Star Wars - 215 - Jedi Prince 06 - Prophets of the Dark Side Read Free

I’m sure Dee-Jay could help us locate the file that has it."
    "It sounds to me as if you and Ken should take another journey back to the Lost City," Leia said.
    Suddenly they were distracted by the image on the viewing screen. Triclops was trembling, reacting to a pain in his head. Luke and Leia watched the screen as Triclops reached up to press his scarred temples. Then Triclops pushed two of his fingers into the back of his mouth, pressing on his upper molar.
    Just then Triclops dropped to the floor and stopped moving. Luke and Leia exchanged a concerned glance. For a moment, they wondered whether Triclops was dead, or if he was just unconscious.

CHAPTER 2
    Return to the Lost City
    Far away on the planet Tatooine, a huge, sluglike old Hutt crawled slowly like a giant worm across the baking sands. His big, yellow, reptilian eyes scanned the horizon, but so far he had seen nothing but sandstorms and mirages.
    Zorba the Hutt, whose braided white hair and beard were now covered with sand, had been squirming through the desert for several days, surviving without food or water, as Hutts have been known to do. "The grand moffs thought they’d get rid of me by tossing me into the Great Pit of Carkoon," he said to himself aloud, "but no one can outsmart a Hutt! And no one can digest a Hutt, either! I’ll bet the Sarlacc’s been nauseous for three days since he spit me out --a-haw-haw-haw . . . !"
    Just then Zorba spied what he had been waiting to see. Off on the horizon, a metallic, boxlike shape was slowly rising from behind a distant sand dune. The object grew taller, until at last Zorba could see it rolling along on treads.
    A sandcrawler!
    "Surely my friends, the jawas, will give me a ride to the Mos Eisley spaceport!" Zorba said to himself. Though Zorba called the jawas his "friends," the fast-talking desert traders known as the jawas despised all Hutts-especially Zorba. But Zorba was prepared to offer them a deal they couldn’t refuse-a hundred slightly used Spin-and-Win machines from the Holiday Towers Hotel and Casino that Zorba owned back in Cloud City on the planet Bespin. Perhaps the machines could be resold by the jawas or installed in their sandcrawlers for entertainment.
    "Once I get to Mos Eisley," Zorba continued, "I’ll find a fearless cargo pilot willing to take me deep into the Null Zone, all the way to Space Station Scardia to see Kadann and his Prophets of the Dark Side. Just wait until the grand moffs see what I have in store for them. A-haw-haw-haw-haw-hawwwww . . . !"
    Ken, the only human ever to have lived with the caretaker droids of the Lost City, was sure that he and Luke were getting closer to their destination. Ken had only departed from the Lost City on three occasions in his life: first when he tried to run away from home, then when he left in search of his lost computer notebook, and a third time after he had taken Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Chewbacca to the Lost City. On that last journey, Ken and Luke had taken special care to recall all the features of the twisting, weaving route through the heart of the rain forest-a path that eventually led to a hidden green round marble wall with a tubular transport in its center. However, the foliage of the forest had grown thicker since they had last been there together, and it was difficult to be certain they were going the right way.
    Ken’s pulse quickened as he thought about riding in the tubular transport, designed to travel down through miles of Yavin Four moonrock to reach the Lost City of the Jedi. The ancient Jedi Knights had constructed their secret hideaway in a buried cavern. That hideaway, the Alliance discovered, was the repository of Jedi files about the history of the galaxy and all its worlds.
    Many explorers had searched for that tubular transport, but none of them had ever found it on their own. And Ken doubted that any ever would, because the rain forest in that region of Yavin Four was too dense, in spite of Trioculus’s