Star Wars - Episode I Adventures 005 - The Ghostling Children Read online

  Pala shook her head no.

  “If I know Pala,” Dorn said, his long eyebrows raising up to emphasize his point, “she got sold for doing something right.”

  “But —” Kitster objected, “Madame Vansitt can’t sell her. She’s not old enough! She hasn’t finished her training —”

  “She's smarter than most beings,” Anakin pointed out. “Loads smarter. She probably doesn’t need more training.”

  Pala said, “Lord Tantos bought me. He wants to tutor me to be his private assassin.”

  “Oh no!” Amee said. Wald swallowed. A loud gulping noise escaped from his green throat.

  Anakin felt all the air go out of his lungs. This was bad news, the worst he had heard in a long time. Lord Tantos had a reputation for being ruthless.

  Anakin, Kitster, and Pala had been friends for a long time. Gardulla the Hutt had owned all three of them once. Even though they’d been split up, they’d always lived in Mos Espa. They’d always been able to see each other. Now Pala would leave Tatooine.

  "What can we do?” Kitster asked.

  “Us?” Dorn said sarcastically. “Nothing, of course. If she tries to run, or tries to fight, all Madame Vansitt has to do is push a button, and bang!” The whiskers on Dorn’s face and the hair around his ears all raised at once, doing a good imitation of a head exploding.

  Pala shook her head. Dorn was right. Slaves all had bomb transmitters hidden beneath their skin. If they disobeyed their masters or tried to escape, it would mean the end of their lives.

  Pala wasn’t the type to run from her problems, but Anakin was concerned about this. He knew that they’d have to come up with some sort of a plan. “You're afraid of Lord Tantos, aren’t you?”

  Pala nodded.

  Anakin wanted to do something, to save Pala if he could. “Can you show me Lord Tantos?” Anakin asked. If he could watch him for a little while, he might think of something.

  Pala nodded. “He’s in Derlag’s Cantina.”

  Somehow Anakin had suspected that Pala would know exactly where to find her new master. She really would make a good spy someday.

  “Maybe I’ll go have a look,” Anakin said.

  He turned to go, and Wald and Amee followed him. The crowd around the racers had thinned out a bit. But then Anakin remembered something. “Oh no,” he said. “I almost forgot to have a look in the crate!”

  Kitster nodded toward the large blue doors that led to the loading docks. “The droids took the crate in there.”

  The big doors were closed, but one little side door was still open. Still, getting through could be a problem.

  Gamorrean guards swaggered around, looking mean. The loading crew was still trying to lift the Podracer from its berth.

  “Uh, you can’t go in there,” Wald warned Anakin.

  “Sure he can,” Pala offered. “I’ll get him in there, if he’s got the nerve.”

  Five minutes later, Pala let out a bloodcurdling scream. “Aaaagh! Help! Help!”

  Anakin glanced across the far side of landing bay. Pala leaped up and down. Her headtails lashed like snakes as she screamed and clambered atop a pile of crates. Amee, Wald, and Dorn all started to scream, too.

  Burly guards raised their weapons and went running toward the children.

  Taking advantage of the diversion, Anakin and Kitster raced through the small open door and dashed around a corner onto the loading docks.

  They stood for a moment, afraid that they might hear the sound of the guards in their heavy armor behind them.

  Pala shouted hysterically, “I saw a womp rat! I saw a huge womp rat!” Amee and Dorn joined in. “It ran behind those crates!”

  The guards began laughing. There were plenty of womp rats around Mos Espa. But the Gamorrean guards weren’t scared, even though the rats ate meat and would often attack people. Gamorreans thought that womp rats tasted great!

  Anakin chanced a peek around the door. Sure enough, the guards were searching behind the crates for the womp rat.

  He and Kitster crept into the darkened docking bay. The room was big enough to hold thousands of crates from a deep-space freighter. But Sebulba had only left one huge black crate in the room.

  Anakin stared hard at it. There was something wrong with the crate. He could feel it, the way that he could feel a broken rotor in an engine, or corroded wires in a droid.

  He hurried close, and heard a mechanical whirring noise and a crackle from the crate. The crate had air holes in it, near the top.

  A sick feeling assailed him. He’d seen crates like this before. He’d heard the cries of slaves within, had smelled the sour odor of dirty bodies. He’d even been in one himself for awhile.

  He peeked into the hole. Inside, the crate shimmered and pulsed with electricity.

  “There’s an energy cage in there!” Kitster said.

  Anakin grunted. Energy cages were seldom used for transporting slaves. They were saved for dangerous criminals, or for creatures too monstrous and powerful to be shipped in a normal cage.

  At first Anakin couldn’t see much inside the cage. He squinted through an air hole. By the faint light he made out tiny shapes inside the black crate. There weren’t criminals inside, or monsters — only children, strange children with pale glowing skin, and bright eyes. They were beautiful, but frail and small, all lying on the floor of their cage. The children were covered with bruises.

  Anakin suddenly recalled that energy cages were also used when transporting the most valuable of slaves.

  “What are you?” Anakin whispered through an air hole.

  A small girl, as thin as a shimmer tree, looked up at him with pale eyes. She brushed back a lock of silver hair. She looked young, maybe eight years old. “We’re Ghostlings, from Datar. We’ve been kidnapped. Can you help us?”

  “Kidnapped?” Kitster asked. “You mean captured?”

  “Kidnapped — taken from our parents,” the girl said. “We want to go home. My name is Arawynne. Princess Arawynne.”

  Anakin shook his head. “Tatooine is your home now. You’re slaves.” It was best if new slaves accepted their lot in life.

  “But... that’s not right!” the girl said.

  Kitster said, “Right or wrong, if you’ve got the transmitter implants, you have to do what your master says. If you don’t, boom!” He made a noise like an explosion.

  “Implants?” the girl asked. “We don’t have any implants. We just got here. Please, help us. Open the crate!”

  Anakin looked at Kitster. Even if he could get the Ghostlings out of the crate, he doubted that they’d be able to run far. But then again, maybe they wouldn’t need to run far. If they didn’t have implants yet, all they needed to do was to get on an outbound ship. The masters wouldn’t be able to track them.

  Anakin didn’t have time to form a plan. A gruff voice behind him shouted, “Hey! What are you doing here?”

  He turned to see a Dug in the doorway.

  Anakin and Kitster jumped down from the loading dock and raced toward the spaceport exit. Blaster bolts ricocheted from the floor at their feet. They ran for their lives!

  Khiss the Dug watched the figures flee. He fanned the docking bay with his blaster, checking for more intruders.

  In seconds some Gamorrean guards reached his back, bearing clubs and crude blades. Khiss shouted at their commander, “You were supposed to be guarding this cargo bay!”

  The Gamorrean grunted, making it clear that he’d take care of it. His men fanned out into the cargo bay as they headed for the far exits. It was all rather comical to Khiss. Obviously, the intruders were long gone.

  Khiss strode over to the packing crate and looked in on the new slaves. The Ghostling children were alive. He quickly counted them off.

  “Good to see you all here,” Khiss said in his deep voice. The Ghostling children looked up at him. In unison they gasped in fear. His ugly face had a way of doing that to some folks.

  “Please, can you help us?” one of the children begged. />
  Khiss smiled cruelly. “Help? I think not. You’re worth a lot of money to my master. Ghostlings are hard to find.”

  “I didn’t do anything bad!” one little boy cried. “I want to go home.”

  “We didn’t take you because you’re bad,” Khiss said. “We took you because you are what you are.”

  Khiss worked for Sebulba. Khiss took orders for rare slaves of specific breeds.

  You want a Bothan slave? That will be ten thousand, and no questions asked. You want a Columi? A hundred thousand.

  Ghostlings... thirty thousand wupiupi each.

  After Khiss took the orders, Sebulba would use his tour of the galactic racing circuit as an excuse to stop at a world where the right kinds of slaves could be acquired.

  There, Gondry and Djas Puhr would capture the slaves, hiding them on Sebulba’s freighter.

  Customs officials rarely inspected his ship. Those who did were almost always most interested in getting his autograph, or taking a close look at his Podracer. They never bothered to check the crates full of “spare parts” in his hold.

  So it was easy for him to run his little slave-trading operation.

  Trading slaves was a nice way for Sebulba to make pocket money. Not that he needed it. Sebulba was rich. He won more races than anyone else in the galaxy — and made more in prize money in a single year than most people made in a lifetime.

  Still, Sebulba liked to keep his hand in all kinds of dirty enterprises. It kept his mind sharp.

  At that moment, the giant Gondry ducked under the doorway and entered the docking bay, with Djas Puhr at his back. Djas Puhr was wearing a stylish visor over his face to cut out the harsh light of Tatooine.

  “I smell blaster fire,” Djas Puhr said. “What’s going on? Why the security alert?”

  “Intruders,” Khiss said. “I found them messing with our slaves. I took a shot at them.”

  “What kind of intruders?” Djas Puhr asked.

  “Small creatures, wearing hooded robes,” Khiss reported. “They might have been Jawas.”

  Djas Puhr strode over to the cage, sniffed around it for a moment. “Not Jawas. Humans. I smell human children.”

  Djas Puhr looked into the cage through its air hole. “So, my Ghostling pets, what did the humans want? What were they after?”

  None of the Ghostlings would answer. They all looked away. Djas Puhr could tell by her thoughtful expression that the Ghostling princess, Arawynne, was trying to come up with a good lie.

  “Watch the cage well,” Djas Puhr warned Khiss. “I smell more than human children. I smell trouble!”

  Anakin raced through the streets of Tatooine with Kitster at his side. He watched over his back, afraid that the Dug would come after them, firing its blaster.

  They’d hardly gotten out of the spaceport when Watto came flying up the street. The Toydarian had an angry look on his face. “There you are! Where have you been? Slacking off with your friends? I’ve got a job for you.”

  “Uh, I was just trying to get a look at Sebulba’s ship,” Anakin said. “I had to sneak onto the docking bay to see his crate. One of his guards shot at me!”

  "Really?” Watto asked. He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Find anything interesting?”

  Anakin shook his head. “It was just some slaves that Sebulba captured.” He didn’t tell Watto that they were helpless children kidnapped from their homes, or that they were frail creatures covered in bruises. Watto wasn’t interested in that kind of thing.

  “Bah,” Watto said in a disgusted tone. “Look, I need you to go out to the Jundland Wastes and pick up a few things for me.” He handed Anakin a keypad with a long list on it. "You’ll do the bartering, then have the Jawas deliver the merchandise.” Watto smiled cleverly. The Jundland Wastes were full of Jawas who were in the middle of their annual rendezvous. They were buying and selling items scavenged from the desert. Anakin was much better at getting good deals with the Jawas than Watto was.

  Anakin looked helplessly at Kitster. Anakin wanted to free the Ghostling children, but he didn’t even have time to talk with his friend about it — or make a plan. Instead he had to go off on another chore.

  “It’s okay,” Kitster promised. “We can talk later.”

  Anakin took his sand skimmer to the Jundland Wastes. A sand skimmer was merely a board with a tiny repulsorlift engine on it. By pushing with one foot, Anakin could make the skimmer glide over the hardpan of the desert. By leaning left or right, he could steer.

  It was slower than a speeder, but far faster than walking. In a couple of hours he reached a towering rock called “The Market.” There he found hundreds of sandcrawlers parked in the great rock’s shadow.

  The Jawas had spread their materials all over the ground — rusted, wrecked spaceships and skimmers, droids that had been caught in sandstorms, pieces of dew harvesters. It was an endless array of junk, but Anakin managed to find the things he needed within an hour. He even bartered the Jawas down to a good price.

  As he did, he tried not to think too much about Pala being sold to the pirate lord, or of the Ghostling children caught in their energy cage.

  He’d been longing for his own freedom for years, and the freedom of his mother. But like most slaves, freedom wasn’t actually a goal that he could work for.

  As the afternoon wore on, Anakin’s tongue began to swell in his throat. The ride on his sand skimmer had been hot and tiring. He wished that he’d stopped at Jira’s stand for a cool drink before he left Mos Espa.

  He decided to wait in the shade until nightfall before trying to make the trip back to town. He desperately needed a drink, but he didn’t dare buy one out here. Watto had given him a little money for some food, and the Jawas had plenty of things available — but all at outrageous prices.

  Though he was hungry and thirsty, he settled for a hubba gourd. That way, he would have enough spare change to buy a little present for Pala before she left the planet.

  The exterior of the hubba gourd was tough as stone, and covered with shiny crystals that reflected the sunlight. He broke the gourd open with a sharp rock to get at the pale, spongy fruit. It tasted bitter, but put a little food in his belly and satisfied his thirst.

  After he finished eating, he wandered through the maze of broken droids and harvesters, looking for a present for Pala — something special. He found an old black jinapur root that was smoothed and polished by the desert sands, and bought it. He immediately began carving a good-luck charm from it as he wandered through the mazes of junk, and he kept his eye out for a little something more — maybe a metal chain to hang it from, or a cheap stone to set into it.

  Twice he came back to one particular Jawa who had a huge Radon Ulzer engine that was dented and rusted.

  Anakin looked it over and felt sure he could make it run. He’d been building his own Podracer for years from scraps he’d gathered, but he didn’t have any engines.

  The Radon-Ulzer would have worked, but the Jawa insisted on selling it for cash. Anakin didn’t have that kind of money.

  As the suns began to set, Anakin felt bleak and defeated. He picked up his sand skimmer and began to make his way through the crowds of Jawas, through islands of junk and debris.

  Then, that something special he’d been looking for finally caught his eye.

  He stopped at a pile where an old Jawa silently leaned on a crooked stick. Its gloves were wrapped around the staff.

  At its feet was an odd assortment of items — shiny blue stones from the edge of the Dune Sea, polished bones of Krayt dragons, a rope woven from bark. Among some pieces from old blasters Anakin noticed a very strange cube that looked to be far, far older than any piece of equipment that Anakin had ever seen.

  He picked it up. The cube was small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, like a large dice. Intricate designs showed on its face, but the designs were so worn that they could hardly be recognized.

  On one side of the cube, it looked like a picture of two Jedi Knights, fighting wit
h lightsabers.

  Another side of the cube showed a volcano. A third side was so worn that he couldn’t tell if it had ever had a picture. A fourth side revealed a star map, with instructions on how to land on a certain moon. The fifth side was also worn smooth. A last side showed a lamp with a knife blade through it, the symbol of forbidden knowledge. All along every corner of the cube was writing in some language that he couldn’t decipher.

  Anakin imagined that tens of thousands of people must have touched this cube over hundreds or thousands of years.

  He hefted the cube, thinking that it was some sort of storage container. But it was so light that it had to be empty.

  Yet, when he squinted, he could feel... well, there was something inside. Something... evil.

  The cube had no latches on the outside, no locks or hinges that he could see. Anakin could almost imagine that the cube wasn’t a box at all, but some component to a machine whose purpose was forgotten ages and ages past.

  “For you, very cheap,” the old Jawa said to Anakin.

  “What?” Anakin asked haltingly. The Jawan language was very hard to understand.

  “Very cheap.”

  “But I don’t want it,” Anakin said. “I was just looking.” He glanced toward home. It was getting late.

  “Three wupiupi,” the Jawa offered, twisting the knob of his cane. It was exactly the amount that Anakin had in his pocket.

  “No,” Anakin said. “I don’t even know what it is.”

  “Three wupiupi is a small price to pay for knowledge,” the old Jawa said. Under his gray-black hood, the Jawa’s eyes gleamed.

  “No,” Anakin said. He started to put the cube down, but couldn’t. What if it really was evil? What if it was dangerous — like a bomb or something? By just leaving it, he could be setting a trap for some unsuspecting person. It really was better to take the thing. Maybe Watto would know what it was.

  In the deepening shadows, he took out his last three credits and handed them over to the Jawa.

  On his way home, Anakin had nothing but starlight for company. He tried to open the cube a dozen different ways. He pushed on pressure points and threw it against rocks.