Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy_ Champions of the Force - Kevin J. Anderson [54]
Golanda called up a navigational chart, displayed across the viewscreen. “Director, the Kessel system is very close, as you know. Perhaps we should—”
“Let’s get the propulsion units up and running again before we plan too far ahead,” Doxin interrupted. “Our ultimate strategy may depend on our capabilities.”
Yemm tore the cover off the communications panel and squinted down into the morass of blackened wires, sniffing the burned insulation.
Golanda kept studying her station, calling up readings from the prototype’s exterior sensors. “Director, I’ve found something puzzling. Looking at the gas turbulence that surrounds the black hole cluster, it appears that another very large ship has recently entered the Maw, only moments ago. It seems to have followed one of the other paths Admiral Daala designated as a safe route through to the Installation.” She looked at him, and Tol Sivron flinched away from her unpleasant face. “We just missed them.”
Sivron didn’t know what she was talking about, nor why it should concern him. All of these frantic problems were like stinging insects buzzing around his head, and he swatted at them.
“We can’t do anything about that now,” he said. “It’s probably another Rebel ship coming to mop up the invasion of our facility.” He sighed. “We’ll get back at them, as soon as we get the Death Star up and running again.”
He leaned back in his pilot’s chair and closed his beady eyes, longing for just a moment’s peace. He wished he had never left his home planet of Ryloth, where the Twi’lek people lived deep within mountain catacombs in the habitable band of twilight that separated the baking heat of day from the frigid cold of endless night.
Tol Sivron thought of more peaceful days, breathing the stale air through gaps in his pointed teeth. The heat storms on Ryloth brought sufficient warmth into the twilight zone to make the planet habitable, though desolate.
The Twi’leks built their society around the governorship of a five-member “head-clan” who led the community in all matters until such time as one of them died. At this point the Twi’leks cast out the remaining members of the head-clan to the blasted wasteland—and presumably to their deaths—while they selected a fresh group of rulers.
Tol Sivron had been a member of the head-clan, pampered and spoiled by the benefits of power. The entire clan was young and vigorous, and Sivron had expected to reap the benefits of his position for many years—spacious quarters, Twi’lek dancing women renowned throughout the galaxy, delicacies of raw meat that he could tear with his pointed teeth and savor the spicy liquid flavors.…
But the good life had lasted barely a standard year. One of his idiot companions had lost his balance on a scaffolding while inspecting a deep-grotto construction project and had fallen to impale himself upon a ten-thousand-year-old stalagmite.
According to their custom, the Twi’lek people had exiled Tol Sivron and the other three members of the head-clan into the blasted deserts of the dayside to face the heat storms and the scouring wind.
They had resigned themselves to death, but Tol Sivron had convinced the other three that if they worked together, they could survive, perhaps eke out an existence in an uninhabited cave farther down the spine of mountains.
The others had agreed, clinging to any hope; and then, as they slept that night, Tol Sivron had killed them all, taking their meager possessions to increase his own chances of survival. Covering himself with thick layers of garments stripped from the dead bodies of his companions, he had trudged across the fiery landscape, not knowing what he was searching for.…
Tol Sivron had thought the glittering ships were mere mirages until he stumbled into the encampment. It was a rugged training base and refueling station for the Imperial navy, frequented by smugglers but supported by the Empire.
Tol Sivron had met a man