But they saw nothing.
Tenel Ka turned to Luke in confusion. “Could the autopilot have malfunctioned?” she asked. “Did we have the wrong coordinates?”
“No,” he said, seeming calm and self-assured. “We must wait.”
Then, as if a curtain had suddenly been drawn aside, they saw it: a space station. A Shadow Academy, Tenel Ka reminded herself. A spiked torus spinning in space, protected by exterior gun emplacements and crowned with several tall observation towers.
“It must have been cloaked,” Luke said.
As they approached the Shadow Academy, docking-bay doors opened automatically, and Luke placed a reassuring hand on Tenel Ka’s shoulder.
“The dark side is not stronger,” he said.
Tenel Ka let out a long breath, and some of her tension drained away with it.
“This is a fact,” she whispered.
20
During the Shadow Academy’s sleep period, all students were locked in their individual chambers and told to rest and meditate, to recharge their energies for further strenuous exercises. It was just part of the Imperial rules, and most students followed them without question.
Jacen sat alone in his small cubicle, bruised and aching from the training ordeal. He dampened one of his socks and used it to soothe the many cuts and scrapes he had received from the sharp rocks and knives.
He and Jaina had requested simple pain relievers, but Tamith Kai had flatly refused, insisting that the aches would serve to toughen them up. Each twinge of pain was supposed to remind them of their failure to deflect a ball or stone. He used what he knew of the Force to dull the worst of the pain, but it still hurt.
Jacen sat cross-legged, trying furiously to figure out some escape before Brakiss launched another raid on Yavin 4 to grab more of Uncle Luke’s trainees.
His sister Jaina was always best at making complicated plans. She understood how things worked, how pieces fit together. Jacen, on the other hand, who liked to live in the moment and enjoy what he was doing, was a bit more disorganized. He managed to get things done—but not always in the same order he had originally planned.
Maybe the most important step was to free Jaina and Lowie. After that, they could decide what to do next. Of course, the biggest question was how Jacen could free them all from their cells.
Then he remembered his Corusca gem.
Jacen nearly laughed out loud—why hadn’t he thought of it before? He grabbed for his left boot, shook it, and was startled to hear nothing. Then he recalled he had put the stone in his other boot. He picked it up and dumped the precious jewel into his cupped hand. Smooth on one side, with sharp edges and facets on the other, the Corusca gem glowed with internal fire—trapped light from when it had formed deep in Yavin’s core ages ago.
Lando Calrissian had said a Corusca gem could slice through transparisteel as easily as a laser through Sullustan jam. But then, Lando said a lot of things that couldn’t entirely be believed. Jacen hoped this wasn’t one of them.
Jacen held the jewel between his thumb and his first two fingers and went to the sealed door. When Tamith Kai and her Imperial forces had stormed GemDiver Station, they had used a large machine fitted with industrial-grade Corusca gems to cut through the armored walls. Surely Jacen’s little gem could cut through a thin wall plate….
He ran his fingers along the smooth metal near where the door sealed. Jacen wished he understood machinery and electronics like his sister did, but he would do his best.
He didn’t think that he could cut through the whole door using only the strength in his fingers, but Jacen knew where the control panel was. Perhaps he could peel back this side of the plate, get to the wires, and somehow trigger the door to open—though he hadn’t the slightest idea how to do it. Still, he took the gem, found where the control box should be, and probed lightly with the Force. He sensed a power source here, tangled controls. This was it.
Jacen drew a generous rectangle with the gem, easily scratching a thin white line in the metal plate. A good start, he thought.
Pressing harder this time, Jacen retraced the rectangle, feeling the sharp edge of the gem gouging deeper into the metal. After his third effort, his fingers hurt, but he could see that he had made a substantial cut through the plate. His pulse raced, and excitement gave him new energy. He forgot all about his aches and pains.
One side cut through and bent inward. Jacen gasped. Almost there. He sawed away at the long side of the rectangle. With a clink, the metal parted. The last two sides were easier, and he sliced through them quickly.
The metal rectangle slipped from Jacen’s sore fingers and fell to the floor with a loud clatter. “Oh, blaster bolts!” he muttered. He was sure the other Shadow Academy students would wake up and that stormtroopers would come running.
But outside, the halls remained utterly silent, as if a cloth gag were bound around the station, muffling all sound. Everyone remained locked in their quarters. Only a few guards wandered the halls at night.
Jacen was safe for the time being. He peered into the hole he had cut, looking with dismay at the mass of wires and circuits that controlled the door. Okay, what would Jaina do? he wondered. He closed his eyes and let his mind open up, tracing the lines of the wires and circuits. Some ran to communications systems, or computer terminals mounted at regular intervals along the corridors, or lights, or thermostats. Some ran to alarms, and others … connected to the door mechanism!
Jacen took a steadying breath. Now, what to do with those wires? He probably needed to cross them, but in a particular way. There was nothing to do but try it.
With aching fingers, Jacen disconnected one of the wires in the cluster he had isolated and touched it to another, careful that the exposed, electrified ends didn’t touch his bare skin. A little spark flashed, and the lights in his room flickered—but nothing else happened. He tried with the second wire and got no response at all.
Jacen hoped he wasn’t setting off silent alarms in the guard stations. He sighed. What if none of this worked? Well, he reasoned, then he might have to slice directly through the door after all. He shook his stinging fingers, anticipating the pain. First, he decided, he would try the last set of wires.
As if sensing Jacen’s impending despair, the door slid quietly open when he touched the wires together.
Jacen laughed aloud and looked out into the empty corridor. He glanced from side to side, but saw only a string of sealed, featureless doors. Glowpanels lit the metallic corridors at half illumination, conserving power during the academy’s sleep period.
The door controls looked much easier from the outside, and he didn’t think he would have any trouble freeing Jaina and Lowie—once he found them.
It proved less difficult than Jacen had feared. He had seen the corridors down which the guards usually led Jaina and Lowie, so he went in that direction, calling with his mind. Jaina will be the easiest, he thought. He tiptoed along, afraid that at any moment stormtroopers would come marching around the corner.
But the Shadow Academy remained silent and asleep.
Jaina, he thought. Jaina!
Jacen walked along, listening at each of the doors. He didn’t want to cause too much of a disturbance, because the Dark Jedi students might sound an alarm if they noticed him.
At the seventh door he found her. Jacen sensed his sister, awake and excited, knowing he was out there. He worked the controls until her door slid open. Jaina burst out, hugging him. “I’ve been expecting you,” she said.