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"Ah," she said, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "Aha." She entered the shuttle, and Jacen heard her say, "It is all right. No one here."

Following her inside, Jacen saw that while the shuttle was unoccupied, someone had been there recently, picking out the remaining salvageable items. Tangles of wire and cable snaked across the dusty deck plates.

Stripped bolts and broken fasteners lay strewn about. Several access panels gaped open, showing empty spaces that had once housed the shuttle's vital equipment.

"Looks like Zekk may have been scavenging here after all," Jacen said.

"That's a good sign."

"Perhaps," Tenel Ka said, lifting a finger to trace the frighteningly familiar symbol that was etched with crude strokes into one of the access panels. "Or perhaps not."

Jacen looked at the fresh scratches that formed a triangle surrounding a cross-the threatening symbol of the Lost Ones gang. Jacen swallowed hard.

"Well," he said, "I guess we know where to look next."

16

STILL DEEPLY WORRIED about Zekk, old Peckhum piloted his battered supply ship, the Lightning Rod, out of its sheltered hangar. The New Republic would have provided him transportation if he'd requested it, but Peckhum liked to take his own ship, though even on its best days it functioned less reliably than the Millennium Falcon. And it had never been made to carry so many passengers.

Lowie crammed himself beside Jaina into the back compartment, his ginger-furred legs stiff and awkward as he maneuvered his lanky Wookiee body into a seat built for someone little more than half his size. Lowie wished he had the T-23 skyhopper his uncle Chewbacca had given him the day he started at the Jedi academy, but the small craft was still on Yavin 4.

Peckhum had cleared tools and cartons of junk from the Lightning Rod's cockpit-he usually flew the ship alone-so that Chewbacca could ride in the copilot's seat. Chewbacca brought his own tool kit of battered hydrospanners and diagnostics, gadgets he used while working with Han Solo to keep the Falcon up and running... if just barely. When the Lightning Rod received clearance from Coruscant Space Traffic Control, Peckhum angled upward through the misty clouds at high acceleration until the glowing atmosphere faded into the night of space. Lowie watched, bending his shoulders to stare out the front viewport as Peckhum maneuvered the ship into a high and stable orbit. The huge solar mirrors remained in position like a lake of silver, spreading a broad blanket of sunlight across the northern and southern regions of the metropolis-covered world.

Although the mirror station was temporarily empty because of the emergency switchover of caretakers, the critical solar mirrors could not be left untended. Peckhum's name was next on the roster, and he had to report for duty, whether or not Zekk had run away from home.

Peckhum brought the Lightning Rod to dock against the corroded old station, which looked like a tiny speck dangling beneath the kilometers-wide reflector. Chewbacca and Lowie blatted to each other in Wookiee language, expressing their admiration for the huge orbital mirror.

The thin silvery fabric was like an ocean of reflection, only a fraction of a millimeter thick. It would have been torn to shreds had it approached Coruscant's atmosphere, but in the stillness of space the mirror was thick enough.

Space engineers had connected it to the dangling guidance station by dozens of fiber cables, gimbaled to attitude-control rockets that could direct the path of reflected sunlight onto the colder latitudes.

With the Lightning Rod docked, Peckhum opened the access hatch, which still bore markings from the Old Republic, and they all scrambled through into the austere station where they would spend the next few days.

"Well... isn't this cozy," Jaina said.

"According to my dictionary programming, I should think cramped is a better word," Em Teedee observed. "I am fluent in over six forms of communication, you know."

The metal ceiling was low and dark, strung with insulation-wrapped coolant tubes and