Jacen saw his father shoot a glance over at Anja, his face troubled.
Jacen was confused because the young woman had told a completely different story about how much pain the farmers caused the people in the mountains. He would have to assume that neither story was exactly correct.
As twilight turned into deeper dusk, the most physically fit young men and women finished eating their fill of the donated rations, then went out as sentries to guard the village. The mine-laced fields sprawled toward the forests and mountains in the west, while behind them rocky hills etched with canyons looked just as inhospitable. Night insects, birds, and more sinister-sounding creatures bumbled and set up their songs around the darkening plain, particularly from the rugged hills to the east where the brush fire still glowed.
“What are you afraid of?” Jacen asked one of the villagers. “What are you guarding against?”
The gaunt young man looked at him in shock. “Everything,” he said.
When Jacen finally settled down to eat, he felt uncomfortable with his usual large plateful when these people had been starving for so long.
Off in the darkness he heard the strange night sounds getting louder.
A low hooting and snarling from the rocks came closer. The villagers looked up in alarm.
The ferocious sound grew louder, echoing, as if it came from dozens, perhaps even hundreds of throats. Now a rustling approached through the distant, fire-ravaged hills. After a moment of rising tension, the sentries shouted an alarm.
Tenel Ka sprang to her feet and stood beside Jacen. “What is it?” she said. “Are the mountain miners attacking?”
Anja dropped back toward the Falcon, a startled look on her face.
Lowie sniffed the air and growled. “Dear me, Master Lowbacca,” Em Teedee said. “I’m certain I can’t identify the specie,;, but I do agree—those definitely sound like the voices of predators.”
The sentries yelled out, “Knaars! Knaars!” The villagers who were still eating dropped their plates of precious food and scrambled back to their homes. Some grabbed sticks, others gathered prized possessions.
Many wailed in panic.
“What is it?” Jacen cried. “What are knaars?”
“Monsters!” Ynos said, pivoting on his droid leg. “It sounds like an entire herd migrating from the hills. The fire must have driven them in our direction.” He hung his head as villagers continued their disorganized evacuation efforts all around them. “Now the miners will have cause to rejoice. Our village will be wiped out.”
“Can you not fight these monsters?” Tenel Ka said.
“For a few minutes,” one of the villagers said.
“I’m going to kill five before they take me down,” a brash young man said, though the look of terror on his pale face belied his brave words.
“Killing five won’t even help,” Ynos said. “A migration pack contains hundreds, and the fire has driven them into a frenzy.”
“We can fight beside you.” Tenel Ka clutched her lightsaber. “We are Jedi.”
“Then you might kill five yourself But we’ll still all fall under their fangs and claws.” Ynos shook his head. “We may as well fight—there’s nowhere to run.” He glanced over at the deadly minefields blocking their path toward the forest, their direction of escape.
Han stood up and put a protective hand on Jacen’s shoulder as the sounds of hooting and howling grew louder. They heard thundering feet, claws skittering on stones. “I could take some refugees in the Falcon. I can’t carry nearly enough, though.”
Ania stood beside the boarding ramp. “I’ll get my lightsaber,” she said, and ducked inside.
Jacen glanced after her with a questioning look. He had thought she always wore the weapon at her belt. But that hardly mattered now. He was much more concerned about the oncoming predators.
Inside the back cabin where she had stashed her pack, Anja rummaged among her belongings and took out the small black carbon-freeze unit.
Her fingers trembled. She had been wanting the spice so badly; now, at last, she had a perfect excuse.
Hunching over to hide what she was doing, Anja took one of the tiny black cylinders in her hand. Its coldness felt welcome against her sweaty palm. Czethros had given her only enough andris for four doses—not as many as she wanted… but she would have to make it last.
Looking longingly at the three remaining packages of spice, she sealed them in her pack. Then she carefully unwrapped the insulating opaque paper that surrounded the spice. The andris spice came from a newly discovered vein on Kessel, the highest quality available.
Anja could barely wait. Outside she heard shouts, human voices among the predatory growls. She would have to hurry.
Before the spice could warm to air temperature, she slipped it under her tongue and felt the energy course through her. Her muscles sang.
Her nerves became much more sensitive. Her thoughts whirled. Her blood pumped more freely, the air tasted sweeter, and her mind opened to things around her that she had never before noticed.
The spice heightened her senses, increased her ability to fight, improved her reflexes. Anja clasped the ancient lightsaber at her side. With the full dose of spice surging through her body, she felt vibrant, powerful, ready to take on any foe.
As Han Solo led a group of escaping villagers into the Falcon, Anja pushed past him to run outside. At this moment she didn’t care how many knaars were attacking. She could handle them all.
“There’s no time to argue, Dad,” Jaina said, standing at the base of the ramp as Han Solo tried to cram a last few people aboard. Zekk had already gone into the cockpit and was powering up the engines for immediate takeoff. A dozen of the remaining villagers huddled around Jaina in terror, holding sticks and agricultural implements. One woman had a small laser drilling tool.
“Take Anakin and go,” Jaina insisted. “We have our lightsabers, and we have to help these people.”
“But I can’t leave my own kids behind,” Han said, obviously torn.
“We’re Jedi Knights, Dad. We have a better chance than any of these villagers. We’ve got to protect them.”
And with that, the first knaars charged out of the darkness at the ramshackle line of buildings, looking for prey. Jaina stood startled for a moment. Tenel Ka, Lowie, and Jacen all stared at their new enemy.
“We’re doomed,” Em Teedee wailed.
The knaars were fast-moving reptilian predators, sleek saurians with purplish-blue scales and a silver frill of razor-sharp spines along their backs. Tails slashed back and forth, inflicting damage on anything around them with their wicked barbs. The creatures’ muscular anus ended in a fistful of claws, and their immense jaws were heavy machinery designed only for eating.
The pack of bloodthirsty beasts stampeded into the village. They swiveled their heads from side to side, clenching and unclenching their grasping claws, looking for flesh to tear.
As the Falcon blasted its repulsorjets and rose up, Jaina watched it swivel around and fly low to the ground, approaching the predatory knaars. Han and Zekk would use blaster cannons to shoot the creatures, Jaina knew, but as the pack of monsters continued to flow from the hills, she realized it would never be enough. This migratory pack consisted of hundreds upon hundreds of members, each hungry from its long charge through the rocky hills.
Jaina’s lightsaber blazed violet in her hand, and her friends drew their weapons as well. Anja rushed up, looking flushed and full of adrenaline; she danced from foot to foot, as if anxious to attack anything that came close. But the moment the knaars fell upon the nearest guard and tore the old woman apart, the other villagers turned and fled, forgetting to put up even a pretense of a fight.