• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Lando and Tendra looked her way. Lando flashed her a smile she knew was supposed to be reassuring. She resented him for it.

“We're not sure that it would do any good at the moment, sweetie,” he told her. “We're trying to figure out what to do next.”

“We should just go down there and look. I'm really good at looking.”

She saw Lando suppress a shudder. “Amelia, do you know what a transceiver is?”

She nodded. “It's like a comlink, except you talk into comlinks, and you don't talk into all transceivers.”

“Right. Your mommy and daddy are carrying several transceivers, some of which they don't even know about. In their speeder, in their equipment.”

“I know about tracking devices, too.” She shot him a suspicious look. “You put tracking devices on them.”

“Of course! Comm signals don't go very far in the mines. They don't go through stone. So I had special transceivers put in their gear that communicate with the seismic sensors we've got all over the tunnels. A while ago, after we stopped receiving signals and we had that groundshake, your aunt Tendra and I did go down to look.”

“Why didn't you tell me? I would have gone with you.”

“Yeah … Anyway, there's a lot of fallen stone between us and Han and Leia right now. We have to dig through to them.”

“And none of our miners are here right now,” Tendra added. “Most of them are away on paid leave. We've sent out word asking for volunteers.”

“Well, until they get here, we can—”

“We can stay here,” Lando said, sounding stern for the first time in the conversation. He fixed her with a stare, and when she did not reply, he turned back to Tendra.

“I could find them,” Allana whispered.

“What's that, Miss Amelia?” C-3PO, dithering beside R2-D2 on the other side of the table, leaned forward as if it would help his au-dioreceptors to pick up her words.

She gave the droid a resentful look. “Nothing.”

R2-D2 tweetled, a lengthy statement for him. Allana glanced at C-3PO for a translation.

The protocol droid leaned toward her again. “He says he approves very highly of adventuresome young girls being adventuresome young girls. But not this time.”

Allana sighed.

NINTH HALL OF JUSTICE, CORUSCANT

She was the same Falleen judge who had handed down Luke Skywalker's sentence, and she was identically impassive now. “It is the determination of this court that Jedi Valin Horn is not competent to stand trial for his actions in the above-named suit.”

At the back of the chamber, standing among the handful of Jedi who had been allowed into the packed courtroom, Jaina heaved a sigh of relief. This was good news. Valin would not be going to trial after all.

The judge's next words shattered her misapprehension. “This court has further determined that the defendant, because of the extraordinarily dangerous nature of his abilities and the overt criminality of his mental illness, is too dangerous to be confined in any conventional facility. For this reason, he will be detained through carbonite imprisonment until such time as—”

Her words might as well have been an unexpected reversal in a crucial bolo-ball game. Suddenly half the observers in the court were on their feet, the Jedi and friends of the Jedi among them shouting protests, the press standing tall or even getting up on benches the better to holorecord the proceedings. Nawara Ven, alone at the defendant's table, was roaring to make himself be heard above the crowd: “Your Honor, this is an outrageous violation of my client's rights, of the rights of all citizens—”

The judge pressed a button on her bench. A musical note like a nautical ship's warning bell sounded through the chamber; it was just loud enough to be painful to those with normal hearing. As the shouts continued, she pressed it again and again, each time creating a louder tone, until all the chamber was silent, most of those present covering their ears or tympanic membranes.

The judge glanced around the chamber, her expression cool. “Would everyone who desires