Ch.2 Questions Lead to More Questions
Jaina stared at Nom Anor with silent hatred. Here was the one who was responsible for the loss of so many lives…including the life of her father, Han Solo. As she matched Nom Anor's one-eyed glare, she bitterly remembered the fight. It had been aboard the Millenium Falcon. She had been pinned down in a corridor by several Vong warriors while her father and Nom Anor had battled in the flight deck, just a few meters away from the corridor in which she was fighting. She couldn't get to her dad in time to help and when she finally fought off the Vong and rushed onto the deck, she arrived just in time to see Nom Anor's amphistaff sink its teeth deep into the body of her dad. She had cried out and rushed Nom Anor. She would have given into her dark rage and slaughtered him, like he deserved to be, if her dad hadn't told her with his dying gasp that he loved her and did not want his daughter to fall to the dark side. So she had let the dirty womprat live and had him sent to this high-security facility in the Maw.
Nom Anor smiled. "I take it this isn't a social call. I'm surprised you had the strength to come here. How is Jacen Solo?" Jaina gritted her teeth and spit out, "He's a Jedi Master and he's rebuilt the Jedi Order that you thought you could destroy. He's training his cousin to be a great Jedi Knight. He's…"
Nom Anor cut her short with a needle-toothed grin. "Ah, you mean your late Aunt Mara's precious little Ben?" sneered the former executor. Jaina replied, 'Let's cut to the chase. We thought you were the last Vong, but now we've uncovered evidence that there may be others out there." She gaze him a piercing, furious gaze and said, "What do you know?" Nom Anor smiled, leaned forward close to Jaina's ear and in a barely audible whisper replied, "I know nothing, Jaina Solo. The question is, what do YOU know?" Jaina's eyes panicked as he gave her another needle-toothed grin.
***
Ben grinned as his podracer zoomed wildly across the tropical harbor near his favorite beach on New Coruscant. He loved to be out here, letting the wind blow in his face. He grin got even wider when he narrowly missed an outcropping of stone, jutting up from the water, that had once been a statue of Borsk Fey'lya during the days when New Coruscant was still, well, OLD Coruscant, a world covered by urban terrain. New Coruscant still had plenty of that, but now it had NATURAL terrain growing right on top of it in a perfect blend between civilization and nature.
"How you doin'?!" he shouted cockily to the girl in the podracer that was speeding along next to his. Vix Katarn grinned back at him and gave him a thumbs-up, her brown hair streaming out wildly behind her. Normal humans could only dream of doing this, but Ben and Vix weren't normal humans…they were Jedi, and they had been best friends ever since they were toddlers. She was the daughter of Jedi Master Kyle Katarn and his wife, Galactic Alliance secret agent Jan Ors-Katarn. He had her father's sense of adventure and her mother quick thinking. Together, she and Ben had pulled several pranks while growing up: pranks as little as hiding an ysalamiri inside Master Durron's survival kit when he was trying to demonstrate the use of the Force to the students at the Jedi Temple, to pranks as large-scale as switching Fyor Rodan's copy of his speech with an old lady's laundry list right before a meeting of the Senate. They were the perfect team.
"Race you out to Eastport Island!" shouted Vix, right before putting her podracer on full throttle and zooming away, causing a tidal wave to splash in Ben's face. "You're dead meat!" he joked as he sped after her.
They raced over the water towards a cluster of particularly tall skyscrapers jutting out of the water. They once formed the area known as Eastport, where Ben's aunt and uncle, Han and Leia Solo, had lived with their children, Lowbacca's uncle Chewbacca, and C-3PO. Now an island, it was a favorite spot for people who looking for a good time. Ben veered past the series of elevated platforms that were Eastport/Imperial City Spaceport. By the time he arrived at the edge of Eastport Island itself, Vix's podracer was already waiting for him. But Vix wasn't. Ben reached out to her with the Force and located her just a little bit inward from the shore. He parked his podracer and jogged up to her. He found her among a crowd of beings staring at something on the ground. "What's going on?" he asked Vix. "My guess is as good as yours, Ben. But I sense a lot of shock coming from these people" she replied. They made their way to the front of the crowd and froze at what they saw. Lying on the ground was the body of Senator Brist Fultrex from the Corellian sector. He had a burnt-out hole in his chest, where some kind of explosive projectile had apparently hit him. Ben knelt down, braced himself, and looked inside the hole. To his horror, he found the smoking husk of something he had only seen in museums: the remains of a thud bug.
