“Okay, where do we go then? I’m open to suggestions,” Jacen said.
“Someplace with more people, to start with?” Anja said, making a shaky attempt at humor.
“An area with more construction perhaps?” Tenel Ka offered.
Jacen waggled his eyebrows. “I guess maybe we should get back to our roots, then.”
Tenel Ka nodded. Anja smiled.
“It’s too bad … just when I was starting to branch out,” Jacen went on.
Lowie groaned.
“All right, all right.” Jacen shot him a mischievous grin. “I know it goes against the grain, but maybe we should all leaf now.”
Lowie grumbled a halfhearted protest, reluctantly swung off his branch, and began clambering back down the tree.
“Yes,” Tenel Ka said slowly. “I wood advise climbing down immediately.”
“Great,” Anja said, “I think that’s a vine idea.”
Tenel Ka stared at her in surprise. Lowie gave a curious growl. Jacen’s mouth fell open.
“It’s certainly more advisable than risking life and limb,” Em Teedee added unexpectedly, shocking them all into amazed laughter.
Anja was glad to be on the move again as she and the others trekked through the amusement complex, keeping up their pretense of having fun. All of them seemed to find the physical activity relaxing.
Anja certainly welcomed the relaxation. She’d become increasingly tense as her suspicions had mounted, and she’d begun to believe that Calrissian was right and Cojahn’s death had not been an accident after all. It was even more uncomfortable to know—since she had been enlisted in the search for clues—that Czethros had interests here on Bespin. She had little doubt that if Cojahn had gotten in his way, Czethros would not have hesitated to have the man “removed.” What if Anja found out that Czethros did have Cojahn murdered? Would she be forced to cover up her boss’s actions?
Anja shivered. She couldn’t believe how strongly she had reacted to her minor slip on the tree branch, how grateful she had been for her friends’ help. Jacen and Tenel Ka had saved her. Would Czethros ever have done something so noble for her?
“Get a grip,” she scolded herself quietly as they entered a chilly, dazzling white polar environment chamber.
Jacen Solo was the son of her worst enemy. She could have taken the opportunity in the treetops to throw him off balance; the fall would have looked like an accident. After all, hadn’t she come to Yavin 4 and now to Bespin to find a way to hurt Han Solo through his children? Objectively speaking, what could have been more fortunate than if Jacen had fallen to injury or death?
But even as the thought entered her mind, Anja’s stomach clenched. How could she be so ungrateful—he had been there for her when she needed him. As she looked around at the bleak whiteness of the polar environment chamber, resentment welled up in her. Who had asked Jacen to be so nice to her? His selfless actions just muddled her thoughts and confused her plans.
I do want to hurt Han Solo, she insisted silently to herself. It’s the only way to make him pay for my father’s death. In frustration, she reached down, packed some snow together into a ball, and threw it directly at Jacen’s chest. He laughed as it broke apart into thousands of fluffy white chunks. He retaliated immediately.
A fast and furious snowball fight ensued, and by the time she, Jacen, Tenel Ka, and Lowie stepped back into the central hub ten minutes later, Anja had pushed all thoughts of weakness from her mind.
“Dear me. What was that?” Em Teedee asked, bobbing along above Lowie’s shoulder, a light dusting of snow melting on his silvery casing.
Lowie gave a questioning growl.
“Over there,” Em Teedee said. “It scurried up the access corridor.”
“What did?” Jacen said.
“Someone—or something,” Em Teedee replied. “An Ugnaught, I believe. He was carrying some sort of case with a handle on it. Come to think of it, I do believe that creature was lurking about earlier whilst we were building our fortress in the sand in the seashore environment—he had the same odd patch of missing fur on his head.”
Anja had an unsettled feeling in her stomach as Jacen trotted over to the corridor that the translating droid had indicated.
“I saw him,” Jacen said. “He just disappeared through a trapdoor in the corridor. Let’s find out what he’s up to.”
“What for?” Anja asked in alarm.
“Because he’s acting suspicious,” Jacen replied, as if the answer were obvious. “If Em Teedee is right about his patchy fur, he may be the same Ugnaught foreman who got fired a few days before Cojahn’s death. That’s suspicious, isn’t it? What would he be doing here? He shouldn’t be at the construction site at all.”
Anja’s tension returned with full force, and she had a sudden overwhelming urge to go back to her quarters, where she could think, where she could be alone, where she had stored her spice.
“I don’t find his lurking or his disappearance the least bit suspicious. Maybe the guy just left some tools behind,” she said. “He came, he got his tools, he left. I think you’re all just a bit too desperate to find something to investigate.”
Tenel Ka shook back her red-gold warrior braids and looked directly at Anja. “But I sensed something through the Force: danger.”
“Me too,” Jacen said.
Lowie rumbled his agreement.
“The sentiment appears to be unanimous, Mistress Anja,” Em Teedee said.
“Well, you can count me out,” Anja said. “I’ve had my share of bad experiences with Ugnaughts, and I don’t really want to repeat them. Besides, dark tunnels tend to remind me of explosions—just like in the booby-trapped mines on Anobis.” She shuddered at the thought of the decades-long civil war between the miners of her mountain village and the farmers in the valleys. “Go ahead without me, if you want. I’m heading back to my room. I’ll see you all at evening meal.”
“Okay,” Jacen said doubtfully. “I’m sure we won’t be long. We’ll see you later.”
With that, he, Tenel Ka, Lowie, and Em Teedee hurried up the corridor to the trapdoor the Ugnaught had used. In less than a minute they had disappeared into the floor, following him.
Anja breathed a sigh of relief when they were gone. Why was it that being among these young Jedi brought up such conflicting emotions within her? She walked down another hallway in the direction of her room as fast as her legs would go.
She felt an overwhelming urge to take some andris. She needed it. She had assured her friends that she wasn’t addicted to the spice, but she knew without a doubt that her need for it right now could not be ignored.
She stepped into a turbolift and slumped against its rounded wall. The door slid shut behind her and she noticed that her hands were shaking. Was she addicted? she wondered. As the turbolift shot upward, she shrugged off the idea.
No, it was only natural, given the circumstances, the tension, her near fall from the tree, that she might need a small extra boost. A light sweat broke out on her forehead and her vision blurred for a moment, then cleared. The instant the turbolift door opened, she dashed down the hallway toward her quarters, burst through the door, and scrambled over to the satchel that held her belongings.
Not wanting to waste time searching, she dumped the contents unceremoniously onto the sleeping pad and grabbed for the little black box that held her precious andris. Her trembling fingers fumbled with the catch and she withdrew one of the insulation-wrapped packets. She ripped away the covering that kept the vial chilled and in the process dropped the container into her pile of clothes.