Anja recognized the man in front, who had a black beard, thick eyebrows, and hair with a long streak of gray down the left side.
“He’s the one to talk to,” she said. “His name is Elis.”
The miners held stonecutting implements, pickaxes, vibrohammers, and other excavating devices. To Zekk the tools looked like potential deadly weapons.
Han extended the boarding ramp. “Let me go first. Anja, you can come with me if you like.”
She looked over at him, gave a curt nod. “As long as you don’t make it seem as if we’re allies.”
Zekk looked at the young woman, wondering what he could do to reach her and whether he could somehow dislodge the large chip on her shoulder.
Anja Gallandro could have been strikingly beautiful if she hadn’t had such a sour demeanor.
“Just give him a chance, Anja,” Zekk said. “Nobody planned that knaar stampede, but for now we’re all in this together.” She shot him a resentful glare.
Han, Anja, and Zekk emerged from the ship together as the miners pressed forward. Darkhaired Elis took the lead, scrutinizing them curiously. He recognized Anja. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen you,” he said. “And who is this you’ve brought with you? Another trader?”
“Han Solo,” she said. “And aboard this ship are Ynos and many survivors from a knaar attack on the farming village below.”
At this, Ynos hobbled forward on his droid leg. Though broad and burly, he still held the boarding ramp piston for support. The miners set up a gruff cheer.
Elis smiled, showing his teeth from within the dark nest of his beard. “Excellent work, Anja. With such important hostages, we can end this war once and for all.”
“Now wait a minute!” Han cried.
Elis gestured and the miners rushed toward the Falcon, their stonecutting implements raised like weapons.
If it hadn’t been for the minefield and the ferocious knaars behind them, the dense dark forest would not have been an acceptable option at all.
16
In the dim but colorful light of sunrise, Jacen could see the dense branches adorned with blue-silver leaves. Some of the trunks were smooth and metallic, others blistered with scaly orange-red bark.
Lichens and mosses dangled down, clustered with lemon-yellow flowers that opened and closed in snow plant reflexes.
Tenel Ka stood next to Jacen, ready to use her lightsaber as a machete.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Jaina asked. “Let’s get hiking.”
One of the young men from the village gestured ahead. “I know the way, but you’ll have to follow carefully.” He started forward, scanning the ground, squinting in the dim forest shadows as the ragtag band pushed their way into the wilderness.
Jacen and Jaina flanked the young villager, with Tenel Ka and Lowbacca each moving out on either side of the group, their senses alert.
Lowie’s dark nose snuffled the air, and his ginger fur bristled with intense concentration. The young Wookiee had survived the dangerous underlevel forests of Kashyyyk, and had won his precious fiber belt by snatching the threads from a carnivorous syren plant. Compared with the ominous forests of the Wookiee world, the woods of Anobis couldn’t be too dangerous, Jacen thought.
But then, he wondered, after twenty years of civil war, how many hidden booby traps had been planted in the dense foliage?
They crunched their way along an ill-defined path. Jacen’s feet popped spherical mushrooms, and wet shapeless things slithered out of the way in the weeds. With a buzzing cry of alarm, two flying creatures that looked halfway between moth and bird fluttered into the upper sparkling leaves.
Within moments it seemed as if the forest had swallowed them up, and Jacen could no longer see the cleared cropland behind them.
As the day strengthened and the sunlight grew brighter, the forest shadows remained a thick lattice around them, allowing only scattered glimpses of the bright blue sky overhead.
Tenel Ka turned her gray eyes toward Jacen; in a cold voice, she said, “Anja could have stayed here to help guide us through. Perhaps she and some of her people planted their own traps.”
Jacen felt an irrational urge to defend the orphaned girl. “You don’t know that about her,” he said. “Just because her people have suffered as much as these”—he turned his chin toward the stumbling villagers—”doesn’t mean you have to think the worst of her.”
Tenel Ka gave him a puzzled look. “We just need to be aware of the dangers here,” she said, and then drifted away.
Suddenly, Lowie howled and raised his hairy arms, gesturing for them all to stop. The people, already on edge, halted in their tracks, glancing around with wide eyes. Em Teedee said, “Ah, yes, Master Lowbacca. I see it too. How horrible!”
“What is it?” Jaina came close to the Wookiee. As the sunlight glittered through, Jacen could see a fine tracery stretched between the silver tree trunks, a gossamer line like the whisper of a cobweb.
Lowie picked up a branch from the ground and tossed it in front of him.
The branch passed through the faint lines and dropped to the ground on the other side, sliced cleanly into small pieces.
“Monofilament wire?” Jaina asked.
Jacen came close and understood the threat: a fiber so strong and so thin it surpassed even the sharpest razor blade. Anything that touched it would pass through and be sliced in two.
The villager in front stopped, looking greenish with dismay. “That wasn’t here before,” he said. “I slipped through here to the mountain village just six standard days ago.”
“Then everything has changed,” Tenel Ka said, not asking what this farmer would have been doing on his way to the mining settlement. “We must be cautious.”
Carefully, they skirted the wire-strung trees, giving them a wide berth. But just as they passed into what they thought was safety, a hidden motion sensor hummed. A laser beam tracked them, spraying a red targeting lance toward the group. “Look out!” Jaina cried as the refugees scattered and dove.
The weapon discharged and blazed holes through nearby trees. One middle-aged man cried out and fell backward into the bushes with a blackened hole through one shoulder. Then, after only a few seconds, the laser ceased firing.
The young Jedi Knights waited in hiding for a few moments, expecting another attack, but when the forest fell quiet again except for the leftover squawks and rustlings of disturbed forest creatures, Jaina stood up and made her way toward the source of the laser blasts.
She found the hidden weapon, its energy pack drained. “It’s a single-use munition,” she said. “Strictly here to gun down one or two trespassers.”
“It was made only to kill,” Tenel Ka said. “To kill anyone. Not specifically an enemy, or a friend… anyone.”
“This is a different kind of war than anything we’ve seen so far, Jaina said, her expression grim. “With no objective in mind, no military targets. The factions just want to destroy everything.”
“You see how horrible the miners are?” one villager said. “They plant burrowing detonators in our cropland, and look what they’ve done in this forest, where we have to hunt! I can’t believe your father wants us to talk peace with them.”
“Let’s just get to the mountains and take it from there,” Jacen said. “I’m sure Anja will put in a good word for us.”
After encountering these two deadly traps, they proceeded with the utmost caution, and continued on for hours without further incident.
“Not finding any booby traps is even more nerve-racking than stumbling upon one,” Jacen muttered.
Finally, after what seemed an interminable time, they paused for a rest. A few villagers had found edible fruit on a tree, which they passed around to their exhausted and hungry companions. They had been through a terrible ordeal, but over the years of civil war they had become inured to such circumstances. They walked with numb shock, fearing another trap.