Jaina Solo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sticksofthejedi) wrote2012-11-11 09:11 pm
sticksofthejedi) wrote2012-11-11 09:11 pm
Entry tags:
Memory 49
Memory: The wondertwins are too much for Chewbacca and Threepio to babysit.
Received: Day 192, dinnertime
Form: Memories come in the form of four little breadcrumbs--well, pieces of bread anyway. They're about the size of your thumb and come inside a bag of your team color. 3/4 uses. (Also: earned a stuffed yugioh hero doll wearing dragon wings...)
Summary: Tiny Jacen and Jaina escape their babysitters and get lost in the undercity of Coruscant. The twins use children's story logic to find their way home.
--
On Coruscant, Chewbacca and Threepio took the twins through the sculpted duracrete columns at the entrance to the Holographic Zoo of Extinct Animals.
At home the pestering children had rapidly worn down even Threepio's patience programming and had driven Chewbacca into a roaring frenzy. Getting Jacen and Jaina outside seemed like a good idea for all concerned. The foursome took transit tubes across the upper skyscrapers in old Imperial City to reach the rooftop levels of the Holographic Zoo.
At the Zoo's gaudy archway Chewbacca let his furry arms dangle behind him; his huge paws engulfed the tiny hands of the children. Chewbacca took two sprawling strides forward, then waited for the twins to catch up before he took two more steps and waited again. Threepio scuttled ahead as if he were in charge. He had just undergone a deep oil bath so that his gold alloy plating gleamed in the artificial lights.
They stepped under the grandiose arches. Threepio went to the cashier kiosk, punching in Han and Leia's credit code. Chewbacca, impatient with Jacen's and Jaina's short legs, scooped up the twins, one in each arm, and strode forward.
They endured a dull preshow in an empty waiting room filled with chairs, cages, and sockets to accommodate the bodies of all alien visitors, until the far doors automatically clicked open. Chewbacca, still carrying the twins, marched down a sloped tunnel to the lower levels. Threepio hurried after, trying to lead the way, but he could not get past the bulky Wookiee.
Arcing, glowing lights shot overhead, inept simulations of stars and comets and planets. As they passed motion sensors, booming godlike voices echoed in stereo from microspeakers in the walls.
"Journey down the corridors of time! Travel the lanes of space! You will experience forgotten wonders from a long time ago and far, far away. You will see extinct creatures lost from our galaxy but recreated here--and now!"
The walls around them darkened. Streaks of light shot out, funneling down in a crude animation of starlines for a fake journey into hyperspace. The floor beneath their feet rumbled and vibrated in the simulation. The children were startled, but Chewbacca groaned at the corniness of it. The illusion ended, and the recorded voice spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. "We have arrived... at a universe of possibilities!"
They stood before a choice of several doorways.
"This way children, this way," Threepio said, stepping forward. He had already scanned the data brochures about the exhibits, and after correlating them with the twins' interests, decided exactly which dioramas he would show them first. "Let us go see the mammoth krabbex of Calamari."
As they stepped through the portal, holograms flared, surrounding them with a turbulent oceanscape, a jagged reef thrusting out from white foamy waters. Standing in a swirl of green-and-purple seaweed battered by the rushing waves stood a segmented crustacean, a ten-legged krabbex with dual mandibles in its mouth, twin rows of spines down its back, and eighteen glossy black eyes, four of which were on its front grasping claws. The krabbex reared up and let out a bellow like a wampa ice creature set on fire.
The twins watched as three green-skinned mermen thrashed out of the foaming waves, cocking jagged spears made of pale bone. The mermen hauled themselves onto the reef and attacked.
The spears pierced the exoskeleton of the krabbex, and the monster clipped at them with its pincers. It swung to the left and grabbed one of the mermen, slicing into his smooth green flesh and dragging him out of the water, where his fused finned legs thrashed like the tail of a fish.
"Let's go," Jaina said.
"Next one," Jacen said.
"But, children, I haven't told you the biological background of these creatures yet," Threepio said.
"Go now," Jaina insisted.
They walked right through the surrounding illusion to the far wall, where several more openings presented themselves. Chewbacca urged the children through the left-hand door.
"Oh, not that one, Chewbacca," Threepio said. "I'm not certain--"
But they had already entered the second chamber to be surrounded by the illusion of a desert planet. Waves of invisible heat rippled from a scabbed, dried clay surface. A strange creature scuttled atop a rocky outcropping with a bloodcurdling roar. It had a squarish humanoid head and a massive feline body, huge curved claws, and a segmented tail that thrashed back and forth, capped with a wicked-looking scorpion stinger. As it opened its mouth to bellow again, cracked yellow fangs dripped with venom.
"A manticore?" Threepio said in disbelief. "Well, really! I'm astonished they haven't updated their display yet. That creature was proved to be a jumble of mismatched fossils long ago. Manticores never existed."
Directly behind them in the hologram another manticore echoed the bellowing challenge and climbed over the baked rocks. The twins tugged on Chewbacca's furry arms and headed through the nonexistent creatures toward the next set of openings.
"Let me choose this time, children," Threepio said.
Chewbacca groaned. The twins didn't seem to care.
"Go home," Jacen said.
Jaina nodded in agreement. "I want to go home."
"But, children," Threepio said, "I'm sure you'll enjoy this next one. Let me tell you all about the mournful singing fig trees of Pil Diller...."
After three more dioramas and three more of Threepio's boring lectures, the twins decided that they would much rather play hide-and-seek than continue the tedious expedition through the Holographic Zoo.
While they couldn't communicate telepathically with each other word for word, they did know in a clear but general way what the other was thinking. When Jacen broke away from Chewbacca to run through the glacier eyries of the Snow Falcons, he headed to the left. At the same time, Jaina sprinted in the opposite direction, brushing past a startled Threepio. The twins used their fledgling talent with the Force to guide them into one of the other openings that led to an exit corridor.
Chewbacca bellowed; Threepio called after the children, but Jacen and Jaina met up outside the dioramas, pleased with their escape and giggling. They trotted down the white-tiled corridor as fast as they could go, past icons for refreshments, rest-and-recharge rooms, repair facilities.
At an intersection of corridors, an old maintenance droid worked in an open turbolift. Jacen and Jaina had seen turbolifts before. That was how they got back home once they reached the Imperial Palace.
The maintenance droid was gunmetal-gray with two heads and numerous mechanical arms, each studded with a handful of attachments. The droid's two heads faced each other. One head bore a set of bright optical sensors, while the other face was a blank screen that displayed data, statistics, and official Imperial Building Code specs.
Muttering to itself in binary, the droid searched its back compartment for a particular tool, found it missing from its bin, then puttered down the corridor. It left the turbolift wide open with only a small dangling sign saying Out of Service.
The children ran for the turbolift and ducked inside. They had watched their parents and Threepio use the controls many times.
The panel looked different from the one in the Imperial Palace: much less ornate, discolored with age and rough use, with a wall of buttons marking hundreds of different floors in the kilometer-high metropolis. Since the lower levels of the city had been abandoned and buried long ago, a thick metal plate had been welded onto the bottom half of the panel, sealing off the first 150 floors. But the maintenance droid had removed the barrier plate to check the turbolift circuits.
The children barely knew their numbers, though Threepio had been trying to get them to recognize the primary numerals. The lessons frequently frustrated the protocol droid, but the twins were bright. They had picked up more than Threepio had realized.
The rows of buttons looked like shiny colorful circles to Jacen and Jaina. They stared at them, not knowing which to push, but they did recognize some of the numbers.
Jaina spotted it first. "Number one," she said.
Jacen pushed the button. "Number one," he repeated.
The turbolift door closed, and the floor fell away as the elevator shot downward, humming as it accelerated. Jacen and Jaina looked at each other in momentary terror; then they giggled. The turbolift descent went and on, until finally the platform came to a stop. The door whisked open.
Jacen and Jaina stood blinking. They stepped out into the shadowy bottom levels of the forbidden metropolitan wilderness. Around them they heard large startled creatures clattering through the fallen debris.
"It's dark," Jacen said.
Behind the twins the turbolift door slid shut as the elevator reset itself and returned to the upper floors, leaving Jacen and Jaina alone.
--
Jacen and Jaina hiked through a forest of fallen girders, orange and yellow toadstools, and lumpy fungus growing in ancient garbage. Unseen feet skittered across fallen beams and webwork structures overhead.
The massive foundations of the buildings looked indestructible, overgrown with thick moss. Things moved in the shadows, but nothing came clear, even as the childrens' eyes adjusted to the shadowy light. Drips of warm, bad-tasting water fell around them in a slow arrhythmic rain.
Jacen looked up, and the enormous buildings seemed to rise forever and ever. He could glimpse only a blurred slice of what might have been the sky.
"I want to go home," Jaina said.
The wreckage of abandoned equipment lay in piles, rusted and corroded. The twins scrambled over crashed vehicles, the hulks of discarded battleships and fighting machines, deep debris left from the previous year's civil warfare.
Jacen and Jaina came upon a half-collapsed wall that had once contained a computer screen. The terminal lay tilted on its side with the screen smashed inward, leaving broken teeth of transparisteel. But the twins recognized it as a data unit similar to the ones inside their own quarters.
Jacen stood in front of the broken panel and put his small hands on his hips, trying to look like his father. He addressed the computer screen--and he knew exactly what to say, after having heard the bedtime story many times before. "We are lost," he said. "Please help us find our home."
He waited and waited but received no response. No lights illuminated the panels. He heard no answer from the torn speaker unit, where glistening black beetles had made a nest.
Jacen sighed. Jaina took his hand, and the two turned around as they heard a slithering sound down the cramped alleyway.
A formless gray-green creature paused behind them, a granite slug with two eyes protruding on gelatinous stalks as if assessing the two children. As it moved, it scoured green sludge off the cracked duracrete alleyway, trailing thick translucent slime.
The granite slug slithered toward them, and the twins backed away. From the bottom of the slug's underbelly, a jagged crack opened up, a quivering lipless mouth that sucked in a long hollow whistle of air.
Jaina stepped up to it. It was her turn this time.
"We are lost," she said. "Please help us find our home."
The granite slug reared until it towered over the little girl. She blinked up at it. Jacen stood by her side.
Then the granite slug seemed to deflate again, hooked its body into a broken passage to the right, and landed on the stones with a wet slapping sound.
A rustle of wind suddenly kicked up, and the granite slug churned down the side alley in alarm. Jacen looked up just in time to see the sharp mantalike wings of a hawk-bat that swooped down from high above, metallic talons outstretched.
The granite slug attempted to burrow into the rusted debris, but the hawk-bat landed on top of the wreckage, ripping and tearing at the fallen hunks of metal with its claws. Its triangular beak bobbed up and down like a piston until it had exposed the granite slug and slashed at the slimy creature. The hawk-bat flapped its broad wings again, heading toward the sky with its squirming, dripping prey.
Jacen and Jaina looked up at the creature, then at each other. The two began trudging through the dark underworld of Coruscant again.
Jaina said, "And he walked, and he walked..."
--
In the dim underworld Jacen pointed to a noisy machine in front of them as the cluttered street widened. "Look," he said. "Droid."
The children ran, waving their hands and hoping to get the droid's attention. But they stopped as the machine continued along a polished path worn through the debris.
The droid was vastly older than the maintenance model up at the turbolift. It had bulkier joints, squarish limbs; large bolts held the pieces together. The antique repair droid was little more than a mobile cart of tools with a torso, arms, and an angled hexagonal head. One of its optical sensors had fallen off. Thick cables ran down its spine and along its neck, corroded and caked with dust and dirt. Moss had begun to grow on its sides. It moved with a stuttering motion as if desperately in need of lubricant.
Along the street a line of corroded poles stood a meter taller than the twins. Atop each pole rested an old glowcrystal, engraved with magnifying facets, but each crystal was a dead translucent gray, shedding no light into the dim streets. Some poles had come loose from their ground-level moorings and tilted sideways.
The repair droid worked its way to the end of the street, stopped at an appropriate position, and ratcheted its torso high on accordion joints so its arms could reach the darkened glowcrystal. The droid removed the burned-out crystal, cradling it carefully in segmented pincers. After placing it in the back of the cart, the repair droid removed another thick glowcrystal from an open bin. Following complex programming, the droid positioned the replacement crystal on top of the pole and activated it.
The new glowcrystal remained as dead and lightless as the first, but the repair droid didn't seem to notice. It moved to the next pole, repeating the process.
Jacen stood in front of the droid, addressing it in his best Daddy voice. "We're lost," he said.
Jaina came up beside him. "Please help us find our home."
The repair droid ratcheted up as if in alarm, then lowered itself down to study the children with its single optical sensor. "Lost?" it said in a clanking voice.
"Home," Jaina insisted.
"Not in my programming," the droid said. "Not my main task." It ratcheted up again and moved to a third malfunctioning glowcrystal pole. "Not in my programming."
Jaina and Jacen began to cry. But upon hearing each other, rather than reinforcing their tears, the twins stopped. "Be brave," Jaina said.
"Brave," Jacen agreed.
The two exhausted twins sat down on a time-smoothed chunk of duracrete in the middle of the open street. They watched the repair droid continue removing dead glowcrystals from poles and replacing them with equally useless lights.
The droid moved all the way to the end of the street, unsuccessful in getting any of the streetlights to work again. Then, picking up speed, it whirred down the worn path it had traveled for a hundred years, back to where it had started.
The droid stopped in front of the first dead glowcrystal pole all over again, ratcheted itself up, and replaced the lightless crystal it had changed only a short while earlier with another one....
--
Jacen and Jaina continued their trek across Coruscant's dank underbelly. They couldn't tell if the dim half light that filtered down from high above signified nighttime or day. The air smelled thick with rotted garbage, dead things, corroded metal, and stagnant water. They walked along the widest streets, dodging rubble, clambering over fallen and ancient wreckage. They had seen nothing familiar for hours, and neither of them knew what to do next.
"I'm hungry," Jaina said.
"Me too," Jacen said.
The deep underground was smothered in a silence overlaid with white noise. Shadowy creatures, startled by the twins, fled into darker hiding spots. Bumping one pile of debris, Jacen and Jaina sparked an avalanche of frightening clatters. The twins ran from the noise, generating further junkfalls that tinkled and clanged from great heights.
"My feet hurt," Jacen said.
"Mine don't," Jaina answered.
Up ahead they finally saw a welcome sign: a cave dwelling made of shored-up wreckage, walls built from piled chunks of duracrete mortared together with a paste of dried algae, mud, and darker substances. Smoky lights burned deep inside the cave, looking enticing in contrast to the forbidding bleakness of the undercity.
Jacen and Jaina moved forward at the same time. "Food?" Jacen asked. His sister nodded.
Outside of the strange slumped cave they saw cables running through lichen-clogged eye bolts mounted at various points. Along the walls and ceilings, metal bands like long fingerbones dangled in a decoration, linked together by sagging segments of chain.
"In here," Jaina said, taking the lead. Dimness folded over them, leading them toward the enticing lights.
Near her head a scratching, scuttling sound came from the shadows. The girl looked to see an elongated spider-roach nearly the size of her head. Bumping against her, Jacen leaned forward to get a better look at the creature. The spider-roach clambered up the lumpy wall and hesitated, turning three glassy amber eyes at them.
Suddenly, with a ratcheting clatter, a fistful of metal flanges from the ceiling swung loose like a prehensile mechanical hand dangling on chains. Dozens of steel fingers slammed against the wall to trap the spider-roach, clamping it into a makeshift metallic cage. The creature thrashed and flailed, clacking its mandibles. Sparks flew as chitinous forelimbs scrabbled against the impenetrable bars.
In panic Jacen and Jaina hurried down the tunnel toward the flickering orange lights. But the twins stopped, simultaneously sensing a thrill of danger. They looked up just in time to see a much larger cage, all prongs and sharp metal edges, collapse down around them. Mechanical metal claws surrounded them like dozens of fists chained together.
"Trap!" Jaina said.
Shuffling footsteps came toward them--a thud, then a scrape as a large hulking creature emerged from the depths of the lair. The silhouette appeared first, a massive tufted head with enormous arms dragging almost to the ground. One thickly muscled thigh looked the size of a tree trunk, but the other leg was much shorter, twisted and withered.
Jacen and Jaina rattled the sharp metal edges of the cage, but the mechanical claws drew tighter together like scissors. "Help!" Jacen said.
Then their captor came into full view, lit from the side by reflected smoky lights. The creature was covered with a pelt of shaggy hair, showing no distinction between its enormous head and the rest of its torso, as if both pieces had been smashed together into one barrel-shaped mass.
The thing's mouth hung in a long crooked slash, twisted sideways and straightened back only partway. Its left eye was overgrown with a mass of tumors and rotting flesh; the other eye, nearly as large as the twins' fists, shone a sickly yellow, streaked with red lines.
Jacen and Jaina were too afraid to say anything. Their ogrelike captor shambled past, ignoring them for the moment as he rocked back and forth on his stubby withered leg. He picked up the small trap to inspect the frantic spider-roach.
The children could smell the stink from the monster as he next bent toward the bars of their cage, thrusting his giant yellow eye close, but Jacen and Jaina scrambled to the other side of the cage.
The ogre disconnected long chains from the wall, draped them over his shoulder, and dragged the twins' cage clattering down the corridor into his firelit den. The cage rolled and crashed against unseen obstacles, and the twins had to scramble to keep themselves upright.
Inside, gnawed bones from large and small creatures cluttered the monster's lair, some piled in baskets, others cracked and strewn over the broken floor. Smoky red flames came from smoldering pots filled with a rancid-smelling fat.
Chained in a cleared area of the pit sat a tusked ratlike creature covered with bristling fur. Its black rubbery lips stretched back in a perpetual snarl. Gobbets of drool flew from its mouth as it snarled and threw itself to the end of its chain.
A set of broken manacles from a detention area hung on the spike-encrusted walls of the chamber. As the ogre moved about in the brighter light, tatters of an old prison uniform could be seen among his greasy curls of body hair.
The ogre pried open the metal fingers of the small spider-roach trap. He picked up the arachnid with his lumpy bare hands and tossed it to the giant rat-monster. The glossy spider-roach flailed its long legs as it tumbled end over end, and the rat-monster snapped it out of the air. But the bug managed to grab on to the rubbery lips with its sharp legs, and it stung hard.
The rat-creature yelped, gnashing its tusks until it chomped down and split the exoskeleton of the spider-roach with a cracking pop. Then, contented, it slurped the juicy soft meat and licked its black lips. The rat-creature panted and rolled its wet red eyes at the two children.
Hopeful, the twins peered out from the cage. "We are lost," Jaina said, calling to the ogre from between the bars.
"Please help us find our home," Jacen added.
The ogre fixed its yellow eye on them. A foul wet stench came from his mouth, like slime scraped from the bottoms of a thousand sewers. He spoke in a bubbling voice, slurring the words. "No," the ogre said. "Gonna eat you!"
Then he tottered off on his shriveled leg toward a smoldering fireplace. The ogre found a pair of long sharp tongs resting in the hot coals. Holding the implements high, the ogre turned back to the twins.
Jacen and Jaina both looked at the top of their cage. The articulated finger joints were held together by small pins clogged with grease and rust, but smooth enough that the cage could open and close.
The twins each knew which pins the other concentrated on--and used their rudimentary ability with the Force, just as they did when they played tricks on Threepio and played the games that their Uncle Luke showed them.
They popped out the cage pins two at a time in rapid succession. Small pieces of metal flew like tiny projectiles in all directions. Suddenly without support, the long metal fingers fell open to the ground with an incredible clang.
"Run!" Jacen cried. Jaina took his hand and they scrambled toward the tunnel.
The ogre let out a furious roar and stumped after them, but he could not keep up on his uneven legs. Instead he grabbed the thick chain holding the rat-monster to the wall and yanked out the long spike that held its collar together.
Set free, the rat-creature lunged. Turning, it tried to snap its teeth at the ogre - comb he used a muscle-swollen arm to bash the rat-thing away from him. He gestured toward the fleeing children.
And they ran, and they ran.
The rat-creature came howling and slavering after them. The twins ran out of the firelit opening and dashed down an alley. Behind them they could hear the steam-engine sounds of the creature as it snorted, following their scent. Its claws clattered on the pavement.
Jaina found a small dark gash in the wall, a hole broken into the layered duracrete. "Here," she said.
Jaina dived into the tiny hole headfirst, and her brother clambered after. Only a second later the rat-creature jammed its tusked snout against the jagged opening, but it could not get its head through the hole.
By that time Jacen and Jaina had scrambled on their hands and knees, burrowing deep into the unexplored darkness.
--
Jacen and Jaina felt the slimy surface of the tunnel as they crawled downward. They had no idea where they were going, but they knew they had to find some other way home.
Jacen reached up, felt no close ceiling, and climbed to his feet. The twins could see nothing in the darkness, only a faint glow ahead. They made their way toward it--cautiously this time, afraid they might find another ogre. Jacen smelled sizzling meat, and he heard guttural words, the first human voices they had heard since deciding to go home without Threepio and Chewbacca.
Jacen started toward the light, but Jaina held on to his arm. "Careful," she said. Jacen nodded and put a finger to his lips as a reminder. They inched forward, hearts hammering. They smelled the delicious scents of cooked food, heard the crackle of fire, the chattering voices.
They reached a corner and peered around it to see a large blasted-out room, a low-level reception area used thousands of years ago. Jacen and Jaina could see a bonfire, tattered figures moving between light and shadow, banks of dimly functioning glowcrystals, and a glimpse of blinking computer equipment. Then suddenly, from all sides, silent hands reached out to grab them.
Firm grips, wiry arms. Five sentries struck at once, snatching Jacen and Jaina and whisking them off their feet before they had a chance to struggle.
The sentries laughed even as the children squealed in terror. A cheer went up from the people around the bonfire as the sentries carried the twins out into the bright light.
--
The feral humans brought Jacen and Jaina before their king. The flickering warmth of the junk-heap bonfire made a pleasant smell. The strips of unrecognizeable meat roasting on long skewers caused both children to lick their lips.
Grimy-faced sentries looked down at the twins and smiled. Their mouths seemed a checkerboard of yellow teeth and black gaps. The king of the underground humans sat on a tall pile of ragged cushions. He laughed. "These are the fearsome intruders?"
Jacen and Jaina looked around themselves, gathering details. The refugees in the former reception area had bedrolls, tattered clothing, and stashes of scavenged possessions. Some sat mending rags, others worked on spring-loaded animal traps. Two old men crouched holding small musical instruments cobbled together from old pipes; they blew into the mouthpieces, comparing high whistling notes.
The feral people wore torn and threadbare clothing, some mended, some not, all very old. They had long hair; the men wore bushy beards. Their skin was pale, as if they had not seen sunlight for decades. Some of them might never have seen natural light at all.
The king seemed to have the best materials. He wore shoulder pads and polished white gloves taken from a stormtrooper. His eyebrows were large, his reddish-brown beard wispy. Though his face was the color of raw bread dough, his eyes were bright and alert. His smile also showed gaps from missing teeth, but it contained real humor.
Around and behind the king hung jury-rigged electronic equipment, computer panels, holographic display modules, even one old-model food-processing unit. Ancient generators had been wired into the frayed energy grid of the skyscrapers, skimming power from the main flow through Imperial City. The lost people had obviously been down here a long time.
"Get these children some food," the king yelled, bending down to look at them. "Well, now, my name is Daykim. What're your names?"
"Jaina," Jacen said, indicating his sister.
Jaina pointed to her brother. "Jacen."
A sentry with gray-blond hair tied in a long ponytail brought a smoking skewer of the roasted meat. He yanked off the red-black pieces of meat with his fingers and dropped them onto a squarish metal platter that had originally been some sort of cover plate. The sentry blew on his fingers, licked the juices, and grinned at the children. He set the platter down in front of them, and the twins sat on the floor, crossing their legs.
"Blow on the meat before you put it in your mouths," the king said. "It's hot."
The twins picked up small morsels, dutifully blowing until the meat was cool enough to chew. King Daykim seemed to delight in just watching them.
"So what were you doing down here all alone? It's dangerous, you know. Would you like to stay here with us?" the king said. "We're all growing old. It's been too long since young people joined us down here."
Jacen and Jaina shook their heads. "We are lost," Jaina said around a mouthful of meat. A thick welling of tears appeared on the edge of her eyelids.
Jacen also started to cry. "Please help us find our home," he said, looking toward the high ceiling. Somewhere up in the distance lay their living quarters.
"Up there?" King Daykim said, comically incredulous. "Why would you want to go back up there? The Emperor lives up there. He's a bad man." Daykim shook his head and gestured around him. "We have everything we want here. We have food, we have light, we have... our things."
Jacen shook his head at Daykim. "I want to go home."
With a sigh Daykim glanced back at his banks of computer terminals and then flashed them a defeated smile.
"Of course you want to go home. Just finish up your supper. You'll need your strength."
--
The sergeant of the militia escorted Threepio and Chewbacca back to Han and Leia's quarters in the old Imperial Palace. "Our records indicate that Minister Organa Solo and her husband returned not more than an hour ago," the sergeant said.
Chewbacca moaned dejectedly. Threepio shot a sharp glance at him. "I think you should be the one to tell them what happened, Chewbacca. After all, I'm only a droid."
"Rest assured we're doing everything we can," the sergeant said. "We've had our teams combing the Holographic Zoo and the adjoining floors just in case the twins found an emergency staircase. We're checking the logs of the maintenance droid just to be sure that no one used the turbolift that was being serviced." He snapped to attention. "We'll find them, don't you worry."
Threepio used the override code on the doorway to open it. Then he and Chewbacca stepped into the living quarters--to find Han and Leia sitting on the self-conforming chairs, with the twins balanced on their knees.
"Children! Oh, thank goodness, you're home!" Threepio cried. Chewbacca thundered a high-pitched bellow.
Han and Leia both turned to look at them. "Well, there you two are."
Threepio noticed at once that one of the panels from the air-ventilation system had been knocked off, apparently from the inside. A stranger, a large man, dressed in tattered but ornate clothing dashed to shelter behind one of the larger pieces of furniture. He had long reddish-brown hair, a wispy beard, and uncommonly pale skin.
Leia returned her attention to the rag-clad man. "Seriously, Mr. Daykim, I can't tell you how much we appreciate what you've done. I assure you the New Republic will do everything it can to repatriate all your people."
Daykim shook his head. "The Emperor never forgave mistakes, not even accounting mistakes. We saw many of our fellow civil servants either executed or sent off to horrendous penal colonies. As soon as we caught ourselves in a simple but irrevocable filing error, we knew we didn't have long to live--so we grabbed what we could and fled to the underlevels of Imperial City. My people have been living there for years. We're just a bunch of feral bureaucrats who don't know any other life."
"We could find a place for you in the New Republic. We don't punish people for simple mistakes. We could bring you all back," Leia said again. "Look around you, we could give you your own quarters like these. Many of the buildings in the old Imperial City are abandoned."
"We know," Daykim said, "we live there ourselves sometimes. Thank you for your offer." He stood up and cast a suspicious glance toward Threepio and Chewbacca. He patted Jacen and Jaina on the head and flashed his gap-toothed smile. "You're good little children. Your mommy and daddy should be proud of you."
Han cleared his throat and extended his hand in thanks. The tattered man grabbed it and shook vigorously as if pleased to give a firm, businesslike handshake.
"I still don't understand why you want to stay down in those murky lower levels," Han said.
Daykim swung one leg into the ventilation duct and looked around. "It's very simple," he said. "Up here I was just a file clerk--down there I am a king!"
With a last smile for all of them, Daykim vanished into the ventilation ducts. They heard him thumping and scrambling as he disappeared down the access tubes.
"Well, everything turned out right after all," Threepio said. "Isn't this wonderful?"
In answer Han and Leia both glared at him.
"We want a story!" the twins said in unison.
Received: Day 192, dinnertime
Form: Memories come in the form of four little breadcrumbs--well, pieces of bread anyway. They're about the size of your thumb and come inside a bag of your team color. 3/4 uses. (Also: earned a stuffed yugioh hero doll wearing dragon wings...)
Summary: Tiny Jacen and Jaina escape their babysitters and get lost in the undercity of Coruscant. The twins use children's story logic to find their way home.
--
On Coruscant, Chewbacca and Threepio took the twins through the sculpted duracrete columns at the entrance to the Holographic Zoo of Extinct Animals.
At home the pestering children had rapidly worn down even Threepio's patience programming and had driven Chewbacca into a roaring frenzy. Getting Jacen and Jaina outside seemed like a good idea for all concerned. The foursome took transit tubes across the upper skyscrapers in old Imperial City to reach the rooftop levels of the Holographic Zoo.
At the Zoo's gaudy archway Chewbacca let his furry arms dangle behind him; his huge paws engulfed the tiny hands of the children. Chewbacca took two sprawling strides forward, then waited for the twins to catch up before he took two more steps and waited again. Threepio scuttled ahead as if he were in charge. He had just undergone a deep oil bath so that his gold alloy plating gleamed in the artificial lights.
They stepped under the grandiose arches. Threepio went to the cashier kiosk, punching in Han and Leia's credit code. Chewbacca, impatient with Jacen's and Jaina's short legs, scooped up the twins, one in each arm, and strode forward.
They endured a dull preshow in an empty waiting room filled with chairs, cages, and sockets to accommodate the bodies of all alien visitors, until the far doors automatically clicked open. Chewbacca, still carrying the twins, marched down a sloped tunnel to the lower levels. Threepio hurried after, trying to lead the way, but he could not get past the bulky Wookiee.
Arcing, glowing lights shot overhead, inept simulations of stars and comets and planets. As they passed motion sensors, booming godlike voices echoed in stereo from microspeakers in the walls.
"Journey down the corridors of time! Travel the lanes of space! You will experience forgotten wonders from a long time ago and far, far away. You will see extinct creatures lost from our galaxy but recreated here--and now!"
The walls around them darkened. Streaks of light shot out, funneling down in a crude animation of starlines for a fake journey into hyperspace. The floor beneath their feet rumbled and vibrated in the simulation. The children were startled, but Chewbacca groaned at the corniness of it. The illusion ended, and the recorded voice spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. "We have arrived... at a universe of possibilities!"
They stood before a choice of several doorways.
"This way children, this way," Threepio said, stepping forward. He had already scanned the data brochures about the exhibits, and after correlating them with the twins' interests, decided exactly which dioramas he would show them first. "Let us go see the mammoth krabbex of Calamari."
As they stepped through the portal, holograms flared, surrounding them with a turbulent oceanscape, a jagged reef thrusting out from white foamy waters. Standing in a swirl of green-and-purple seaweed battered by the rushing waves stood a segmented crustacean, a ten-legged krabbex with dual mandibles in its mouth, twin rows of spines down its back, and eighteen glossy black eyes, four of which were on its front grasping claws. The krabbex reared up and let out a bellow like a wampa ice creature set on fire.
The twins watched as three green-skinned mermen thrashed out of the foaming waves, cocking jagged spears made of pale bone. The mermen hauled themselves onto the reef and attacked.
The spears pierced the exoskeleton of the krabbex, and the monster clipped at them with its pincers. It swung to the left and grabbed one of the mermen, slicing into his smooth green flesh and dragging him out of the water, where his fused finned legs thrashed like the tail of a fish.
"Let's go," Jaina said.
"Next one," Jacen said.
"But, children, I haven't told you the biological background of these creatures yet," Threepio said.
"Go now," Jaina insisted.
They walked right through the surrounding illusion to the far wall, where several more openings presented themselves. Chewbacca urged the children through the left-hand door.
"Oh, not that one, Chewbacca," Threepio said. "I'm not certain--"
But they had already entered the second chamber to be surrounded by the illusion of a desert planet. Waves of invisible heat rippled from a scabbed, dried clay surface. A strange creature scuttled atop a rocky outcropping with a bloodcurdling roar. It had a squarish humanoid head and a massive feline body, huge curved claws, and a segmented tail that thrashed back and forth, capped with a wicked-looking scorpion stinger. As it opened its mouth to bellow again, cracked yellow fangs dripped with venom.
"A manticore?" Threepio said in disbelief. "Well, really! I'm astonished they haven't updated their display yet. That creature was proved to be a jumble of mismatched fossils long ago. Manticores never existed."
Directly behind them in the hologram another manticore echoed the bellowing challenge and climbed over the baked rocks. The twins tugged on Chewbacca's furry arms and headed through the nonexistent creatures toward the next set of openings.
"Let me choose this time, children," Threepio said.
Chewbacca groaned. The twins didn't seem to care.
"Go home," Jacen said.
Jaina nodded in agreement. "I want to go home."
"But, children," Threepio said, "I'm sure you'll enjoy this next one. Let me tell you all about the mournful singing fig trees of Pil Diller...."
After three more dioramas and three more of Threepio's boring lectures, the twins decided that they would much rather play hide-and-seek than continue the tedious expedition through the Holographic Zoo.
While they couldn't communicate telepathically with each other word for word, they did know in a clear but general way what the other was thinking. When Jacen broke away from Chewbacca to run through the glacier eyries of the Snow Falcons, he headed to the left. At the same time, Jaina sprinted in the opposite direction, brushing past a startled Threepio. The twins used their fledgling talent with the Force to guide them into one of the other openings that led to an exit corridor.
Chewbacca bellowed; Threepio called after the children, but Jacen and Jaina met up outside the dioramas, pleased with their escape and giggling. They trotted down the white-tiled corridor as fast as they could go, past icons for refreshments, rest-and-recharge rooms, repair facilities.
At an intersection of corridors, an old maintenance droid worked in an open turbolift. Jacen and Jaina had seen turbolifts before. That was how they got back home once they reached the Imperial Palace.
The maintenance droid was gunmetal-gray with two heads and numerous mechanical arms, each studded with a handful of attachments. The droid's two heads faced each other. One head bore a set of bright optical sensors, while the other face was a blank screen that displayed data, statistics, and official Imperial Building Code specs.
Muttering to itself in binary, the droid searched its back compartment for a particular tool, found it missing from its bin, then puttered down the corridor. It left the turbolift wide open with only a small dangling sign saying Out of Service.
The children ran for the turbolift and ducked inside. They had watched their parents and Threepio use the controls many times.
The panel looked different from the one in the Imperial Palace: much less ornate, discolored with age and rough use, with a wall of buttons marking hundreds of different floors in the kilometer-high metropolis. Since the lower levels of the city had been abandoned and buried long ago, a thick metal plate had been welded onto the bottom half of the panel, sealing off the first 150 floors. But the maintenance droid had removed the barrier plate to check the turbolift circuits.
The children barely knew their numbers, though Threepio had been trying to get them to recognize the primary numerals. The lessons frequently frustrated the protocol droid, but the twins were bright. They had picked up more than Threepio had realized.
The rows of buttons looked like shiny colorful circles to Jacen and Jaina. They stared at them, not knowing which to push, but they did recognize some of the numbers.
Jaina spotted it first. "Number one," she said.
Jacen pushed the button. "Number one," he repeated.
The turbolift door closed, and the floor fell away as the elevator shot downward, humming as it accelerated. Jacen and Jaina looked at each other in momentary terror; then they giggled. The turbolift descent went and on, until finally the platform came to a stop. The door whisked open.
Jacen and Jaina stood blinking. They stepped out into the shadowy bottom levels of the forbidden metropolitan wilderness. Around them they heard large startled creatures clattering through the fallen debris.
"It's dark," Jacen said.
Behind the twins the turbolift door slid shut as the elevator reset itself and returned to the upper floors, leaving Jacen and Jaina alone.
--
Jacen and Jaina hiked through a forest of fallen girders, orange and yellow toadstools, and lumpy fungus growing in ancient garbage. Unseen feet skittered across fallen beams and webwork structures overhead.
The massive foundations of the buildings looked indestructible, overgrown with thick moss. Things moved in the shadows, but nothing came clear, even as the childrens' eyes adjusted to the shadowy light. Drips of warm, bad-tasting water fell around them in a slow arrhythmic rain.
Jacen looked up, and the enormous buildings seemed to rise forever and ever. He could glimpse only a blurred slice of what might have been the sky.
"I want to go home," Jaina said.
The wreckage of abandoned equipment lay in piles, rusted and corroded. The twins scrambled over crashed vehicles, the hulks of discarded battleships and fighting machines, deep debris left from the previous year's civil warfare.
Jacen and Jaina came upon a half-collapsed wall that had once contained a computer screen. The terminal lay tilted on its side with the screen smashed inward, leaving broken teeth of transparisteel. But the twins recognized it as a data unit similar to the ones inside their own quarters.
Jacen stood in front of the broken panel and put his small hands on his hips, trying to look like his father. He addressed the computer screen--and he knew exactly what to say, after having heard the bedtime story many times before. "We are lost," he said. "Please help us find our home."
He waited and waited but received no response. No lights illuminated the panels. He heard no answer from the torn speaker unit, where glistening black beetles had made a nest.
Jacen sighed. Jaina took his hand, and the two turned around as they heard a slithering sound down the cramped alleyway.
A formless gray-green creature paused behind them, a granite slug with two eyes protruding on gelatinous stalks as if assessing the two children. As it moved, it scoured green sludge off the cracked duracrete alleyway, trailing thick translucent slime.
The granite slug slithered toward them, and the twins backed away. From the bottom of the slug's underbelly, a jagged crack opened up, a quivering lipless mouth that sucked in a long hollow whistle of air.
Jaina stepped up to it. It was her turn this time.
"We are lost," she said. "Please help us find our home."
The granite slug reared until it towered over the little girl. She blinked up at it. Jacen stood by her side.
Then the granite slug seemed to deflate again, hooked its body into a broken passage to the right, and landed on the stones with a wet slapping sound.
A rustle of wind suddenly kicked up, and the granite slug churned down the side alley in alarm. Jacen looked up just in time to see the sharp mantalike wings of a hawk-bat that swooped down from high above, metallic talons outstretched.
The granite slug attempted to burrow into the rusted debris, but the hawk-bat landed on top of the wreckage, ripping and tearing at the fallen hunks of metal with its claws. Its triangular beak bobbed up and down like a piston until it had exposed the granite slug and slashed at the slimy creature. The hawk-bat flapped its broad wings again, heading toward the sky with its squirming, dripping prey.
Jacen and Jaina looked up at the creature, then at each other. The two began trudging through the dark underworld of Coruscant again.
Jaina said, "And he walked, and he walked..."
--
In the dim underworld Jacen pointed to a noisy machine in front of them as the cluttered street widened. "Look," he said. "Droid."
The children ran, waving their hands and hoping to get the droid's attention. But they stopped as the machine continued along a polished path worn through the debris.
The droid was vastly older than the maintenance model up at the turbolift. It had bulkier joints, squarish limbs; large bolts held the pieces together. The antique repair droid was little more than a mobile cart of tools with a torso, arms, and an angled hexagonal head. One of its optical sensors had fallen off. Thick cables ran down its spine and along its neck, corroded and caked with dust and dirt. Moss had begun to grow on its sides. It moved with a stuttering motion as if desperately in need of lubricant.
Along the street a line of corroded poles stood a meter taller than the twins. Atop each pole rested an old glowcrystal, engraved with magnifying facets, but each crystal was a dead translucent gray, shedding no light into the dim streets. Some poles had come loose from their ground-level moorings and tilted sideways.
The repair droid worked its way to the end of the street, stopped at an appropriate position, and ratcheted its torso high on accordion joints so its arms could reach the darkened glowcrystal. The droid removed the burned-out crystal, cradling it carefully in segmented pincers. After placing it in the back of the cart, the repair droid removed another thick glowcrystal from an open bin. Following complex programming, the droid positioned the replacement crystal on top of the pole and activated it.
The new glowcrystal remained as dead and lightless as the first, but the repair droid didn't seem to notice. It moved to the next pole, repeating the process.
Jacen stood in front of the droid, addressing it in his best Daddy voice. "We're lost," he said.
Jaina came up beside him. "Please help us find our home."
The repair droid ratcheted up as if in alarm, then lowered itself down to study the children with its single optical sensor. "Lost?" it said in a clanking voice.
"Home," Jaina insisted.
"Not in my programming," the droid said. "Not my main task." It ratcheted up again and moved to a third malfunctioning glowcrystal pole. "Not in my programming."
Jaina and Jacen began to cry. But upon hearing each other, rather than reinforcing their tears, the twins stopped. "Be brave," Jaina said.
"Brave," Jacen agreed.
The two exhausted twins sat down on a time-smoothed chunk of duracrete in the middle of the open street. They watched the repair droid continue removing dead glowcrystals from poles and replacing them with equally useless lights.
The droid moved all the way to the end of the street, unsuccessful in getting any of the streetlights to work again. Then, picking up speed, it whirred down the worn path it had traveled for a hundred years, back to where it had started.
The droid stopped in front of the first dead glowcrystal pole all over again, ratcheted itself up, and replaced the lightless crystal it had changed only a short while earlier with another one....
--
Jacen and Jaina continued their trek across Coruscant's dank underbelly. They couldn't tell if the dim half light that filtered down from high above signified nighttime or day. The air smelled thick with rotted garbage, dead things, corroded metal, and stagnant water. They walked along the widest streets, dodging rubble, clambering over fallen and ancient wreckage. They had seen nothing familiar for hours, and neither of them knew what to do next.
"I'm hungry," Jaina said.
"Me too," Jacen said.
The deep underground was smothered in a silence overlaid with white noise. Shadowy creatures, startled by the twins, fled into darker hiding spots. Bumping one pile of debris, Jacen and Jaina sparked an avalanche of frightening clatters. The twins ran from the noise, generating further junkfalls that tinkled and clanged from great heights.
"My feet hurt," Jacen said.
"Mine don't," Jaina answered.
Up ahead they finally saw a welcome sign: a cave dwelling made of shored-up wreckage, walls built from piled chunks of duracrete mortared together with a paste of dried algae, mud, and darker substances. Smoky lights burned deep inside the cave, looking enticing in contrast to the forbidding bleakness of the undercity.
Jacen and Jaina moved forward at the same time. "Food?" Jacen asked. His sister nodded.
Outside of the strange slumped cave they saw cables running through lichen-clogged eye bolts mounted at various points. Along the walls and ceilings, metal bands like long fingerbones dangled in a decoration, linked together by sagging segments of chain.
"In here," Jaina said, taking the lead. Dimness folded over them, leading them toward the enticing lights.
Near her head a scratching, scuttling sound came from the shadows. The girl looked to see an elongated spider-roach nearly the size of her head. Bumping against her, Jacen leaned forward to get a better look at the creature. The spider-roach clambered up the lumpy wall and hesitated, turning three glassy amber eyes at them.
Suddenly, with a ratcheting clatter, a fistful of metal flanges from the ceiling swung loose like a prehensile mechanical hand dangling on chains. Dozens of steel fingers slammed against the wall to trap the spider-roach, clamping it into a makeshift metallic cage. The creature thrashed and flailed, clacking its mandibles. Sparks flew as chitinous forelimbs scrabbled against the impenetrable bars.
In panic Jacen and Jaina hurried down the tunnel toward the flickering orange lights. But the twins stopped, simultaneously sensing a thrill of danger. They looked up just in time to see a much larger cage, all prongs and sharp metal edges, collapse down around them. Mechanical metal claws surrounded them like dozens of fists chained together.
"Trap!" Jaina said.
Shuffling footsteps came toward them--a thud, then a scrape as a large hulking creature emerged from the depths of the lair. The silhouette appeared first, a massive tufted head with enormous arms dragging almost to the ground. One thickly muscled thigh looked the size of a tree trunk, but the other leg was much shorter, twisted and withered.
Jacen and Jaina rattled the sharp metal edges of the cage, but the mechanical claws drew tighter together like scissors. "Help!" Jacen said.
Then their captor came into full view, lit from the side by reflected smoky lights. The creature was covered with a pelt of shaggy hair, showing no distinction between its enormous head and the rest of its torso, as if both pieces had been smashed together into one barrel-shaped mass.
The thing's mouth hung in a long crooked slash, twisted sideways and straightened back only partway. Its left eye was overgrown with a mass of tumors and rotting flesh; the other eye, nearly as large as the twins' fists, shone a sickly yellow, streaked with red lines.
Jacen and Jaina were too afraid to say anything. Their ogrelike captor shambled past, ignoring them for the moment as he rocked back and forth on his stubby withered leg. He picked up the small trap to inspect the frantic spider-roach.
The children could smell the stink from the monster as he next bent toward the bars of their cage, thrusting his giant yellow eye close, but Jacen and Jaina scrambled to the other side of the cage.
The ogre disconnected long chains from the wall, draped them over his shoulder, and dragged the twins' cage clattering down the corridor into his firelit den. The cage rolled and crashed against unseen obstacles, and the twins had to scramble to keep themselves upright.
Inside, gnawed bones from large and small creatures cluttered the monster's lair, some piled in baskets, others cracked and strewn over the broken floor. Smoky red flames came from smoldering pots filled with a rancid-smelling fat.
Chained in a cleared area of the pit sat a tusked ratlike creature covered with bristling fur. Its black rubbery lips stretched back in a perpetual snarl. Gobbets of drool flew from its mouth as it snarled and threw itself to the end of its chain.
A set of broken manacles from a detention area hung on the spike-encrusted walls of the chamber. As the ogre moved about in the brighter light, tatters of an old prison uniform could be seen among his greasy curls of body hair.
The ogre pried open the metal fingers of the small spider-roach trap. He picked up the arachnid with his lumpy bare hands and tossed it to the giant rat-monster. The glossy spider-roach flailed its long legs as it tumbled end over end, and the rat-monster snapped it out of the air. But the bug managed to grab on to the rubbery lips with its sharp legs, and it stung hard.
The rat-creature yelped, gnashing its tusks until it chomped down and split the exoskeleton of the spider-roach with a cracking pop. Then, contented, it slurped the juicy soft meat and licked its black lips. The rat-creature panted and rolled its wet red eyes at the two children.
Hopeful, the twins peered out from the cage. "We are lost," Jaina said, calling to the ogre from between the bars.
"Please help us find our home," Jacen added.
The ogre fixed its yellow eye on them. A foul wet stench came from his mouth, like slime scraped from the bottoms of a thousand sewers. He spoke in a bubbling voice, slurring the words. "No," the ogre said. "Gonna eat you!"
Then he tottered off on his shriveled leg toward a smoldering fireplace. The ogre found a pair of long sharp tongs resting in the hot coals. Holding the implements high, the ogre turned back to the twins.
Jacen and Jaina both looked at the top of their cage. The articulated finger joints were held together by small pins clogged with grease and rust, but smooth enough that the cage could open and close.
The twins each knew which pins the other concentrated on--and used their rudimentary ability with the Force, just as they did when they played tricks on Threepio and played the games that their Uncle Luke showed them.
They popped out the cage pins two at a time in rapid succession. Small pieces of metal flew like tiny projectiles in all directions. Suddenly without support, the long metal fingers fell open to the ground with an incredible clang.
"Run!" Jacen cried. Jaina took his hand and they scrambled toward the tunnel.
The ogre let out a furious roar and stumped after them, but he could not keep up on his uneven legs. Instead he grabbed the thick chain holding the rat-monster to the wall and yanked out the long spike that held its collar together.
Set free, the rat-creature lunged. Turning, it tried to snap its teeth at the ogre - comb he used a muscle-swollen arm to bash the rat-thing away from him. He gestured toward the fleeing children.
And they ran, and they ran.
The rat-creature came howling and slavering after them. The twins ran out of the firelit opening and dashed down an alley. Behind them they could hear the steam-engine sounds of the creature as it snorted, following their scent. Its claws clattered on the pavement.
Jaina found a small dark gash in the wall, a hole broken into the layered duracrete. "Here," she said.
Jaina dived into the tiny hole headfirst, and her brother clambered after. Only a second later the rat-creature jammed its tusked snout against the jagged opening, but it could not get its head through the hole.
By that time Jacen and Jaina had scrambled on their hands and knees, burrowing deep into the unexplored darkness.
--
Jacen and Jaina felt the slimy surface of the tunnel as they crawled downward. They had no idea where they were going, but they knew they had to find some other way home.
Jacen reached up, felt no close ceiling, and climbed to his feet. The twins could see nothing in the darkness, only a faint glow ahead. They made their way toward it--cautiously this time, afraid they might find another ogre. Jacen smelled sizzling meat, and he heard guttural words, the first human voices they had heard since deciding to go home without Threepio and Chewbacca.
Jacen started toward the light, but Jaina held on to his arm. "Careful," she said. Jacen nodded and put a finger to his lips as a reminder. They inched forward, hearts hammering. They smelled the delicious scents of cooked food, heard the crackle of fire, the chattering voices.
They reached a corner and peered around it to see a large blasted-out room, a low-level reception area used thousands of years ago. Jacen and Jaina could see a bonfire, tattered figures moving between light and shadow, banks of dimly functioning glowcrystals, and a glimpse of blinking computer equipment. Then suddenly, from all sides, silent hands reached out to grab them.
Firm grips, wiry arms. Five sentries struck at once, snatching Jacen and Jaina and whisking them off their feet before they had a chance to struggle.
The sentries laughed even as the children squealed in terror. A cheer went up from the people around the bonfire as the sentries carried the twins out into the bright light.
--
The feral humans brought Jacen and Jaina before their king. The flickering warmth of the junk-heap bonfire made a pleasant smell. The strips of unrecognizeable meat roasting on long skewers caused both children to lick their lips.
Grimy-faced sentries looked down at the twins and smiled. Their mouths seemed a checkerboard of yellow teeth and black gaps. The king of the underground humans sat on a tall pile of ragged cushions. He laughed. "These are the fearsome intruders?"
Jacen and Jaina looked around themselves, gathering details. The refugees in the former reception area had bedrolls, tattered clothing, and stashes of scavenged possessions. Some sat mending rags, others worked on spring-loaded animal traps. Two old men crouched holding small musical instruments cobbled together from old pipes; they blew into the mouthpieces, comparing high whistling notes.
The feral people wore torn and threadbare clothing, some mended, some not, all very old. They had long hair; the men wore bushy beards. Their skin was pale, as if they had not seen sunlight for decades. Some of them might never have seen natural light at all.
The king seemed to have the best materials. He wore shoulder pads and polished white gloves taken from a stormtrooper. His eyebrows were large, his reddish-brown beard wispy. Though his face was the color of raw bread dough, his eyes were bright and alert. His smile also showed gaps from missing teeth, but it contained real humor.
Around and behind the king hung jury-rigged electronic equipment, computer panels, holographic display modules, even one old-model food-processing unit. Ancient generators had been wired into the frayed energy grid of the skyscrapers, skimming power from the main flow through Imperial City. The lost people had obviously been down here a long time.
"Get these children some food," the king yelled, bending down to look at them. "Well, now, my name is Daykim. What're your names?"
"Jaina," Jacen said, indicating his sister.
Jaina pointed to her brother. "Jacen."
A sentry with gray-blond hair tied in a long ponytail brought a smoking skewer of the roasted meat. He yanked off the red-black pieces of meat with his fingers and dropped them onto a squarish metal platter that had originally been some sort of cover plate. The sentry blew on his fingers, licked the juices, and grinned at the children. He set the platter down in front of them, and the twins sat on the floor, crossing their legs.
"Blow on the meat before you put it in your mouths," the king said. "It's hot."
The twins picked up small morsels, dutifully blowing until the meat was cool enough to chew. King Daykim seemed to delight in just watching them.
"So what were you doing down here all alone? It's dangerous, you know. Would you like to stay here with us?" the king said. "We're all growing old. It's been too long since young people joined us down here."
Jacen and Jaina shook their heads. "We are lost," Jaina said around a mouthful of meat. A thick welling of tears appeared on the edge of her eyelids.
Jacen also started to cry. "Please help us find our home," he said, looking toward the high ceiling. Somewhere up in the distance lay their living quarters.
"Up there?" King Daykim said, comically incredulous. "Why would you want to go back up there? The Emperor lives up there. He's a bad man." Daykim shook his head and gestured around him. "We have everything we want here. We have food, we have light, we have... our things."
Jacen shook his head at Daykim. "I want to go home."
With a sigh Daykim glanced back at his banks of computer terminals and then flashed them a defeated smile.
"Of course you want to go home. Just finish up your supper. You'll need your strength."
--
The sergeant of the militia escorted Threepio and Chewbacca back to Han and Leia's quarters in the old Imperial Palace. "Our records indicate that Minister Organa Solo and her husband returned not more than an hour ago," the sergeant said.
Chewbacca moaned dejectedly. Threepio shot a sharp glance at him. "I think you should be the one to tell them what happened, Chewbacca. After all, I'm only a droid."
"Rest assured we're doing everything we can," the sergeant said. "We've had our teams combing the Holographic Zoo and the adjoining floors just in case the twins found an emergency staircase. We're checking the logs of the maintenance droid just to be sure that no one used the turbolift that was being serviced." He snapped to attention. "We'll find them, don't you worry."
Threepio used the override code on the doorway to open it. Then he and Chewbacca stepped into the living quarters--to find Han and Leia sitting on the self-conforming chairs, with the twins balanced on their knees.
"Children! Oh, thank goodness, you're home!" Threepio cried. Chewbacca thundered a high-pitched bellow.
Han and Leia both turned to look at them. "Well, there you two are."
Threepio noticed at once that one of the panels from the air-ventilation system had been knocked off, apparently from the inside. A stranger, a large man, dressed in tattered but ornate clothing dashed to shelter behind one of the larger pieces of furniture. He had long reddish-brown hair, a wispy beard, and uncommonly pale skin.
Leia returned her attention to the rag-clad man. "Seriously, Mr. Daykim, I can't tell you how much we appreciate what you've done. I assure you the New Republic will do everything it can to repatriate all your people."
Daykim shook his head. "The Emperor never forgave mistakes, not even accounting mistakes. We saw many of our fellow civil servants either executed or sent off to horrendous penal colonies. As soon as we caught ourselves in a simple but irrevocable filing error, we knew we didn't have long to live--so we grabbed what we could and fled to the underlevels of Imperial City. My people have been living there for years. We're just a bunch of feral bureaucrats who don't know any other life."
"We could find a place for you in the New Republic. We don't punish people for simple mistakes. We could bring you all back," Leia said again. "Look around you, we could give you your own quarters like these. Many of the buildings in the old Imperial City are abandoned."
"We know," Daykim said, "we live there ourselves sometimes. Thank you for your offer." He stood up and cast a suspicious glance toward Threepio and Chewbacca. He patted Jacen and Jaina on the head and flashed his gap-toothed smile. "You're good little children. Your mommy and daddy should be proud of you."
Han cleared his throat and extended his hand in thanks. The tattered man grabbed it and shook vigorously as if pleased to give a firm, businesslike handshake.
"I still don't understand why you want to stay down in those murky lower levels," Han said.
Daykim swung one leg into the ventilation duct and looked around. "It's very simple," he said. "Up here I was just a file clerk--down there I am a king!"
With a last smile for all of them, Daykim vanished into the ventilation ducts. They heard him thumping and scrambling as he disappeared down the access tubes.
"Well, everything turned out right after all," Threepio said. "Isn't this wonderful?"
In answer Han and Leia both glared at him.
"We want a story!" the twins said in unison.