Star Wars - Episode I Adventures 006 - The Hunt for Anakin Skywalker Read online

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  Sebulba was furious as he and his men searched the fortress of Gardulla the Hutt. He cursed Gardulla under his breath as he walked down the hallways.

  The Ghostling children — slaves he’d worked hard to catch — had escaped from right under Gardulla’s nose. Now, she was going to make him find them for her.

  It was unfair. If he’d been on a world that was part of the Republic, Sebulba would have taken Gardulla to court. But there were no courts on Tatooine. Just Hutts with a lot more power than Sebulba. He would have to find the slaves. If there was anything that he hated, it was work.

  Sebulba’s tracker, Djas Puhr, was walking behind him, along with the Dug, Khiss. Gondry, a greenish-tan Abyssin giant, lumbered down the hall toward Sebulba, head hanging. His moustache was long and gnarled. He acted like an overgrown kid as he punched the down button on the turbolift.

  Sebulba drew his heavy blaster and smiled wickedly. “Step away from the door,” he said.

  Gondry looked at him, mouth wide in panic. “You’ll never let another slave escape,” Sebulba growled in Huttese.

  “Hwaree!” Gondry said. He really did feel sorry. It was all his fault that the children escaped. He was supposed to be guarding the children. But he’d left the room because some Jawas had told him to!

  Sebulba fired, and a reddish bolt slammed into Gondry’s stomach.

  The giant’s single yellow eye opened wide in pain. He blinked back a tear. “I hwaree,” Gondry said in his thick accent as he slumped to the floor.

  “Not as sorry as you’re going to be!” Sebulba shouted. Sebulba’s heart was pounding hard in rage. He wanted to rip the giant to shreds, but Gondry’s people were notoriously hard to hurt. They could regenerate limbs and heal their wounds in minutes.

  Sebulba leaped upon the giant’s chest and ripped out a handful of moustache hair. Gondry winced in pain.

  Sebulba jabbed Gondry in the eye with his blaster and screamed, “I’m going to shoot you every day for a week until you find those children!”

  Gondry threw a hand in front of his face to protect himself. Sebulba bit his wrist and, for a moment they wrestled — Sebulba flailing and biting, Gondry trying to ward off the blows.

  “Forgive me, boss, if I say this,” Djas Puhr ventured, “but the more time you waste punishing Gondry, the harder it becomes to trail the Jawas who stole our slaves.” The tall Sakiyan spoke gently, reasonably.

  Sebulba scowled and got off Gondry. He felt worn-out, even after a little bit of a scuffle. It was too much like work.

  “All right,” Sebulba said. He stalked into the turbolift. Djas Puhr followed, along with Khiss, the hulking Dug. Gondry crawled in last.

  Punishing the giant hadn’t done any good. Sebulba had started out being mad. Now he was mad and tired. The elevator opened on the seventh level, the slave quarters. The lights were out in the deep shafts. Sebulba and his henchmen stepped into the hall. The hallway was carved of sandstone. Pipes overhead carried electric cables and cool air to the far reaches of the fortress.

  A giant mora beetle sounded its horn off to their left. Sebulba got out of the elevator just as it turned and charged.

  The enormous beetle thundered through the corridor on its ten legs. Sebulba couldn’t see it.

  Khiss brought up his blaster rifle and shot. Blaster fire illuminated the air. Khiss saw the huge black creature with green eyes rushing toward him. The blaster blew away chunks of chitin, and the dead beetle skidded to a halt just centimeters from Sebulba’s foot.

  Khiss took a small but powerful light from his belt and shined it down the hall to his right. Dead bugs littered the hall, and the smell of transmitter fire filled the air. A giant ghost spider had spun a web at the end of the hall. It had already caught a two-headed effrikim worm, and was wrapping the poor worm in cords stronger than steel.

  The Jawas who’d let the bugs out of their pens and freed the slaves had made a mess of Gardulla’s fortress. Smoke was still rising in places.

  They’d done a fine job.

  Sebulba suddenly realized that he wasn’t mad at Gondry anymore. He wasn’t even angry at Gardulla.

  It was the Jawas who had caused the problem — dirty, stinking, evil little Jawas with their bright glowing eyes! He hated them.

  I know what I’ll do, Sebulba thought. I’ll catch those Jawas and leave them out in a Sarlaac pit.

  He was imagining how much fun it would be when he reached the scene of the crime. The door was blown off the infirmary. Khiss shone his light into the room. It reflected off medical equipment and beds. Fortunately, there were no giant spiders running amok.

  Djas Puhr entered first and sniffed the air. “The trail is growing cold,” he said. “Gardulla’s henchmen have been in here. The Gamorreans stunk up the room pretty bad.”

  “Can you smell the Jawas?” Sebulba asked. “I want the Jawas who did this.”

  The huge Sakiyan crept around the room, sniffing at the doorjamb, smelling the counters, hovering near the lock of the energy cage that had held the Ghostling children.

  After several long minutes, he said, “Gondry, describe these Jawas for me.”

  Gondry was standing well now, though he still looked shaken. The blast wound to his belly was healing. “Uh, shwort,” he said. “Hwave eyes thwat glow. Hwear robes.”

  “Are you sure they weren’t humans?” Djas Puhr asked. “I smell two humans, a Twi’lek, and something else, some creature I’m not sure of.”

  “Too small to be hwumans,” Gondry insisted.

  “Children!” Khiss said. He began to growl deep in his throat. “Children!”

  “What?” Sebulba asked.

  “Yesterday I caught two slave children talking to the Ghostlings at the docking bay. I took some shots at them, but missed.”

  Sebulba gaped at his henchmen in surprise. Slave children had done this? Slaves had made a mess of Gardulla’s fortress? How interesting. The Hutts offered rewards for anyone caught helping to free their slaves. The reward for these children might be enough to pay Sebulba for his trouble.

  “If we catch them,” Sebulba said, “we’ll have to devise some special torture!”

  “Not if we catch them,” Djas Puhr said. “When.” The Sakiyan tracker picked up something small from the floor and held it for the others to inspect. It was a flake of green skin from a Twi’lek.

  “Run it through a scanner,” Sebulba said. “When we get a match, this one will lead us to the others.”

  “Did you girls hear the news?” Madam Vansitt asked that morning at her Charm Academy. “Some children tried to free some slaves last night at Gardulla’s palace. Many of the tunnels are in ruins.”

  “Who would do such a silly thing?” Ado Mura asked. She was a human girl with dark skin.

  Pala glanced this way and that. All twelve of the girls in Pala’s class looked at one another in astonishment. She forced her head-tails to be still, so that she wouldn’t betray her anxiety. She hoped that the others would imagine that they saw astonishment in her golden eyes. As a student, she was being trained to be a spy. But she’d never felt as much apprehension as she did right now.

  “I don’t know,” Madam Vansitt answered. “But they will not get away with it. They found a flake of skin at the scene. It was Twi’lek skin...”

  Perhaps she added that bit just as an item of curiosity. Four students in the room were Twi’lek. But few of Pala’s people lived on Tatooine, and fewer still were children. In fact, in the city of Mos Espa, most of those children were sitting in this room.

  She suspects o
ne of us, Pala realized. Madam Vansitt glanced around, letting her eyes rest on each girl in turn.

  They’d been learning various subtle means of sabotaging droids. Pala was sitting at a table with a droid’s positronic sensor array in her hand. She set the array down carefully, along with a spanner.

  Pala had spent the whole morning filled with anxiety. She’d been sold to Lord Tantos, one of the vilest pirates in the galaxy. That was enough to terrify her. But after her little escapade last night...

  Madam Vansitt glanced at Pala. She was a large woman who wore her lipstick just so. Her teeth were filed to sharp points, and when she smiled they showed like pearly daggers in her mouth. Now there was a hint of a smile in her eyes, but none showed on her bloodred lips.

  Pala was very careful not to reveal the turmoil building inside her.

  “You all know the punishment for such a crime,” Madam Vansitt said. “Death.”

  She said it as she let her glance rest on Pala.

  “It is a just punishment,” Madam Vansitt continued in her normal lecture tone. “As I’ve told you a thousand times, ‘Punishment for a crime is a price that only the stupid are forced to pay.’ If smart girls — my girls — commit a crime, they should never get caught!”

  The girls all began chattering innocently. Crimes were committed on Tatooine every day, and Madam Vansitt almost always took time to discuss them in her classes. If the crime went well, she would talk about why the plot had succeeded. If the crime went wrong, she’d criticize the performance and analyze why it had failed.

  “Girls,” Madam Vansitt suddenly said in a casual tone, “what was the first mistake that these children made?”

  Pala’s friend Gola raised a hand. “Four of them went to do one person’s job!”

  “That’s right,” Madam Vansitt agreed. “Never tell anyone about a crime you intend to commit. An accomplice will always inform on you. There are machines that can extract information from even the most unwilling prisoner.

  “In this case, one of the children left a flake of skin at the scene. The child may have brushed against a door, or torn it off in a scuffle. In any case, the damage is done. The scanner will identify the criminal by nightfall, and he or she will be in the hands of Gardulla. Once that happens, Gardulla will wring the truth from him or her, and everyone involved will pay the ultimate price.”

  Gola asked, “What do you think Gardulla will do?”

  Madam Vansitt frowned. “Ah, that’s so horrible, I dare not say...”

  “Oh, come on,” the children all begged. “Please?”

  “Well,” Madam Vansitt said, “the last time a thief tried to steal one of her slaves, Gardulla made a throw rug from his skin. She’ll want to outdo herself this time, though.”

  “Ew!” the girls all called out, making disgusted faces.

  Pala couldn’t help it. A shiver of terror swept through her, and her headtails began to lash.

  Madam Vansitt’s eyes flicked toward her.

  She knows, Pala thought. She knows, and she’s not going to say anything.

  Madam Vansitt suddenly smiled broadly, and her sharp teeth looked as if they would cut through her lips.

  “So,” she said, “let’s imagine for a moment that one of you had committed the crime and knew that you had only hours left to live. What would you do?”

  The girls all looked at one another. There was only one possible answer: escape. But slaves never talked about that in front of their owners.

  “I’d try to escape,” Pala said boldly.

  “Hmmm...” Madam Vansitt shook her head. “That’s not very practical when you have a transmitter hidden in you. All your owner has to do is push a button, and...”

  But in this case, Pala thought, my owner can’t push that button. By doing it, she’d blow my brains out — and that means that the other slaves who helped commit the crime might never be caught. No, she needs me alive.

  “Maybe you could hope to get sold to someone off-planet,” Pala suggested.

  She was thinking furiously. There would be a reward for her capture. But how much was Pala worth as a slave? Was it possible that Pala was worth more to Madam Vansitt alive than dead? Would Madam Vansitt go so far as to help Pala escape?

  Pala didn’t believe that.

  “Ah, that would be a nice fantasy,” Madam Vansitt said. “And in your case, it’s almost true. You’re to be sold tomorrow, and if Lord Tantos decided to pick you up a day early, then your life might be spared. But I doubt it. He has to do business with the Hutts, after all. And he wouldn’t want a slave that he couldn’t trust. No, he’d wring the information from you himself, and then turn you over to Gardulla, so that she might have her fun...”

  Pala kept thinking. She knows what I did, but she’s not doing anything about it. She could tell Gardulla herself, get in her good graces...

  “I’m afraid,” Madam Vansitt said, “that the slave who did this is as good as dead. It would be a shame if it were one of you. After all, here at Madam Vansitt’s Charm Academy, we have a high reputation to uphold. We have a tradition to maintain.”

  Reputation. That’s it! Pala realized. Madam Vansitt knew what she’d done, and as soon as the rest of the galaxy found out, it would tarnish her reputation. One of her girls, one of the slaves she was training as a spy, was stupid enough to get caught.

  That would hurt the academy. It would cost Madam Vansitt sales, hurt the school’s reputation for decades to come. It might even ruin her financially.

  But if that same slave managed to escape... the school’s reputation would be salvaged. Pala could almost imagine the things that would be said. “Did you hear about that slave girl Madam Vansitt was training? She broke into Gardulla’s fortress and stole some slaves right under her nose, then just disappeared. Madam Vansitt sure knows how to train them!”

  Madam Vansitt would lose a fortune if Pala died. She’d make a fortune if she escaped.

  But even if Madam Vansitt wanted Pala to escape, she couldn’t help. She’d get in too much trouble if anyone found out.

  So Pala had to do it on her own. She had to figure out how to get off Tatooine.

  And once she was off, she could never let herself be caught again.

  She pretended to work on the positronic sensor array, and thought frantically.

  She grew restless throughout the day, and hoped that Madam Vansitt would let her out of class. It wasn’t until midafternoon that her slave-master touched her on the shoulder and said, “Pala, are you all packed for tomorrow?”

  “Not all the way,” Pala lied.

  “Go make sure that you’ve packed up everything. Then say good-bye to your friends.”

  Pala bolted for her room, and grabbed her bags. Madam Vansitt’s last words kept echoing in her mind. “Say good-bye to your friends. Say goodbye.”

  Djas Puhr wasn’t content to wait for the results of the sequencer scan.

  Sakiyans are born to hunt. His eyes let him see his prey in total darkness. His keen ears let him hear the little gravel-maggots crawling under the hot stones of Tatooine. His sense of smell was so strong that few slaves ever eluded him for long.

  He was one of the best trackers in the galaxy.

  He’d caught the scent of two human children in the infirmary. If he ever smelled one of them again, he’d recognize the scent. The thrill of the hunt was upon him.

  He took along a seeker, a droid that could detect smells even better than he could. The black droid, which hovered on little repulsor-lift engines, moved easily through tight spots. With its powerful thrusters and little stabilizer fins, it could travel much faster than a man could run. It would be tireless in its hunt.

  In the depths of Gardulla’s palace, there was a counter where one of the children had picked up some transmitters — transmitters that had later been used to destroy dozens of tunnels and battle droids. Gardulla would be glad to learn who had done that.

  “Droid, can you smell the human who last touched this counter?” Djas Puhr ask
ed.

  “Yes,” the droid answered. “I recognize a scent: male, human, child.”

  “Precisely,” Djas Puhr said. “Let’s find him.”

  With that, the droid’s repulsor-lift engines began to whir, and it carefully spun, seeking its prey.

  “Bah,” Watto cursed at Anakin. “You’re no good to me this way! What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

  The Toydarian softly flapped around Anakin in the junkyard behind his shop, looking at the boy from all angles. Anakin was one of Watto’s most valuable slaves. He didn’t want Anakin to be sick.

  “Maybe,” Anakin said. He was worried and exhausted. He’d worked all day yesterday, and then he’d helped to rescue the Ghostling children on top of that. He hadn’t slept all night.

  Now he couldn’t concentrate on work. All morning he’d been looking through piles of junk for a new control cable shock absorber for Watto’s Podracer.

  “Don’t get sick on me,” Watto warned him. “Your work will just pile up.”

  “I — I couldn’t sleep last night,” Anakin confessed. “I found something at the Jawas’ market yesterday. I think it’s a box of some kind. I couldn’t get it open.”

  “Let me see, eh?” Watto demanded.

  Anakin hadn’t meant to show it to him. He was afraid that it might be valuable, and Watto would take it away. But he needed some excuse for being tired, and he really didn’t know how to open the box.

  He reached into the pocket of his robe, fished out the cube, and held it up for Watto’s inspection.

  The Toydarian landed and stood scrutinizing the cube for a moment. He studied the words written on each side of the cube. They were written in some language that Anakin had never seen. He looked at the images.

  “Hmmm...” Watto said, puzzled. “Old. Very old, I think. One, two thousand years.”

  He squinted at the thing from all angles. “Looks solid. What makes you think it’s a box, eh?”

  “The weight,” Anakin said. “It’s hollow. I’m sure there’s something inside.”

  “Eh, I don’t see any seams! It’s no box.” Watto picked up a powerful magnifying glass that he often used to inspect datachips. “Hmmm... maybe.”