Star Wars_ Young Jedi Knights 03_ The Lost Ones - Kevin J. Anderson [49]
The theft of military equipment was undoubtedly part of the evil work of the Shadow Academy. From Ackbar's description, Jaina knew that the Imperial in command of the attack had been none other than Qorl, the TIE
pilot she and Jacen had tried to befriend near his crashed ship on Yavin.
She sighed and shook her head, watching the footage yet again. Jaina had hoped Qorl would see the error of his ways-and though the TIE pilot had trembled on the verge of surrender, the Imperial brainwashing had won out in the end. And now Qorl continued to cause trouble for the New Republic.
She replayed the videoclip of the Adamant's capture a third time. The film, taken by New Republic forces as they'd rushed from Coruscant to defend the supply cruiser, had low resolution. But something about the clip bothered her in an indefinable way, as it had since the first time she'd seen it.
Jaina chewed on her lower lip. "Something just isn't right." She watched the shark-mouthed assault ship appear out of nowhere, while shots from the flanking Imperial ships took out the Adamant's communication arrays and weapon systems. She turned her attention back to the replay-and suddenly sat up with a jolt. She had been watching Qorl's ship-but it was the other imperial fighters that didn't fit.
"That's it!" she cried. "It can't be."
Chewbacca growled a question as he stood up from his cramped position in the control modules for the life-support systems. Jaina focused her attention on the images of the smaller ships, pointing. "I know my Imperial fighters," she said. "Dad taught me to identify every ship ever recorded... well, almost every one." She leaned closer to the image.
"Those are short-range fighters." She jammed her finger at the image on the screen. "Short-range fighters! They had to come from somewhere nearby. Their base is close-hidden somewhere in this system!"
Chewbacca growled a surprised comment.
Lowie, wedged into a chair built for humans with his knobby knees thrust high and his arms reaching almost to the ground, cradled his datapad in his lap, studying coordinates of the known items of space debris. He roared his own question, and waved the datapad in the air.
"Attention! Excuse me!" Em Teedee shrilled. "Master Lowbacca believes he has also found something of utmost importance, an inconsistency in the positions of orbital debris. I can't see it myself since he hasn't shown me the datapad"-the miniature droid huffed-"but I trust it's something highly unusual for him to become so excited. You really must calm down, Master Lowbacca, and explain yourself."
Jaina rushed with Chewbacca to look at the thousands of dots plotted in the three-dimensional map of space around the planet Coruscant.
"That can't be right, either," Jaina said immediately She was still puzzled by her own results, and now Lowie had made the mystery even deeper. "It's pretty much the opposite of what we expected."
Lowie barked his confirmation. Jaina sighed, biting her lower lip again.
The entire reason for their mapping project had been to discover uncatalogued debris that posed a danger to navigation. Instead of revealing the uncharted hazard that had destroyed the Moon Dash, though, Lowie's map of space wreckage showed absolutely nothing in the marked zone. In fact, it was more like a forbidden area in space, an island empty of all known debris, as if somehow it had already been swept clear.
But they knew the Moon Dash had struck something large enough to destroy it....
With a burst of static from the communications system, words filtered across the small, confined space. "Hello! Hello, Mirror Station?