Free Star Wars: The Last of the Jedi, Volume 3 by Jude Watson Page A

the time he’d started to run, Keets was already there.
    He couldn’t be there for him every time. Or so he tried to tell himself.
    He didn’t know where his responsibility to the boy began or ended. He knew, of course, that Trever was hardly as self-sufficient as he professed to be. Even though the boy had lived on his
own for years, he occasionally needed guidance, someone to watch over him.
    Was that his job?
    If he were still a Jedi, if the galaxy hadn’t changed, he’d be old enough to have a Padawan now. But Trever wasn’t his Padawan. Ferus didn’t have the connection with him
that a Master Jedi would. He didn’t have the link that he’d had with Siri. He lost track of him occasionally. And he couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling.
    It was better that they part, that he find a haven for Trever so he could grow up safe and secure. Even loved, if that were possible.
    Because Ferus would just keep burying them deeper into complications and danger. It wasn’t fair to Trever. Today it had been a ten-foot duracrete slug. But what would tomorrow bring, and
the day after that?
    With those disquieting thoughts, Ferus felt himself slipping toward sleep. The soft breathing in the room told him that the others had succumbed, despite the hard, flat beds.
    Suddenly he heard a noise. Ferus put his hand on his lightsaber, but soon saw it was Trever, crawling toward him quietly so as not to awaken the others.
    He stopped by the head of the sleep couch, his eyes gleaming.
    “I know where to find Solace,” he said.

“It was when the slug started to pull me down—”
    “Trever, I’m sorry I—”
    “Enough with the guilt wallow, Feri-Wan—I’m trying to tell you something. I dropped an alpha charge and when it went off, the light showed me something. More than a ten-foot
predator chewing on my ankle, I mean. There’s something down there.”
    “Something?”
    “Something more than a duracrete slug nest. I was thinking about it. There was a glint...like there was metal or something, or water. I’m not sure, but it was like there was...space.
Like a room. Or something. It’s just that...remember when some of the rumors said
below
the crust?”
    Ferus didn’t have to ask if Trever was sure. He trusted this boy’s perceptions.
    “I’ll wake the others. Let’s go.”
    It was now what many called the empty hours. Too late for even those who walked these dangerous areas at night, too early for those who rose before dawn. They kept close
together as they walked.
    Trever led a yawning Keets and the others to the spot where the duracrete slug had tried to pull him through the crack. Ferus leaned over and shined a glowlight down into the space. He
couldn’t tell, but he thought Trever was right—there
was
something down there.
    “I think I can fit,” Ferus said. “Let me go down, and if I see anything, I’ll call up.”
    Keets leaned against a column and yawned. “Take your time.”
    Ferus eased into the opening. There was a crumbling half-wall once he got below, he saw. It was deeply gouged with the tracks of a slug, but that gave him toeholds and handholds. To his
surprise, Trever began to climb down after him.
    “Stay up there,” Ferus told him.
    “No way. I found this place, I’m coming.”
    Ferus knew it would be a waste of breath to argue. He continued to climb down slowly. He jumped the last few meters. His boots hit solid ground. Trever jumped next to him a moment later. He held
a glow rod over his head for illumination.
    Ferus could see now that they were in a tunnel. Gigantic blocks of stone formed the walls and ceiling. The floor was deeply grooved and he could see the remnants of machinery buried in the
tracks.
    “That’s what you saw glinting,” he told Trever. “This must have been some kind of transportation system.”
    He shouted up to the others that the way was clear, and they began to climb down, one after the other.
    Hume avoided a steaming yellow pool that released