Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 01_ Jedi Search - Kevin J. Anderson [27]
The item that had attracted Luke’s attention, though, was that a woman named Ta’ania—an illegitimate descendant of a Jedi—had been one of the original colonists on Eol Sha. Luke would have suspected the Jedi’s bloodline had ended there, except for one small detail.
According to the sociologist’s report, the leader of the ragtag colonists, a man named Gantoris, was said to be able to sense impending earthquakes, and he had miraculously survived as a child when his playmates were killed in an avalanche. Somehow Gantoris escaped injury while the others, a mere arm’s length away on either side of him, had been crushed.
Luke attributed many of these stories to exaggeration in retelling, for even someone with a great deal of Jedi potential could not control such things without training—as he himself knew. But still the clues and the circumstantial evidence led him to Eol Sha. He had to follow every lead if he was to find enough candidates for his Jedi training center.
Luke took the modified shuttle on a figure-eight trajectory around the looming moon and vectored in on the remnants of the outpost on Eol Sha. After crossing the terminator where the planet’s night fell into day, Luke looked out the viewport at the scabbed and uninviting surface of the planet.
His hands worked the controls automatically. As he swooped low, he could see the decrepit and shored-up habitation modules that had been battered by natural disasters for decades. In the near distance hardened mounds of lava sprawled around a volcanic cone from old eruptions. Curling smoke rose from the heart of the volcano, and glowing orange smudges showed where fresh lava seeped through cracks in its side.
Luke took the shuttle past the battered settlement and beyond a stretch of cratered, jumbled terrain. The shuttle settled onto the rocky hardpan, and Luke exited through flip-up doors behind the passenger seats.
The air of Eol Sha smoldered in his nostrils, filled with acrid sulfurous smoke and chemical vapors. The gigantic moon hulked on the horizon like a platter of beaten brass, casting its own shadows even in daylight. Murky clouds and volcanic ash hovered in the air like a hazy blanket.
When Luke stepped away from the passenger shuttle, he could feel the ground hum beneath his boots. With senses heightened from the Force, he could touch the incredible strain the close moon placed on Eol Sha, squeezing and tearing it with tidal forces that grew worse each passing year as the moon spiraled closer. A hissing white noise permeated the air, as if the innumerable steam vents and fumaroles breathed out gasps of pain from the world.
Pulling the dark cloak about him and securing the lightsaber at his belt, Luke strode across the rough terrain toward the settlement. Around him small craters and deep pits dotted the ground, encircled by white and tan mineral deposits. Sounds of gurgling steam came from deep beneath them.
Halfway to the settlement Luke fell to his knees when a jolt went through the ground. The rocks bounced and the earth rumbled. Luke spread his arms to keep his balance. The tremors rose, then fell, then increased again before stopping abruptly.
Suddenly, the random craters around him crackled, then belched towers of steam and scalding droplets of water. Geysers, all of them—he had walked into a field of geysers, triggered by the earthquake to erupt simultaneously. Steam rolled over the ground like a dense fog.
Luke pulled the hood over his head for protection and took shallow breaths as he trudged forward. The settlement was not far away. On all sides of him the geyser field continued to gasp and howl, gradually lessening as the spumes declined in intensity.
When Luke finally emerged from the steam, he saw two men staring at him from the doorway