Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 01_ Jedi Search - Kevin J. Anderson [109]
Escape! The word rang through his heart, conjuring images of hope. He was not certain how he did what he did. Sensing the best route through darkened spice tunnels seemed perfectly natural to him. When flying the shuttle through the fiery gas clouds, he had listened to the mysterious whispering voice directing him. Kyp turned and altered course, spinning and whirling whenever it seemed right.
But now that he needed to make use of the Force, he didn’t know where to begin.
He fixed his gaze on the flimsy foil covering of the instant meal, trying to bend it. He pushed with his mind, picturing the thin metal twisting and crumpling into a ball—but nothing happened. Kyp wondered how much of Vima-Da-Boda’s ramblings had been simple superstition and craziness.
His parents had no special sort of powers. On the Deyer colony of the Anoat system, they had both been outspoken local politicians. Upon hearing of a growing rebellion against the Emperor’s rigid policies, they decided to work from within, speaking out against Palpatine to make him more moderate rather than overthrow him entirely. They resoundingly protested the destruction of Alderaan—but their efforts had only gotten the two of them and their sons Zeth and Kyp arrested.
Kyp remembered that night of terror, when the stormtroopers had melted down the door of the family dwelling even though it was unlocked. The armed soldiers marched into the living quarters, kicked over the fragile fiber-grown furniture. The stormtrooper captain read an arrest order through the filtered speaker in his helmet, accusing Kyp’s parents of treason; then the stormtroopers drew their blasters and stunned the two astonished adults. Kyp’s older brother Zeth had tried to protect them, so the troopers stunned him as well.
Kyp, with tears streaming down his face, could only stare in disbelief at the three crumpled forms as the stormtroopers linked stun-cuffs around his wrists. He still couldn’t imagine how they had considered him a threat, since he had been only eight years old at the time.
Kyp and his parents were taken to Kessel, while fourteen-year-old Zeth was hauled off as a brainwashed recruit to the Imperial military academy in Carida. They had never heard from Zeth again.
After little more than a year Kessel went into enormous internal upheavals, with prison revolts, the Imperials overthrown, slave lords taking over. Kyp’s parents had died during the commotion, executed for being on the wrong side at the wrong moment. Kyp himself had survived by hiding, becoming silent and invisible. He had rotted in the darkness of the tunnels for eight years, and now he had escaped.
Only to be captured again.
Somehow, it seemed, the Imperials were always there to wreck his aspirations. On Deyer the stormtroopers had stolen him away from his home; on Kessel they had thrown him into the spice mines. Now that he and Han had finally escaped, the stormtroopers had clamped around him again.
Kyp’s anger focused into a projectile, and he tried again to use his ability on the meal tray. He pushed, and a drop of sweat fell into his eyes, blurring his vision. Had the tray moved, jerked a little? He saw a small dent in the textured protein patty that formed the main course. Had he done that?
Perhaps anger was the key to focusing his latent energies.
He wished Vima-Da-Boda had spent more time instructing him down in the mines. He concentrated on the walls, on his narrow surroundings. He had to find some way of escaping—Han had already proved that it could be done.
Kyp vowed that if he did manage to get away, he would find someone to teach him how to use these mysterious powers. He never wanted to be left so helpless again.
Looking at the delicate, birdlike Qwi Xux, Han somehow could not imagine her as the developer of the Death Star. But she worked willingly in the Maw Installation, and she had admitted her role in a matter-of-fact way. “What’s