Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 02_ Dark Apprentice - Kevin J. Anderson [84]
He waited and waited but received no response. No lights illuminated the panels. He heard no answer from the torn speaker unit, where glistening black beetles had made a nest.
Jacen sighed. Jaina took his hand, and the two turned around as they heard a slithering sound down the cramped alleyway.
A formless gray-green creature paused behind them, a granite slug with two eyes protruding on gelatinous stalks as if assessing the two children. As it moved, it scoured green sludge off the cracked duracrete alleyway, trailing thick translucent slime.
The granite slug slithered toward them, and the twins backed away. From the bottom of the slug’s underbelly, a jagged crack opened up, a quivering lipless mouth that sucked in a long hollow whistle of air.
Jaina stepped up to it. It was her turn this time.
“We are lost,” she said. “Please help us find our home.”
The granite slug reared until it towered over the little girl. She blinked up at it. Jacen stood by her side.
Then the granite slug seemed to deflate again, hooked its body into a broken passage to the right, and landed on the stones with a wet slapping sound.
A rustle of wind suddenly kicked up, and the granite slug churned down the side alley in alarm. Jacen looked up just in time to see the sharp mantalike wings of a hawk-bat that swooped down from high above, metallic talons outstretched.
The granite slug attempted to burrow into the rusted debris, but the hawk-bat landed on top of the wreckage, ripping and tearing at the fallen hunks of metal with its claws. Its triangular beak bobbed up and down like a piston until it had exposed the granite slug and slashed at the slimy creature. The hawk-bat flapped its broad wings again, heading toward the sky with its squirming, dripping prey.
Jacen and Jaina looked up at the creature, then at each other. The two began trudging through the dark underworld of Coruscant again.
Jaina said, “And he walked, and he walked …”
“We must sound the alarm immediately, Chewbacca!” Threepio said. But the Wookiee seemed reluctant to admit they had lost the two small children.
They left the unconscious Bothan attendant in one of the holographic dioramas, then made their way to the white-tiled corridor leading to the souvenir shops, refreshment stands, and other parts of the museum. Threepio wondered what the poor Bothan would think when he woke up lying inside the web lair of a cannibal arachnid from Duros.
A maintenance droid finished its turbolift repairs and removed the Out of Service sign. Its two heads began humming a duet to themselves at having completed a satisfying menial task.
Chewbacca pointed to the maintenance droid, but Threepio became indignant. “What could a low-level maintenance droid possibly know about this situation? Those models aren’t much smarter than loader vehicles.” But a large Wookiee hand dragged him along. “Oh, all right, if you insist.”
Chewbacca sprinted ahead and stood in the path of the trundling maintenance droid. Automatic sensors instructed the droid to swerve one way, then the other, but Chewbacca forced it to stop. The maintenance droid emitted a high-pitched whine of confusion.
Threepio came up behind it. “Excuse me,” he said, and garbled out a long series of crude binary questions. The maintenance droid answered with a blat like a stepped-on steam whistle. Threepio repeated his question, but got the same answer.
“I told you he’d be no use,” Threepio said. “Maintenance droids aren’t programmed to notice anything. They just do their repairs and wait for new instructions.”
Chewbacca moaned, shaking his big hairy head.
Threepio said, “Oh, be quiet, you … you big walking carpet—I was not talking too much! Besides, you’re the one who has the life debt to Han Solo.”
The maintenance droid continued, oblivious to their bickering. Threepio wished that he could simplify his own programming and be so blissfully ignorant in the ways of the galaxy. He felt his circuits