“It’s Tenel Ka!” Jacen said. “And Lowie. They must have a great pilot.”
“I’ve never seen Lowie fly that fast,” Jaina said.
“Well,” Han said, “they certainly won the race.”
The bureaucrat stood up. “Come, Han Solo. You are the Grand Marshal. You must be on the upper platform to greet our winners as they arrive back from the cometary cloud. The other ships will straggle in, but you must be there to wave and shake their hands… or appendages.”
“Well, somebody’s got to do the job,” Han agreed.
“We’re going along,” Jacen replied. “If that’s Lowie and Tenel Ka in the Rock Dragon, I want to be the first to see their faces.”
The bureaucrat glanced at him after checking the race contestant records. “I’m afraid you may be mistaken. No one by the name of ‘Lowie’ or ‘Tenel Ka’ is registered as the pilot of this vessel.”
“We’ll just see for ourselves,” Jaina said.
A turbolift took them to the top of the observation tower, and then a floating platform shuttled them across the crowded rooftops. The hastily erected grand stadium stood by itself, garlanded with beautiful feathers, flowers, and the colorful flutterplume creatures that Jacen had identified.
Jacen shaded his eyes and looked up at the azure sky until he saw a glint of the ship appearing from high orbit, cutting through the gusty winds. The pilot unerringly found the reception platform and the waiting celebration. Jacen and Jaina waved, recognizing the Hapan passenger cruiser that Jaina herself had flown so often with Lowie at her side as copilot.
“You’re right, kids,” Han Solo said. “That’s the Rock Dragon. No doubt about it.”
When the small ship settled down, dozens of new floaters surrounded the stage and platform, holocams and curiosity seekers. In the distance, cheering crowds of humans and aliens stood on rooftop landing pads, in ship hangars, and on balcony flight decks, waving banners and shouting.
Jacen could already see other contestants coming in to land, now fighting for second or third place.
But when the Rock Dragon’s hatch opened and a figure emerged, Jacen was astonished to find that it was neither Tenel Ka nor Lowie.
“Zekk!” Jaina cried. Behind Zekk, her other two friends stepped out and stood next to their new darkhaired pilot.
Tenel Ka gave only the faintest smile upon seeing Jacen—then again, she never gave more than a faint smile about anything—but Lowie bellowed loudly, raising a ginger-furred fist in victory. He seemed immensely pleased that the Rock Dragon had won the prestigious daredevil race.
Zekk’s emerald eyes flashed, and he gave his friends a warm smile.
“Just following Master Skywalker’s instructions,” he said. “He told me to find something I was already good at, and try to use my Jedi skills to become even better. I’ve always enjoyed piloting, so I thought a hotshot race might just be a good test.”
“And it was indeed quite a challenge for us all,” Em Teedee chirped, sounding exhausted.
Jacen looked around at his friends. The crowd cheered the winners, but all that mattered to Jacen was having the young Jedi Knights back together again.
Together again, the young Jedi Knights learned how to deal with being celebrities. Jacen, Jaina, and Anakin had already spent a lot of time with their father in his duties as Grand Marshal of the Blockade Runners Derby, but now that Zekk, Tenel Ka, and Lowie had actually won the race, publicity seekers and HoloNet reporters pestered them constantly, taking their images, interviewing them, asking them what it was like to receive such an honor.
In the history of the Derby, no crew so young had ever won the challenge. Upon discovering that these were Jedi trainees, some of the losers cried “foul,” claiming that the use of the Force gave an unfair advantage—though the Rock Dragon had not taken advantage of the permitted mechanical modifications, as most of the other contestants had.
Fortunately the controversy died down quickly. The newspeople had other planets in the galaxy to dash off to, and Ord Mantell preferred to keep media attention to a minimum. Large groups of organized smugglers—some of them rivals, some allies—were a powerful political force, and they managed to shoo away the reporters shortly after the Derby ended.
Some of Ord Mantell’s most prestigious “businessmen” (important smugglers, Jaina presumed) had invited Han Solo to a banquet to thank him for his work as Grand Marshal, no doubt in an attempt to curry favor with the husband of the New Republic’s Chief of State. Jaina smiled as she thought of this possibility: her father had nothing to gain by taking bribes, but she doubted the smugglers would realize this. Jaina wondered if Czethros would be there.
Meanwhile, the Solo children spent the afternoon with their friends in the docking bay where the Falcon was berthed. At Han Solo’s request, Zekk had been allowed to dock the Rock Dragon in the same secure V.I.P bay where Jaina had landed the Falcon, so that the Grand Marshal’s ship and the Derby winner were isolated and protected in the same security area.
When the twins told their friends about their adventure during the trial run of the obstacle course, Tenel Ka immediately suspected an assassination attempt. The warrior girl tossed her red-gold braids and squared her shoulders, obviously ready for action. She’d had plenty of experience with political intrigues in the tough environment of the Royal House of Hapes.
Lowie expressed concern and Em Teedee dutifully translated, though Jaina could already make out many of the ginger-furred Wookiee’s words.
“Master Lowbacca suggests that we look at the space mine debris. Perhaps with some attentive analysis, we can determine the mines’ origin.”
“Good idea, Em Teedee,” Jaina said absently, then looked up into Lowie’s golden eyes. “I mean, Lowie.”
The little translating droid detached himself from Lowie’s fiber belt and floated in the air on his microrepulsorjets, bobbing about the docking bay. They went to the storage locker near the Falcon, where Han had insisted on keeping the evidence, believing that only he and his New Republic technicians could be trusted to perform a thorough analysis.
“For some reason,” Jaina said, “Dad isn’t too confident that the people on Ord Mantell will give us an honest answer.”
Jacen said, “They’re probably more interested in keeping their smuggling records secret.”
“Secrets are fine,” Zekk said, “except when one of those secrets holds the key to who tried to kill you.”
On a worktable mounted to the docking bay wall, Jaina spread out the twisted fragments that had been scooped up by the Falcon’s tractor beam. The young Jedi Knights pressed closer. Not much remained after the mines’ detonation and vaporization in space, but Anakin scrutinized the shrapnel carefully and began to sort the pieces into piles he knew went to individual mines. Jaina let her younger brother work, knowing how well he was able to solve puzzles and visualize the way pieces fit together in three dimensions.
In short order, Anakin had several partial mines reassembled. Lowie and Jaina helped him with the wiring, finding parts of serial numbers and determining the initial configuration using the two duds as a reference. The duds were dangerous, though they had been defused. If the mines had not detonated as programmed, Jaina didn’t trust them to behave properly when deactivated either.
Lowie growled as he picked up some of the pieces with his long fingers.
Zekk studied the shrapnel as well. “I think these are contraband war materials,” he said. “So much smuggling goes on through Ord Mantell, this could have come from a black-market weapons merchant.”
Jacen suggested, “Didn’t Czethros say something about a civil war on a nearby planet? Anobis? The smugglers are supplying them with munitions.”