“But what about the Rock Dragon?” she protested.
Han glanced at the Hapan passenger cruiser. “I think we can station an extra guard or two here without much difficulty.”
Tenel Ka’s lips curled in a hard smile. “And the vessel has its own… security systems.”
“Indeed, yes,” Em Teedee said. “And they are most efficient. I had a fine conversation with them just this morning.”
“It’s settled then.” Han clapped his hands and began giving out assignments.
Jacen was glad to know that all of his friends would be coming along.
They worked well as a team, and he had no doubt that together they could handle anything that happened on Anobis.
He had no sooner begun his task of examining the Falcon’s lower hull than a familiar figure sauntered into the docking bay. She held herself straight and proud, and her dark, streaked hair trailed behind her like the tail of a comet.
“Hey, what are you doing here, Anja?” Jacen asked, managing to sound brash, if not outright rude. He felt himself turn red with embarrassment as he realized his blunder.
The young woman seemed not to notice. She bent to look at him beneath the Falcon’s hull, her big eyes serious. “After what happened yesterday, I wanted to make sure that your ship had come to no harm.”
“Hey, that’s kind of a coincidence,” Jacen said. He started to stand to get a better look at her, but only succeeded in smacking his head on the belly of the Falcon. He quickly ducked down again. “What I mean is, we’re all on our way to Anobis—to help your people, like you suggested.”
Anja cocked her head slightly as she digested this information, then shrugged as if this were no more than she had expected. “I’m on my way back there myself.”
“Hey, Jacen. Don’t forget to check those two rear struts when you’re finished,” his father’s voice called from inside.
“Uh, Dad?” Jacen called back. “Do we have room for another passenger?”
“Depends. Who—?” Han jumped off the ramp to land beside the ship, and his question ended in a wordless whistle of surprise.
“Anja needs to go to Anobis, too,” Jacen hastily explained, seeing the strained look that passed between his father and Gallandro’s daughter.
Anja backed away from the Falcon, drew herself to her full height, and folded her slender arms across her chest. Her attention remained on Han Solo while Jacen continued. “I thought maybe we could give her a ride. She can probably show us the safest places to land, maybe even introduce us to a few important people.”
His father returned the girl’s challenging stare. “Would you be willing to do that?”
Anja gave a curt nod. “Maybe not to help you—but to help my people, yes.”
Han gave her a hard look, as if he didn’t quite trust her motives. “All right. You’re welcome on the Falcon, then. You can tell us more about your planet’s war once we’re under way.”
Jacen listened with fascination as Anja recounted the tale of the strife that had been raging among her people for decades, since the days of the Empire.
“And so,” Anja continued, “the people of the valley who worked all of the rich farmlands declared war on the mountain people simply because we traded with the Empire. They stopped trading with us or selling us food. What else could we do?” She looked earnestly around to her circle of listeners. “In the mountains we had no way to make a living except with our mining. If we hadn’t agreed to trade with the Empire, the Imperials would have come and taken the raw materials from us by force. We had very few herd beasts, and no croplands. We would have starved.”
Seeing the skepticism on the faces of his father and his sister, Jacen could not help but come to Anja’s defense. “The valley people should have been helping you. After all, it wasn’t a crime just to trade with the Empire. A lot of current members of the New Republic did that.”
Anja gave a sad sigh and nodded. “Not only did the farmers declare war on us, they also sabotaged our mines by booby-trapping the tunnels. They continue to do so even today. The tunnels collapse, our people are killed, and our work becomes ever more difficult.”
“Yeah, well, there are two sides to every story, kid,” Han said. “Maybe more than two.”
Jacen thought about the story his father had told Anja about Gallandro’s death, and what he had told Jacen, Jaina, and Anakin the night before. He wondered if there might not be more than two sides to that story as well….
“We’re on a fact-finding mission here,” Han went on. “And we’d like to get the story from as many points of view as we can before we decide how the New Republic can help.”
Anja gave him a haughty look. “Of course, I just have to hope you know the truth when you hear it.”
Jacen wondered.
11
As they cruised away from Ord Mantell, Anja sat stiffly against a bulkhead wall facing the Falcon’s cockpit, where Han Solo and Jaina sat at the ship’s controls. Anja’s face was hard, her arms folded over her chest.
Across from her, Jacen smiled. “Why don’t you relax,” he said. “We’ll find a way to help your planet.”
Anja closed her big, sad eyes and gave a mirthless laugh. “Right. A few pampered kids and one former smuggler will fix everything. I feel better already.”
Lowie gave a soft growl, turning in the passenger seat to look at Anja.
Tenel Ka sat stiffly beside Jacen, as if ready to protect him. “This is not a fact. We are not children,” she said. “We are Jedi Knights. We have all faced hardship.”
“And war,” Jaina added. “And the death of friends and family.”
Zekk spoke up from beside Lowie. “And General Solo here has some real influence with the New Republic fleet.”
Anja looked skeptical. “It’s just hard to believe, since nobody in the New Republic has ever bothered to think of us before, much less offer us help.”
“Give us a chance,” Jacen said. “We’re your friends—at least we’d like to be.”
“With the past history between our fathers, I’m not certain becoming friends is possible,” she said in a flat voice. No anger, no hope… no emotion at all now. Jacen watched her, wondering deep in his heart exactly what had happened between Han Solo and Gallandro so many years before the twins were born. “Besides,” Anja continued, “the flight to Anobis is brief enough that there’s little point in getting comfortable.”
“The hyperspace route to the Anobis system is short,” Anakin said. “We’ll arrive in less than a day.”
“Then that’s when the fun starts,” Anja murmured.
She removed her lightsaber and began playing with it, looking at the intricate knobs and buttons. Every lightsaber was different, made from various raw materials. Jacen, Jaina, Tenel Ka, and Lowie had built personal energy blades using their skills and their imaginations. Anja was not a Jedi trainee, yet she had a sophisticated-looking lightsaber, apparently an ancient one.
Jacen tried again to strike up a conversation. “Hey, that’s an interesting weapon. Have you had any Jedi training?”
Anja threw her head back and looked at him with scorn. “I don’t have time to sit around in the jungle and concentrate at rocks and leaves.”
She made a rude noise. “No. I bought this lightsaber from an old trader. He said it’s some sort of Jedi relic. Who cares? It works. That’s all that matters to me.”
“But you used it well against the chameleon attackers,” Tenel Ka observed.