The twins were met by a still silence upon exiting into the satellite's hanger. There was no sign of life anywhere. Though it seemed almost too quiet, they did not feel anxious. Three was only the unexplainable air of sadness that surrounded them.
The hanger was rather large but stark; not a single decoration adorned its walls. On the lower level lay at rest a few unattended maintenance jobs, while the upper level had many silver doors with writing in a language that was very different from Basic.
Looking up at them and straining their eyes, Jaina and Jacen could not make out even the first word of the doors' labels.
"I hope those aren't warnings…" Jacen said. The feeling that something had occurred here to bring such a silence filled him with the need for caution.
The twins, leaving their renegade shuttle behind, walked to one of the many doors. Jacen hesitated before pressing the button to enter the room.
"Are you sure?" he asked his sister.
"Come on Jacen…" Jaina replied and with that placed her hand upon his, and pressed the button. The door did not make a sound as it slid open and revealed a small corridor into the main part of the satellite.
Though the walk down the corridor was short, it felt to the Jaina and Jacen that they had walked for a thousand meters. Their muscles were growing tired just from the short time they'd been inside the satellite. At the end of the corridor was another door. It too slid open in silence, revealing a sight that left them in awe. On the other side of the door was a massive control room which was filled with computer bay after computer bay. The individual bays seemed to be separated by their purposes and uses as could be seen by the different types of devices at each of the computers in each bay.
At the center of the room was a clear circular viewing pane from which the dark sky above could be seen, as well as the blue-green planet below. These, however, were not what left the Solo twins in the state of shock they had arrived at, it was in fact that at each of the computers, lay a cat-like creature that looked to be asleep, though not breathing heavily enough to be seen.
"Are they sleeping or not?" Jaina whispered. "And what are they?"
"Noghri," Jacen whispered back, with a look of sorrow on his face, "and I don't think they're sleeping. I don't sense their lives' energies in the Force. I think they're dead."
This idea flooded over Jaina and Jacen. They allowed themselves to feel the shock and then the sudden, unexpected pangs of grief.
"They look so peaceful," Jaina said, still whispering into the silence. "Whatever it was, they didn't see it coming," Jacen whispered in return. He thought for a moment. "That means we won't see it coming either."
He looked urgently at Jaina. She'd sat down on the floor and was stretching her legs. They were so sore, she thought, which was unusual.
"Jaina, get up now!" Jacen said in a loud voice, shattering the quiet reverie of the room. "Shhhh…" Jaina said in horror. "Have you no respect for the dead?"
"I have plenty of respect for them," Jacen shot back in a louder voice, "but I don't want to die here alongside them."
"Huh?" Jaina's confusion was plainly visible on her face. She swayed from side to side and her eyes began to be heavy.
"Jaina," Jacen said frantically, "now! Let's go! Let's get out of here!"
"How could we die the way they did," Jaina said with a yawn, "whatever killed them is already long gone by now, I'd imagine."
Jacen pondered this. He let his mind slip a little. It soared out into the room where the dead creatures peacefully lay, and then beyond into the realm of possibilities and logic; then he brought it back. "Not if they were gassed with a sleeping agent." It all made sense to him now. "Jaina, stay awake!" he yelled at his sister, "we've got to get out of here; there's deadly gas in the ventilation!"
Jacen put all of his focus into his sister's mind, attempting to clear it. Had he been as powerful as his Uncle Luke, this would have been an easy feat to accomplish. But he was nowhere near as talented as his uncle; not yet at least.
Jaina began to regain full consciousness. The energy provided by her brother's mind, allowed her to snap back to attention. "Let's get back to the shuttle!" Jaina said hurriedly and made for the corridor.
"No," Jacen replied, stopping her, "The shuttle's busted. We need to find an escape pod, and fast."
The twins searched high and low, in every place seeming that it could house a shuttle bay with escape pods. They looked behind every door they could find in the satellite, but no escape pods, or shuttle bays other than the one they'd blasted in on were to be found. They tried reading signs, but since they could not read anything written on the ship's signs, they came up empty handed.
In frustration, Jaina pounded her fist against the viewing pane. To her surprise, it went through the viewing pane. "It's a hologram, Jacen," she said. Hesitantly, both of the Solo twins stepped into the middle of the hologram to find themselves in an odd room. There was an alien panel on the side of the wall that had many different colored buttons on it. Not wasting any time, Jacen pushed a few random buttons and waited to see if there was a reaction.
"What are you doing?" Jaina yelled at him, "You could break it!" She sighed. "I'm the mechanical one." She studied the panel carefully and then pressed the button that, to her, looked most like a "start" or "engage" button. A glittery white light surrounded them. It whirled and swirled mixing in flecks of gold in its white light.
Then, the gold flecks grew brighter until it was unable to see the white light through it. All of a sudden, the white light flashed again, even stronger than the gold, then the entire glow and hologram vanished. Jaina and Jacen were no longer inside room where the light had been. They were somewhere else entirely.