Lando chuckled. "Not exactly, but close. I was hoping to borrow this
fine crew of young people to visit the place with me before I open it
to the public. Give me their ideas and opinions, maybe even
doublecheck things to make sure there aren't any potential hazards our
engineers have overlooked.
"See, my buddy Cojahn has two daughters, a twelve-year-old and a
five-year-old, but I need someone a little older to let me know what
works for them and what doesn't. Your young Jedi Knights here could
think of it as a vacation, and it'll help me out as well." He winked
at Luke. "I promise not to let anyone get kidnapped this time."
The Jedi Master narrowed his eyes thoughtfully and then nodded.
"Yes. I think these students could benefit from an opportunity like
that." Lowie gave an exultant bellow.
"Good. We'd love to!" Jaina said.
"We would be honored to assist." Tenel Ka nodded; her red-gold warrior
braids swung around her serious face. "It will be ... fun."
"Oh, indeed, Master Lando! I should be most gratified if you'd accept
my services as well."
Lando gave a small bow. "You bet, Em Teedee. You can never have
enough competent droids around on a project like this. I wouldn't
think of leaving you behind."
"Hey, speaking of being left behind," Jacen said, "we've got a new
friend staying here with us at the Jedi academy. Would you mind if she
came along? She's only been here for a few weeks-she's a former
smuggler-but she's having kind of a rough time and I think she could
use a change of scenery."
"A former smuggler? Sure, bring her along," Lando said with a bright
smile. "She sounds like my kind of young lady."
Anja Gallandro finished packing for the trip to Bespin in less than
five minutes. Slinging her satchel of belongings over one
shoulder-including the few special items she wanted no one to know
about-she headed down the temple's ancient stone corridor toward the
adjoining quarters occupied by the Solo twins.
She reached up to tighten the leather headband that held her flowing
hair in check, though just barely enough to keep it out of her face.
Anja sighed as she thought of Jacen and Jaina. Everyone in the Solo
family seemed to have an effect on her life, and she found it both
irritating and unnerving.
First, Han Solo had murdered her father; then, when Anja had confronted
him after a lifetime of planning the moment, he had denied it, and
somehow thwarted all of her attempts to get revenge. Finally, telling
herself it would be the easiest way to hurt Han Solo, she had followed
his children to Yavin 4, pretending to be their friend. She had
believed that as she got to know the twins better, their true
characters would emerge, and she would find ample reason (and
opportunity) to inflict some sort of punishment on them. But that
hadn't turned out as she'd expected either.
Instead of proving heartless, self-centered, and prideful as she had
believed they would be, Jacen, Jaina, and their friends at the Jedi
academy had shown themselves to be helpful, patient, and honorable-even
in the face of her most withering sarcasm. To make matters worse,
Jacen had turned out to have an endearing love for animals and a
quirky, silly sense of humor that Anja had come to find more and more
pleasant as the days passed.
She stamped her foot in annoyance outside the door to Jacen's
chambers.
How could this be happening? She wanted to hate these young Jedi
Knights, wanted to find them despicable in every way. Their talk about
trusting in the Force was a bunch of nonsense. They were trying to
change her with their talk of control and inner calm. So why didn't
she despise them?
Anja couldn't allow herself to become fond of these "friends," she
reminded herself She needed to get revenge for the death of her father,
the great Gallandro. She could never allow herself to trust a ... a
Solo.
They would probably show their true colors sometime soon.
Perhaps if she tried goading them a bit more ...
Squaring her shoulders, Anja raised one fist to knock on Jace's door.
But before she could do so, Jaina emerged from the next room over.
"All ready for Cloud City, I see," Jaina observed. "Me too." She
patted the small duffel she carried. "How about Jacen?"
"I was about to check," Anja replied in as cold a voice as she could
muster. "Isn't it obvious?"
Jaina's brandy-brown eyes blinked at Anja's rudeness, but then she
shrugged it off and gave a hesitant smile. "Guess I should have
figured that out, huh?" Then she stepped forward, tapped once lightly
on the door, and poked her head in without waiting for an answer.
Anja could see past Jaina into the room to where the tousle-haired
young man stood in front of a wall filled with cages and aquariums. A
ball of bright blue fluff sat on his shoulder.
He turned around and waved his sister and Anja inside. His face lit
with a quick smile. "Hey, I'm almost done here. I was just setting
the timers on those new feeding and exercise monitors you designed,
Jaina.
Raynar said he'd look in on my menagerie, just in case, and Uncle Luke
even offered to take care of Nicta," he said, pointing to the feathery
blue ball perched on his shoulder.
"We shouldn't keep Calrissian waiting," Anja said gruffly, impatiently,
though she wasn't the least bit eager to go.
A rich chuckle came from the doorway. "No, it doesn't pay to keep me
waiting-unless, of course, you're a beautiful young lady."
Anja turned to look at the speaker and saw in the arched doorway a
dashingly handsome man with dark features and a dazzling white smile.
"Well, hello.... What have we here?" the man said, striding into the
room. "Two beautiful young ladies?" He took Anja's hand, bowed, and
kissed it lightly. "It's a pleasure to meet you." He held her hand in
his and favored her with a brilliant smile.
She sucked in a quick breath. This man was too smooth and hand some
for his own good. And she wasn't at all pleased that she felt a slight
flush of pleasure to be the center of his attention. From the corner
of her eye she saw Jaina clap a hand over her mouth to suppress a
giggle.
"Ummm, Lando Calrissian, this is Anja Gallandro," Jacen said, flushing
as well. "Anja, meet Lando Calrissian, one of my father's oldest and
best friends. Lando used to be a pretty big gambler, and he's a former
smuggler, too."
At these words Anja stiffened and snatched her hand from Calrissian's
grasp. Her gaze turned frosty, and her lip curled back in an
involuntary sneer. "What a shame. I kind of like smugglers. But I've
always found people who call themselves tonner smugglers to be sort of
... self-righteous."
Rather than being offended, as Anja had hoped, Lando Calrissian raised
his eyebrows as if he'd found her statement interesting. "Well, we'll
just have to see if we can't correct that impression," he said. "I'll
wait for you three down at the Lady L
uck. The others are already
there."
He gave an enigmatic nod and left the room with a swirl of his cape.
As Anja turned back toward the twins, she saw disapproval in Jaina's
brandy-brown eyes.
"That was pretty rude."
Anja blinked at her with feigned innocence. "Oh, really? Was it?"
Tension crackled in the air between them until Jacen intervened.
"Lando has been like an uncle to us since we were born. He's risked
his life more than once for every member of our family. I know it's
hard for you to trust people, Anja, but Lando's one of the best. Give
him a chance."
Jaina pointed out, "After all, he was nice enough to invite you along
to Bespin, even though he doesn't know you."
Anja nodded and the tension broke. "Sure. I'll give him a chance."
"Just try to relax-and try not to insult anyone," Jacen added.
Jaina grinned the lopsided grin that made her look like her father, Han
Solo. "Fortunately for you, Lando Calrissian doesn't insult too
easily."
Jaina nodded to Lando from the copilot's position in the Lady Luck.
"Ready for jump to hyperspace."
"Hang on, everybody," Lando said. He flipped a few switches and the
twinkling lights outside the front viewport stretched into brilliant
starlines around them.
"Too bad we couldn't have brought the Rock Dragon," Jaina said.
"Or the Lightning Rod," Zekk spoke up from behind her in the crew
cabin.
Lowie gave a noncommittal rumble.
"Come on, now," Lando said, "we didn't need to bring a whole fleet! "
"It was unnecessary," Tenel Ka agreed.
"Indeed, and the Lady Luck is certainly quite a fine ship," Em Teedee
said.
"And she's big enough for a crew twice this size. Anyhow, I promised
your families and Luke that I'd keep an eye on all of you. You know,
not let anything happen. How could I do that if you were off in some
other ship?" Lando turned his most charming smile on Jaina.
"Besides, don't tell me it's a hardship to practice your copiloting
skills in the Lady Luck."
Jaina laughed. "No, I enjoy flying more than I could possibly enjoy
any ride in your new amusement park, and you know it."
Lando's face shone with childish excitement. "I don't know about
that.
SkyCenter Galleria is fantastic. I can't wait to show it to you. My
friend Cojahn and I are sparing no expense in making it the best
entertainment complex in the galaxy. If you can't find something to
enjoy in our galleria, you're probably dead. Cojahn's putting
everything into it.
He spends every waking hour there. He takes his wife and daughters
with him at least once a week just to show them the progress."
"You said he's another former smuggler?" Anja asked from the back of
the cockpit. "I suppose that means he's respectable, too?"
"He had a pretty tough time of it up until the past few years, but
things have really turned around for him. This is his biggest break.
I tell you, since we started working on this new project I've never
seen him so happy." He grinned over his shoulder. "You'll like him.
He's a nice guy ... like me."
The white metropolis was like an island in the sky, with towers and
turrets and transparisteel windows that gleamed in the light from
Bespin's brilliant sun. All around them the soup of clouds swirled in
a rainbow of pinks and oranges from airborne micro-algae and plankton
that lived on the winds. A flurry of tiny ships circled like moths
around the lights of the docking bays.
"Dazzling," Zekk said.
"I never get tired of looking at her," Lando said quietly.
Lowie gave an enthusiastic rumble as the Lady Luck touched down on a
landing platform on the outskirts of Cloud City. "Goodness, yes!"
Em Teedee agreed. "It is rather high, isn't it?"
Cloud City's altitude suited Lowie just fine. Being so high reminded
him of the great wroshyr trees on his home planet of Kashyyyk. It gave
him a feeling of home and safety. He was always most comfortable when
he was up high, and the young Wookiee couldn't wait to get out and
explore, maybe climb some of the highest towers or just hang out on
some of the external hover-scaffolding.
With Em Teedee clipped firmly to his syren-fiber belt, Lowie was the
first to bound down the Lady Luck's landing ramp. Eager to see the
view, Lowie strode to the edge of the landing platform to get a better
look at the layered clouds below.
Aside from the floating cities, Tibanna gas refineries, and storage
tanks that drifted in Bespin's atmosphere, the planet had no habitable
landmasses. The view was exhilarating, and Lowie gave a contented
sigh. It was so high up! His friends from the Jedi academy joined
him.
"Ah," Tenel Ka said. "Aha. An interesting sensation."
Zekk said, "Whoa-and I thought the trees you liked to climb were
high!"
He gave Lowie an admiring look and stepped back from the edge of the
platform. "I sure wouldn't want to fall."
"Hey, they've got some neat indigenous animals," Jacen said, pointing
at a flock of small creatures flying below them in the clouds.
"Bespin has life-forms different from any place else in the galaxy."
Anja seemed completely at ease with the height and moved up close
beside Lowie at the edge of the platform, standing with one hand cocked
on her hip. "Nice view," she commented.
As Lando and Jaina emerged after shutting down the Lady Luck's systems,
a small and somber group of Exex, the city officials, marched across
the docking platform toward the space yacht. At first Lowie thought it
might be a small committee to welcome home the former
Baron-Administrator of Cloud City-but he could sense immediately that
something was wrong.
Lando raised a hand in greeting. "Good to be back. How ya doing?" He
looked at them, perplexed. "This is all the fanfare you could
manage?"
But the tiny group of officials converged around Lando and all began
speaking at once in hushed voices.
"What? Wait a minute, now! One at a time." Lowie, hearing Lando's
voice rise in alarm, moved closer so he could hear. His sensitive
Wookiee ears picked up the words, and he froze as one of the female
officials spoke in a low firm voice.
"It's true, sir. I saw him fall myself. The Wing Guard has ruled it a
suicide. Your partner Cojahn is dead."
When the young Jedi Knights accompanied Lando into the sprawling
construction site of his high-tech entertainment complex, Jaina looked
around in wnazement.
Once completed, the amusement park would be an imaginary city within
the floating city, with rides, games, food booths, themed "shopping
environments," and live-action shows. SkyCenter Galleria would be a
fabulous vacation spot for sentient creatures of all ages. There was
no doubt that the high-altitude entertainment center offered fun for
everyone.
But the sad news about Cojahn had not left Lando and the young Jedi
Knights much in the mood for fun.
Land
o held a small datapad that projected a holographic model of the
SkyCenter Galleria plans, but he rarely consulted the schematics as he
walked along through the bustling, confusing construction site. Since
learningabout the death of his friend and partner, Cloud City's former
Baron-Administrator seemed to lack enthusiasm for the promising
investment.
Lando used his passcard to enter the site's work areas, and his guests
followed him, curious but also wary around the sparking laser welders
and the groaning repulser-cranes. Temporary fabric walls and
force-field windows protected the structures and circuitry from the
elements.
"Pretty different from when the New Republic engineers rebuilt the
Great Temple at the Jedi academy," Jaina said.
"This is just a bit more modern than a four-thousand-year-old pyramid
in the jungles," Lando pointed out.
Tenel Ka peered upward at the girders and levitating scaffolds that
Ugnaught construction workers were using to build the upper gondolas
and sweeping tracks of amusement rides. "Impressive," she said.
"D'you think we could have fun here?" Jacen asked her. "When it's all
done, I mean."
Under A Black Sun Trilogy Page 19
