Star Wars_ Young Jedi Knights 07_ Shards of Alderaan - Kevin J. Anderson [30]
'Would you prefer an honest answer?" Tenel Ka replied.
"It was just a rhetorical question," he mumbled, handing one of the suits to Tenel Ka as he climbed into another. "It looks like your grandmother even remembered an extralarge one for Lowbacca."
"My grandmother paid careful attention to all such details before she allowed my parents to send me this ship," Tenel Ka said.
The companions checked each other's fastenings to verify that the suits were secure. Jacen stood back to look at his friends in their seashell-shaped helmets, head lamps, and silvery suits; they appeared sinister and ominous.
"We look like a crew of alien invaders,' he said. "Like those legendary pirates of the asteroid belt, Tenel Ka." Jaina picked up her sample packs and cutting tools and went to the magnetic hatch of the Rock Dragon.
"What are we waiting for?" she said. "Let's go."
Stepping out onto the surface of the asteroid, Jacen felt light as a feather, ready to fly. The ships on which he had traveled had been equipped with artificialgravity generators, but the pull from this metallic mountain in space was insufficient to hold them with more than a frail graspThe surface beneath his booted feet was like hardened slag.
He used his boot heel to scrape away the tarnish and space dust, exposing bare metal that shone in the faint starlight. 'nlting his helmet upward, he saw the other rocks overhead, boulders like clouds casting random shadows across the core asteroid.
Tenel Ka strode beside Lowie, who stood tall and hulking in his environment suit.
Tenel Ka's grandmother had ordered a specially tailored suit for the young warrior girl, sealing off the extra sleeve for her missing arm so that the empty fabric would not get in her way.
Jaina trudged forward, toolkit in hand, pointing her facemask downward as she studied the pocked metal surface. She stepped to a fissure in the rock and squatted to let the light in her helmet shine into the fissure like a beacon.
"Look here," she said, her voice echoing through their helmet comm system.
Jacen hurried forward with Tenel Ka and Lowie to see delicate crystalline growths sprouting like feathers made of ice chips.
Transparent needles branched in random directions, beautiful and glistening in the glow from Jaina's helmet light.
"What are they?" Jacen said, breathless with wonder. "Are they alive?"
"Some kind of silicon formation,' his sister answered.
'Ah. Aha," Tenel Ka said. "Crystal ferns.
I have heard of them in other asteroids.
Some prospectors search for them. They are quite fragile and therefore are considered great treasures."
"Should we take one of those for Mom?"
Jacen asked.
"No, let them keep growing," Jaina said.
"I want something more... special.
Something less fragile." She hopped across the broad fissure, but misjudged the low gravity and ended up flying many meters beyond the edge.
"Hey, that looks like fun." Jacen took a flying leap and soared over his sister's head, tumbling in the air, and then gradually drifted back down to the surface.
"Be careful," Jaina said. "It wouldn't take too much to reach escape velocity on this little rock-you'd fly off into space, and we'd have to go through the trouble of capturing you again."
"Oh," Jacen said. "I guess that would be something to avoid." Jaina found a polished lake of pure solidified metal and knelt down, pulling her lightsaber free from its clip at her belt.
"Looks like a good spot," she said.
She switched on the lightsaber and scribed a rough octagon in the surface, cutting deep and angling toward the center. Tenel Ka and Lowie went to help. The pure metal vaporized, sizzling and popping in the cold vacuum as Jaina worked with slow precision to cut free a piece of what had once been the core of Alderaan.