creating a kind of armored hide. His hands were encased in thick black gloves that made a warm, satisfying creak as he clenched and unclenched his fists.
Brakiss’s porcelain-perfect face smiled with pride. He held out a gift, a flowing black cape lined with deep, vibrant crimson, like fresh dark blood.
“Young Zekk, I present this to you as a symbol of your importance to the Shadow Academy,” Brakiss said. “You have proven to be an avid pupil, a true asset to the Second Imperium. Our efforts would be greatly disadvantaged had you not joined us in our struggle. In your duel to the death with Vilas, our other powerful candidate, you proved yourself to be our champion, our new hope—our Darkest Knight.”