[Galaxy Of Fear] - 06

CHAPTER 1


“There’s another one,” Tash Arranda said with a tremor in her voice.

She pointed at a control panel in the cockpit of the Shroud. The scanner registered a tiny blip hovering just at the edge of their sensor range.

On her left, her brother Zak held his breath. On her right, her uncle Hoole sat as still as stone. Only his tight grip on the Shroud’s guidance control stick revealed his tension.

All three of them knew what that blip represented-an Imperial Star Destroyer, bristling with weapons. It was like an enormous shark, hunting through the vast ocean of space.

It was hunting for them.

Tash let her breath out slowly. Only the Shroud’s emergency lights were running, but even in their dim glow she could see her breath in the cold air of the Shroud’s cockpit. Twenty minutes before, Hoole had deactivated almost all of the ship’s power systems, and he had turned the life support down to a bare minimum.

“I’m freezing,” Tash muttered. “Can’t we turn the heat up a little?”

“Well, it’s warmer in an Imperial detention center,” Zak replied. “Which is where we’ll find ourselves if we power up the systems and they detect us.”

“Here it comes,” Hoole said flatly.

They watched as the blip changed course, growing larger as it headed straight for them.

“Do they see us?” Zak asked in a sharp whisper.

“I don’t know,” Hoole replied.

“Maybe we should make a break for it.”

“No, it’s too late,” Hoole said. “We are under their guns. We will just have to wait it out.”

Tash looked at her uncle. He stared stonily at the ship’s instruments. For once, she admired his inhuman ability to stay levelheaded. Hoole was a Shi’ido and, unlike his human niece and nephew, he seemed able to disconnect his emotions from his surroundings. His face rarely changed expression.

The blip grew so large that it seemed to blot out the scanning screen. Tash and Zak felt the Shroud begin to shake around them.

Zak, Tash, their uncle Hoole, and his droid, D-V9, had been on the run from Imperial forces for two days, ever since they had fled from the space station Nespis 8 and Borborygmus Gog.

Tash shivered when she remembered Nespis 8 and Gog. Gog was a Shi’ido, like Uncle Hoole, and could change his form at will. He was also an Imperial scientist. By shapeshifting into disguise, Gog had been able to lure Tash, Zak, and Hoole to Nespis 8. And when the evil scientist realized he could not use Tash’s sensitivity to the Force in his experiments, he had almost killed her. But Gog, who had come so close to destroying them all, had fallen to his own death down a deep shaft in the space station.

Unfortunately, their troubles had not ended with Gog’s death. The scientist had created Project Starscream for the Empire, and the Emperor’s most powerful servant had come to Nespis 8 to investigate. Tash, Zak, Hoole, and Deevee had escaped Nespis 8 just before the arrival of Darth Vader.

Vader. The thought of him made Tash’s skin crawl. He was the Dark Lord of the Sith, a master of the dark side of the Force and, next to the Emperor, the most powerful man in the galaxy. He was far more terrifying than Gog. They said Vader could kill people with a single thought. They also said that, rather than kill, the Dark Lord preferred to rule through two devices: torture and terror. None of them wanted to imagine what horrors would await them in one of Vader’s prison cells.

In the viewport, the two Arrandas saw space rocks of various sizes zip by. Hoole had attempted to hide their ship from the Imperials by flying through a small asteroid belt and landing the Shroud on an asteroid twice its size.

Suddenly, Zak cried out. “It’s going to pass right over!”

A giant field of white had settled over their ship, blotting out the stars. They were looking at the underbelly of an Imperial Star Destroyer. The floating fortress was gigantic. Tash saw a squad of Imperial TIE fighters buzz like angry flies around the massive cruiser’s docking port. Tash and Zak knew that sensor beams were shooting from the Star Destroyer, searching for any sign of them. But because Hoole had cut off all the Shroud’s power, their ship was as dead as the asteroid on which it floated. The Imperial sensor beams passed over it without stopping.

The energy put out by the Star Destroyer’s enormous engines shook the entire asteroid upon which they sat. The Shroud trembled like a leaf on a tree. For a moment Zak thought the energy waves would tear the ship apart. But a moment later, the giant battleship had passed on. Zak and Tash sighed and looked at each other. They were safe.

“I am going to power up the systems so that we can depart,” Uncle Hoole said. “Please see how Deevee’s repairs are coming along.”