Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 03_ Champions of the Force - Kevin J. Anderson [81]
Han heard a sonic boom reverberate through the thin atmosphere, a high-pitched sound mixed with the thunder of sublight engines. He scanned the sky until he saw the pronged disk of the Millennium Falcon.
The ship landed in a powdery white clearing beside the Lady Luck. The ramp slid out, and five smugglers emerged: two tall, well-muscled women—Mistryl guards—a hairy, tusk-faced Whiphid, and a reptilian Trandoshan; each wore a uniform with the crosshatched insignia of the new Smugglers’ Alliance. The smugglers bristled with weapons; their bulging belts contained enough recharge packs for an entire assault.
Last down the ramp, still fumbling to adjust a breath mask over his face, came Ghent the slicer, with tousled hair and rapidly blinking, alert eyes. He nodded cursorily at Mara, then fixed his entire attention on the barricade gates. Slung over his shoulder was a satchel crammed with tools, diagnostic apparatus, splitters, rerouting circuits, and security-cracking equipment. “Should be a piece of cake,” Ghent said.
Mara Jade and Lando sat next to Han and watched Ghent fall to work with total concentration, not the least distracted by the miserable environment of Kessel.
Han said, “I certainly never dreamed I’d be trying so hard to break into the Kessel prison.”
Cowering behind a locked door in the lower levels of the Imperial Correction Facility, Moruth Doole longed for the good old days. Compared to the constant paranoia he had endured for the past several months, even life under the Imperial yoke had been paradise.
After he had taken over the prison years ago, Doole had moved into the warden’s office, where he could spend much time staring out at the landscape, observing the desolate purity of the alkali wastelands. He had fed upon tender flying insects. Whenever the whim struck him, he had mated with one of his captive female Rybets in his personal harem.
Now, though, since Daala’s attack, he had moved into one of the high-security prison cells for protection. He had tried to make preparations, establish defenses, because he knew someone was going to come after him, sooner or later.
The cell walls were thick and blast proof. The lights shone down, burning shapes into his blurry vision. He tapped the mechanical eye that helped him to focus. The device had broken during the space battle around Kessel. Doole had tinkered with the mechanical components, putting its gears and lenses back together; it no longer worked quite properly, though, and his vision winked out from time to time.
Doole paced the cold stone floor of his cell. Everything had fallen apart. The planet Kessel had been abandoned, leaving only smoking rubble on the surface and destroyed hulks of ships strewn across the system all the way to the black hole cluster. Doole couldn’t even get a ship of his own to escape. He didn’t want to stay here—but what choice did he have?
Even the blind larvae—the large-eyed creatures whom Doole had locked inside pitch-black rooms to process the mind-enhancing spice, glitterstim—were growing restless. He had cared for them, given them food (a meager amount, to keep their growth down, but enough for survival), but now they had begun to struggle.
Doole snorted, making a squeaking sound with his bloated lips. The larvae were his own ungrateful children, immature Rybets who had not yet undergone their final metamorphosis. Blind and wormlike, almost as large as Doole himself, the larvae were perfect workers to wrap the spice fibers in opaque sheaths, since even brief exposure to light would spoil the product. His children could work in the blackness, and be happy. And what sort of gratitude did they show him?
A few larvae had gotten loose, fleeing blindly through the winding prison passages, hiding in shadowy cells, waiting in darkened wings to ambush Doole if he came looking