The Ruins of Dantooine: Star Wars
Author: Voronica Whitney-Robinson
Date: 2000-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Star Wars; Science Fiction; Fiction; War; Fantasy; Space Opera; Science Fiction Fantasy; Adult Fiction; Games
Description: STAR WARS AN EMPIRE DIVIDED! It is a time of great turmoil. The oppressive Empire is close to seizing complete control of the galaxy. The ragtag guerrilla army of the Rebel Alliance fights on, striking wherever it can, but now something has come to light that could spell certain doom. Hidden in the Jedi ruins of Dantooine is a Holocron containing a list of high-level Rebel sympathizers. If that list were to fall into the hands of Darth Vader, the Rebel Alliance would lose its most valued support—and possibly the war itself. As an Imperial bio-engineer who frequently visits other worlds, Dusque
Publisher: LucasBooks
Rights: Copyright © 2004 by Lucasfilm Ltd

Star Wars Galaxies: The Ruins of Dantooine is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A Del Rey® Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2004 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or TM where indicated.
All rights reserved. Used under authorization.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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eISBN: 978-0-307-54778-1
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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen

Dedication

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Other Books by This Author

Introduction to the Star Wars Expanded Universe

Excerpt from Star Wars: The Old Republic: Deceived

Introduction to the Old Republic Era

Excerpt from Star Wars: Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

Introduction to the Rise of the Empire Era

Excerpt from Star Wars: Death Troopers

Introduction to the Rebellion Era

Excerpt from Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor

Introduction to the New Republic Era

Excerpt from Star Wars: X-Wing: Rogue Squadron

Introduction to the New Jedi Order Era

Excerpt from Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime

Introduction to the Legacy Era

Excerpt from Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Betrayal

Excerpt from Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Outcast

Star Wars Legends Novels Timeline

PROLOGUE

A light rain misted the hillside. Other than that slight patter, the only sound disturbing the evening was the sudden cry of the peko peko. The large, blue-skinned reptavian’s pitiful squawk carried across the still lake before stopping as suddenly as it had begun.

“The tusk-cats must be hunting,” Inquisitor Loam Redge said quietly to himself, smiling at the idea of the sleek, fawn-colored beasts circling the Retreat. Peko pekos weren’t the only thing that the large predators could kill; simply the opening course.

The cloaked human stood alone on the stone balcony overlooking the placid lake and the hills beyond. For the last few moments, he had watched the final glow of the setting sun turn the world a brief, shimmering pink. As soon as the molten ball had disappeared, though, the sky had turned several shades of gray, from dirty white to steel. The colors layered themselves one on top of the other, so it was impossible to discern where one began and another ended. And then the rains had come.

With a parting glance toward the twinkling lights of Moenia off to the east, the Inquisitor returned inside, where he brushed at his cloaks furiously, as though their exposure to the abrupt shower had somehow sullied them. He smoothed back his rich brown hair and stood with his spine at ramrod attention.

No one knew how old the Inquisitor was, and Redge preferred it remain that way. There were precious few secrets in the Empire, and he liked to keep as many as he could.

Inquisitor Loam Redge was one of those rare individuals who derived great pleasure from his work. Finding those sensitive to the Force, torturing them, and destroying them were his topmost priorities, and they also gave him the greatest joy. He was very good at his vocation, and he always looked as though he was enjoying a private joke when he was at his busiest. This twisted happiness had, over time, etched its mark on his face in the form of the faintest crinkles near the outer edges of his dirt-colored eyes. Other than that, his face was mostly unlined. He might have been thirty, he might have been fifty.

When he was satisfied that he looked properly groomed, Inquisitor Redge moved out into the hallway. He padded silently across the plush, goldtrimmed maroon carpeting that lined the walkway. It was so thick, he barely heard the MSE-6 that almost scurried past his feet. The tiny, black, rectangular droids littered the Emperor’s Retreat, as they did so many of the Imperial starships and ground installations throughout the galaxy. When the struggling company Rebaxan Columni had found itself facing imminent bankruptcy, it had offered the Empire a cut-rate deal on millions of them. Because the navy was extremely short on droids, it accepted. Now the Empire was crawling with the little automatons.

The small droid stopped a few feet beyond the Inquisitor and extended its heavy manipulator arm, clutching a rag. It scrubbed feverishly at some unseen smudge on the tan marble wall. Redge studied the droid for a moment as it buffed the already highly polished surface before slightly raising his cloaks up and moving past it. He found that the mechanism reminded him vaguely of a type of small vermin, and it disturbed him slightly.

There was no one else in the corridor, and he continued to revel in the quiet luxury of Emperor Palpatine’s Retreat on Naboo. The Emperor’s homeworld was calmly green, with areas of dense swamps broken up by rolling plains and verdant hills. Redge found the view soothing and knew that Emperor Palpatine had chosen the location for just that effect, not because of any maudlin sense of homeworld loyalty. While he had traveled to Theed, Moenia, Kaadara, Dee’ja Peak, and most of the smaller cities on the relatively peaceful planet, Inquisitor Redge had not yet ventured into the streams and canals that honeycombed the interior core of the planet. He had heard from a reliable source that it was possible for one to travel throughout the whole of Naboo and never once stick a head above ground. At some point, he would have to explore the passageways himself, or send a trusted associate in his place. There was no way of knowing just what or who might be hiding down there. Naboo might be a haven not just for artists and architects, but for other, less desirable sorts as well.

Since establishing the Retreat, the Emperor had had little trouble planetside and seen no sign of the Rebellion, as far as Redge was aware. And Redge made it his business to know. Queen Kylantha had pledged and proven her loyalty many times over to Palpatine. But it irked the Inquisitor that she had not bothered to dissolve the Naboo Royal Advisory Council or to impose any real changes on the democratic structure of the government. If she were truly that loyal, then why hadn’t she made the simple and overt gesture of disbanding the mock administration? Was it simply for her vanity, so that she could retain her empty title, or was there more to it? These questions nagged at the Inquisitor during the darkest hours of the night.

Rounding a corner, Redge arrived at the entrance of a cavernous, domed antechamber, large enough to hold several garrisons comfortably. Like the hallway that led up to it, the chamber was composed entirely of mottled pink-and-tan marble. Hanging along the walls and from the curved ceiling were banners of maroon and gold, like the rugs that carpeted the myriad hallways in the Retreat. Cylindrical gold lamps hung down, casting shining puddles of light on the polished floor. Along the far wall, two of the Emperor’s personal guards, draped entirely in crimson, stood as sentries by the door the Inquisitor knew led to the Emperor’s inner sanctum. Like avenging spirits, the guards remained steadfast in their duty, not moving a muscle. However, the vast chamber was not entirely devoid of movement.

Along the curved wall, near a small computer terminal, two stormtroopers stood. Unlike Redge, these troopers were relaxed in their stance. One leaned casually against the wall—no easy feat, given the fact that he was clad from head to toe in sparkling white armor. His colleague held only a slightly more militaristic pose. Neither man faced Redge, so both were unaware of his presence. Gliding over slightly, the Inquisitor could just hear their clipped conversation.

“I tell you,” the one against the wall squawked to the other, “if they haven’t started building a new one yet, they’re not going to.”

“It’s only been about a year,” the other replied with more static in his response, his transmitter clearly in need of some attention. “Equipment that awesome takes time to repair.”

“I’m telling you,” the first argued, “that if they haven’t repaired or replaced the Death Star by now, they won’t. And that should tell you something.”

“What do you mean?” his comrade responded, and even Redge could hear the unease in the man’s mechanized voice.

The first stormtrooper shifted his stance slightly. “I’ve heard rumors that the Rebellion is growing, becoming more powerful. If they could take out a weapon as great as the Death Star, there’s no telling just how strong they really are. I think the Emperor is hiding that from us.” His voice had dropped surprisingly low, considering he had to speak through a transmitter. “I think he’s hiding many things.”

“Talk like that will get you killed,” his friend warned him.

“Or worse,” Redge added in a gentle, melodic voice.

Both troopers turned suddenly, clearly caught off guard. That was the technique that Redge enjoyed the most: knock an opponent off balance and strike while he was teetering.

“Sir, I-I didn’t know you were here,” the first stammered.

“Obviously,” Redge replied easily, enjoying the man’s apparent discomfort. He decided to let him squirm a moment longer and so remained silent, forcing the trooper to try to dig his way out of his shallow grave.

“I’m sorry, sir, I meant no disservice. I was just explaining my concerns to—”

“Don’t bother trying to explain anything to me, soldier,” Redge interrupted coldly. “I know exactly what you were trying to explain to your ‘friend’ here.” He nodded to the other man. “You feel our Emperor is keeping things from you, keeping you in the dark, so to speak?”

“It’s just that—”

“It’s just nothing,” Redge warned him darkly, his facade of pleasantness a memory. “You know all that you need to know and nothing more or less, like the rest of us. To serve the Emperor is to trust in him completely and question nothing.”

The stormtroopers remained silent, and the Inquisitor knew they were both too frightened to speak. That fear warmed his cold heart. The corners of his thin lips twitched in growing pleasure. He relaxed his stance ever so slightly.

“But,” he graciously allowed, “you do make a good point in your own simplistic fashion.”

“Sir?” the second soldier asked, and Redge knew they were fishing for anything to redeem themselves.

“The war is far from over,” he admitted. “We do have the strength and the power to crush the Rebels; that much is obvious. However, the Rebels are devious, and like fanned rawls they have hidden themselves well and fashioned nests and lairs at the highest levels of power. Only when we drive them out and exterminate those hidden in our midst will victory truly be ours,” Redge explained, momentarily caught up in his own fervor.

But before he could pursue the discussion further, he felt an almost imperceptible change in the air pressure of the chamber. The wiry hairs on his arms rose, and Redge knew the Emperor’s door had slid open.

He turned his back on the two stormtroopers, their presence completely inconsequential now, and watched as a black figure separated himself from the impenetrable shadows of the doorway. As the stark figure moved forward, Redge felt his stomach turn and experienced a moment of vertigo. Sensitive as he was to the Force, the Inquisitor was nearly overwhelmed by the power of the man moving toward him.

The giant figure was covered from head to toe in obsidian armor. On his chest plate, a series of devices blinked blue and red, in time with his breathing and his heartbeat. His face was covered by a grotesque, helmeted breath mask that resembled the skull of some dark god. He moved swiftly yet deliberately toward the Inquisitor, his black cape billowing behind him. He looked like nothing so much as a winged bird of prey.

Redge vaguely saw, from the corner of his eyes, that the troopers snapped even straighter at the ominous presence than they had for him. He didn’t notice much more as he sank gracefully to one knee in a deep, obsequious bow.

“My Lord Vader,” he whispered with just the right amount of reverence.

“Rise, Inquisitor,” Lord Vader ordered in a deep, rich voice, his orders punctuated by his unmistakable mechanized breathing. “Rise and walk with me.”

Redge rose as gracefully as he had knelt and resisted the urge to shake out his cloaks yet again, refusing to appear foppish before a Dark Lord of the Sith. He stretched his back even straighter, but still had to look up at the Sith Lord who stood two meters tall. Before he moved with Vader, however, he turned to face the two soldiers.

“Since you both have so much free time on your hands to reflect, I will see about relocating you to a post that you will undoubtedly find more … challenging,” he told them. “Perhaps something in the Hoth system,” he mused. “I don’t believe we have sent many satellites out there yet. Report to your garrison commander for new orders. Your tour of duty here is now over.” With that, he turned and marched alongside Lord Vader, briefly contemplating what hellish location they would eventually be dispatched to.

After a few moments of silence that were distinctly uncomfortable for Redge, he addressed the dark shadow. “Yes, my lord?”

“The Emperor wishes to know how you are progressing,” Lord Vader demanded.

Redge struggled to keep his equilibrium. The dark power of the Force rolled off Vader in crashing waves.

“Inquisitor?” the distorted voice demanded, and Redge knew he would not ask the question a second time.

“My lord,” he began, “I understand the seriousness surrounding the nature of the mission.”

“Do you? I am honored that you agree with me,” Vader replied. Redge thought he could almost hear the sarcasm in the Sith Lord’s voice.

“I only meant, Lord Vader, that I fully comprehend my role in this.”

“Do you, Inquisitor?” Vader asked him, stopping just before both men reached another hallway. Only Vader’s mechanized breathing could be heard echoing in the antechamber. Redge was momentarily at a loss for how to proceed. Darth Vader was the only creature that ever inspired this effect in the Inquisitor.

“Do you truly know what it will mean,” the Sith Lord eventually continued, “if the holocron should return to the Rebels’ hands?”

Redge swallowed hard. “Yes, my lord, I think I can appreciate what should happen. If the Rebels manage to retrieve that device—with, among other things, its list of high-level Rebel sympathizers—and activate those spies, the Empire could very well crumble from within.”

Vader regarded him stonily before he raised a gauntleted finger to point accusingly at the Inquisitor. “What are you doing about it?” he demanded.

“Lord Vader, I have my best operative on the trail of this item even as we speak. I have trained this agent for many years, and I believe there is no one better suited for the mission. We will not fail,” he promised, barely hiding the quaver in his voice.

Vader stared a moment longer and then turned to walk down the hallway, his heavy footfalls muffled by the thick pile of the carpets. The Inquisitor hastened his step to keep up.

“The Death Star incident will never occur again,” Vader told Redge. The Inquisitor knew the Sith Lord was not really sharing a confidence with him as much as he was simply thinking aloud. However, he did nothing to interrupt Vader, awed as he was in the moment.

“The fact that those plans slipped through our fingers and reached the cursed Rebels …” Vader’s voice trailed away and he tightened the fingers of his left hand.

As he did so, Redge felt a pressure build up around his heart. His breathing grew more rapid, and black spots began to dance around the corners of his vision. He slowed his pace and vaguely saw that Vader was continuing on, unaware that he had lost his stricken companion. Redge placed a hand against his chest. He felt as if a fambaa were settled atop it. His head swam. Then, as abruptly as the pressure began, it disappeared. He rested one hand against the marble wall and tried to catch his breath before trotting weakly after Vader, who had not paused in his march.

“Inquisitor?” Vader demanded.

“Y-yes, my lord?” Redge stammered, barely recovered from Vader’s unconscious assault.

“Your best agent, you say?”

“Yes, Lord Vader,” Redge said, his voice growing stronger with every passing moment. “This agent will not fail.”

Darth Vader turned and stared at Redge once more. “Inquisitor, you should know full well that that there is no such thing as failure within the Empire. I suggest you remember that.” He raised a finger and shook it once, ominously, toward the Inquisitor and then turned and left. The hiss of his automated breathing faded as he marched down the length of the passageway. Only when Redge was no longer in the presence of the Sith Lord did he realize that he had been holding his own breath. He let it out slowly.

Redge turned from the hallway and walked over to an alcove with a view of the Emperor’s personal shuttle, an AT-ST standing guard nearby. He leaned his head against the cool marble wall and sighed. His thoughts drifted from the holocron to his operative and back to Vader’s barely concealed death threat. He understood only too well how much was riding on the success of this mission. Redge sighed and continued to stare out into the night. The rain fell harder.

The young woman gazed out into the clear night sky. She sat on the forest floor with her arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees, her hair hanging down in thick braids. There was nothing extraordinary about her at first glance. In her loose shirt and trousers the dappled color of the forest, she could have been nothing more than a young woman doing a little stargazing at the end of a long day. It was only when her face came into view that anyone would have recognized the self-possessed manner in which she held herself, even while sitting on the ground. And the ancient look in her eyes.

Senator of a now dissolved government and Princess of an obliterated world, Leia Organa had not lost her faith or her purpose, though her titles carried no meaning. Her will was forged of the hardest metal, and that will had so far carried her through the many dark times the Alliance had faced. Though only in her twenties, she was wise beyond her years. She wore her mantle of responsibility with a strength that defied reason. The many troops and commanders who followed her wondered at the woman who never showed fear to anyone. And Leia maintained that confidence in front of everyone. She knew she couldn’t afford not to. Still, there were times, mostly in the dead of night, when she doubted and worried. At those moments, if it was possible, she would sneak out from wherever she was and breathe in real air, not the manufactured atmosphere of a hidden base or starship, touch the soil and look to the stars. That simple act grounded her and always brought her peace. It reminded her that she was a part of a greater whole and that there was an order to things that had to be followed. Knowing that she was a part of this order renewed her and gave her the strength to carry on. She had always done this alone, since she was a child. But this had changed recently.

Leia heard the faint rustle behind her but didn’t reach for her pistol. She suddenly ducked her head, closed her eyes, and smiled. She knew who it was.

The blond youth dropped down to squat next to her. He was dressed in much the same fashion as she was. In the starlight, Leia could see he also wore an easy smile. But his blue eyes weren’t quite as innocent as they had been when she had first met him so many months ago. There was a touch of faded sadness to them and something else, as well. Something that Leia could see was growing. She knew that with each passing day, Luke Skywalker was learning more and more about the mystical ways of the Jedi. And that path of knowledge was changing him.

“It’s late,” he told her, and she noticed he didn’t bother to ask why she was outside the hidden Rebel shelter. Over the last few months, Leia had discovered that he shared the same need that she did to feel the worlds they were on, even for a little while. What had surprised Leia was that she didn’t begrudge his presence as an intrusion, but welcomed his company. They sometimes sat for hours in companionable silence. The closeness she felt to him was something new for the Princess.

“I know,” she whispered back in a husky voice.

“What’s troubling you tonight, Leia?” he asked.

Leia sighed. She didn’t resent his question. She had been more preoccupied of late. And there was perhaps only one other person she might have shared her fears with, but he was on a mission far from their temporary base on Corellia. And, when she was honest with herself, Leia had to admit sometimes she was nervous around the smuggler-turned-Rebel, as though there were an uncertain current that passed between them. With Luke, she simply felt at home.

“We have so far to go,” she eventually replied, trying to mask the weariness in her voice.

“But we’ve come so far,” he told her gently. “The destruction of the Death Star alone was a huge victory.”

“I know,” she agreed. “It was a momentous success and a great rallying point for the Alliance. It crystallized the hopes of so many who were undecided or afraid. But it was only one victory, and it cost us so many lives,” she confessed tiredly.

“You’re right on all counts,” he agreed. “But the Empire will fail because they put their faith in technology rather than people. They don’t recognize that all the lives they’re trying to crush actually make a difference and will determine the outcome of this war.”

Leia studied him more closely. For a moment, he had the same enthusiasm and naïveté as when they had first met, when she knew he felt like he could conquer the Empire single-handedly. She smiled and felt her mood begin to lighten.

“I know that, too, Luke,” she said. “I think that’s why this latest mission weighs on me so heavily.”

“The holocron?” Luke asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yes. The names stored there could turn the tide for us,” Leia admitted. “As you said, our greatest strength lies in those who work toward the same goal as us. If that list should fall into Imperial hands, not only would it mean certain death for those sympathizers but it could spell the end for us, as well. Just as we needed help from within the Empire to defeat the Death Star, we need these people and the glimpses inside the Empire they can offer us now even more.”

Luke moved closer to her. “You’ve sent one of your best agents to retrieve it, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Leia replied and didn’t bother to hide the weariness in her voice now. “Yes, I’ve sent another one out into the void, perhaps to death again. One more …” She lowered her head on her knees and squeezed her eyes shut. And not even Luke’s comforting arm across her shoulders was able to ease the burden the Princess of Alderaan had to bear alone.

ONE

“Where do I go?” Dusque Mistflier shouted to her colleague. She turned to look up at him, barely able to hear herself over the noise of the crowd.

“I believe we have seats farther to the left,” he replied.

Several members of the rowdy assembly turned at the sound of Tendau Nandon’s unusual voice, despite the raucous atmosphere. It was a rather difficult sound to make out, and it had taken Dusque many months to understand the unusual harmonics of his speech.

Nandon was an Ithorian, a species some referred to as “Hammerheads.” Standing nearly two meters tall, he had a domed head that rested atop a long, curving neck. What lent his speech such a curious tone was that along the top of his neck, he had not one, but two mouths. So whenever he spoke, there was an unusual stereo effect; some found it disconcerting when he used Basic and impossible to understand when he communicated in his native tongue.

Dusque nodded to him and turned to face the direction he had indicated. She brushed her nearly waist-length, sandy-brown hair out of her eyes and cursed herself again for not tying it back away from her face. But Dusque hated fussing with herself, considering it too feminine a trait. Being feminine, she was learning, was not the most ideal situation within the Empire, so she made a concerted effort to appear as unfeminine as possible. She even thought about cutting her hair short. In her heart, she was certain her gender was why she was being held back and not utilized to the best of her abilities. Her current assignment, she felt, was proof enough of that.

Of course, she told herself, I’ve only been assigned to the Imperial corps of bioengineers for a few months now, but that still should afford me a measure of respect I have yet to see.

Instead, she found herself on the relatively peaceful and beautiful planet of Naboo at an animal handler and trainer event, sponsored by a casino, of all things. Not exactly a dream assignment, and Dusque suspected she had been given the task of collecting genetic tissue samples and recording trained animal behavior simply because most of her other colleagues, who were senior to her, felt the assignment beneath them. Granted, there was always something of value to learn from captive behaviors, and Dusque would have been the first to argue that fact to anyone else, but she wondered for the umpteenth time just what could be learned from this debacle.

The Aerie was a new casino that had opened very recently near the city of Moenia and was already touting itself as one of the premier gambling facilities in the galaxy. And as Dusque surveyed the throng of Bothans, Rodians, humans, Corellian animal traders, and others in attendance, she couldn’t deny that it had drawn a very large crowd, adding credence to its claims. A special arena with chairs had been set up near the casino, and impromptu betting tables had been hastily erected for the event. Hundreds of people had shown up. Dusque saw that nearly every seat was taken and that scores of other observers were hanging around behind the official viewing area. As Imperial scientists, Dusque and the Ithorian had ringside seating.

Dusque spotted two empty seats up front, and she picked her way over to them very carefully. She knew that Nandon was not comfortable walking planetside, and she adjusted her stride accordingly without drawing his attention to the fact. She didn’t want him to think that she was patronizing him, but she knew his struggles. Ithorians in general spent most of their time in floating cities above Ithor, never setting foot on their beautiful homeworld, so most were comfortable only on ships or other artificial constructs. Some of the more adventurous of the peaceful species had made their way into the stars, though. Tendau Nandon was one of those pioneers. But that didn’t change his discomfort.

Dusque was still learning about his species, but she understood how much they revered nature. In fact, they worshiped the very nature of their planet and referred to it as Mother Jungle. Considering how highly they regarded the natural ecology, it was no wonder that many of the Ithorians actually came to be biologists and bioengineers, fascinated by all forms of life. And Nandon was one of the best biologists Dusque had ever known. The only reason her current assignment was at all bearable was because he had requested to go with her when no one else would.

Dusque was unaware what a sight they presented even in the eclectic gathering at the arena. Standing a full human head shorter than Nandon, Dusque was a slim woman, but she expertly hid her wiry form under loose trousers and an oversized top. Nandon had clicked in disapproval of her attire. Even he had recognized the false importance of the evening and had dressed accordingly, donning a special wrap he reserved for solemn occasions. He had urged her to wear something more formal, and Dusque had chuckled at his surprise when she informed him that she didn’t own any dresses.

“What would be the use?” she had asked him, her gray eyes twinkling. “You can’t run or climb with any amount of ease in the blasted things, so why have them?”

“That’s not what they are meant for,” he had countered.

“I don’t see you wearing one, although that wrap does set off your silver skin very nicely,” she said, and they had both shared a laugh. Once again, she was glad she had an ally among her stoic colleagues. Despite her growing friendship with the Ithorian, however, Dusque still felt like an outsider in the sterile labs of her workplace.

“Here we are,” she said and seated herself, trying not to sound too discouraged.

“It could be worse,” Nandon told her in his lyrical voice.

“How so?” Dusque sighed.

“It could still be raining,” he pointed out, and that brought a crooked smile to Dusque’s face. She sighed, realizing that he would always point out something on the positive side. And he was right. It had rained heavily the previous night, and there was still a decidedly slurping sound as they had maneuvered through the spectators, but their chairs didn’t sink too far into the ground as they made themselves comfortable for what was undoubtedly going to be a long night.

Tendau’s right, she told herself. We’re bioengineers and this is our job. Resigned to her assignment, Dusque pulled out a datapad and a stylus, ready to make notes on her observations. But her heart wasn’t in it. Not for the first time, she wondered where the choices in her young life had taken her.

From a large family, Dusque had been the youngest. And she had been the only daughter her parents conceived. Growing up on Talus, she had alternately been the baby and the pet, always under the watchful eyes of her four brothers. She had followed them around on their childhood adventures, eventually growing strong enough to keep up with their running and climbing and building makeshift camps. Their tricks and pranks had made her tougher than most, because Dusque felt she had to take their teasing with a stiff upper lip. There had been no such thing as tears when she was little. Her brothers didn’t cry, so she didn’t, either.

Her father had toiled diligently for a small company manufacturing starship components. Not as prestigious as those companies located above Corellia, but it had been good work. And he had been a hard worker. Her mother kept the house and bandaged up the children when they had their cuts and scrapes. It had been a simple but good life. Unfortunately, it didn’t last.

Even though she had been little more than a child at the time, Dusque remembered when the Imperials started to make their presence known to those who worked on Talus. And she recalled how her father would come home at night, exhausted and worried, wondering just what the ships he helped construct were being used for. Many times he and her mother had talked late into the night about it, and Dusque remembered sneaking out of bed to listen in on them once in a while. There had always been tears and accusations when they spoke on the matter. But most of all, there had been fear. Even she had sensed that her parents were frightened. Tensions grew in their modest home. And then there was the day her father didn’t come home.

Her mother received word that he had collapsed in the manufacturing facility and that by the time his coworkers had carried him to the medic, it had been too late. His heart had simply given out. Everything changed for Dusque at that point. Without her father to hold the family together, it frayed at the edges and eventually collapsed. Her mother never really recovered from the loss of her husband and became more of a shadow than ever. She catered to her sons and moved about like a ghost, as though she had lost her substance and ceased to exist. It was at this point that Dusque swore an oath: she would never let herself become like that, no matter the cost. And she would never again care about anything as she had for her family, because the price of loss was too steep.

Her two oldest brothers quit their studies and took up their father’s crafting profession. Dusque saw how it aged them prematurely, so she buried her nose deeper into her schoolwork, determined not to take that path. And when her studies were done for the evening and her home too somber, she would sneak out of their small compound and hide out in the forest where she and her brothers used to camp in happier times. She became more withdrawn from people and spent hours and hours studying the creatures native to her town. She began to prefer their company to that of other people, finding their cues and habits easier to read than those of humans. Her youngest brother joined the ranks of the Imperial forces, determined to become a pilot and soar through the stars, as resolute as Dusque was to leave their small home behind. A few months after joining, he died in a training accident. And for the first time since the death of her father, Dusque saw her mother display an anger and a fire she hadn’t known the woman possessed.

For one moment, her mother was like a raging animal, and Dusque glimpsed just how deep her hatred for the Empire ran. She blamed them for her young son’s death as well as that of her husband. But her rage burned out quickly and once again she was only a shell of the woman she had formerly been. That was the year Dusque graduated with high honors and chose to pursue a path of bioengineering. In her eyes, this career combined her two greatest desires: it let her continue to study and track animals, and it got her off her homeworld. But because it was a profession that answered to and was governed by the Empire, Dusque was never really certain how much her decision might have broken what was left of her mother’s heart.

For the next few years, she completed the advanced studies required to proceed to bioengineering. The only effort she needed to make during her course work was mastering a medic’s knowledge of organic chemistry. That turned out to be the one she had to struggle with, because it wasn’t intuitive to her. The scouting aspect of her career choice came as second nature. Survival skills, as well as trapping, hunting, and exploration, were instinctive to her, and she excelled among her fellow students, finishing second in her class. Her high ranking caught the attention of several prominent scientists of the Imperial party, along with garnering a stellar recommendation from her trainer, and she was awarded a position as a bioengineer.

Dusque, however, soon found it frustrating to distinguish herself from her male colleagues when she was no longer competing for scores and marks on exams. She answered to an older supervisor named Willel, who never seemed to trust her with any project of worth no matter what she did. Boring assignment after boring assignment came in, each of which she dutifully completed. She even found ways to make the assignments more exciting for herself, although her superiors never knew of her extra excursions. Still, she continued to receive the most simplistic studies, and the only thing she could conclude was that she was trapped in a male world. Most of the others she worked with had held their positions for decades, and there appeared to be no room for advancement within the ranks. She had traded what she felt was a dead-end life with her family for what looked like a dead-end career with the Empire. And her current whereabouts just affirmed her certainty.

“I think it’s going to begin,” Tendau told her, interrupting her depressive reverie. Dusque returned to the present and looked in the direction the Ithorian had indicated.

A slight, humanoid figure in a garish robe was entering the arena from the side and making his way into the center. His green skin, antennae, and flexible snout told Dusque that he was a Rodian. She wasn’t surprised to see one of his species taking center stage, so to speak. She knew of several clans who had escaped the watchful eye of the Grand Protector and left the devastated ecology of Rodia. Most became dramatists of the highest caliber, and Dusque had recently viewed an excellent performance by a traveling troupe. But there was always something she found shifty about them, with their multifaceted eyes that were nearly impossible to read. Dusque placed a great deal of value in what she saw in another’s eyes.

The announcer cleared his throat before tapping a small transmitter attached to his cloak. “Let me extend a warm welcome to all of you this beautiful evening. My name is Eban Trey, and I will be your host for the tonight’s festivities,” he said with a great flourish.

“Let me be the first to welcome you to the finest gambling establishment of the Mid Rim: the Aerie Casino. To launch the official, grand opening of the casino, we have a night of extraordinary events for your entertainment. In a moment, I will turn this stage over to an incredible mix of exotic animals that the majority of you have never seen the likes of before or will ever see again in one venue.

“Coupled with their trainers and handlers, they will be pitted against one another until only the most skilled is left standing. But”—he added with a dramatic flair—“that will not signal the end. After the winner has been awarded his or her prize, we will officially open the doors to the casino, and the first one hundred through the entrance will be given one hundred credits.”

At his pronouncement, the crowd went wild. The Rodian, clearly a master of timing, bowed deeply and dashed out of the arena. Dusque shifted in her seat and sighed disappointedly. The external lights that surrounded the makeshift arena dimmed dramatically, and the crowd grew silent. The only sounds were those that drifted over from the nearby swamps. When the lights came on again, they pulsed in a flashing pattern. From the eastern point of the arena, Dusque saw the first of the contestants enter the ring.

Leading the parade of creatures was a rare sight. A female, pale-blue-skinned Twi’lek sat atop a cu-pa and actually rode the bright pink-and-blue-furred beast into the arena. Cu-pas were native to Tatooine, Dusque knew; resembling tauntauns, they were very passive but not nearly as intelligent. The simple fact that the woman was able to mount and direct the creature was a fascinating spectacle. Dusque noted that the Twi’lek had her two head tentacles wrapped tightly around the cu-pa’s neck, and she wondered if that aided her in directing the animal. She recorded her observations, reserving her conclusions for later, when she would, she hoped, have more information.

A Wookiee led in a small herd of floppy-eared squall, and quite a few snickers could be heard among the spectators. Even Dusque was hard pressed not to laugh at the sight. However, all laughter stopped as soon as the Wookiee threw back his head and roared his displeasure. The ferocious sound made even Dusque sit a little straighter in her seat.

After the Wookiee, a bevy of handlers and creatures made a single pass around the arena. Mon Calamari carried anglers in on their shoulders, their spearlike legs dangling, Trandoshans rode in on tusk-cats, humans followed behind flewt queens that strained against their tethers, and even stranger sights marched by. Dusque recorded it all, down to the minutest detail.

“I haven’t seen this many creatures since we were at the Coruscant Livestock Exchange and Exhibition,” Tendau whispered to her from his two mouths.

“You’re right,” she grudgingly agreed. “Now that you’ve reminded me, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some of those traders here, as well. There certainly is a large enough gathering.”

The Ithorian nodded in agreement. “I suspect we will.”

Most of the attendees looked like well-dressed tourists, no more and no less. Dusque saw that most were making frequent trips to the betting tables, and it was clear that the odds against the matches were in constant flux. As she craned her neck around, she was momentarily startled to see a pair of nearly black eyes regarding her steadily. She cocked her head sideways as she saw that the eyes matched the ebony hair of the human male who was watching her. She turned back abruptly toward the scene in front of her. As a trained bystander, Dusque was suddenly uncomfortable when she realized she was the one being studied.

Very flustered, she busied herself with her observations. A zucca boar was pitted against a womp rat. Both animals were native to Tatooine, and Dusque realized that for the opening rounds, only animals from the same planets were forced to fight one another.

“While the boar has weight on his side,” she whispered to her colleague, “he doesn’t stand a chance against those incisors.”

“Care to place a bet on that?” came a snide remark from behind her. “My credits are on the zucca.”

Dusque didn’t even turn her head to acknowledge the speaker. “Then you’re about to become very poor.” She shook her head as he snorted in derision. He’d see soon enough.

As their handlers turned them loose, the two competitors charged each other. And as Dusque had suspected, although the boar had more muscle behind his attack, he didn’t have the agility of the hopping womp rat. When the boar was nearly close enough to gore his opponent, the smaller native of Tatooine hopped to the side. The zucca wasn’t able to stop his rush in time to escape the wicked teeth of the womp rat. The boar’s hide was tough, but not tough enough to withstand the repeated attacks of the competition. Every time the boar attempted to regroup and charge, the womp rat sidestepped him with a nimble hop. It was only a matter of time before the boar expired. The womp rat’s handler emerged from the sidelines and called his creature to follow him. With only one backward glance, the womp rat fell in behind his handler and hopped out of the arena. A judge rushed out to check on the condition of the boar and, as the boar’s handler struggled with the carcass, the womp rat was declared the winner and advanced to the next round. Dusque noted everything.

From behind her, she could hear the disgruntled gambler swear. He threw his handful of tickets to the ground and stomped off. Tendau leaned toward her once again.

“I’m impressed,” he told her.

“It was obvious,” Dusque replied, waving off the compliment. “That match was no contest.”

“No,” he corrected her, “I meant I was impressed because you didn’t tell him I told you so.” She saw that he was smiling with the mouth that faced her. She smiled back.

The next few rounds went much the same, and there was very little that Dusque learned about behavior that she hadn’t seen demonstrated on some other world before. Although she kept her facial expressions to a minimum, she was growing more nauseated as the evening wore on. She watched as one magnificent specimen after another was torn to shreds simply for the multitude’s amusement and a handful of credits. The only conclusion she was drawing was that there was no end to what the Empire allowed to propagate.

Unable to stomach the slaughter, she found her eyes once again wandering from the staged events back toward the crowd. The more vicious the fights, the more frenzied the throng became. She saw that most were on their feet, tickets and chips clutched tightly in their hands. Many were shouting threats or words of encouragement to their favored choice, alternating indiscriminately between them. And, almost discreetly, a small garrison of Imperial stormtroopers patrolled the periphery of the arena, ostensibly to keep at bay anything that might be drawn from the swamps by the growing stench of blood. As always, the Empire was ever present. While Dusque continued to observe the mob, she discovered that same pair of obsidian eyes staring back at her again.

As he lifted a hand, Dusque unconsciously raised her hand to her throat. For a moment, she thought he was going to somehow signal to her, and she wondered what she would do. But he simply brushed some of his unruly black hair from his eyes and continued to regard her steadily. She turned away again, feeling suddenly foolish and at a loss.

“It’s almost over,” the Ithorian told her. “Only a few are still standing.”

Dusque focused on her datapad, trying to busy herself with her notations. The last creatures left were a malkloc from Dathomir and a flit harasser from Lok. The malkloc had literally mowed over her competition. Larger than a tauntaun, malklocs had a heavy body and long neck. Dusque recalled from her studies that they were near the top of the food chain on Dathomir due to their sheer mass. Only an adult rancor bull had any hope of bringing down one of the giants. Luckily for the rest of the creature population, malklocs were herbivores, content to spend their waking hours chewing thousands of leaves every day, blissfully oblivious to their surroundings. This malkloc, however, had been trained to respond to her handler’s commands, as had all the other specimens that performed in the arena. She had crushed every one of her opponents under her tremendous feet. But her feet would not help her against her final opponent.

On the other side of the arena, a Trandoshan female was bringing out her prized creature. It was one of the largest flit harassers Dusque had ever seen. Indigenous to Lok, the creatures had a tough, leathery hide, an incredibly sharp beak, and a wingspan that was usually greater than the height of a large Wookiee. Very few living things could face down one of these reptavians.

“The only chance the malkloc has,” Tendau whispered to Dusque, “is the fact that the flit has a damaged wing from its tussle with the dire cat in the previous round.” He pointed out the injury with his long silvery arm.

“And the fact that they normally hunt in swarms,” Dusque added. She saw the Ithorian nod in agreement but look away as the signal was given for the animals to attack. She knew he was just as sickened as she was by the bloody scenario in front of her. Travesties such as this were not the reason either of them had become biologists.

The match ended fairly quickly. The malkloc made her charge and miscalculated. The moment she unsuccessfully thundered past the flit, the reptavian swooped awkwardly around the massive beast and landed on the malkloc’s back. It dug its claws into the tough hide of the herbivore and raised its beak high above. When it was certain it had a solid grip, the flit dropped its head and buried its beak deep into the malkloc’s neck. And then it began to feed.

Dusque turned away, having no desire to watch the bloodsucker at work. Almost unconsciously, she looked back in the direction of the human male who had been watching her—and found that he was still watching her, just as he had been earlier. She met his gaze and held it for a few moments until he did something unexpected. He winked at her.

Dusque was at a loss. She knew she should have been offended, or should ignore him at the very least, but she didn’t know how to respond. Almost against her will she could feel the color rise in her face. But before she could say or do anything, a sudden thud shook the stands and she whirled back around to face the arena.

The malkloc had finally fallen to the ground. The flit’s handler trotted out from the sidelines and tried to pull the bloody victor from its prize even as he accepted his credits as the evening’s grand-prize winner.

When Dusque collected her thoughts, she turned back toward her admirer, but he was gone. She scanned the crowd quickly: he was nowhere to be seen. The Ithorian noticed she was distressed and placed a hand on her shoulder. Her flushed appearance couldn’t be missed, either. He asked, “Are you all right?”

Dusque took a moment before she replied, “I’m not sure.”

TWO

The moment the official winner was announced, a cry went up from the masses. Almost as one, the spectators turned and made for the casino entrance as quickly as they could, and Dusque was certain it was with the gleam of free credits dancing before their eyes. A few of the slower members of the throng squawked in surprise and pain as they were shoved aside and stepped on by the more assertive guests. But she saw that even the slow recovered and tried to push their way through.

Dusque collected her materials and picked up her small pack. She grabbed the railing and easily swung her legs over the side. She looked back over her shoulder and told the Ithorian, “I’m just going to collect a few samples. Won’t be but a few moments.” She knew Tendau would probably become ill if he had to walk through the blood-spattered arena. She wasn’t thrilled by the prospect either, but she knew she wouldn’t become physically sick from the contact like her colleague would.

Dusque walked off to the far side of the temporary stadium where she had seen most of the carcasses hastily dumped between rounds. There was only one handler who had remained behind, along with a few attendants who were already beginning the tedious task of breaking down the show grounds. She noticed the handler was still stroking the side of his fallen wrix. He paid no attention to her, but one of the attendants approached her.

“Dusque Mistflier,” she identified herself and showed him her credentials. As always, the sight of her authorization left no room for questions, granting her immediate access to anything she required.

“Imperial bioengineer, hmm? Little out of the way for you here, isn’t it?” he pointed out.

Dusque ignored his snickers and his implied insult and moved past him. Breathing through her mouth to avoid the smell, she pushed her hair back and removed her tools from her bag. She then began methodically drawing blood and tissue samples from the fallen creatures. When she had collected and stored all of the DNA, she cleaned her hands on a sterile wipe and started to walk back over to the Ithorian. But the wrix trainer called out to her and trotted after her. Dusque stopped and waited for him.

By his tattoos and vestigial horns, Dusque realized he was a Zabrak. And he was obviously distraught by the death of his creature.

“What can I do for you?” Dusque asked him politely.

“I saw you take samples of my wrix. I want to know how many credits you want to clone him,” he demanded.

“I’m sorry,” she replied, somewhat surprised by his request. “I don’t have the proper equipment for that kind of procedure. And I don’t believe in cloning,” she added. “When things die, they should stay dead.”

But the Zabrak didn’t seem to appreciate her answer. “I know what you and your kind do,” he spat, his anger obviously making him reckless. “You run around the galaxy, collecting your little bits and pieces of everything you find and scurrying back to your labs.

“You mix and match things at your whim, or the Emperor’s, without batting an eye. Well”—he grabbed Dusque by her upper arm—“you’ll clone him for me and you’ll do it now.”

Dusque twisted around sharply and freed her arm from his hard grip. But before anything else transpired, the two attendants rushed up to restrain him.

“Now, now,” the attendant who had spoken to Dusque soothed. “You don’t want to mess with her kind. You saw her rank. Touch her and we’ll have to find a way to clone you,” he joked nervously and Dusque saw him eyeing the patrolling troopers. The situation became more apparent to the Zabrak, and he angrily shoved off the attendants.

“You’re right,” he growled, “she’s not worth it. None of her kind is. They’re worse than the abominations that they cook up in their labs.” And with that, he trudged back over to his fallen creature.

Dusque turned and walked the rest of the way back to Tendau without further incident. She could see the Ithorian looked worried, so she pasted a smile on her face and shook her head in mock disgust. But the Zabrak’s words stuck with her. She knew many of her superiors back at their labs did exactly what the trainer had accused her of. They experimented and tampered and went against the natural order of things, all in the name of the Emperor. Dusque tried to convince herself she was just a xenobiologist, taking samples for study and documenting behaviors. Still, she had an inkling what some of her samples were used for; she simply chose not to recognize the truth.

“Are you well?” Tendau asked her when she reached his side.

“Yes, yes,” she reassured him. “I’m fine. He was just distraught by the death of his pet. If he cared about it that much, he should never have entered the contest.”

“The lure of credits can be very strong to some,” Tendau said. “And sometimes people just make mistakes.”

Dusque looked up sharply at his last statement and saw that he was regarding her steadily with his deep brown eyes.

“Enough seriousness,” he went on after a moment’s silence. “It is still early. Now that all the foolish have pushed and jostled their way into the casino, why don’t we go and see what all the fuss is about, hmm?”

“It’s a little late,” Dusque began, trying to beg off, but she recognized the determined set to the Ithorian’s face.

“It’s barely past sundown,” he corrected her. He thrust out the crook of his long arm and said, “Why don’t we try our luck tonight?”

Dusque shook her head with a smile. “You never give up, do you?” And she slipped her arm through his.

Dusque raised a hand to her eyes and found that she needed to squint against the flashing lights. The casino was a hive of activity, sights, and smells. As soon as she and the Ithorian had rounded the corner after the entrance, their senses had been assailed by the noise and lights.

The main room was huge and filled beyond capacity with eager gamblers. Along one of the far walls, row after row of lugjack machines beeped and chirped. And almost every one of the devices was in use. Dusque watched for a few moments and saw that far more credits were pouring into the machines than were coming out. But every once in a while, a patron would jump up and down as her machine screeched a winning alarm and a few credit chips came shooting out.

Off to her right, Dusque saw at least three spinnerpits in operation. A dozen or more players were crammed around each of the tables, piling their chips on their favorite numbers. Dusque noticed that some discreetly consulted small datapads; she wasn’t sure if they were trying to play a system or simply wanted to see how many credits remained in their bank accounts. She couldn’t even begin to guess how much the casino was raking in for its grand-opening extravaganza.

“My dear,” Tendau told her, “why don’t you try your hand at a few of the games?”

“That’s all right,” she told the Ithorian as she patted his hand. “I wouldn’t want to throw away any credits.”

“I’ve seen you staring at a few of the tables; you know you want to try. Go ahead,” he urged her, “and have a little fun.” He leaned down close to her right ear and whispered, “I’m sure we can find a way to claim any losses as necessary expense.”

She was momentarily shocked, but a smile spread across her face in spite of herself. It wouldn’t be the first time she and the Ithorian had bent the rules just a little bit.

“All right,” she finally agreed. “What about you? Not going to leave me holding the bag, are you?”

“Don’t be foolish, child. I think I saw Mastivo, the Coruscanti trader, here and I would like to exchange a few words with him,” he said.

“Tell him hello for me, would you?”

“Of course. Now have some fun.” And with that, the Ithorian shuffled off into the noisy mass.

The only thing he hadn’t done, she thought, was pat her on the head and hand her a few credits, but Dusque knew he meant well.

She went over to one of the spinnerpits and threw out a credit chip onto a number at random, more to humor the Ithorian than anything else. When the wheel stopped turning, she was delighted to find out she had won. She smiled broadly and scooped up her winnings. Without her colleague acting as escort, though, Dusque soon realized that more than a few of the human males around the table were sizing her up, despite her drab attire. She moved to a different one and tried again. She surprised herself by winning yet again. Even Dusque couldn’t deny the tiny thrill of beating the odds.

With two pocketfuls of chips, she accepted a blue drink of indeterminate origin and sipped at it cautiously. She frowned at the taste. Whatever was in there was extremely intoxicating, and she set the beverage back down on the first empty seat she found. Dusque never allowed her judgment to become compromised, no matter the occasion, and she wasn’t about to begin tonight. She wandered about the casino and realized that she had the beginnings of a headache. She noticed there were a few semiprivate rooms off toward the back that appeared to be fairly quiet, so she made her way over to them, hoping to find a place where she could collect herself.

When she got closer, however, she realized that each room was full of players seated at tables large enough to accommodate only five or so. Each of the players held a few chip-cards in his hands, and a dealer sat opposite them. Whatever the game was, she noticed they were all very serious about it, which explained why the rooms were so quiet compared to the rest of the casino. Dusque stood in the archway to the room and watched as the dealer pressed a special button on the table and the players then scrutinized their cards. Some proceeded to place one or more in the dealer’s interface field, while others allowed the dealer to continue to press his button.

It must send out some kind of signal, she reasoned.

But it was what was heaped at the center of the table that puzzled Dusque. She knew that they must have been wagering, but she didn’t recognize the markers they were using. They weren’t the simple credit chips that everyone, including Dusque, used in the rest of the casino. She furrowed her brow in puzzlement, but could tell by the grim demeanor of the gamblers that no one would appreciate any questions from a nonplayer. She was so absorbed by the game itself that she wasn’t aware of the man who came over to stand next to her.

“Well, hello there,” he said after standing unnoticed by Dusque for several long moments.

Startled, Dusque turned and answered, “Hello.”

“Allow me to introduce myself,” the brown-skinned human said. “My name is Lando Calrissian. And you would be—?”

Dusque silently cursed Tendau for dragging her out when she could have been back in her quiet room going over documents alone. While there was no argument that the man was handsome and obviously charming, he was just a little too shiny and slick for her tastes. She had met his type before.

“My name is Dusque Mistflier,” she replied with a smile and, after a beat, turned back to the game, hoping he would take it as a cue that she wasn’t looking for company. The man was not deterred so easily, though.

“I couldn’t help but notice that you were intrigued by the sabacc table. Care to play?” he invited suggestively.

Ignoring his innuendo, Dusque answered truthfully, “I think I understand the rudiments of the game, but I don’t recognize the markers that they’re playing with. Just what are the stakes?”

Lando smiled broadly, revealing even, white teeth. “They say if you have to ask, then you can’t afford to play.” He laughed deeply, but Dusque didn’t sense any spite in his tone. She returned his smile.

“I guess you have your answer, then,” she said and they both smiled again.

“Actually,” he explained, using the opportunity to move a little closer, “the markers have different values. You see that blue one there?” He pointed out a chip on the table, and Dusque nodded.

“That one is for a spaceship,” he said.

She sucked in her breath. “He’s risking his ship?”

“Yes.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she sputtered. “Who in their right mind would gamble away a ship?” Dusque turned to her new companion for clarification, but he was silent for a moment. It was hard to tell, but she could almost swear Lando was blushing.

“Well,” he started to explain, spreading his hands expansively, “sometimes the stakes are worth it, especially if he thinks he’s drawn an ‘idiot’s array.’ What are the odds of two players drawing that in a single round?” he mumbled, but Dusque wasn’t paying attention.

One of the players, a Wookiee, revealed his hand, and Dusque watched the others throw their chipcards down in disgust. It was obvious he had won. The Wookiee wrapped his big, hairy arms around the pot and drew it toward himself, a self-satisfied grin plastered on his furry face.

Since the game seemed to be over, Dusque turned around to look back into the main room of the casino, and as she did, she caught sight of Tendau.

Her Ithorian friend was over in a corner, near some of the lugjack machines. She tried to discreetly wave to him, but he appeared to be so deep in conversation with a Bothan female that he didn’t notice Dusque. She scrutinized the Bothan fairly closely and didn’t recognize her from the arena. She was a bit puzzled as to who the woman was.

“Friend of yours?” Lando inquired solicitously.

Distracted, Dusque replied, “Yes, it is. I should go over and say hello. Thank you for the tutorial on sabacc,” she added, seizing the opportunity to leave his company.

Lando picked up her hand and brought it slowly to his lips for a brief kiss. Dusque tolerated the gesture and smiled when he released her hand. “Until later, perhaps?” he asked.

“Perhaps,” she answered and moved past him back into the main room, resisting the urge not to wipe her hand on her pants. However, when she looked back in the direction of her colleague, both he and the Bothan female had seemingly disappeared. Dusque was a little perplexed that she had lost track of him so quickly.

“This is probably his way of forcing me to mingle a little bit more,” she told herself quietly. “Of course, here I am in a room full of people and I’m talking to myself.” She chuckled.

“I could help you change that,” a deep but gentle voice offered.

“Lando, you just don’t know when to—” she started to say as she turned around. She caught her breath as she realized the voice hadn’t come from the suave gambler. Instead she found herself staring into the black eyes of her admirer from earlier in the evening. “Oh,” she said, immediately at a loss.

He was almost a head taller than she was, with thick eyebrows and ebony hair to match. His face was full of sharp angles, with a cleft chin and a strong jaw. Dusque couldn’t see many lines on his face, but he still had a weathered look about him, and she would have bet all the credits in her trousers that he had spent some time outdoors. His clothes were nondescript, casual but practical like hers, not luxurious like Lando’s.

He doesn’t just push buttons inside some station, she thought. He gets his hands dirty.

When she glanced at his mouth, she realized he was still smiling at her and that she was still staring. Flustered, she dropped her gaze.

“Well,” he continued easily, “this isn’t good. You’ve gone from talking to yourself to not talking at all.” He cocked his head and grinned crookedly. “Do you feel lucky?”

“What?” she blurted out and then tried to clear her throat, not certain of his question.

Without another word, he grabbed her hand and gently but firmly led her through the casino. Dusque was so stunned, she actually let herself be pulled around. She could feel how strong his hand was, and how rough. There were quite a few calluses on it, and she was comforted that at least one of her hunches was right.

“Wait a moment.” She came to a stop. “Just where are you taking me?” she asked, no longer willing to be dragged around like a child’s toy.

He turned around and looked at her. “This is a casino, isn’t it? You did come here to have a little fun, didn’t you?”

“Well, I’m really here to—” she began, but he simply turned away and started to tug her over to one of the spinnerpits, appearing to disregard anything she might have had to say that was contrary to his plans.

“If I have to steal you,” he said, “so be it.”

As they found a free space near the table, the Twi’lek attendant nodded to Dusque’s abductor. “Back again?”

He grinned and held up Dusque’s hand. “Now that I’ve found my lucky piece, there’s no stopping me.” He looked at Dusque and asked, “What’s your favorite color?”

She was thrown so off balance by the question, she just said, “Red.”

He winked at her and placed a handful of chips on the spot she had unknowingly selected for him.

“No further bets at this time,” the attendant informed the group.

In spite of herself, Dusque became a little caught up in the excitement of the game. Ill at ease with the man next to her, she alternately hoped he would win or lose all his credits. Either way, she supposed, and he would eventually leave her alone. Yet there was a nagging voice in the back of her head that wasn’t certain she wanted him to leave just yet. With an effort, she overrode the offending mental noise as she always did.

“Red it is,” the attendant announced, and the man smiled at Dusque.

“See,” he told her, “I knew you’d bring me luck.” Dusque half expected him to kiss her hand with the same false gallantry Lando had shown, but he surprised her once more.

“Pick another for me?” he asked.

“Twenty-seven,” she replied, nonplussed.

One side of his mouth curled up. He turned to the attendant and said, “Twenty-seven, please.” And once again he won, much to Dusque’s exasperation. In fact, he won the next seven colors and numbers that she chose.

Enough was enough. Determined that he should ultimately lose, Dusque told him, “Double zero.” And she smiled wickedly when she saw his grin finally falter.

But he cocked his head sideways and told the dealer, “You heard the lady. Put it all on green.”

“You do realize the odds, don’t you, sir?” the dealer inquired. “And you do have a substantial amount on the table.”

“If she says green, then green it is,” her companion replied with a touch of bravado in his voice.

“No further bets,” the attendant told the large group around the spinnerpit. Dusque vaguely noticed that the crowd had grown considerably since their lucky streak began. But even she was caught up in anticipation. She watched the ball bounce and hop its way across the jubilee wheel, and she held her breath.

“The wheel is slowing,” the attendant informed everyone, although that much was obvious. Even he sounded a touch tense, though.

The ball landed on twenty-eight. Black.

Dusque was a little disappointed, but she flashed her unknown companion a smirk even as the others groaned in sympathy. The black-eyed man met her gaze with his own soft smile. Before either said anything, there was a funny pop and the onlookers collectively gasped. Dusque broke away from his gaze and looked at the wheel. The ball was nestled in the slot marked DOUBLE ZERO. It was green. Against incredible odds, she had picked the winning number again.

“And the selector has popped the ball onto double zero,” the astonished attendant announced. “We have one winner.”

“Unbelievable,” she whispered.

While Dusque stared in amazement at her companion, she noticed from the corner of her eye that one of the pit bosses had come over to talk to their attendant. The Gungan female was well dressed and stern faced. She leaned over to the attendant and whispered some instructions into the employee’s ear. He nodded vigorously, and she stepped behind him.

“Sir,” the attendant said to the black-eyed man, “considering the amount of your winnings, I’m going to have to cash you out tonight.” He glanced back to his boss for support, and Dusque could see he was nervous. However, he didn’t have to worry. Dusque’s companion took the news without fuss and smiled easily.

“Cash me out,” he told the attendant and made it sound as though it had been his idea. “My lady friend has had enough of the game anyway and wanted this to be the last spin. Didn’t you?” he added and winked at her.

“Yes,” Dusque answered truthfully, “I did want this to be the last round on the jubilee wheel.”

“We’ll go ahead and credit your account,” the attendant offered.

“That will be fine,” he agreed. “Shall we?” he asked Dusque and motioned to the entrance.

“I think I’m about done for tonight,” she told him, trying to beg off.

He leaned toward her ear and whispered, “One last look at the stars for the evening? After all the luck we’ve shared?”

Dusque felt shivers along her back as he breathed against her ear. She knew better, and yet she was intrigued by the strange man who hadn’t even introduced himself. She decided to take a chance. If he was like most, she knew she could handle herself. She understood she was considered attractive by most standards, and it wasn’t the first time someone had tried to get her alone. It just frustrated her that she always seemed to be thought of as a woman first, and not a scientist. And a part of her hoped that he was exactly like all the other men she had met. Because, as it stood at the moment, she couldn’t make him out at all, and she prided herself on her ability to read other creatures. He, however, was definitely a puzzle, and she was intrigued.

“Maybe just one glance,” she quietly agreed. His smile grew wider.

I think I’ve got you pegged, she thought.

Lightly placing a hand on the small of her back, he expertly guided her through the busy casino. Passing by the bar, Dusque noticed that a few of the patrons had become a bit rowdy. The free drinks had long since run out, but the serious folks had started tabs. As two disagreed on who owed how much, the very drunk Mon Calamari took a swing at his companion to punctuate his point. But he overcompensated for his inebriated state and completely missed his friend holding the bill. His swing brought him crashing toward Dusque. She started to flinch, but before she could make a move, her companion shot out a muscular arm and caught the drunk before he even touched her.

“What yer think yer doin’?” the Mon Calamari slurred.

“You should think very carefully about what you plan to do next, friend,” her companion shot back in a deadly voice.

Dusque wasn’t the only one who saw just how serious he was. The Mon Calamari’s more sober friend, who had a slightly better grasp of the situation, grabbed his companion and started to pull him from the black-eyed man’s grip.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “Too much fun on the first night, I guess.” And with that, he yanked his friend toward the far end of the bar.

“Are you all right?” the black-eyed man asked Dusque.

“Of course,” she answered.

They walked out of the casino without further incident. Once outside, Dusque let her head fall back. She breathed in deeply. She had forgotten her blossoming headache, and the cool air felt good. When she faced her protector, she realized that they weren’t alone. A few of the other patrons had also escaped for some air, and they meandered around the marble walkway. One pair laughed in such a way that Dusque knew they wouldn’t want to be disturbed, at least for a little while.

“It smells like rain,” she told the stranger, slightly uncomfortable with the silence between them. “I don’t think we’ll see many stars tonight.”

He stared at her hard and then said quietly, “I think I can still find something interesting to show you. Come on.” And with that, he grabbed her hand and led her away from the other revelers, toward a fountain with a few discreet shrubs and alcoves. When they found an unused corner, he turned and faced her. He looked quickly from one side to the other.

Now is when he tries something, Dusque thought, prepared to stop him. “Look, whoever you are, I’m sorry if you thought—” she began, but he cut her off.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” he said, and Dusque noticed a change in his demeanor. He no longer appeared to be the sly suitor, but something very different.

“Let me explain,” he said, further confusing Dusque. After another surreptitious glance at their surroundings, he continued, “My name is Finn Darktrin and I’m not what you think I am.”

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“I’m taking a big chance talking to you like this. If anyone were to overhear us, I’d be dead,” he explained without the bravado he had shown inside at the gaming tables. The lack of that cockiness made Dusque take notice.

“What are you talking about?”

He grabbed her upper arm and said flatly, “I’m part of the Rebel Alliance. I’m a spy.”

If he hadn’t been holding her, Dusque would have turned away. She couldn’t believe what she had heard. But the gravity of the situation was carved on his face. She realized that this wasn’t some sort of elaborate ruse to trick her into a clandestine, romantic liaison. He was serious. She was relieved but also a little disappointed.

“What?” she said again, feeling the beginnings of fear creep in. She found herself looking over her shoulder and overly aware of her surroundings, but they were alone.

“I wish I had more time,” he told her, “to let you get used to the idea and for that, I am truly sorry. But time is the one thing neither of us has any longer.”

“Then tell me what you want,” she answered.

“You are absolutely vital to my current mission,” he replied.

“How could that be? I don’t even know you.” But, just like at the jubilee wheel, Dusque could feel her pulse begin to quicken. I’m vital to something, she thought.

“Because of who you are. Look,” he tried to explain, and Dusque could hear the edge to his tone, “the mission I accepted is critical to the Alliance. It could even potentially turn the tide in the Galactic Civil War. And you are the one who can make it work.”

“All right, tell me more,” she said, lowering her voice and unconsciously taking a step closer to him.

“You are an Imperial bioengineer. One of the top-ranking scientists in your class. That alone gives you free rein when it comes to travel. You show your credentials and no one bats an eye, and they certainly clear out of your way. And,” Finn added, “most important, it gives you access to any planet you desire. That’s why I need you.”

“Oh?” Dusque asked.

“I want to travel along with you as your assistant. I need to retrieve a device that contains the names of some vital personnel and I need to find it fast. The Empire knows of its existence and I’m sure they won’t waste any time sending their agents after it. With you as my companion, no one will question me. I can be in and out before anyone could be the wiser,” he finished.

“Oh,” she said again, and she was hard pressed to hide the disappointment in her voice. Of course, she thought, he only wants me for cover.

Perhaps sensing that he was losing her, he loosened his grip on her arm and added, “And I knew you would be sympathetic.”

Dusque yanked her arm free of his grip. “What makes you think I would be a Rebel sympathizer?” she demanded, fear making her words harsh.

“I know about you,” Finn told her, “and about your family.”

“You don’t know my family and you certainly don’t know me,” she replied, her anger on the rise. “You don’t know me at all.”

“That’s where you have underestimated the Alliance. Do you think your name was chosen at random? Do you think I would ask this of just anyone within your class?” Finn’s voice rose dangerously. “Please give me a little more credit than that.”

Dusque folded her arms across her chest like a barrier against his words. But she didn’t back down.

“Your father worked for the Empire,” he recited to her, “and look what that job brought your family. It drove him to his death. He couldn’t live with what he was doing.”

Dusque lowered her arms slowly as though she were deflating, a shocked look on her face.

“Your mother basically died with him, no longer the woman she had been. Your younger brother died at an ill-equipped Imperial training facility, and that was the nail in your mother’s living coffin, wasn’t it? And your older brother—”

“Stop it,” she hissed at him.

“All right,” he agreed. “Then let’s take a look at you. You study, you learn, and you take a job that turns out to be exactly what you didn’t believe in.”

“What are you taking about?” she asked through clenched teeth.

“Don’t know what I mean? What about that mission on Tatooine?”

“What about it?”

“What happened to the genetic sample of the Sarlacc you were supposed to retrieve? Where did that disappear to?”

“It wasn’t properly stored and didn’t survive the transport,” Dusque explained.

“Sounds plausible enough,” Finn agreed. “Except you’re better than that. I think that you had an attack of conscience. After all, if the Empire started playing around with the DNA, mixing and matching creatures with that kind of potential for destruction, how many innocents could they kill?”

“That’s not my problem,” she said, trying to dismiss his accusations.

“Ahh … but I think it is. I think it bothers you more than you admit to anyone. And then there were the snow slugs of Alzoc Three, the failed attempt to improve the combat arachnids of Carida, the clawing dinkos of Proxima Dibal, the—”

“That’s enough,” she interrupted.

“You’re right,” he agreed and glanced around. “It was more than enough reason for the Alliance to take notice of you. We did. And we need you now.”

“For cover,” she said, “and nothing more.”

“Exactly.”

She shook her head slightly, thinking that here again was someone who didn’t realize her abilities. He knew I had a sample from a Sarlacc, she thought, and didn’t even recognize how difficult it must have been to collect.

“So that’s all I am to you people? You want me to risk bringing the displeasure of the Empire down on my head so that you can have a free ticket to go planet-hopping? I won’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“I’m surprised you even have to ask, after you laid it out so obviously before me,” she countered, growing angry. She started to tick off items on her fingers. “The Empire destroyed my family. I won’t lose anything more to them. I’ve got a good job and I’m safe,” she added and started to walk away. Before she had taken two steps, though, Finn grabbed her and spun her around.

“Safe?” he nearly shouted at her, but remembered where he was and lowered his voice. “You think you’re safe with your head buried in the sand? If we noticed the things you were doing, or rather not doing, it won’t take your Imperial superiors much longer before they do—if they haven’t already. And when they do,” he added, “they will come for you. Make no mistake about that.”

Dusque shook her head in refusal, but didn’t say a word.

“Don’t you see,” Finn added, moving closer to her, “that there is no safety in not taking a stand. The Empire doesn’t just kill exposed Rebels. Even if you choose to do nothing, you could still be choosing death.”

Before Dusque could respond, Finn grabbed her upper arms and pulled her to him in a deep kiss. Dusque was momentarily stunned. But even more startling was the fact that she found herself responding to him. For a moment, she forgot who and where she was. A flash of white and the clink of armor, however, brought her back to reality as a stormtrooper patrol passed by them a moment later.

Dusque pulled herself free of Finn’s grip and dragged a hand roughly across her mouth. She looked at him disgustedly and said, “Was I just cover there, too?” In the subdued light, though, Finn didn’t look so self-possessed. That observation off-balanced her more than the kiss, and she realized that she just didn’t know what to make of the man. It frustrated her, but it confused her, as well.

“I’ve got to go,” she said awkwardly.

Finn hadn’t given up quite yet. He reached out and caught her hand once more. “What will it take?” he whispered to her.

Dusque shook her head and, without a backward glance, broke away. “I don’t know,” she answered, too quietly for anyone but herself to hear.

THREE

Tendau Nandon was slowly making his way around the casino. He hadn’t seen Dusque for a while and suspected that she had managed to head back to her hotel room. He shook his head sadly and nearly banged it against a low-hanging lamp in the process. The casino was just not well equipped for his kind, although it did accommodate a variety of other species well, judging by the happy noises.

Or perhaps they are just too inebriated to notice, the Ithorian thought.

The place had become more crowded since the doors had opened for the evening. Scores surrounded the spinnerpits, and there were lines to the lugjack machines four deep. It seemed as if at least a quarter of the players were winning, but it might simply have been that they were drunk and found everything worth cheering about. And when the Ithorian thought it couldn’t get any louder, he noticed an entertainer setting up behind a nalargon near the bar. As soon as he had tuned his instrument, though, he began to play a song that Tendau could almost recognize. As if on cue, a few Twi’lek dancers appeared from nowhere and began an impromptu show. Although the mood was festive, the Ithorian sensed an almost frantic pulse behind it.

Deciding to take one more look at the sky before retiring for bed, he stepped through the double doors, almost tripping over a body in his way. At first he thought someone had fallen and injured himself, but then he realized that some of the more raucous patrons had literally spilled out onto the walkway. A brief inspection told him they were no worse for the wear. Then, as he started to shuffle along, he saw Dusque walking back toward the casino. He smiled, but his two mouths gradually turned down as he got a better look at her.

She was walking with her head down, her eyes partially squeezed shut. With both hands, she was rhythmically rubbing her temples. She was so distracted that she nearly marched right past him. Tendau reached out with one long hand and brushed her shoulder. She twisted around with such a fearful look on her face, the Ithorian didn’t know which of them was more startled.

“Are you well?” he asked her, concern echoing from both his mouths.

She didn’t answer right away, and Tendau got an even closer look at her by the light of the casino sign. Her light brown hair was more askew than usual. Her face was flushed, and her eyes had the glassy quality of unshed tears. While Tendau knew that the human female was prone to fluctuations in hormone levels not seen in many other species, he had never known Dusque to fall victim to their cyclical nature. In fact, he could not recall ever seeing her so distraught.

When he had first met her months ago, he had been struck by how earnest she looked. He had not been in the service of the Emperor for very long, and his colleagues had still regarded him with mistrust. As the only Ithorian in the group, he was certain he would always be a bit of an outsider. So he readily sympathized with the newest arrival. Because she was the only female there, he knew she would have an uphill climb to mesh with the other bioengineers. She was diligent, hardworking, and, he discovered from his personal experience, immaculate in her collecting techniques. It didn’t take him long to recognize that the woman didn’t make mistakes; she was very intentional about every aspect of her profession. What had impressed him the most, though, was her affinity with other creatures.

Whether it was collecting DNA from anesthetized animals or sneaking into a lair or warren to investigate, he saw that Dusque moved as if she were a natural part of her surroundings. In those situations, she displayed a sense of balance that he rarely saw when she was with people. She appeared content when she was with animals, and at peace. She did not look that way now.

He reached a gentle hand toward her face and laid it briefly against her brow before brushing an errant strand of hair from her eyes. She lost some of her fearful look and closed her eyes at his touch.

“What’s the matter?” he asked her again.

Dusque shrugged her thin shoulders and said tiredly, “Nothing is wrong, Tendau. I think the day has finally caught up with me. So I’m going to call it an evening, if you don’t mind,” she added and started to leave. But the Ithorian was not so easily avoided.

“As long as you are going back in, why don’t you join me for something soothing to drink? You know it will help you relax,” he reminded her, not willing to have her go before he could find out why she looked so troubled.

She smiled weakly up at him, and he knew her heart was not in it. But she agreed anyway. And he knew she did it for his sake alone.

“You never do take no for an answer, do you?” she quipped.

“Not where you are concerned.”

Dusque shook her head and waved briefly. “It’s nothing, really,” she said, dismissing her obvious distress. “But maybe something to drink would be good before retiring.”

Tendau nodded and motioned back to the casino doorway. He walked slightly behind her as they both sidestepped the drunken Trandoshan who was still lying on the ground. The doors slid open with an airless whoosh, and the sounds of the gamblers hit them like a wave. He saw that Dusque faltered a bit and seemed unsure of her footing. The Ithorian stepped alongside her and offered her the crook of his slender arm. She hesitantly accepted, and he led her toward the bar. He lowered his head enough so that one of his mouths was near her left ear.

“Just one drink, maybe a little something to eat, and we’ll turn in. All right?”

“All right,” she replied, and this time he saw that she smiled at him with some genuine warmth.

There were twenty or so customers lined up along the bar. As Tendau and his colleague walked the length of it in search of two free seats, he noticed that more than one male turned and stared at Dusque. It happened quite frequently, and Tendau was saddened that she should always be so distressed by the reactions of others. Like most Ithorians, he revered nature and saw the beauty in all creatures. It was not hard to see her beauty; it was just sad that so few managed to look past it and really see her. And he knew Dusque was aware of that, as well. No matter how she excelled at a very difficult job, her gender was always a stumbling block. And he had noticed that lately she had accepted more and more hazardous missions. He suspected it was in an effort to erase her gender in the eyes of their superiors. He feared that her growing desire to dive into risky situations was going to land her in some very hot water, and he wouldn’t be there to help.

Toward the far end of the bar, he saw a small empty table. Tendau motioned to it, and Dusque nodded. When the waiter droid left with their order, Tendau tried again to find out what was wrong.

“Where did you get off to?” he asked her.

“I was just wandering around, taking in the sights,” she replied evasively. “Isn’t that what you were doing, too?”

“Did you try your hand at some of the games of chance?” he asked, sidestepping her question.

“Oh yes, I got a little more than I bargained for,” she answered, and Tendau could discern a trace of bitterness in her voice. “What about you? Where did you end up?”

“Oh,” he answered slowly, “I just walked around and made observations.”

“Did you find Mastivo and pass along your regards?”

“No, I was unable to locate him. I’m afraid I saw no one we know, after all.”

“Oh,” she answered, “no one at all. Hmm …” She seemed to be fishing for some kind of answer, and the Ithorian wondered why. Normally, Dusque was one of the most straightforward beings he knew. Now she was coming across almost as devious in her approach with him.

The droid returned with their order, and Dusque grew silent. Tendau observed that while she picked at a bowl of melon, she was surreptitiously scanning the room. He wondered who she was looking for, or if she even knew herself. Starting to worry, the Ithorian tried a different approach.

“Our hosts have thought of everything tonight,” he told her. “They even brought in a nalargon player. He is not bad.”

“I can just hear him over the crowd,” she replied. “I’ve actually been listening for the last few moments. Surprisingly, I think his playing is making my headache fade a bit.”

“They are known to be very calming,” Tendau agreed. The music and the food seemed to be relaxing her a bit. He tried again. “Will you tell me what happened tonight?”

Dusque looked at him sharply and seemed to be weighing something in her mind. She leaned slightly forward and he could see that she was chewing her lip. It was a behavior he had noticed she exhibited when something serious was bothering her. She seemed on the verge of speaking when she heard a piece of a conversation off to one side and shut down again.

“Not here,” she said.

The Ithorian decided to let the matter rest for a while and they ate silently, the only ones in the casino who weren’t talking. He concluded that she would tell him or not in her own time and fashion.

To their right, a few of the handlers from the arena had gathered. Tendau noticed that the ones who hadn’t won had moved on from commiserating about their losses to discussing some of the latest gear that was available to them. The topics ranged from reinforced gloves to more specific tools used for training and animal enrichment. He was half paying attention to their discussions in case they had some interesting insights into their animals. He valued all perspectives, even those that were obviously skewed.

“It can’t be done,” one of the handlers said. “You can’t tame those bats.”

“Aw, you just haven’t tried hard enough,” her companion joked.

The Zabrak who had made the initial claim slowly pulled off her left glove. She slammed her elbow down on the table and waved her left hand in the air. Tendau could see she was missing two fingers.

“Believe me,” she said, “I’ve tried.”

Her companion lost some of his haughty air and lowered his eyes.

“Borgles are more than mean,” she continued. “It’s like they’re evil right down to their core. Maybe because of all the time they spend in their caves, in the dark.”

“Are they native to Rori?” her chastised friend asked, and Tendau saw that he was treating her with slightly more respect since she had revealed her compromised hand.

“Don’t know,” Fingers replied. “There’s so much speculation about Naboo’s moon in general, I don’t know if anybody knows the straight answer.”

“What do you mean?” he asked her.

“Well, I’m no historian,” she began, “but I don’t think folks can even agree on who colonized Rori, let alone what is and isn’t indigenous to the place. As I understand it, some say the original human colonists of Naboo landed there first, hated it because it was too inhospitable, and then came here. Others say that a group of spice miners went there first in search of the mother lode. Nobody can agree.”

“Actually,” her friend said, “I heard that it was Gungans who first built a settlement there.”

“See what I mean?” Fingers agreed. “No one has the same story.”

“I heard it was the spice miner theory,” Dusque whispered to Tendau. The Ithorian cast a surprised glance at her, unaware that she had been paying attention so closely. But when he saw the way she regarded Fingers, he realized Dusque was becoming intrigued by the thought of an animal that couldn’t be trained.

“What someone should do,” Fingers continued, unaware that her conversation was being so closely regarded, “is investigate a little more. I mean, there are so many unusual animals there. You’d think somebody would want to know.”

“She’s got a good point,” Dusque told Tendau. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, because he was afraid he knew where her interest was going to lead.

“If some of the animals could be sampled and it turned out that they were originally indigenous to another planet, it might help narrow down just who did colonize the place,” she finished.

“It might,” Tendau agreed tentatively. “But by the same logic, it might increase the speculation, as well.”

“Even conflicting data has value,” Dusque argued.

Tendau was torn. He was glad she was starting to act more like her old self. Still, the gleam in her gray eyes was making him nervous. Although Tendau did not know the Zabrak handler, the woman looked capable enough. If she had lost two fingers trying to handle one, there was no telling what might happen to Dusque, with no experience tangling with borgle bats.

“All data is valuable,” he said. “All right, just what do you have in mind?”

“Well,” she began with an innocent tilt of her head, “as long as we’re already here, I don’t see why we couldn’t look into this a little more ourselves.”

Tendau sighed inwardly. It was as he expected. “The only issue, as I see it, is that we don’t have the opportunity to get our superiors to approve it. This idea of yours doesn’t have the sanctioning of the Empire.”

He saw Dusque straighten her back almost imperceptibly at his concerns. She had resumed her wary stance, and he wondered again what had transpired this evening to cause her to become so distrustful of him.

“Since when do you care so much about Imperial endorsement?” she snapped, and folded her arms. “Are you afraid someone is watching us?” Her voice had dropped, and she cast a quick eye around the room.

“You know me better than that,” he replied.

Dusque dropped her stern gaze as the Ithorian’s words sank in.

“You’re right,” she admitted. “I guess I’m just surprised that you could walk away from a mission that has this potential for discovery. Doesn’t seem like you.”

“Walk is exactly the point, Dusque. You know how painful it can be for me to move around planetside,” he explained. “Even here, where it is somewhat civilized, I have had some discomfort. Those two we were eavesdropping on mentioned that Rori was relatively inhospitable. I suspect that I will have some difficulty moving around there. I am afraid I would slow you down.”

“I could go alone,” Dusque said. “I have to go,” she added more intensely. “I have to get away from … all these people. I need—I don’t know, some space to think, I guess.” For a moment it seemed as if she were going to say more, but then she just clammed up. She looked unhappy.

“Even if I were to agree to this,” Tendau said slowly, “we only have enough funds to pay for our lodging here and transport back to the labs.”

Even as he threw up another excuse to dissuade Dusque, he watched as one corner of her mouth slowly curved upward. He knew that grin only too well. She always looked that way when she trumped one of their supervisors. She reached into her trouser pockets and pulled out handfuls of chips, which she promptly dumped onto the table. They lay there like a spotted rainbow.

“I think that’ll cover it,” she said gleefully.

Tendau tilted his curved neck and knew he had lost. She was determined to go, and if he didn’t go with her, he was certain she would attempt it on her own. He shook his head at her, but found a small chuckle inside.

Dusque leaned back in her chair and slowly rolled her head from one side to the other. Even over the bar chatter, Tendau could hear the joints in her neck crack several times. He worried even more about what it was that was weighing on her so heavily. It looked to him as if the small trip would be the quickest way for him to find out.

“I just want to get out of here,” she added quietly. “I feel like there are too many eyes on me. Just to have the ground under my feet and a sky overhead for even a little while …” She trailed off.

“All right,” the Ithorian agreed.

Dusque straightened her head and focused her eyes on him. “Really?” she asked quietly, and there was a childlike delight in her voice.

Tendau nodded. “When do you want to go?”

“How about at first light?”

“Will that be enough time to gather appropriate equipment?” he asked her.

“I’ve got my pack and a few extra items,” she replied, and Tendau watched as she perked up and grew more confident with each passing moment, now that she had something to focus on. “Anything else we might need we can probably get here. I think I noticed a crafting station near the spaceport. I’m sure that’ll cover it.” She shoved at some of her chips with a slim finger.

“There’s a travel terminal near the spaceport. When we arrived the other night, I noticed there were at least a few shuttles to Rori on a daily basis. We shouldn’t have any trouble purchasing tickets. We could be there and back in the matter of a day or so, no one the wiser.” She looked at Tendau, and he could tell she was reining in some of her excitement. “Are you really sure you don’t mind?”

“Anything for you, child,” he told her. “And who knows what we might learn once we arrive there, hmm?”

“Exactly,” Dusque agreed. “I’ll find you at first light.” She got up, and Tendau watched as she disappeared into the crowd.

“Who knows what we’ll find,” he repeated slowly to himself, “who knows?”

FOUR

“Where are you?” Dusque called, trying not to sound worried.

Waist deep in a marshy bog, Dusque was cold and miserable. She couldn’t believe Tendau had disappeared. And when she got no response, fear set in.

She and the Ithorian had arrived on Rori a few hours earlier. There were only two cities on Naboo’s moon, and they had chosen the one that bore the name of the man who had officially created the first colony: Narmle. However, what had started out as an outpost had grown into an almost respectably sized city, even boasting a hotel and a medcenter. Dusque had noted that the latter, tiny facility though it was, might come in handy, assuming one wasn’t wounded too far away from it. A thick, reedy bog separated Narmle from the other city, Restuss. Other than that, there was just a vast expanse of jungles and swamps.

“I can see why Narmle eventually gave up on colonizing this place,” she had told Tendau. “I haven’t seen such an overgrown planet in a long time.” The overcast skies added an ominous feel to the place.

Tendau had chuckled at her remarks. “First off, remember that this is a moon, not a planet,” he’d corrected her. “And for one as young as you, nothing is really a long time.” And then he had smiled at her.

The two had left the spaceport in search of more information prior to their search for the borgles. Before they had left Moenia, Dusque had questioned the fingerless Zabrak about the bats, but Fingers had grown hesitant to give out much information as soon as she had realized that Dusque was an Imperial biologist.

“Just why do you want to know?” she had asked.

“I overheard your conversation last night and I agreed with what you said,” Dusque explained.

“You were eavesdropping?” Fingers asked, shocked. She got a wary look in her eye, and her answers became much more guarded. Dusque soon gave up, empathizing with how the woman felt about discovering her privacy had been violated. She was rapidly learning about that herself.

Upon their arrival on Rori, they tried to glean a little more information about the borgles and their habitat. The few who would talk to them, after a tankard or two at the cantina, spoke in low voices tinged with fear. The borgles, it seemed, as well as a few other creatures, had garnered quite a reputation around the area. And it was not good.

“I don’t know anybody who’s ever killed one of them things,” a drunken Rodian had slurred. “They’re just evil,” he added. No one else had been able to offer much more in the way of useful information except for the general direction in which they might find some caves that housed the creatures. They had to make do with that meager guidance.

Making sure she had emergency supplies in her pack, Dusque concluded that she was well equipped. Between her sampling tools and food rations for both her and the Ithorian, there wasn’t much more she could think of. She hoisted her pack on her back, and strapped a small but effective Twi’lek dagger to her thigh. And in consideration of the terrain, she even tied back her waist-length hair. Then, certain she had everything, she had checked in with Tendau.

“Are you sure you want to come along?” she had asked him one more time. “You could stay here in Narmle and we could use comms to stay in touch.”

“And what would be the point of my remaining behind?” he had asked. “I thought we were in this together. Besides, who would watch you if I weren’t there?” He had smiled at that, but Dusque became uneasy.

“Why would anyone need to watch me?” she asked, on edge.

The Ithorian lost his easy smile. “I meant,” he corrected himself, “who would make sure you stayed out of trouble?” The moment dragged out between them, filled with tension.

Finally Dusque broke the awkwardness. “Since when do I ever get into trouble?” she asked, deciding she had to lighten up more around the Ithorian.

He raised his long hand and started to count off. “There was the time on Tatooine, Yavin Four—”

“All right!” She laughed with genuine warmth and threw her hands up in defeat. “You win. Watch away.” And with that, she gathered up his gear, despite his protests, and placed the bulk of it in her backpack, to relieve him from some of the excess weight and pressure on his feet. She noticed one item that was out of the ordinary, however. Tendau had a CDEF blaster in his possession. She had never seen him carry any weapon before, other than a survival knife. She looked at him sharply.

“I have an uneasy feeling about this mission,” he told her gravely. “And I did not want to go into it unprepared.”

“Probably a good idea,” Dusque agreed hesitantly, but she was still unnerved by the sight of the deadly weapon. Of course, she told herself, all weapons can be lethal with the right training. Still, there was something almost sinister about the black, shiny blaster lying there like an unspoken accusation.

And so they had left Narmle on foot and headed out into the wilds of the Rori backwoods. For a while, Dusque and Tendau did no more than follow the rough coordinates that they had received from the drunken Rodian, who had simply said to go southeast. Each seemed lost in his or her respective thoughts, and the wide plains were ideal for contemplation. The gray, overcast skies fit the mood. The farther in they proceeded, the more Dusque sensed herself relax.

With the fields under her feet and the lack of prying eyes, she felt as though a weight were lifting. The only thing that preyed on her mind was her colleague. The longer they traveled across the plains, the more Dusque realized that what was troubling her about Tendau was not his actions at all, but the fact that she somehow doubted him. That was what had set her off balance. She knew there was only one thing to do, and she stopped her light run dead.

“What is it?” Tendau asked, immediately on guard. “Did you see something?”

“Not exactly,” she began. “But I thought this might be a good spot to do some foraging and surveying. We came here for samples, after all.”

“Good idea,” he agreed, but Dusque could see that at least part of the reason he was acquiescing so easily was because he was tired. She once again marveled at his fortitude in his work when he was so obviously in pain, and she wondered how she could have come to doubt him.

Whether it was the onset of shame or the fact that she just wanted to be honest with him, Dusque blurted out, “Are you an Imperial bioengineer?”

The Ithorian turned off his device, stopped surveying, and stood up. He had a perplexed look on his face, as though he was trying to figure out the joke in her absurd question. “You know what I am,” he told her. “Why do you ask?”

The pile of rocks she had been surveying was abandoned. She lowered her pack to the ground and sat down with her back against it. The cold stones felt good on her shoulders. She motioned to Tendau with her hand, inviting him to sit with her.

As soon as the Ithorian had lowered his large frame to the ground, he asked her, “Is this about last night?”

Dusque smiled ruefully. “Right to the heart of it, as usual. Am I so transparent?”

“Child,” Tendau started, “it’s not because you are transparent that I know you, but because you are honest. And last night, you were not yourself. Something or someone frightened you. It pained me,” he continued, laying a hand against his chest, “to see you so far removed from yourself. Will you tell me what has happened to cause you to question?”

Dusque turned away, once again consumed by doubt laced with fear. It was this unnamed fear that had changed everything for her. She shifted onto her knees and started to rummage through her pack. “If we’re going to be here a while,” she explained, “we might as well be comfortable.” She found her small tool kit and in a matter of moments had a tiny but cheery fire burning. The damp was starting to seep into her bones and she knew that if she felt uncomfortable, the Ithorian felt worse, no matter how stoic he remained about it.

“As usual, you are a wonderful observer. Something did happen last night,” she said and then faltered.

“Do you want to share this with me right now,” he offered, “or would you rather we not speak of it?” Dusque knew he had made the offer because he sensed her unease. And with that simple act of kindness, she knew in her heart that if there was anyone she could or should trust, it was he.

“Thank you for that,” she replied and he smiled at her, giving her the time she needed. “Does it ever bother you,” she began, “to do the things we do?”

“Is that why you asked if I was an Imperial engineer?” he asked. Dusque nodded. The Ithorian stared into the fire a moment before he responded. “It is something I wrestle with,” he admitted.

“I wanted so much,” he went on, “to see all of Mother Jungle in her many incarnations. That need drove me from my herd ship to pursue the stars. And in the course of that pursuit, I was ‘recruited,’ if you will, into Imperial service.

“At the beginning,” he added, “it did not seem so bad.”

Dusque nodded in understanding. “And now?”

It was Tendau’s turn to sigh. “And now, it is different.”

“Why now?” Dusque asked, hoping that his answers would somehow guide her.

“I thought,” he admitted, “that the Empire would leave us alone. And I believed that nature should be allowed to take its course. But after the Battle of Yavin, we were no longer uninvolved. The Empire decided to leave a garrison stationed on Ithor. Like so many other worlds, the Empire had implanted themselves like a blight on us. It was then that my eyes were opened.” He stopped and looked into the small fire and did not continue for several long moments.

“I believe in the Mother Jungle,” he said eventually, “and disease is a part of her mystery. By design, it serves a purpose, as do famine and competition for territory. All of these things are unpleasant for some to observe, but a single part in a larger cycle. But when one starts to tamper with nature, the disease that should be checked runs rampant instead. I believe the Empire places the galaxy out of equilibrium. It is the duty of every individual to find and restore balance.

“So,” he sighed, “to answer your question, I am a biologist who works for the Empire. I do not know for how much longer, though. Does that make sense?”

Dusque was silent for a while. She weighed his words against what she felt inside. Finally, she said, “And just what does one do to return the galaxy to equilibrium?”

The Ithorian smiled at her. “My child, I do not have one answer for you. I wish I did. But each of us must make a journey to a decision that is for us alone. While my destination might be the same as yours, our paths must inherently be different.”

Dusque pulled her knees up against her chest and wrapped her arms about them, although she felt no chill. “And how do we know what our path is?”

Tendau reached over with his long arm and brushed her hair lightly. Dusque momentarily had a flash of her father. That gesture had been the only physical affection he had ever demonstrated to the sole girl in his brood. She was struck momentarily by a touch of homesickness, which she immediately banished.

“It will become clear to you,” he said gently, “in time.”

Caught up in the moment, Dusque confessed, “I met someone last night.” The Ithorian said nothing, only nodded to her to continue.

“He said he was with the Alliance,” she said quietly, lowering her voice even though there was no one else as far as the eye could see. “And he said he needed my help.” She looked at the Ithorian imploringly. “He … knew things about me.”

Tendau nodded gravely. “Dusque, there are very few secrets in this galaxy. You should know that. After all,” he added, “even our job is to unravel secrets at the most basic, genetic level. We are all watched as though under a microscope. We are all known to one degree or another.”

She shifted uncomfortably. “I guess I thought I was under the radar, so to speak. I guess I thought no one really noticed me. I mean,” she added, “I never get any recognition at the labs. I got used to thinking of myself as invisible. And,” she finally admitted, “I think I liked being overlooked.”

“It is a shadow of a life,” the Ithorian said, “and one I have been guilty of, as well. I put my desires before the needs of others. But you have only been overlooked out of fear. Willel fears you because he knows that you will surpass him in ability soon enough.”

“So what do I do?” she asked.

“You decide what you can live with and what you cannot bear to witness any longer,” he stated flatly.

“Is that what you’ve decided to do?” she asked. “I thought I saw you talking to someone unusual last night,” she offered, suddenly feeling guilty that she had spied on him.

The Ithorian, however, took no visible offense. “Child, we do what we have to and we choose what to live with. Nature must, however, be kept in balance. And those things that are unnatural should be removed—otherwise chaos ensues.”

Dusque sensed he was finished for the moment and wouldn’t tell her what to do. He had been clear enough that the choice belonged to the individual. As she started to toss dirt on the fire to smother the flames, she silently berated herself for how servile in her thinking she had become. Of course, she trusted Tendau, but did she really want him to tell her what to do? Or had she simply become so used to taking orders from her male colleagues that she was afraid to stand alone? She shook her head.

She started to put her backpack on, when she felt the Ithorian, unasked, help her with it. She smiled despite her mental debate. “Thank you,” she told him and held his gaze for a long moment. “For everything.”

“Child, when the time comes, you will see your path like a beacon before your eyes. Trust me,” he finished.

“I do,” she finally admitted.

“Now that that is settled, let’s see about those bats,” he said. And they headed farther into the trees.

Initially, finding paths through the trees had been simple. However, that did not last for very long. As they struggled with vines and branches, it became necessary to bushwhack their way through the increasingly dense jungle. The gray sky was blotted out by the thick canopy of trees, and Dusque felt claustrophobic. Almost no light was able to break through, and they had a hard time keeping each other in sight. By default, Dusque took the lead to clear a path for Tendau to follow. She could feel herself become winded, and the moisture-laden air was difficult to breathe. Each breath was an effort, and both were soon taxed. To make matters more challenging, their coordinates took them straight to a bog.

Seeing no way around it, they had no choice but to wade through it. Dusque went in first and held her arms above the waterline. Tendau followed, but seemed less uncomfortable than she.

“I hate getting wet,” she mumbled.

The sun set, although it made little difference where they were. Then Dusque noticed little points of light that appeared to be dancing above the water, and she smiled despite her misery. The lights turned out to be a kind of glow bug. There must have been a hundred or so, and they bobbed and fluttered just above the boggy water. She was so entranced, she forgot where she was. When she realized Tendau hadn’t commented on them, she turned around to see why not. That was the moment she realized he was nowhere to be seen.

“Tendau,” she called again and turned sluggishly around, tangled in the tall reeds. She drew her Twi’lek dagger and slashed at the plants, her heart pounding. She struggled forward, her splashing sending the glow bugs into a frenzy of buzzing. A cloud of them dissipated in her wake.

“Tendau,” she called again, fearing the worst.

“Here!” The faint reply seemed to come from somewhere off to her left.

She slogged her way toward a clump of knotted trees, grateful to find more solid purchase. As she grabbed some of the heavy roots to hoist herself out, a strong hand grabbed her wrist and yanked her free of the murky water.

“I think I found their lair,” he whispered. “At least, it looks like what the Zabrak trainer mentioned last night.” And he motioned for her to follow.

Above the bank, nestled in a hillside, was what appeared to be a cave. Dusque shook her head, impressed that her colleague had spotted the lair with its natural camouflage and in the poor light.

“Good eyes,” she told him. “I was so busy watching glow bugs, I didn’t even notice I had lost track of you. Sorry,” she apologized sheepishly.

“Don’t worry,” he replied. “I know if I had been in any real trouble, you would have found me.”

Dusque pulled out a small halo lamp and switched it on. Its beam illuminated a small circle of dirt in front of her. She nodded to Tendau, and they approached the cave opening.

The entrance was large enough to house several packs of creatures. A quick perusal revealed nothing, although Dusque did stop to do a brief survey of the sopping grounds around the cave opening just in case. With a quick nod to Tendau, she entered the lair. He followed directly behind.

The first section of the den was cavernous, with a vaulted ceiling from which hung a few stalactites. Dusque crossed her arms reflexively as a cold breeze assaulted her. In the distance, she could hear the faint sound of water dripping intermittently. That and the few echoes of rockfalls were all she heard at first. There was no sign of anything living. Her faint light revealed several tunnels, each winding in a different direction. She turned her face from one side to the other until she could feel on her skin where the breeze was coming from. She motioned to Tendau with one of the hand signals they had developed since first working together, and they started their descent into the darkness.

Given the cave’s acoustics, it was a challenge not to reveal their location to anything that might have been nesting in there. Fortunately Dusque’s boots, made from the softest hides with soles sturdy enough for the most rugged terrain, were as quiet as though she were barefoot. And the Ithorian, although it was extremely challenging to match Dusque’s abilities, was as silent as she. It was so dark within the cave that even with her light, Dusque was forced to run her hand against the side of the tunnel to keep from becoming disoriented. The rocks that formed the cave walls and ceiling were so unremarkable and so dark, it was difficult to visually tell which way was up at times. She found the effect almost nauseating.

As they descended, Dusque started to become discouraged. There was little sign of anything other than more rocks and tunnels. She was about to motion to Tendau that they should turn around when she heard an odd sound down farther to their left. She held up her hand and signaled to the Ithorian to hold up and listen. She saw him cock his head at an angle, and after a moment’s deliberation, he nodded. He raised his hand and waved his fingers briefly: their sign for wings.

Dusque slid slowly around the corner, Tendau directly behind her. By her weak light, she saw a creature hovering over something about ten meters away. She couldn’t make out much, but she was able to observe that whatever it was had a wingspan about as long as she was tall and what looked like a wicked beak of sorts. It was hovering over a small mound. Both she and Tendau held their ground and watched as the creature dipped down over the mound, settled on it for a moment, and then took to the air again. The creature repeated the process a few more times before flying deeper into the tunnels. Certain that it wasn’t going to return in the near future, Dusque and Tendau cautiously approached the unattended mound.

Dusque dropped to her knees and saw that the mound was the remains of a squall. Not indigenous to Rori, it was a small, fur-covered mammal with long ears and a distinctive, hopping gait. And the one on the tunnel floor was a very dead specimen, mostly likely the recent meal of a borgle bat. As Dusque ran her hand over the corpse, she felt something wet and slick near the squall’s throat. She pulled her hand away and held it in the circle of light from her halo lamp. Her hand gleamed back a rich crimson in the dim light: blood. That was interesting: blood on the neck, but not much on the ground around the corpse. That would suggest that the borgle that had killed the squall was not just an ordinary carnivore, but a bloodsucker. Dusque flashed her stained hand in warning to the Ithorian. She rose to her knees and moved down the tunnel.

Winding her way to the right, Dusque heard the sounds of flapping grow. She reached a bend in the tunnel and, using it for cover, carefully peered around the corner. Several creatures were flapping around in a cluster. None of them was as large as the first one she had seen above, near the corpse of the squall. But she was able to get a better look at these specimens.

They were definitely bats, with leathery wings and fur-covered bodies. Their faces were elongated, and they had very pointed ears. From where she stood it was hard to tell if they had any type of claws on their feet, but Dusque assumed they probably did. The fact that they were blood drinkers was most likely the reason they were untamable. Any creatures this aggressive would have to be taken when they were extremely young, if one were to have any hope of training them to respond. One of the group suddenly emitted a high-pitched sound and flew off into the depths. The others followed, and Dusque seized the opportunity.

Shrugging off Tendau’s warning grip, she slowly crawled over to where the young borgles had been fluttering. There she discovered the remains of what must have been a nest. She grew excited when she saw that while there were no juveniles present, there were tufts of downy fur caught in the nest itself. She deftly pulled out her sample containers and collected all the bits she could find. She gave Tendau the sign for success and was sliding back toward him when an odd reflection caught her attention.

There was something glinting in her light off in a far recess of the tunnel. As Dusque moved closer to it, she could see that yet another opening appeared to descend even farther down. What had caught Dusque’s attention was a bone, picked clean. And she saw that there were more reflections down the partially concealed tunnel. Since neither she nor Tendau had spotted any other living thing in the caverns besides the bats, including the smallest insect, Dusque’s curiosity was piqued. Those bats’ feeding habits were blood drinking. This was most likely the work of something else. She wondered what other creatures might be living in down among the bats. She couldn’t resist a quick reconnaissance. Tendau shook his head, but Dusque held up one finger and disappeared into the gaping maw.

She felt more cold air brush against her skin and realized that this was the source of the chill that she had felt when they entered the cave system above. Her lamp revealed almost nothing. The darkness seemed to swallow it up and was absolute. Dusque felt a stab of dread, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She was starting to reconsider her plan when something bumped into her from behind.

Stifling a scream, she turned and realized the Ithorian had followed her. She smiled, although she knew he couldn’t see it, and continued into the darkness. With him near her, Dusque was more sure of herself. However, as she came across more and more bones, each one a different size, her certainty began to falter. With no definite way to tell how big the cavern was, she was starting to understand that it was littered with bone cairns in every niche. She wished that she had thought to mask her and the Ithorian’s scents before they had begun their exploration. And then she heard a flapping in the dark. They both froze in their tracks.

Unlike the sound the other bats had made, this was slow and deliberate and powerful. Dusque knew it was near and was torn between her desire to see it and her growing fright. She shook her head and told herself that this was exactly the reason she had become a bioengineer: to discover new things and to understand them. She knew there was no turning back. So she steeled herself and continued deeper into the black cavern. Feeling her way against the wall, she knew Tendau was still behind her. And as she felt the wall curve, she came around to an eerie sight.

By her weak light, Dusque saw a mound of bones as tall as she was and nearly eight meters long. And atop that skeletal throne was a monstrous borgle. Heart pounding, mind racing, Dusque estimated the beast was at least five meters long. While it resembled the others in almost every other detail besides its size, there was one other striking feature: the bat had glowing, hateful, yellow eyes. In fact, they were almost hypnotic in their power. In the pit of her stomach, Dusque suddenly understood why the fingerless trainer had said they were evil incarnate. She reached back and squeezed the Ithorian’s hand so hard that she nearly broke his fingers. She found herself frozen in her tracks and hazily wondered if it was the borgle’s doing.

As Tendau started to tug her back, the mutant bat let out a shrill screech, and from somewhere below, Dusque heard the fluttering of hundreds of wings. The Ithorian pulled harder, and she suddenly felt freed. The two turned and started to run at a breakneck speed. Tendau’s small pistol and her dagger would be of no use against the sheer number of bats.

As they stumbled through the tunnels, it was Dusque’s turn to grab her friend and pull him along. She could feel the breath burn in her lungs, but her fright had galvanized her into action and given her a burst of energy. Just as she thought she felt claws grab at her hair, she saw the weak light of day ahead. With the entrance to the cave in sight, they both increased their speed and tumbled, rolling out of the cave and partway down the slight hill. They lay in a heap, gasping for air, weapons drawn and at the ready. But nothing followed them out.

Dusque rolled onto her back and let a sigh of relief escape. After she had a moment to collect herself, she started to giggle. Her giggles grew into full-fledged laughter and then Tendau joined in. They laughed until they were breathless again, and then Dusque pushed herself on one elbow to regard her friend.

“Did you see the size of that thing?” she asked, amazed.

“It would have been hard to miss it,” Tendau quipped, “seeing how it filled the whole vault.”

Dusque smiled but found herself sobering up. No longer giddy, she said seriously, “Aside from its obvious size, that thing was wrong … somehow.” She found she didn’t have the words to describe how she felt about its overpowering malevolence.

“Yes,” Tendau agreed. “There’s no denying that that creature was a mutant—an abomination of evil. Sometimes it is easy to pick that out, isn’t it?” He gave her a pointed stare.

“Yes,” she agreed, his real meaning perfectly clear to her. “Sometimes it’s easy to tell something is wrong. But sometimes it isn’t,” she argued.

With that, she knelt and rummaged through her pack, checking to make sure her samples had survived their hasty departure. The containers were unbroken, and she was glad the trip hadn’t been wasted after all.

“If only we could’ve sampled that thing,” she murmured.

“You amaze me, child,” Tendau admitted. “You really do at times. We’re lucky the thing didn’t sample us.” He stood and straightened his tunic. “Now let’s return before you get us into real trouble.”

FIVE

As dawn broke with its thin, pink tendrils snaking across the sky, they made good time heading back to Narmle, even though they were exhausted from their flight from the cavern. Dusque, elated at their relative success, could not resist stopping to take a quick survey of some small warrens that she had noticed on their way out to the caves. While she was sampling, she thought she heard a low growl not too distant from where she and Tendau were working.

“Do you hear something?” she asked him quietly.

“No,” he replied.

“I think something’s been following us,” she told him.

“Child, you are imagining it. I think we are both still somewhat on edge.”

“Just the same, let’s keep moving, okay?”

“Of course.” And they packed up their equipment and continued on.

Suddenly, the low growls that Dusque was certain she had been hearing stopped entirely. Rather than relieve her, though, it made Dusque’s hackles rise. Before she could even turn around to say another word to Tendau, the jungle exploded around them in a cacophony of snarls and screams. Dusque realized that one of the screams had come from her.

A huge tusk-cat came crashing out from the thick brush. Weighing easily four times as much as Dusque, it had two very prominent canines protruding from its jaw that lent its kind their name. The feline was sand colored with a very long tail and strong haunches, although its fur looked mangy and patchy. Dusque and the Ithorian tried to dart for cover. Dusque made it to some trees, but Tendau was not so fortunate.

The tusk-cat bounded after the Ithorian without hesitation. Dusque could see that he was fumbling for his blaster, his fright and his exhaustion making him clumsy. The tusk-cat was about to pounce on him, and Dusque knew he didn’t stand a chance. Seeing him in mortal danger, she acted without thinking.

Unsheathing her dagger, she rushed at the charging tusk-cat. With a leap, she landed partially on its back. As soon as she made contact with the cat, she locked her arm around the creature. Surprise and momentum were on her side, and Dusque diverted the feline’s attention away from Tendau and onto herself.

The large cat galloped around like an unbroken tauntaun, trying to buck the offending weight off it. Dusque, at the same time, tried to slash at the cat’s throat, but it managed to snap its jaws dangerously close to her hand in retaliation. The sharp teeth caught her on the arm and Dusque screamed in pain. She managed not to drop her dagger, but she lost her grip on the cat. The tusk-cat bucked again and Dusque went flying across the small clearing, landing hard on her side. The enraged beast turned and charged. Dusque rolled off her side onto her back and raised her small dagger in the air just as the feline leapt.

Tendau, having freed his blaster, dropped to one knee. For a brief instant, Dusque could see him take aim. Then her vision was eclipsed by the sight of the tusk-cat, jaws spread wide, descending on her. She brandished her dagger forward and aimed right for the center of the cat’s throat, knowing the gesture was fruitless but refusing to give up. As the feline landed, the air around them was filled with a blinding red haze. Dusque heard the tusk-cat howl and snarl in rage and pain just before collapsing on top of her. She wasn’t even sure if her knife had struck its mark. The weight of the cat forced all the air out of her lungs. She dimly thought she heard the whine of another blaster shot slice through the air. Vaguely, she realized the cat was suffocating her. Dusque tried to push against the body, to no avail. She found it difficult to draw in a breath, and more colored lights danced and flashed behind her lids as she grew light-headed.

Slowly, Dusque felt the cat start to move.

“Dusque,” she heard a muffled voice call.

She started to push the cat in the direction it was already moving, and as part of the feline cleared her head, Dusque could see the Ithorian above her. He was straining against what Dusque now recognized was deadweight. The tusk-cat was finished. Although her hands were somewhat pinned, Dusque used her knees and legs to try to help Tendau move the carcass off her.

She gave a hard shove, grunting with the exertion. Between the two of them, they moved the cat far enough so that Dusque could pull herself out from under the dead animal.

“Are you all right?” Tendau asked with great concern. He knelt down next to her and ran his hands over her bleeding arm.

“I’ll be fine, I think,” she said and grinned ruefully. “Good shot.”

“Sorry I wasn’t faster. Let me retrieve your pack and tend to this,” he added, indicating her arm.

Dusque pulled away at the torn fabric of her sleeve and examined the wound. It looked relatively superficial to her. “Leave it,” she told the Ithorian. “We shouldn’t stop for this. She probably wasn’t alone.”

The Ithorian returned to her side and started to rummage through her bag. “I haven’t heard anything else. If she was with her pack, they would’ve descended by now.” Looking at her bloodied clothing, he added, “That smell would’ve driven them into a frenzy.”

“You’re probably right,” Dusque agreed after some thought. She watched as he laid out a ground cloth for a somewhat sterile field and pulled out bandages and a few stimpaks. She sat cross-legged and offered her injured arm out to Tendau. Carefully, he cleaned and dressed her wound.

They managed to return to Narmle and Moenia without any further incidents. Despite her wounds, Dusque enjoyed the quiet trek through the wilderness. But once they reentered the city, all the doubts she had tried to dismiss came rushing back like waves crashing on a shore. Once again she recognized how fortunate she was to have a friend and colleague like Tendau in her life. He helps me and supports me and I’m lucky to know him. But what can I do for him? I take and take and stay safe. I work for the Empire, but I don’t embrace their beliefs any more than I’ve embraced those of the Alliance. And when she thought of the Rebels, her mind drifted back to the black-haired agent who had haunted her since they had first locked eyes.

Maybe, just maybe, like Finn said, by choosing not to take a chance, I’ve been choosing not to live. What does that make me in the end? she wondered.

The spaceport was crowded for the return flight to Naboo. As Dusque looked around, absently rubbing her wounded arm, she saw many folks who appeared tired and scared. She suspected they had come to Rori to answer some call to adventure and had been beaten back. Realizing their mistakes, they were fleeing back to those things that they knew. But, Dusque noted to herself, they had all taken a chance. At least they could comfort themselves with that knowledge during the long nights ahead of them.

The shuttle flight wasn’t long, but Dusque was haunted the whole way. And while she had accused her mother of becoming a shadow back when she lived at home, Dusque suddenly feared the fact that maybe she had been the ghost in her family all along. Perhaps the time to choose had come. And yet she still felt torn.

“What should I do?” she asked the faint reflection that stared back at her from the shuttle window. But that specter had no answer for her. She sulked in silence.

When the shuttle touched down, there was a huge rush of people. Travelers spilling out of the shuttle were replaced by nearly as many eager to get on. Dusque was shoved and jostled and she remembered why she liked being in the field so much, even if it meant that she was being hunted by something decidedly bigger than she was. Folks of all classes with all manner of baggage were milling about in the open-air arena of the shuttleport. Some had released their pets, and an extremely large peko peko hovered obediently near its owner. The blue of its skin was dazzling in the morning sun. Dusque noted that the Naboo tended to revere them less as living things than as trophies. It was the Gungans who kept them as pets.

While Dusque was admiring the reptavian, she unknowingly lost track of Tendau. By the time she had retrieved her small pack, he was nowhere to be found. She turned and turned, pushing against the crowd of people, trying to locate him. She wasn’t worried so much as curious where he had gotten off to again. While she was searching, she thought she caught sight of the black-haired Rebel, Finn. In spite of herself, Dusque felt her heart skip a beat. A Gungan trader walked past her, his falumpaset trailing behind him. The quadruped was nearly three times as big as Dusque, with packs and equipment strapped to its back. As it passed by her, it obscured her view. She ducked her head from one side to the other, trying to catch a glimpse around it, but by the time the gray-skinned creature had moved past, Finn was nowhere to be seen. Dusque scanned the crowd briefly and then dismissed him as a mirage, conjured by her imagination since he had been weighing so heavily on her mind. Then a ripple of activity went through the already bustling crowd.

Dusque was tossed around by the throng. As she pushed back to keep her balance, she started to become worried. Something was not right. A few of the travelers started to yell. Over the growing din, Dusque could hear the heavy tread of armored feet echo across the stone walkways, approaching rapidly. The shuttle departed so suddenly that its blast knocked a few of the disembarking passengers off their feet. Dusque found herself on her stomach, blinking dust from her eyes. She raked her hair from her face, and when her vision cleared, she could see Tendau about ten meters away. He was completely surrounded by white-armored stormtroopers. The sun, which had actually broken through the heavy cloud cover that always seemed to shroud Moenia, winked and glinted off their armor. Dusque squinted against the glare and saw that a dark-clad Imperial officer of the Security Bureau was reading to the Ithorian from a datapad he held in his hand. Although he was surrounded, Tendau was making no attempt to flee.

Dusque was not so reserved. She sprang to her feet and started to shove her way through to reach him. But those who had recovered their footing were backing away collectively from the tableau in front of them. Some tried to run for the exits, while others crouched and cowered fearfully. Dusque was in a state, her emotions making her rash. First she knocked down a small Bothan woman holding a basket of fruit, then she ran up against a newly formed wall of spectators. She grabbed a Rodian by the shoulders and tried to yank him aside. But the crowd had bunched up and there was nowhere for Dusque to move him. He turned angrily and looked at her coldly with his multifaceted eyes.

“Watch what yer doin’, woman,” he yelled at her.

“I’ve got to get to him!” she cried and strained to see past the gawkers who were now riveted by the scene.

“No, you don’t,” he warned her, “trust me on that. They’ve got a warrant for the Hammerhead’s arrest and execution.”

“What?” Dusque demanded. “What has he done? What’s going on here?” All the while, she was trying to force her way closer, to no avail. Almost sensing the impending danger, the crowd was no longer trying to move away. Another line of stormtroopers moved into formation, creating a solid line in front of the spectators, this time to keep them back.

“I heard someone up front say he was a traitor,” the Rodian replied distractedly. “Sold some information or bought some. Who knows?” He turned to get a better look.

Horror-stricken, Dusque saw that the Imperial officer was putting away his datapad, his pronouncement finished. He signaled to three of the troopers, and two of them seized the Ithorian by his long arms. He made no move to struggle as the two dragged him toward an open section of the spaceport, followed by the third, who was brandishing an E-11 blaster rifle.

“Nooo …,” she moaned quietly. She tore at the shirts and sleeves of those around her in an effort to burst free. But the more she pushed, the more she was shoved back. At one point, she was certain that Tendau saw her. He shook his domed head sadly and let it hang down. She cried out to him, freeing one hand between the troopers to wave imploringly. He raised and lowered his hand, signaling for her to stop: death ahead, it meant in their private language.

Her fear and rage made her reckless, blind to the imminent danger all around her. “You don’t understand,” she screamed at the officer. “You’re making a terrible mistake!”

The officer glanced over in her direction. He cocked his head and tried to find out who exactly was screaming at him. His hand dropped to his sidearm, and Dusque was too frenzied to notice the implied threat in his actions. She was starting to scream again when a strong arm wrapped itself around her waist and yanked her backward, nearly off her feet. She twisted wildly against whoever was pulling her away from the front of the crowd, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Tendau.

The two stormtroopers who had pulled him toward the far side of the shuttleport now stepped away from him, although they kept close enough in case he tried something. But the Ithorian simply raised his head to look at the sky. The third trooper faced him from three meters away and drew a sight on him with his blaster.

“Ready,” the stormtrooper said, not really asking a question.

Dusque grew limp and found herself using the arm that still held her as support, instead of struggling against it. “No,” she whispered, her eyes wide with disbelief.

“Now,” the officer ordered. The crowd had grown deafeningly quiet.

The Ithorian dropped his gaze to look directly at the soldier, then spread his arms wide in an almost welcoming gesture. The stormtrooper fired his blaster rifle once, the red beam slicing through the morning air with a deadly whine. It struck Tendau directly in his chest. He convulsed inward and crumpled to the cold stone. He twitched once and then was still.

Dusque screamed out and bent forward, feeling as if the beam had struck her, as well. She lifted her head, and a snarl of defiance escaped her lips. She dragged a forearm across her moist eyes and tried to launch herself at the officer, but another arm encircled her and she felt herself wrenched farther away from her target. She fought against the grip and twisted around to come face-to-face with Finn. She was dumbfounded. The Rebel spy used the opportunity to drag her farther back into the crowd toward the main exit of the shuttleport.

“What?” she finally managed, more out of surprise than any conscious thought.

“We need to get out of here,” he whispered urgently, still pulling her by the arm.

Dusque shook herself free of his grip and twisted back to the knot of onlookers, her face like that of an avenging spirit. Finn ran back and caught her up in his arms and forced her to turn away.

“If we don’t get out of here now,” he repeated, “we will both die and that will serve nothing. Don’t make it a wasted death!”

Dusque felt as if she were moving through a dream. Tendau’s death echoed in her head and her heart. She deflated and let him hustle them both out of the shuttleport, past those who craned their necks to get a better look at her dead friend and those who thanked their fortune to still be standing. Once out of the launch area, she vaguely noticed the ticket terminal and the small groups of people chatting and having a few drinks before their departure.

As she was rushed past them, she couldn’t help but think how wrong it was that they didn’t know Tendau was dead; that they didn’t care that he was gone forever. She couldn’t comprehend that he was gone. And she couldn’t understand how Finn had come to be there to save her at just the right moment. She raised a hand to her head, suddenly hot and claustrophobic. Finn kept them moving.

Once outside, Dusque drew in a few deep drafts of air. Almost directly opposite them, past a crafting station, was a lively cantina. Finn started to take them in that direction, and Dusque hadn’t regained her senses enough to question him. She found it easier to let him pull her around than to actually process what she had just seen. At the entrance to the cantina, however, she abruptly froze.

“Not in there,” she whispered. She couldn’t take the thought of being surrounded by noisy people, laughing and talking and carrying on.

“Right,” Finn agreed. “Too many eyes. No way of knowing who might be in there.” He pulled her past the cantina to the back of the building. It was on the periphery of the city proper; the only thing behind it was a bit of a brick road that faded into the swamps and marshes. The building wall curved, and soon enough they were both out of earshot of anyone. Dusque leaned her back against the cold stone wall and closed her eyes, oblivious to the two tracks of tears that trickled down her hot cheeks. She remained motionless for several long moments.

When she opened her eyes and faced the black-haired agent, there was a hard expression on her face. “Get out of my way,” she said through tight lips, her emotions at war with themselves. She needed to let them vent, and Finn provided a convenient target.

Finn didn’t release his grip on her arm, though he relaxed it a little. “And where do you think you’re going? Are you seriously thinking of marching back over there? And doing what, exactly?”

“There has to be justice,” she demanded. “There has to be. And I want answers.”

“Listen to me closely,” he said, moving so near to Dusque that she could almost count his individual eyelashes. “As far as they are concerned, justice has been meted out. Go back there, and they’ll serve justice on you, as well.”

“What are you talking about?” she cried, his words making no sense to her. “How could Tendau’s death be justice?”

Finn looked around to see if anyone had heard her call out. Satisfied that they were still undiscovered, he continued, “Your colleague traded information with Bothan spies. He betrayed the Empire.”

“What?” She shook her head. “He was a scientist. All he ever did was look for answers to nature’s secrets. He didn’t trade them.” But she thought back to the other night in the casino and the Ithorian’s conversation with the stranger—a conversation he had never explained. And now would never have the chance, either. Had something illicit transpired between them?

Finn appeared to be unconvinced. “Well, in the eyes of the Empire, he was a traitor. And even his position couldn’t save him from a traitor’s fate.” He looked at her meaningfully and Dusque recalled their only other conversation, when he had warned her that her job was no guarantee of safety or anonymity. It certainly looked as if that had been true for Tendau. Could it be true for her, too?

“And if they haven’t already,” he continued, “they’ll brand you a traitor right along with him.”

“What?” she asked. She felt as though she couldn’t stop asking the question, couldn’t stop walking through a horrible dream.

He let go of her arm and continued more softly, “You worked with him almost exclusively, day and night, out in the field. You tell me how they could not suspect you. Is there someone else in your labs who would stand up for you, speak on your behalf and proclaim your innocence, your loyalty to the Emperor?”

Dusque stopped in her tracks. She knew that back in her sterile world, none of the others would say a word. And she had done nothing to set herself apart as a staunch supporter of anything. “No,” she finally said. “No one would. In fact, some would be glad to see me go.” She thought about what she sadly realized had been her last night with her only friend. She thought about how he said that nature must be put right, no matter the cost. And she thought about how she had done nothing like that. “And make no mistake,” she warned him, “I’m not innocent.”

Finn looked slightly surprised by her last admission. He stepped back imperceptibly and ran his hands through his unruly hair. “Then you’re already a part of the Alliance?” he asked, confused.

“No,” she answered, “but I’m guilty just the same.”

“Doesn’t matter now,” he told her. “We need to get off this rock. If we don’t, they’ll capture you for sure. Trust me on that.”

A frown crossed her features. She looked down at her torn and dirty shirt and trousers. She realized that she had only her small pack on her and nothing else. Her belongings as well as Tendau’s were back at the Hotel Aerie, just outside the city. “What about my things?” she asked. She knew it was a foolish question, but focusing on the mundane was helping her cope. “Everything is back in our—my rooms,” she corrected herself and felt a lump form in her throat, her voice suddenly husky with emotion.

“There’s no time. You don’t have a choice any longer. We’ve got to go,” he said. “We’ll keep outside the city limits and stay on the perimeter.” He started to move, but Dusque held her ground.

“We don’t have time for this,” he said, walking back to her. “Do you not understand the gravity of the situation? It’s not like you have a choice any longer.” The exasperation was clear in his voice.

She regarded him steadily. “Oh, yes I do,” she replied. “I do have a choice.”

His black eyes grew stormy. “You’re right, you do. You can stay here and die, or you can join the Rebellion.”

“It’s not that simple,” she whispered, confused again.

“Nothing ever is,” he said gently. “Then come with me for the Hammerhead’s sake,” he added, and Dusque momentarily bristled at his casual use of the slang for Ithorians. “If you don’t believe in me and what we stand for, then come with me because of what they did to him. Come with me for revenge.”

Dusque swallowed her fear. She felt churned up inside, unsure of her emotions. What he said made sense at a basic level. It was the least she could do for her fallen comrade. Maybe, she thought, maybe I can’t right nature for you, but I can avenge you. That I can do.

“All right,” she agreed. “Let’s go.” And she placed her fate in his strong hands. For now, she thought to herself. I’ll trust you for now.

SIX

Finn led the way, keeping them close to the stone buildings on the edge of Moenia. From across the swamps, Dusque heard the cry of the peko peko. Subconsciously, she started to estimate how far away it was—probably twenty meters—as though she were actually going out to track the reptavian.

But those days were gone, she corrected herself.

The spaceport, it turned out, was even closer. Finn stopped and turned to Dusque.

“I can see the shuttle from here. We’re going to have to run for it,” he explained, and then a gentleness suddenly came over him. “Can you do it?”

Dusque was confused. His concern for her made her feel moved and angry at the same time.

“Yes,” she said.

“Let’s go,” he said, and they burst out running across the brick courtyard. Up the steps and past the throng of travelers, they ran at full speed. No one paid them any mind, however, and only one passenger even glanced at them. Dusque realized, as they weaved their way through the lounge into the docking bay area, that Finn had timed it almost perfectly. They didn’t stand out in their haste because the shuttle was nearly ready for departure. In fact, a Trandoshan doctor almost bowled them over in his hurry to board.

Finn slowed down enough to toss their travel tickets at the protocol droid that was busy trying to collect and organize vouchers.

They and the medic were the last to board the shuttle. As Dusque sank wearily into a seat and strapped herself in, she looked about the cabin. It was a ragtag and motley group that shared the transport with them. With the exception of the medic and themselves, she thought most of the others looked like questionable sorts. Some carried weapons whose capabilities she couldn’t even begin to guess at, and others appeared to be hunters. It dawned on her that she had no idea where they were going—but if the passengers were any indication, it was not a nice place. She resolved to ask Finn about it as soon as they took off. She was just going to close her eyes for a moment first …

The next thing Dusque was aware of was someone insistently shaking her shoulder. She was so tired; she tried her best to ignore it. But the shaking only grew steadier the more she turned away from it.

“All right, Tendau,” she murmured and weakly waved one hand, “I’ll break down the camp. Just give me a bit longer.”

“We’re here,” Finn whispered, capturing her fluttering fingers in his grip.

Dusque’s eyes flew open at the unexpected touch and the sound of the strange but increasingly familiar voice. She blinked her eyes to clear them and gazed around the ship. She saw that most of the passengers had disembarked. She and Finn were some of the last to leave.

“That was fast,” she said.

For the first time since they’d met, he flashed her a genuine smile. “How would you know? You slept the whole time.” He rose to his feet and offered her a hand up. “I understand, though,” he added when she looked down at her lap. “With everything that happened …”

Dusque ducked her head and refused to accept his hand. She felt suddenly guilty for having rested at all. She thought that she should have maintained some kind of vigil for her lost friend, but instead she had slept like a child the first moment she’d had a chance to. “I’m fine,” she told him brusquely and moved past him.

“Stubborn,” he muttered, following behind.

Dusque smelled the heat before she felt it. She climbed out of the ship and squinted against the sun. Without waiting for Finn, she moved away from the landing area and found herself a vantage point. From there, she shielded her eyes and quickly scanned the area. Dust filled her nose, and a warm breeze caressed her cheek.

The area where they had landed was mountainous, although she saw a valley to the south. The sun was just breaking above the range, and the sky was a yellow-pink. Directly in front of the shuttle was a bridge that led to a rather large outpost. The buildings, constructed mostly from sandstone and other local materials, almost faded into the harsh landscape. And there was no mistaking the smell of rotten eggs in the air. The bridge crossed a river not of water, Dusque surmised, but of sulfur. She put her hands on her hips and turned to Finn, who was watching her.

“Well?” she asked him.

He stepped over to her side. “Aren’t you even curious where we are?”

“Lok,” she replied. “Obviously.”

“How did you know? As far as I was aware, you’ve never been here before.”

“I’m a biologist, first and foremost. And I’m good at my job,” she announced without a trace of vanity. “Just because I’ve never been here doesn’t mean I don’t know about the planet.”

Finn raised his eyebrows. “I’m impressed.”

“The sulfur rivers gave it away,” she admitted, pointing to the canal ahead of them.

Finn smiled broadly and Dusque thought he was pleased. “They do reek a bit, don’t they?”

Dusque nodded. “It’s because of the sulfur that the kimogilla developed such a tough hide. I’ve only seen one sample of it. Amazing, adaptive feature on the beast.”

“Not to mention they’re one of the most venomous creatures in the galaxy and can swallow a Wookiee whole if the mood strikes them. If we’re lucky,” he added, “we won’t see a single one of those monsters while we’re here.”

It was Dusque’s turn to be surprised. “You know your creatures.”

“I know Lok,” he corrected her.

“And that’s why we’re here?”

Finn nodded. “I needed to get you off Naboo, and while this place isn’t somewhere you’d describe as safe, it is safer than the Emperor’s homeworld.”

Some thirty meters away, Dusque saw a spined snake slither out of a rock cairn and strike at one of the flightless birds indigenous to Lok. The bird was dead before it hit the ground. While the snake dislocated its jaw to accommodate its meal, Dusque looked at Finn.

“No,” she agreed, “I would definitely not think of this place as safe. Why here?”

“I’ve got some connections,” Finn told her.

“There are members of the Alliance here?” she asked. She knew they had to hide themselves well from the ever-vigilant eyes of the Empire, but Lok was a hellhole. As she kicked at the skull of a small scavenger beneath her feet, she wondered how desperate they must be to hide among the snakes and the dead.

“No,” Finn admitted slowly, “not the Rebels. The ties I have to my connection go back farther than that. I used to … do things for him.”

“Who?” she asked.

After Finn checked to see they were alone, he said, “Nym. All of this here is his stronghold.”

“I know that name,” Dusque remarked thoughtfully. Realization spread across her face after a moment. “Isn’t he the pirate who’s been raiding supply transports along the Corellian Trade Spine?”

“How did you know that?” he asked, nonplussed.

“He intercepted several shipments designated for my group. When I tried to find out what had happened to the supplies, his name was bandied about. It delayed a project of mine for some time.”

Dusque regarded Finn with a keener eye than she had before. She had actually heard quite a bit about Nym and what he was capable of—or, at least, accused of being capable of. The lanky man standing in front of her not only worked covertly for the Rebels but, by his own admission, had even older ties with one of the most fearsome pirates this side of the galaxy, renowned for looting the hyperlanes of the Core Worlds. She looked at him and wondered what he was capable of. And she wondered what she had been drawn into.

No, she corrected herself, I didn’t just fall into this. He was, after all, right. There had been no security for Tendau and Dusque in their work. She had chosen to do this, and she’d chosen to trust the man in front of her. Now she was going to have to see where her choice took her.

“So you do know about him,” Finn replied. “Well, not only does he have an impressive ship of his own, but he has been amassing a small fleet here, as well. We should be able to get some covert transport.”

“And just why would Nym help us, if he’s not with the Alliance?”

“Let’s just say that he owes me a favor and the time has come to cash it in,” he replied grimly.

“Must have been a big favor,” she mused.

“It was,” he admitted, with a lopsided grin. “Remind me to tell you about it someday.”

“I will.” She smiled back. “So, assuming he’ll help us, where do we go from here?”

“We go on to Corellia, but that’s not our final destination,” he said. “I don’t know where we go after that.”

“What?” she asked.

“It’s a safety measure,” he said slowly, and Dusque sensed that he was choosing his words very carefully.

“How does that keep us safe?” she demanded.

“It doesn’t,” he replied, shaking his head. “It keeps the Alliance safe. If we fail, no one else will suffer from our deaths.”

“I don’t understand,” she continued. “Everyone who joins must know they’re risking their lives and the lives of those around them.”

“You’re right,” he agreed, “but you don’t understand. You don’t really know what the Empire is capable of.”

“I have an idea,” she replied. “And I’m still here with you, willing to take my chances.”

Finn scrutinized her for several moments. A hot breeze carried across the small plateau they were standing on, and some of Dusque’s hair blew across her face. Gently, Finn reached over and pushed the offending strands away from her gray eyes. The gesture was almost a caress, and Dusque felt unsettled. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Everyone betrays those they love to the Empire eventually; there’s no choice.” And he gave her a sad smile.

“There is a choice,” she returned. “The problem is, sometimes we make the wrong one.”

Finn seemed to contemplate her words, weighing them carefully. Dusque thought that it was as though he was wrestling with something.

He probably hadn’t expected her to be serious, she thought. He was probably going to underestimate her just like everyone else did. Well, he was in for a surprise. If she could avenge Tendau, then any price was worth it.

The silence between them was growing uncomfortable. “So where do we find Nym?” she asked.

“Follow me,” he told her, leading her away from the shuttleport. Dusque realized that there was little need to hide on this planet; for the moment, they enjoyed safety amid the anonymity of refugees and renegades. There was one thing that concerned her, though.

“What if there’s a price on my head?” she asked as they moved across the bridge that led to the collection of sandstone edifices comprising Nym’s stronghold.

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” he told her as he swatted a rather large fly away from his face.

Dusque pursed her lips. “That really must be a big favor that he owes you.”

“Well—” He turned his head to look at her. “—the favor wasn’t that big. I just don’t think the price on your head will be all that high.” He held a serious face for a moment longer and then smiled at her.

“Nice,” she replied. “Bounty humor.”

“Come on,” he said with a slight chuckle.

As they moved around the stronghold, Dusque saw a group obviously preparing for a hunt. Most wore armor of varying degrees and quality. Several were checking the readiness of their weapons and supplies. A Mon Calamari was counting out his supply of lecepanine darts and testing the strength of his wire-mesh traps. And a few even had their own animals with them. A full-grown gurrcat paced next to his master, and a Bothan was feeding her young bantha some of her travel biscuits.

A well-armed human male walked over to them, and Dusque felt her pulse quicken. His chest shield winked in the sunlight. She noticed that Finn had edged his hand slightly toward his hip and realized that he must have a blaster secreted under his travel cloak. She breathed a little easier knowing he was armed.

The man stood in front of them and looked them both over appraisingly. He nodded at Finn and let his gaze linger a little longer on Dusque. Normally, she would have been offended by his stare, but she bit back her indignation, understanding that drawing attention to themselves now was not in their best interest.

“We’re looking for a few more to join us,” he began in a gravelly voice. “Want to group up?”

Finn stood just forward of Dusque and said, “Not today, friend. We’re busy.”

The hunter leaned against his polearm and blocked their path. Slightly taller than Finn, he tried to emphasize his height by looking down at Finn in an exaggerated fashion, using his weapon for balance. “I wasn’t referring to you. I meant the lady, and I am not your friend,” he added with a touch of menace.

Dusque was slightly surprised when Finn didn’t do anything. The hunter shifted his weight to lean closer to her. “Now,” he repeated, “how about it?”

Before Dusque could do anything, Finn swept his leg in an arc and knocked the polearm out from under the hunter. Without the weapon for balance, the man toppled over onto his face. Finn was on him in a flash. He straddled the larger man’s back and drew his concealed weapon. With a scout blaster aimed at the fallen man’s head, Finn said through gritted teeth, “I said we were busy and that means the lady, too. Understood?”

Shown up in front of his snickering crew, the hunter nodded without saying a word.

“Good,” Finn told him and then stood up, holstering his weapon with practiced ease. He nodded once to Dusque and then helped the shamefaced hunter to his feet. As they walked away, Finn tossed back a parting remark over his shoulder. “And you were mistaken. I am your friend. If I wasn’t, you would be dead.”

Maneuvering around the bustling streets, Finn seemed right at home to Dusque. She was certain he had been there before, and obviously for a fair stretch. He ducked and weaved through the alleys and byways until they were standing in front of a cantina.

“If he’s in town,” Finn explained to Dusque, “he’ll be here.” He pushed open the door for her, and they walked in.

After the bright sun, it took Dusque a few moments to adjust to the dim lighting of the bar. Off to one side, a lone Bith played a slitherhorn. There was a nalargon next to him, but it was not being played. Probably too early in the day, Dusque thought. Perhaps the rest of the Bith would perform later. Very rarely did the baggy-headed aliens travel alone through the galaxy; they tended to tour in groups. Because they saw sounds in much the same way others saw color, they made excellent, if expensive, musicians. Nym, she reasoned, must be very wealthy.

Several Zabrak milled about the bar and were busy discussing animals. Dusque caught bits and pieces of their conversation. They, like the group outside, were planning a hunt. But they were hoping to capture several species for training, not trophies. She almost wished she could go with them. Lok boasted some of the harshest geography and climate in the galaxy, and Dusque marveled at the way nature had allowed its creatures to survive and adapt.

Finn walked around the bar toward a seating area in the back. It was deserted, and Dusque suspected they were out of luck. But then she saw Finn approach a partially hidden door and continue farther into the recesses of the cantina. She hurried to follow him, enjoying the cooler temperature of the darkness.

Rounding a corner, they entered another room. It was hazy and filled with smoke. A few human men sat at a small table in the corner, lost in their conversation. A Twi’lek female wearing a few strategically placed pieces of cloth undulated seductively in another corner of the room, dancing to music no one but she appeared to hear. Toward the back, reclining on a couch carved out of the sandstone, was the person they were looking for. Finn walked over, and Dusque followed close behind.

It was impossible for Dusque to tell the age of the pirate sitting on the couch. He could have been forty or four hundred. Although he was sitting, she estimated he was at least two meters tall. What she could see of his green, hairless body was heavily rippled with muscle. He had pronounced brow ridges that cast strange shadows over his red eyes, and while he didn’t have a nose like humans did, he did have the suggestion of nostrils that ended in two tendrils hanging to his chest. Several thicker tendrils sprouted from his scalp and hung about his shoulders like hair. He wore bits and pieces of armor carefully placed, and carried two blasters at his hips and at least one armband of additional ammunition. He sat effortlessly enough, drinking what looked like Vasarian brandy from a large mug and nodding in time to the Twi’lek dancer’s movements. She noticed he had placed himself at the back of the cantina, with a good view of the room and near another half-concealed door. A kusak lay curled at his feet. The partially armored canine was a fearsome species that, if tamed, was loyal to the death. She saw he was stroking the animal absently with his free hand. While he might have appeared unaware to the casual observer, Dusque realized he was extremely tactical in his positioning. He was no one to be taken lightly.

When he saw Finn, a slow smile of recognition crossed his face. Dusque noticed that it did not reach his eyes, however. They glowed a deadly crimson.

“Finn,” he said easily, “what brings you back to my doorstep?” He cast an appraising eye over Dusque, but in a discreet way, far from the obvious ogling of the hunter from outside. “And in better company than the last time I saw you.” He motioned for them to sit and join him at his small table.

Finn pulled up a chair, flipped it around, and straddled it with his arms across its back. Dusque got herself a chair and waited for Finn to start talking. She found, however, that she had a hard time diverting her gaze from Nym. He was an impressive specimen, and she racked her brain trying to decipher what species he was.

“Hungry? You look like you could eat me alive,” he told her, and Dusque shook her head. It dawned on her that she had been far less subtle in her observations of him than the reverse.

Finn started to speak, but Dusque interrupted him. “I’m sorry for staring,” she apologized sincerely. “It’s just that I never thought I would ever be fortunate enough to see a Feeorin in my lifetime.”

Nym regarded her shrewdly for a long moment. She could see Finn shift uncomfortably on his chair, and she wondered if she had somehow offended their prospective savior by her statement. But Nym broke the tension by dropping his head back and laughing with a deep, throaty bellow. When he straightened his head, he nodded in acknowledgment to Dusque.

“Nobody has ever said they were lucky to meet me.” And then he turned to Finn and said, “Much better company than last time. Now that you’ve brightened up an otherwise boring morning, what do you want?” There was no kindness in the question.

“I need a favor,” Finn told him straight out. “I need a ship.”

Nym leaned back and stroked his chin for a moment. “That’s a big favor. And what do you need a ship for?”

“I need a ship that’ll get us as far as the Core Worlds,” Finn explained. “That’s all you really need to know.”

Nym cast a sidelong glance at Dusque and replied, “I doubt that’s all I need to know. There’s a good story here.” Changing his tack, Nym asked Dusque, “But how the hell did you get mixed up with this gravel maggot?”

Dusque didn’t wait for Finn to say anything. “I was in the wrong place at the right time.” And she smirked at Nym, sensing that she shouldn’t give him any ground.

Nym grinned back and nodded his head. Facing Finn, he asked, “What do you want with a ship, anyway? It’s not like you could pilot the thing.”

“What?” Finn sputtered, and by the look on Nym’s face, Dusque understood that for this round, Nym had won. He had flustered Finn first. “I’m a damn good pilot.”

“Maybe a good copilot, but you’re no good on your own. It takes a special breed to fly solo,” Nym pronounced.

Finn’s jaw had a rigid cast to it. Dusque, wondering what he was biting back on, was impressed that he wasn’t getting too wrapped up in the dance of male dominance. “Regardless of what you think, a two-person ship is what I need. And you owe me,” he added, not above using a deadly tone, too.

“Don’t have one,” Nym grunted. He gulped down his brandy.

“What do you mean you don’t have one? Lok is littered with wrecks. Surely you’ve got a few that are in commission?” Finn demanded with some exasperation.

“No,” the pirate replied calmly. “None are up and running. There were some complications on our last run on the Corellian Spine. But don’t get yourself worked up.”

“Why not?” Finn asked.

“Just because I don’t have any ships operational doesn’t mean I can’t get you a ride. I can arrange transport for you and your lovely cargo.” He looked at Dusque. “Or you could stay here with me for a while. I could tell you a lot about my species.”

“It’s a very tempting offer,” she said, playing along. She reached over and casually dropped her hand by the kusak, letting it sniff her. When she was sure it was comfortable, she rubbed it along its haunches. Nym and Finn were clearly amazed that the beast tolerated her touch.

“Maybe some other time,” she offered, sounding regretful. “Right now, I have some business to finish. And I need him to do it.”

“Another time then,” Nym agreed and winked at her. He returned his attention to Finn. “I can get you the ride, but it’ll cost you.”

“I don’t believe you. After what happened on Dathomir, you would deny me this? And what about that little misunderstanding between you and the Gray Talon? Have you forgotten all of that?”

Dusque caught her breath at the last one and felt her eyebrows trying to climb into her scalp with surprise.

“What was between us then doesn’t equal what you’re asking for now. Even you should realize that,” Nym reasoned.

“That’s it, then. Come on, Dusque. We’ll find someone else to deal with.” Finn rose to his feet and offered his hand to Dusque. She looked at Nym. The pirate had a smug expression on his large face. Dusque suspected he was the only game in town, and what was more, both he and Finn knew it.

But those like Nym always wanted something, she thought. That was part of what drove them on. For them having was not nearly as sweet as wanting. She and Finn just needed to find out what Nym wanted.

“It seems a shame we couldn’t do business together,” she announced.

“Business is a different matter. I can always do business,” Nym said.

Finn slowly returned to his chair, but not in the slumped-over posture he had adopted when they had first sat down with the pirate. Reading his body language, Dusque knew he was tense and she guessed that the meeting had taken a turn he hadn’t anticipated.

“What do you want?” Finn asked Nym finally.

The pirate stretched back against the naturally carved sandstone and idly scratched at his kusak’s ear. “There is something you could do …”

“What?” Finn asked again, his irritation barely masked.

“North of here is a small box canyon. There’s a group of corsairs camping there, and they have something that belongs to me,” he explained. “I want it.”

“What is it?” Dusque asked.

“A portion of a hyperspace map. I want it for my ‘collection,’ ” Nym told them. “Get it for me and I’ll see that you get to where you’re going, no questions asked.”

“How big a camp?” Finn asked.

Nym made a dismissive gesture with his mouth. “Three or four at the most. Easy for you.”

Dusque knew what the next logical question should have been, but figured Finn was too smart to ask Nym why he didn’t bother to retrieve it himself. The answer was plain: the task was extremely dangerous.

Finn shook his head slightly. “Fine, we’ll do this for you. But this is the last time, Nym,” he added in a deadly tone.

The pirate smiled lightly, leaned his head back against the rough, unfinished wall, and closed his eyes. “Not the first time I’ve heard that. And I’m sure it won’t be the last, either.

“Head north, over the plateau and then down into the canyon. You can’t miss their camp,” he said. “Get my map.”

Finn nodded curtly and stood. Sensing that Nym was finished with them, Dusque rose to her feet, as well. As they started to walk toward the entrance, Nym called out to them once more.

“Take the back door,” he told them, hooking a thumb in the direction of the passageway Dusque had noticed when they first sat down. “And feel free to help yourself to whatever supplies I’ve got laying around back there. You might need ’em.” With that, he resumed watching the dancer, who hadn’t paused through their entire conversation. They were dismissed.

Dusque, closer to the door, opened it, but noticed that Finn moved up to stand slightly in front of her. Certain that the pirate couldn’t hear them, she whispered, “I must be important, the way you always shift yourself to cover me.”

Finn looked at her with some surprise. “Of course you’re important.” But Dusque could almost bet that he hadn’t been aware he was doing it. She wasn’t sure what to make of him—or what she was starting to feel when she was next to him, either.

They walked through a narrow, dimly lit passageway that emptied into what appeared to be a storeroom worthy of a small army. Along one wall was a massive collection of rifles, pistols, and bandoliers of ammunition. Another wall was covered in swords and knives, and yet another boasted an impressive collection of traps and snares. The last wall had a modest collection of clothing and armor. Dusque immediately moved there.

She thumbed through the various pieces of armor and camouflage. She rejected a chest plate that looked too heavy: in the heat of this volcanic world, she wanted something that wouldn’t weigh her down. She found a jumpsuit of a light weave and pale color. She had just started to take her torn tunic and pants off when she sensed that she was being watched. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Finn was over by the blasters. But he wasn’t reviewing the inventory. Instead, his black eyes were riveted on her. She returned his gaze and then turned away, flustered.

He’s done it to me again, she thought.

She dressed rapidly, exchanging everything she originally had except her hide boots. Then she selected a pair of thin leather gloves to protect her hands and a pair of goggles brown-tinted to save her eyes from the intense glare of the sun. At the wall with the knives, she chose a light, single-arm sword. She lunged forward a few times with it, testing its weight and feel. The craftsmanship was superb, and she absently wondered where Nym had pilfered the weapon from. Finally she added a small knife to her boot and, feeling suitably outfitted, turned around to check on Finn.

Obviously at some point he had stopped watching her and gone on to select a carbine rifle to add to his personal arsenal. He had also exchanged his dark cloak for a lightweight tunic and matching trousers. Twin bandoliers of ammo crisscrossed his chest, and she saw that he had chosen a pair of hide gloves, too.

“Good idea in case there are more spined snakes, or worse,” Dusque told him. She rummaged through the clothes until she found a visor. She pitched it to him.

Finn caught it easily enough in his hands.

“It’ll save your eyes,” she explained, “and make some of the local wildlife easier to spot right before they strike you dead.”

Finn tossed the visor in his hand once and looked at Dusque. “Nice,” he said, mocking her earlier words. “Biologist humor.” But he slid the visor on.

“Let’s go,” he told her, and they stepped out into the burning heat that was midday on Lok.

SEVEN

“How are you doing?” Finn called back to Dusque.

They had been running for some time now. The sun was beyond its apex, on the decline, but it was almost impossible to feel a difference in the temperature yet. The ground felt hot and dry under Dusque’s booted feet, and she was beginning to feel a burning in her muscles. But rather than succumb, she was starting to revel in the fact that her body was being tested by the bleak and foreboding landscape and she was meeting it head-on.

For the most part, they both kept silent, for fear of alerting anything to their presence. Dusque spotted some incredible specimens of snakes and birds, not to mention some desert plants that she had never seen before. She wished there had been someone to witness it with her—someone who would have found beauty in every bit of scrub and parched plant.

Tendau would have been amazed, she thought. When her mind drifted to the fate of the gentle Ithorian, she felt a lump form in her throat and had to blink back tears. No matter what he had done, he hadn’t deserved to die like a cur, shot dead in the streets. Even in its style of execution, the Empire had tried to strip him of his dignity. But Dusque had watched how he faced his death with courage and honor.

I’ll make them pay for that, she vowed.

They were heading into a canyon, Dusque realized, noticing the way the rock walls seemed to be closing in on them in from both directions. The sky was stained a rosy pink and Lok’s sun was like a flaming, molten ball just above the horizon, sinking fast. Finally, there was a subtle cooling to the burning air. In short order, she knew it would be freezing on the volcanic planet’s dark side. With the change in temperature, the daytime animals would be looking for their burrows and the night hunters gradually waking up.

Catching sight of a rock cairn off to one side, Dusque lit upon an idea. She dropped farther behind Finn and veered over to the cairn, slowing her pace. A few meters from it, she stopped completely and pulled a wire-mesh trap from her sack. Holding it in her left hand, she slid bit by bit on the ground until she was right up against the cairn. Carefully, as though she were handling an active thermal detonator, she began to shift some of the smaller rocks until she found what she was looking for.

Nestled in a ball against the remaining rocks for warmth was a spined viper. The cooler night air had already slowed the animal’s metabolism enough that its senses were somewhat deadened. It didn’t even notice that Dusque had removed some of its protective shelter. As she was about to reach in, she heard Finn come up behind her. Without looking away from the viper, she held up her free hand in warning to him. He stopped in his tracks, and she could see from the corner of her eye that his hand had dropped to his blaster.

Dusque picked up a small pebble and tossed it into the lair, just in front and to the side of the viper’s head. Dulled by the lack of warmth, it struck out at the pebble much slower than it would have earlier in the day. She knew she had one shot. As it lunged forward, she thrust her leather-clad hand into the cairn and grabbed the creature by the back of the neck, careful to avoid the venomous spines along the dorsal part of its body. She yanked the reptile out quickly and stuffed it into her mesh trap without a moment to spare, not even giving Finn time to react. Certain the snake was secured, she placed the trap into her travel sack. Then she sat down and realized she was sweating slightly in the cool breeze.

Finn dropped down near her, although she noticed he kept a slight distance and one eye on the slowly undulating pack. “Why’d you do that?” he asked. “We’re not collecting, we’re retrieving for Nym.”

Dusque, confident that the viper was trapped and her bag was sound, slung the pack onto her back. She stood up and set off in their original direction. Over her shoulder, she tossed back, “You never know when one of these might come in handy.” He nodded, but she could see that he wasn’t entirely convinced. Still, he did seem to accept her word, and she was pleased that he trusted her judgment despite the fact that he didn’t really understand her actions.

By the time they reached the canyon, night shrouded the land. Off in the distance, a large moon could be seen peeking over the rim of the eastern canyon wall. Silhouetted against its white glow were two objects. One was very obviously a large tent, with distinctive rooftop points stabbing into the sky. The other might have been a structure, as well, but it was somewhat smaller than the tent. The pair were close to each other, situated on the top of a plateau. It was a perfect vantage point. The occupants had a clear view in all directions, which made a covert approach almost impossible.

Both Finn and Dusque crouched low, leaning against the canyon wall. Finn whispered into her ear, “Corsairs.”

Dusque nodded, and now that Finn had broken the silence, she said, “Which way do you want us to go?” As soon as she said it, she realized that she already trusted his abilities enough to let him make the call.

Finn rummaged through his smaller pack, pulled out a pair of electrobinoculars, and adjusted the range. Cupping his hands over them, he turned toward the encampment and for several moments took readings and made observations. Finally, he slid closer to Dusque and handed the binoculars to her.

“See there?” he asked her, and guided her hands toward the direction he had been viewing. “As best as I can tell, it looks like there are two of them, and they’re drinking.”

Through the electrobinoculars, Dusque could see two figures huddled around an outdoor fire. One was squatting near it, presumably tending the flames, and the other leaned casually against a tent pole, taking a long swig from a bottle. The only one Dusque could see clearly was the one standing up. He was one of the Nikto species. She estimated that he was almost as tall as Finn. His yellow skin and almost complete lack of brow ridges or horns told her that he was one of the M’shento’su’Nikto race that had evolved in the southern region of Kintan. Instead of fins, they had long, prominent breathing tubes along the backs of their heads. Because the species had very little musculature in their faces, they often had blank, unintelligent expressions and were sometimes mistaken for idiots or dullards. But that was far from the truth. The Nikto could be deadly in their single-mindedness.

“I thought Nym said there were three or four,” she replied as she handed him his electrobinoculars.

“He did,” he replied as he stuffed them back in his travel pouch. “But I was watching for some time and I didn’t see any others. You?”

“No,” Dusque answered. “We’ll need to be extra cautious, regardless. Those Southern Nikto are able to use their breathing pipes to detect vibrations. They could hear us long before they see us.”

“Hmm, that’s the trick then,” Finn said. “Let’s see if there’s anything that can help us there.” He pulled out the electrobinoculars and scanned the canyon. Not twenty meters from the north side of the plateau base was a small herd of very large snorbals. Dusque followed his gaze and nodded when she saw the herd of large herbivores, scavenging for food with their split trunks.

“That might do it,” she agreed, “provided we can get them to go in the right direction.”

“One thing before we go in there,” Finn told her.

“What?” Dusque asked.

“There is no reasoning with these pirates, you understand? We have to go in and take them out. Hesitation means death,” he explained.

“I understand,” she told him, though she wasn’t sure she did. “But how can you be sure they’re the right ones?”

“While Nym and I … disagree on some things, I do know he wouldn’t have sent us on a wild Bantha hunt. He sent us directly to this camp, so these are the ones. No mistakes there.”

“I suppose …” she said nervously. “Well, I’ll follow your lead.”

“I can’t see any other way,” he added. Dusque wondered if he had said that for the benefit of her conscience or his own.

Finn scurried along, low to the ground, and Dusque flanked him. When they were about ten meters from the grazing herd, they split up and started to circle the animals from opposite directions. One of the snorbals picked up its head, and Dusque knew they had no time left. She waved to Finn and started to move closer to the animals without shielding too much of her approach. She saw Finn doing the same thing from the other side. One after another of the herd pricked its ears, and as a group they started to move loudly up the incline of the plateau.

Dusque and Finn continued to steer them slowly up the plateau, toward the corsair camp. The two humans trailed behind them, using their heavy footfalls as cover. When they were fifteen meters below the camp, Finn signaled to Dusque. Together, they moved so suddenly that the animals startled and burst into a run. Dusque and Finn took advantage of the pounding stampede to sneak up to the perimeter of the camp.

Sliding along on their bellies, they could see that the animals had had their desired effect on the renegade pirates. Both Nikto were on their feet and watching the animals cut across the plateau. As the creatures began their descent of the other side of the incline, the Nikto who had been tending the fire drew his blaster. Dusque could feel her heart pounding and her mouth going dry. She tensed, preparing to feel his laserfire. But the pirate drew a bead on the departing animals and opened fire on them instead.

He struck one, and the two corsairs chuckled between themselves. He took aim again, squinting along the sight, and continued to fire. That prompted his companion to draw his weapon, as well, and try to best him. Dusque figured she and Finn had only a few moments. She motioned to Finn and the pirates. He looked surprised until she reached for her backpack. He grinned crookedly and gave her one sharp nod. He took aim and waited for Dusque. She shook her sack twice and flung the enraged contents as the two corsairs continued firing.

The spined snake shot out of the opened trap and sunk his fangs into the Nikto closer to the tent. The pirate screamed in rage as the venomous reptile attached itself to his cheek. The Nikto tried vainly to pull the creature free of his face, but the viper coiled its body around his waist and resisted all attempts to dislodge it. The corsair’s screams of rage attracted the attention of his companion, who had been too busy picking off snorbals to notice the other’s predicament. The unbitten pirate lowered his blaster as he started to turn around, a vaguely perplexed look on his smooth face. Finn seized the opportunity and started blasting.

The unbitten Nikto tried to bring up his weapon and return the unexpected fire, but Finn’s aim was dead straight. The shot caught the pirate across the chest and the force of the blow spun him around. He was dead before he hit the ground. Finn moved forward to finish the second, but stopped when he saw that the pirate was mortally wounded. The stricken Nikto fell to his knees and then landed face-first on the parched ground. His death was fast but not easy as the viper’s venom paralyzed all of his autonomic functions. Dusque moved up and watched the life begin to drain from his face. The viper slithered off and disappeared into the cold darkness, once more in search of a warm den.

While Dusque knelt down near the Corsair she had effectively killed, Finn trotted over to the small structure near the tent. By the firelight, he recognized it as a locked container.

“They must have been guarding the cargo, waiting for someone to pick it up. The map’s got to be in here,” he told her. “It won’t take me long to slice the lock.” Dusque nodded in agreement.

While Finn set to work on the electronic code, Dusque watched the bitten pirate slowly expire as his breathing and his heart stopped. She had mixed feelings about her part in all of it. She knew that, given the chance, they would have killed her, but the reason she was out here was her own doing. She tried to balance her need for revenge with taking the life of someone who wasn’t really part of the Empire or the Rebellion. But before she could debate the morality of her actions any further, she was grabbed forcibly from behind and thrown to the hard ground, stunned.

Something pressed hard into the small of her back—she guessed it was her attacker’s knee. He was mumbling drunkenly as he stripped her of her weapons. Then the weight lifted, and when she turned her head, she could see him stumbling away, shaking his head as if he were trying to clear his thoughts. Finn obviously hadn’t heard the third corsair’s arrival. He must have cracked the code, because the large container was now wide open. Only his lower legs and his boots were visible as he rummaged through the illicit goods. Dusque didn’t have enough air in her lungs to call out a warning to him.

The quickly sobering Nikto staggered over, yanked Finn by the ankles, and dragged him free of the container. Startled, Finn didn’t have time to reach his blaster before the Corsair pinned his arms under his heavy legs so he could keep his own arms free. As he straddled Finn, the pirate began to punch him repeatedly in the head. Dusque, all but forgotten by the enraged Nikto, pushed herself to her feet. She stumbled over to where the pirate sat, locked in a struggle with Finn.

She may have been unarmed, but Dusque was not without her resources. Hardly thinking, she threw herself at the pirate’s back and fastened onto him tightly. The Nikto barely slowed his assault on Finn, even though he now had two to contend with. But he didn’t realize what Dusque knew.

As a bioengineer, she was aware of his biology and his one weakness. Enduring a stabbing blow to her ribs from the corsair’s elbow, Dusque managed to clamp her hands on his two breathing tubes and refused to let go. It took a moment for the enraged Nikto to realize what she was doing to him, and by the time he did, the lack of air was already taking its toll. He slowed his assault on Finn and turned his waning attention onto Dusque.

Rising to his feet, he stepped over the inert Finn and swung his own body into the metal container. Dusque winced in pain as her back smashed into the cold steel, but she didn’t loosen her grip. The pirate whirled about and reached back, clawing his hands across Dusque’s face and arms. With one last burst of strength, the air-deprived Nikto got hold of her forearms and managed to pry them free of his breathing tubes. Keeping his grip on her arms, he swung her over his head and slammed her to the ground in front of him. Blinking hard, Dusque looked up and saw him raise his arms over his head, locking his hands together into one fist. But before he could deliver what would surely have been a deathblow, his head suddenly turned to an awkward angle with a strange pop. His arms fell limply to their sides, and he toppled over to her right to lie in an unmoving heap. Dazed from his attack, Dusque couldn’t quite process what was happening.

Suddenly a bruised Finn filled her vision. She watched as he moved the pirate completely off her and knelt next to her. He put his hands under her arms and raised her to a half-sitting position. While Dusque shook her head, she could feel Finn’s hands run up and down the length of her. She winced when he touched her back, and the bright stab of pain sharpened her focus.

“Hurts?” he asked her.

“A little bit. Not so bad, though,” she replied, and tried to flex her shoulders and stretch her spine somewhat. She looked at him through the tangled mass of her hair and saw the beginnings of a bruise flowering across his left eye, but otherwise he appeared no worse for the wear.

He looked at her with some concern. “Really?” he asked again.

She shakily rose to her feet unaided. “I’ll be fine. What about you?” Tentatively she touched his swollen cheekbone. He flinched, jerked his head back, and caught her fingers lightly with one hand.

“I’ve been better,” he admitted and then flashed her a roguish grin. “But I’ve been a whole lot worse, too.” He looked at her through his own tousled hair, and somewhere Dusque managed to find a smile.

“Did you get the map?” she asked, feeling uncomfortable again and wanting to say something to break the strange mood between them.

“I was about to,” he told her. He hooked a thumb at the dead Nikto. “Until Handsome interrupted me.” He led Dusque around the slain pirate and added, “That was very quick thinking on your part, especially considering how much bigger he was than you.”

He turned his attention back to the container and didn’t see the rosy flush stain her cheeks. His words carried a great deal of weight with Dusque. It was the first time a man other than Tendau had ever given her any praise for her abilities in the field. She became even more flustered and busied herself by craning over Finn’s shoulder to see what was in the storage unit.

Bits of metal and gemstone winked out at her in the moonlight. She could see blasters and other, more exotic weapons, as well as a cache of documents and credits. Finn tossed out a few datapads and other bits and pieces, mostly weapon powerups and the like.

“I found some datachips,” he called out to her. “Need to check ’em with my datapad.” After a few moments, he said, “Got it. It’s the only one of the bunch that’s a map. It better be the right one,” he continued.

He emerged with a datachip clenched tightly in his hand. Dusque returned his smile and was momentarily surprised when he handed it to her to carry. “I can’t wait to see the look on Nym’s face when you give it to him,” he explained. She accepted the treasure and placed it in her small sack. She also recovered her sword and her mesh trap. She hated to waste anything or leave anything behind. The last thing she did was toss handfuls of dirt onto the dead pirates’ fire. She kicked at the embers and ground them under her boot soles. When she was done, she turned and saw that Finn was watching her.

“We have Nym’s prize, so let’s go collect our reward,” he told her.

They walked down the plateau, and Dusque sensed that Finn was keeping a slow pace in deference to her injuries. While she was hurt, she noticed that the more she moved, the more she limbered up. She appreciated his concern and was also glad that when she appeared to be able to handle more, he increased their rate accordingly.

Except for the cries of a few perleks out scavenging, they saw nothing else on their return trip. The sky was clear and another moon rose in the distance. Or is it a planet? Dusque wondered. Tendau had always been better at celestial geography than she was.

Nym’s stronghold loomed up in the distance like a grave marker. Dusque wondered how many the Feeorin had buried in his career. She nearly jumped out of her skin as a gurk came screaming toward her, howling and arms raised. She drew her sword, but lowered it when she realized the hairy humanoid was only a whelp, the most threatening thing about him his screams. Finn had already turned to see what was wrong, his hand reaching for his blaster, so Dusque signaled that everything was fine as she trotted past the youngster. She didn’t sheathe her weapon, however, until she was well inside the stone wall surrounding the stronghold.

Even though it was the dead of night, they encountered a lot of traffic. If anything, Dusque thought, there were even more hunting parties arriving and leaving than they had seen earlier. Groups of well-armed and eager killers continued to gear up and head out, even though others were returning bloodied and wounded and unsuccessful. She remembered how she had felt during her own trials, and how exhilarating it was to challenge her mind and body’s endurance. Perhaps, she mused, it’s that challenge that drives them to test themselves. She noticed the remains of the group that had accosted her and Finn on their arrival on Lok. The leader who had made advanced to her was very obviously missing. Dusque shuddered and jogged to catch up with Finn.

The cantina was a hive of activity. The rest of the Bith band had arrived, and the place was alive with chatter and music. An incredible variety of species was packed into the large room, and Dusque and Finn had a little difficulty threading their way through the jocular crowd. Dusque noticed, though, that there was an almost frantic air to the festivities, as though the revelers knew that this might be their last celebration before whatever fate had in store for them in the harsh and unforgiving terrain of the volcanic world.

They managed to squeeze their way past a pair of rambunctious Wookiees and wind their way back to the concealed room where they had found Nym before. As he had been in the morning, the pirate was seated on the naturally hewn-out seat, his kusak curled up by his feet. This time, though, he was not alone. Seated next to him was a human male, and opposite them both was a very tall Wookiee.

The human and Nym were obviously in the throes of a heated discussion—a very private one. They stopped arguing when Dusque and Finn entered the room, and Dusque sensed that some agreement had been reached between them. The human stood up and glanced at Dusque with a cursory, appraising eye, then turned back to Nym.

He looked tall, but Dusque had a hard time judging his height accurately because the leanly muscular man stood somewhat slouched, a posture that gave him a lackadaisical air. She suspected he did that to lull others into a false sense of security. With brown hair and eyes to match, he was handsome by human standards, if a bit scruffy around the edges, maybe thirty standard years old. He was dressed in casual pilot’s garb, but Dusque’s eyes grew wide when she saw he had the Corellian Bloodstripe running down the length of his black pants. That was an honor few earned.

“Finn,” Nym began, breaking off his discussion with the other man, “You’ve got the map?” His red eyes flicked over to Dusque. Without any preamble, Dusque brushed past the human and laid the map down on the table. Nym cocked his head in acknowledgment of their accomplishments and tucked the map, unopened, into his tunic. Dusque wasn’t sure if he did that to show his trust in their honesty or if he simply did not want the strange human and the Wookiee to view its contents.

“Good. Now, about my end of the deal,” the pirate lord continued. “There’s a small transport waiting for you in my starport. You’ll be flyin’ with a Mon Cal, but Han and Chewie here are gonna escort you all the way to Corellia. Seems you run in the same circles,” he added slyly.

Han nodded in salute to Finn, while winking at Dusque. The Wookiee howled a salutation to them, as well, before rising to his full, towering height. Han turned his attention back to Nym and his demeanor grew serious.

“Listen, Nym,” he began, speaking freely now, “there’s still a lot of credits to be made working for the Alliance. We could use your help, and I can arrange for high-risk, high-paying jobs.”

The pirate shook his head. “We’ve gone over this, Solo, and you know where I stand.”

It was Han’s turn to shake his head in disappointment. “I know what you’re thinking,” he told Nym. “I was there once and you’re wrong. You think that no one’s gonna bother you, locked up here in your personal fort. Well, sooner or later the Empire will find you, and they will shut you down.” Dusque heard the genuine passion in his words, his casual demeanor forgotten for the moment.

Han looked at the pirate one more time before heading for the door. “Get your stuff. We’re leaving,” he tossed over his shoulder, businesslike, to Dusque and Finn, and left with the Wookiee trailing behind.

Dusque thought about his words and how closely the conversation mirrored the one she and Finn had shared. All around her, she was finding accomplished people who firmly believed in the Rebel Alliance. She was starting to wonder how she had avoided the whole conflict for so long, buried away in her lab as Nym was in his fortress. She was starting to see that both were just elaborate prisons of a sort.

“Finn,” Nym said, “you an’ me, we’re free of each other. Understand? Take the transport, but this is the last favor I do for you. Or the Alliance.”

Finn saluted him in return. “We are quit of our debts.” He turned and started out of the room.

“And good-bye to you,” Nym said, addressing Dusque with mock gallantry. “I hope our paths cross again.”

Dusque surprised both of them by winking at the pirate lord. “You never know. The galaxy is full of surprises. Oh—” she tapped her sword, “—I’m going to hang on to this. Something to remember you by.”

Dusque could still hear the Feeorin’s hearty laughter as she and Finn made their way toward the small starport. She didn’t know much about ships, but the small one in front of them seemed adequate enough. A Mon Calamari was standing near the landing gear.

“I hope he flies better than he looks,” Dusque whispered to Finn, eyeing the pilot’s mangy clothes and tarnished weapons with concern.

“Me, too,” Finn grinned. “But if Nym recommended him, he’ll be one of the best.”

When the Mon Calamari pilot saw them, he waved them aboard. “She’s no cruise liner, but she does what she has to. And with the Falcon flying escort, this trip should be a breeze,” he told them. Inside, Dusque and Finn found seats crammed among all sorts of cargo and junk. As they strapped in, Dusque could hear the Mon Calamari signal to Han.

“Peralli to Falcon. All cargo is secured. Ready for departure.”

“Copy that,” came the static-laced reply. Dusque wondered when the communications equipment on this ship had last seen maintenance. “Falcon out.”

“Hang on,” the Mon Calamari shouted back to them. “This is going to be a little rough.”

Dusque gripped the arms of her seat when the transport shuddered to life. As they left Lok for Corellia, Dusque looked at Finn and wondered what lay ahead.

EIGHT

“Now that we’ve jumped into hyperspace,” Peralli said, “you’ve got some time. Nym sent me a message. He said that you”—he pointed to Dusque—“can help yourself to that small crate over there. He wanted you to have something a little more practical than that skinny gurnaset sticker to remember him by, whatever that means.” The Mon Calamari shrugged his shoulders and ambled back to the cockpit.

“Wonder what Nym’s got in mind for you,” Finn said. He unbuckled himself and maneuvered over to the small crate. Dusque did the same.

“Let’s open it up and find out,” she replied.

Finn grabbed a metal bar and pried the top loose. Inside the small crate was an impressive selection of blasters, all new and shiny. Dusque briefly recalled Tendau’s weapon and how there seemed to be something vaguely sinister about it, like unspoken betrayals.

“Not bad,” Finn murmured as he rummaged through the contents of the container. He pulled out various styles of blasters and checked their power supplies. Dusque was impressed with how comfortable he was with each type, easily disassembling them and reassembling them again after verifying their condition.

“What’ll it be?” he asked her when he was finished.

“Doesn’t really matter,” she confessed, “because I don’t know the differences between any of them.”

“You’ve never used one of these?” he asked her.

“Not in my line of work. Survival knives, some fencing, and hand-to-hand techniques are all I’ve ever practiced or used.” She lowered her head, afraid that she had disappointed him and that he must now have found her wanting.

He surprised her again. “Then we better rectify that while there’s time,” he said easily, without a hint of derision in his voice. “C’mere.”

Dusque moved closer to the crate. Finn pulled out four different models of blasters and handed two to her, while he hung on to the other two himself. He nudged a few scraps of metal and other crates aside with his foot and cleared a path to a small workbench. He laid his blasters down and then had Dusque add hers to the lineup. He arranged them, then picked up the first one on the left, a long, slim one, and held it up, barrel pointed away, for Dusque’s inspection.

“This is a sporting blaster,” he explained. “It has a manual sight here just in front of the cooling coils on the barrel. It’s light and easily concealed. Go on,” he urged her. “Take it.”

Dusque accepted the weapon from him and felt the heft of it in her hand. It was very light, weighing not much more than a decent survival knife. While she balanced the item in her hand and tried to become more familiar with the feel of it, Finn moved up beside her.

“The downside to this weapon is that it doesn’t have a very powerful charge and it burns up power packs pretty quickly. Also, it uses a manual sight, so there’s more room for error. Actually,” he continued, “it’s more the weapon of the nobility than anything else.”

“Then it’s no good?” she asked.

“Don’t discount this little one so fast,” Finn told her. “You can swap out power packs pretty quickly and, if you need to sneak a weapon in someplace …” He paused. Moving to stand behind her, he pointed out a small recessed button on the blaster above the trigger.

“See there?” he asked her. She nodded and found herself standing taller as he stood closer.

“Press this and she pops into three pieces: the grip with the power pack, the main body with the blaster components, and the barrel. Give it a try.”

Dusque found that the gun came apart readily. Without waiting for his instruction, she snapped its parts back into a functioning weapon. “That could be handy,” she agreed coolly, trying not to show how pleased she was by the obvious approval on his face.

He took away the sporting blaster and handed her the next one.

“This is a DH-seventeen blaster,” he explained. When she took it from his hands, he moved even closer to her.

“Heavier than the other one,” Dusque remarked.

“Yep,” he agreed. “Longer range than the sporting model and longer-lasting firepower.” He wrapped his hand over hers. It was warm and dry and strong.

“The safety release,” he told her, “is above the trigger. See?”

“Mm-hmm,” she agreed, studying the pistol. “Is that the power pack?” she asked, pointing to a unit above the trigger, near the barrel.

“That’s right,” Finn replied, sounding delighted that she noticed. He released her hand and stepped back. “On the other model it was in the grip itself. These are a little trickier to take out, but can still be removed quickly when you get the hang of it.”

“Pros and cons?” she asked.

“It can blast through stormtrooper armor, but not a ship’s hull, so this is a good choice for close fighting on a ship. And on the low-power stun, it can knock someone out cold. It’s normally semiautomatic, but this one’s been juiced to fully automatic. See?” he asked as he pointed out the modification.

“The downside with that is you burn up packs very quickly and can even overheat the outer components if you’re not careful. And it’s illegal for any nonmilitary personnel to possess.”

“Oh,” Dusque said, and held the weapon out as though she were targeting something. Finn moved behind her and placed his hand over hers again as she sighted down the weapon. He guided her head with his other hand.

“It’s got a scope,” he explained quietly, “not a manual sight. Notice the difference?”

Dusque faltered for a moment when she felt his body touch her back lightly. As much as she wanted to deny it, there was a current that ran between them. It excited and frightened her at the same time.

“I do,” she finally said. Finn was quiet for a minute, and when he stepped over to their arsenal, Dusque was certain he let his fingers trail over hers longer than he needed to. He busied himself with his next selection, and Dusque wondered if he needed to collect himself. When he did choose another, she realized she had seen one like it before.

“The other pilot, Han Solo, carries one like that,” she said.

Finn gave her a grin. “Very good,” he complimented her. “You obviously studied him pretty closely,” he added after a moment’s thought, and Dusque could’ve sworn there was just the touch of jealousy in his voice. Even while she felt exasperated, she knew she was also pleased.

“Well, I did have a hard time taking my eyes off him,” she told Finn innocently and watched his jaw clench. She bit back a laugh. When he didn’t respond, she began to wonder if her teasing had gone too far. She was about to say something to make up for it, but then the storm cloud lifted from his face and he smiled back at her, although it was not the easy smile of a moment ago.

“Anyway,” he began, ignoring their last exchange, “the DL-forty-four is what’s known as a heavy blaster.” He tossed the weapon at her, and Dusque needed both hands to catch it. She wondered if he was mad at her.

“You’re right,” she said, “but I can still carry it one-handed.”

Finn nodded. “And you can fire it that way, too. But this weapon is really designed for close-quarters combat, and it uses up power packs even faster than the DH-seventeen.

“The nice thing, though,” he continued and leaned in, “is this right here.” He pointed to a small unit in the grip. “That device vibrates the grip when you’re low on power, so you know to switch out packs. Downside with this weapon is you have to be a good shot. You can’t just blast away and hope for the best, or you’ll burn out the pack. And the button above the grip but below the sight is a quick release for the power pack.”

He took that one away and handed her the last weapon on the table. It was longer than the others.

“This is the E-eleven blaster rifle,” he told her. “Go on, take it.”

Dusque was a trifle hesitant because he still seemed angry with her. Finn appeared to sense her discomfort and eased off a bit. “You can do it,” he told her. She accepted the rifle and realized she needed both hands to hold it comfortably.

“It has a range almost three times that of a blaster.”

“It’s heavier,” Dusque admitted. “I don’t think I could hold this with one hand.”

“Most can’t. If you see under the barrel, there’s an extendable stock that’ll help your aim.”

Dusque fumbled with the mechanism and Finn assumed his earlier pose, standing behind her and cradling both her and the weapon in the circle of his arms. He snapped the stock partially open, forming a triangle under the gun.

“Now hold this up and look through the scope,” he instructed her.

Dusque saw that the view with this one was different. “It’s not like the others,” she told him. When he responded, he spoke into her right ear and his breath sent shivers through her once more.

“It’s computerized so that you can aim in the worst conditions. Doesn’t matter,” he continued, “low light, haze, or smoke won’t affect your shots. For more stability—” He paused and pulled the stock toward Dusque, opening it fully. He placed it against her shoulder. “—open this up.”

He stretched his arm against the length of her left one and there wasn’t a part of their bodies that wasn’t touching. Dusque wasn’t sure which of them was trembling.

“The switch over here,” he continued softly, “is so you can vary the power setting from stun to something … more … powerful.” He hesitated.

Dusque was no longer listening to the words he was saying. She leaned her body against his and found his solidity comforting. She didn’t know which one of them lowered the weapon, but it slid to the floor with a dull thud. His hands trailed up her arms and he gripped her shoulders firmly. His breathing came out in short puffs that tickled her neck, and chills ran up and down her spine.

“Dusque,” he whispered.

“Yes,” she replied in kind.

“H …” He faltered.

“Yes?” she asked gently, overcome with an emotion she feared to name.

“I-I can’t,” he finished and pushed her away from him.

Dusque reeled slightly as she regained her balance, and she was surprised at herself for having relied so much on his strength to support her. She leaned forward to grip the workbench and take a deep breath.

When she had composed herself, she saw that Finn had a torn expression on his face. She wondered if he was frustrated by pushing her away, or upset that he had allowed her to get too close to begin with. And then his words about the Empire came back to her, how he believed that everyone betrayed those they loved to it eventually.

As Finn started to speak, Dusque held up a hand and placed it against his lips. “It’s all right,” she said. “I understand. It’s the Empire, isn’t it?’

Finn did not speak for some time, but stared at her with his black eyes. Dusque thought she might drown in those inky depths. When he finally did answer, his voice was hard and almost cold. “Yes,” he agreed, “it is because of the Empire.”

Dusque wondered what atrocity they had committed against him or, most likely, someone he had loved to leave him so cold and hateful now. The realization came to Dusque that while he knew so much about her, his past was shrouded in mystery. She had learned a little on Lok, but there was so much left unsaid between them.

“What happened—” she started to ask him, when the Mon Calamari returned.

“Strap yourselves back in,” he ordered, totally unaware of what he had interrupted. “We’re about to drop out of hyperspace.”

“You heard the man,” Finn told her, and she wondered if he was glad he didn’t have to answer her question.

She turned away from him and picked up the DH-17. “I think I’ll take this one,” she said, changing the subject herself. She didn’t want to force him to talk if he was unwilling to open up. She grabbed a holster from the crate and an armband with power packs. When she had added the weapon to her gear, she sat down and strapped herself in.

From the only viewport in the cargo area, Dusque could see the slashing rays of hyperspace travel streak by, and then the stars stopped their mad dash. She breathed a sigh of relief, glad that they were almost there. But her relief was short lived. Suddenly the shuttle rocked hard to the left and then the right. Had she not been buckled up, Dusque knew she would have been slammed against the wall with the rest of the cargo. As the ship bucked, she could see laserfire from the starboard portal. They were under attack.

“What is it?” Finn shouted, struggling with his restraints.

“Imps,” the Mon Calamari yelled. The tension and fear in his voice were unmistakable.

“Blast it,” Finn hissed. “They’re never in this sector.” He freed himself just as the ship took another hit; he was thrown hard to the floor.

“Watch out!” Dusque called as a crate broke free of its moorings and slid dangerously close to him. He sidestepped the deadly object and it smashed into the far wall, goods spilling out everywhere.

She saw that he managed to struggle into the cockpit, and then she lost sight of him. She debated joining them forward, but realized she had absolutely nothing to offer them other than a distraction. She knew less about the workings of ships than she did about guns. She held on to her restraints as the ship was tossed about like a piece of driftwood at sea and hoped that Finn was as good a copilot as he had proclaimed on Lok. Between the blasts, she strained to hear what they were saying up front.

“Solo, do you copy?” the Mon Calamari shouted. “We’re under attack.”

“I’ve kind of got my hands full here at the moment,” came the Falcon pilot’s clipped response.

The ship took another hit, and Dusque was nearly torn from her seat by the force of it. They were in serious trouble, she realized, and she wondered if she was going to perish out in the void of space with her friend’s death unavenged and her life unremarkable.

I’ve done nothing with my life, she mused, and the waste of it tormented her more than its imminent loss.

“Give me that comm,” she heard Finn’s rough voice demand.

“What?” Peralli cried out.

Dusque heard what she thought might be a struggle of sorts before the ship took another dangerous hit. No longer bucking, the transport started a dangerously steep descent. While Dusque held on to the arms of the seat out of useless fear, she heard a whine and an explosion. Oddly, it sounded like it had come from within the cockpit.

“Finn!” she screamed. She clawed at her straps, suddenly more afraid that he had perished than that her own death was close at hand. As she fumbled to find the buckles, she was momentarily relieved to hear his voice. It sounded as though he was talking to Han, saying something about their position. As she released the last strap, she realized that the ship was plunging ominously downward at an increasing rate. The attack, however, had ceased.

She held on to the support structures and crossbeams to keep from crashing forward as she made her way toward Finn. Smoke obscured most of her view; she could see that the tiny cockpit was filled with the acrid stuff, and part of the control panel was sputtering. As she clung to the doorway, she could also see Peralli slumped forward in his pilot’s seat, his communications gear askew on his large, fishlike head, his eyes rolled back. He was dead. Finn was straining his muscles as he fought with the controls.

“What—” was all Dusque managed to stutter.

Without looking up, Finn said through gritted teeth, “Too late to save the ship. Too late.”

“What about the Falcon?” she asked.

“Han managed to clear the fighters,” he replied.

There were no longer any in sight, she noted, and she wondered why the fighters hadn’t stayed to finish them off. Filling the clear canopy of the cockpit was the planet Corellia. It looked so peaceful, Dusque thought, blue-green and white against a velvet background. But as it grew larger and larger, she realized that they were accelerating.

“Get yourself strapped back in,” he shouted to her, “and brace yourself for planetfall.”

Dusque swung around. She climbed over boxes and loose gear, fighting to regain her seat. There was too much in the way—too many items that had not been properly strapped down—and the ship rocked and swayed as gravity pulled it through the atmosphere. She slipped and fell back. On her hands and knees, vaguely aware that she was crawling up, she reached out for the seat. Her fingertips touched it, then the ship shuddered, and she stumbled. With a great push, she lurched to her feet, intending to launch herself at her seat. And then she heard Finn scream out, “This is it!”

The ship slammed to a shattering halt and Dusque felt herself falling, suddenly airborne. She hit something hard and then she felt nothing more.

Somewhere in the blackness, Dusque could feel herself floating. She was warm and comfortable and felt quite free. There was, however, a persistent tugging and a voice somewhere deep in the void. She tried to ignore it, preferring the cool darkness to the sounds and sensations calling to her. She moved away from it and when she did, she felt a sharp, stabbing pain. Suddenly colors blinked and swirled around her, shattering the peaceful darkness. And from somewhere, she heard a moan. Then she realized the sound was coming from her. She blinked hard several times and slowly opened her eyes completely. It took some time before she was able to focus, and when she did, she was amazed.

She was lying in a heap in what remained of the cockpit, her limbs askew, covered by bits of crates and other debris. She could feel wetness behind her and tasted blood. She tried to move and winced again. She realized it was the sharp stab in her side that had roused her to consciousness—that and the voice that still called out to her frantically.

“Dusque!”

“Here,” she answered weakly and then tried again. “Here!”

Debris started to fly off her, and Dusque realized that she was less injured than she had originally thought. She was mostly pinned. As a large piece of equipment was lifted from her chest and shoulders, she could see Finn standing above her. Worry and concern were etched on his face. Blood seeped down his forehead; he was frightening to behold. But Dusque was grateful to see him alive.

Without saying a word, he reached down and removed the last bit of wreckage off her legs. He leaned down and scooped her up into his arms. She stifled a cry of pain and, as he carried her up toward the main cabin, she realized why he had moved her without checking for other injuries first. Over his shoulder, she could see that the cockpit was slowly flooding with water. The body of the pilot lay there, partially submerged.

“Peralli,” she said weakly.

“He’s dead,” Finn stated flatly, a grim expression fixed on his stony visage. He maneuvered them over to the workbench, which was only slightly tilted. He laid her down with surprising tenderness and ran his hands over her legs and arms, checking for injuries. When he moved up to her waist and left side, she winced in pain.

“Feels broken,” he told her, referring to at least one of her ribs.

“No argument there,” she agreed.

“I’m not sure what else might be injured,” he told her, worry softening his voice.

Dusque propped herself up on one elbow and moved to sit up. Finn tried to restrain her initially, but she shook her head and waved his hands away.

“No time for that,” she replied and clenched her jaw. “What about you?”

“Nothing, just a few scratches,” he said, dismissing her concern. He left her side and started to search the piles of gear that had been thrown about the cabin.

“What are you doing?” she asked him, keeping one eye on the water that had now filled the cockpit. At least, she thought, the Mon Calamari had been returned to the water in the end.

“Looking for a medkit to fix you up,” he explained angrily. “We are going to have to get out of here soon.”

“Forget about it.” She winced. “Grab the straps from that chair. They’ll do.”

Finn managed to find one of the flight chairs and cut the straps free with a knife he had tucked up his sleeve. When he had freed two of them, he stumbled back over to Dusque. She sat upright and raised her arms out to her side. The pain in that simple movement was excruciating, and she realized that she looked like Tendau had in his final moments, arms spread.

“Do it,” she told him.

He nodded to her once and placed the first restraint around her chest. As soon as he had the free end threaded through the buckle, he began to tighten it. Dusque groaned with the discomfort.

“More,” was all she managed to say.

He exhaled heavily and cinched the strap tighter. Dusque bit back on a moan and then breathed a little easier.

“Do the other one,” she told him.

As he applied the second makeshift brace, she leaned against him with her outstretched hand. “How did the pilot die?” she asked, to take her mind off the pain.

Finn was silent as he tightened the second brace. “We took a hit in the cockpit,” he finally said. “He didn’t make it.”

Dusque hazily thought that he seemed to be hiding something. She wondered if he had somehow made a mistake and that had been the reason for the pilot’s death. And if his abilities with a ship were not what he had said they were, what else, she wondered briefly, might he have lied to her about? She dismissed the thoughts as soon as he looked up at her through his tousled hair. She realized that she didn’t care about herself or anything else at that moment; she was just glad he was alive.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he said shakily. He touched her face. “I thought …”

“I did, too,” she answered him and managed a smile through her discomfort. She placed her hand across the straps and breathed in experimentally. “It’ll do,” she pronounced.

Finn helped her up. “Grab what you can,” he told her. The water had reached the main cabin. “We’ve got to move.”

She eased herself off the table and found that the straps were holding: there was much less discomfort the more she moved around. She found her small pack and strapped it to her back. She wasn’t able to find her sword, but the blaster was poking out from under some circuitry. She wound the holster around her hips and even found an armband of ammo floating past her feet. She noticed, as she ducked below hanging wires and jagged metal, that there was little else that was salvageable.

Finn was near the back hatch. He was squatting in the water, and Dusque realized that he was placing charges around the door. The door lock must have been jammed, she deduced. She slogged through the nearly waist-deep water to stand beside him.

“Now what?” she asked.

He placed the last charge and turned to look at her. He had a worried expression on his face.

“I’ll manage,” she replied to his unasked question.

“I’m going to have to blow the door. I’ve got charges placed in the cockpit, as well. I’m going to blow that first,” he explained, “and then the door. As soon as I do, the seawater is going to rush in behind us first, and as the air escapes, hopefully it will push us out the hatch.”

Dusque nodded. “As soon as we get out,” she told him, “and you can open your eyes, let out a little air. Your bubbles are going to head to the surface, so follow them.”

He nodded in return. “Grab on to something, okay?”

She wrapped her arm around a metal beam. “Okay,” she told him, and started to take several quick breaths to blow all the carbon dioxide out of her lungs. Then in one big breath she filled her wounded chest with as much air as she could possibly hold. She saw Finn do the same. He locked eyes with her and held out a detonating switch. He pressed down on one switch and then the other. Twin explosions rocked the doomed vessel, and Dusque found herself thrust out into the depths of the Corellian ocean. Once again, she was lost in the darkness.

NINE

Dusque was being buffeted around. She shut her eyes tightly, but could do nothing about the cold water that immediately filled her nostrils. One thing she had neglected to tell Finn was that she was absolutely terrified of deep water. And she was in the grip of that fear now. It took all that she had not to scream, though she knew it would do no good. When she finally built up enough courage, she opened her eyes.

She was swirling and tumbling about, unable to tell what was what. The water around her was frothy from the plane wreckage, and Dusque felt panic start to build within her. She momentarily forgot her advice to Finn, finding it impossible to tell where any of the bubbles were heading. Through blind luck, she managed to see the remains of the shuttle. She fixed her frightened gaze on it and realized that it was getting smaller the longer she looked at it. Her scientific mind kicked in and overrode the fear.

Of course, she scolded herself, gravity has taken hold of it and it’s sinking. If it’s going that way, then I’m headed the other.

Without another thought, she kicked up as hard as she could. Though she feared the ocean, she was able to swim. Drowning was a great motivator and teacher.

Remembering what she had told Finn, she let a little of her precious air escape from her mouth and saw the tiny stream of bubbles move past her eyes. That told her that she was headed in the right direction. She swung her arms down in great passes and kicked as hard as she could. But the burning in her chest let her know that she didn’t have much time.

The combination of her injuries and her fear caught up with her. She let out a bellow, and giant bubbles exploded from her mouth in an underwater scream. She saw strong foam no more than a few meters directly above her. With a final thrust of her arms, and spots winking in and out of her vision, Dusque broke the surface.

Her ragged gasp for air sucked in some salt water, and she started to hack and wheeze. She retained enough presence of mind to tread water, and now that she was breathing in air, her fear started to recede. It was still there, but it was no longer overwhelming. When she finally cleared her sore chest, she started to swim in ever-widening circles, calling for Finn.

“Over here,” she heard, and she turned about wildly, searching for the source of the voice, praying it was Finn.

Eventually, she spotted his head bobbing in the surf some ten meters away. Beyond him, she could see something almost equally gratifying: a shore. She started her clumsy strokes over to where Finn was, pausing frequently to get her bearings and catch her breath. Her fear may have receded, but it wasn’t that far in the distance. Between her sore ribs and clumsy strokes, she was a pathetic sight.

“Thank the Force,” Finn said and Dusque thought it almost sounded like a benediction from his lips. “I thought I’d lost you again.”

“N-no,” Dusque sputtered. She found it difficult to swim and talk too much.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Kicking furiously to stay afloat, Dusque answered, “I will be once we’re on shore.”

Finn scrutinized her and she could see he realized that she was close to panicking. “We’re close now,” he told her encouragingly. “Follow me.”

Dusque struggled along behind Finn, and she was certain he had slowed his pace considerably to accommodate her poor form. He asked only once if she needed help, and when she refused, he didn’t ask again. But she saw him turn his head back frequently to make sure she was following. Even though the shore wasn’t far off, he veered toward a clump of large rocks, and she knew he was doing that for her sake so she wouldn’t have to ask for help. She felt the now familiar mix of exasperation and pleasure over his actions.

He was slightly ahead of her and called back, “Let’s climb out on those rocks and catch our breath, okay?”

“Mm-hmm,” Dusque agreed, holding her mouth shut against the water. As they neared the outcropping, the water broke against the coral flats and grew choppy because of it. She could see that even Finn was being buffeted around by the force of it. But he still worried about her, not himself.

“There are some reeds or something here that you can grab hold of,” he called to her, and started to swim in the direction of the vegetation he had seen. Even though she was nearly exhausted, something in what Finn said didn’t make sense. There shouldn’t have been any reeds or the like growing in the surf. It took her muddled mind a moment to realize what it was he had seen.

Finn was about to reach for one of the two stalky reeds when Dusque screamed out. He turned back toward her and didn’t see those two stalks raise themselves out of the water and hold themselves above his head menacingly.

Realizing that swimming to him was out of the question, Dusque reached for the blaster she hoped was still in its holster. It was. She pulled the blaster free and flipped the safety like Finn had shown her on the shuttle. “Down!” she screamed at him.

She released a volley of blasts in the general direction of the arachnid creature. More by luck than skill, a few of those blasts caught the monster dead-on, and it crumpled back into the water. She didn’t know who was more surprised by her shooting: her or Finn. She held the blaster tightly in her fist, afraid to try to holster it while the waves knocked her around. She swam awkwardly over to Finn, growing more tired by the second.

When she reached his side, she gasped, “Maybe we can stop here for just a moment or two?”

Finn smiled broadly. “For you, we can even stop for three. Is it safe, though?”

Dusque wasn’t too tired to realize that he was asking her for her evaluation of the situation, even though she was floundering and sputtering like a child.

“L-looks clear,” she gasped, and watched as Finn pulled himself up onto the rocks, carefully avoiding the dead spider creature. He braced himself and pulled Dusque from the water. She gasped at the pain in her side, but she didn’t care. She was overwhelmed with relief to be out of the water. For a few seconds, they both sat there, gasping and shivering. Just as Finn was about to say something, the creature sprang to life and shot toward them.

Before Dusque could let loose with another round of laserfire, Finn unsheathed his knife and drove it into the creature’s back. It fell flat in a chattering heap, all of its many limbs splayed out. And from where Finn had stabbed the thing, black ooze started to pool. He reached for his knife, but Dusque caught his forearm.

“Watch out,” she warned him. “That black ink is venomous.”

Finn carefully extricated his weapon and cleaned it off with a piece of his torn tunic. He inserted the sharp blade back under his sleeve and Dusque figured out that he must have some kind of mechanism under there to release the blade when triggered.

“It was probably dead when it skittered over here,” she told him after she had caught her breath. “Just a reflex action.”

Finn regarded the meter-long arachnid with some disgust. “Just what was that thing?” he asked her.

“A dalyrake,” Dusque explained. “They’re more common on Talus than Corellia, but, as you can see, they can be found here, as well.”

“And that black stuff is toxic?” he asked. Dusque would’ve laughed if her side didn’t ache so. When he asked the question, he looked for the entire world like a little boy both disgusted and fascinated by a creepy-crawly.

“Yes,” she answered with a smile. “They can live on land or in the water indefinitely. What they do quite often is find a solid perch near water and dangle in their front two arms as lures. They wait for some unsuspecting fish to swim by and spear it with their venomous talons.” She smiled more broadly, wondering if he grasped the implication of the explanation.

“So what you’re telling me is that I was nearly killed by something that hunts fish …” He trailed away.

The corner of her lip twitched in amusement. “That’s right, Finn,” she said, emphasizing his name.

He looked at her and said, “Isn’t that ironic?”

The next thing she knew was they were both lying on their backs, laughing at the absurdity that a man named after a part of a fish had almost been killed by something that frequently preyed on them.

“O-ow,” she said, gripping her side and sitting back up, composing herself after the much-needed release of tension.

“Let’s get to shore and get you some medical attention,” he told her. “It’s not too far now.”

The idea of reentering the water sobered Dusque up. She scanned the shore and tried to estimate how much farther it was until she would be on dry land. Only about fifteen meters or so, she thought. I can do it.

“Yes, you can,” Finn told her as if he had read her thoughts.

“You’re right,” she said in return. “I can.”

Finn slid into the water and Dusque followed him in more slowly, favoring her injured side. The water felt colder after their time on the rocks, but Dusque steeled herself, knowing they would soon be back on land. Glancing ahead to the beach, she thought she saw something glint bronze in the setting sun. She saw that Finn noticed it, too; he seemed wary as he swam ahead of her. As soon as he was able to, he stood up and waded partially to shore. Then he stopped and waved, and Dusque realized that the bronze glint she had seen was a metallic figure, who responded to Finn’s wave with a salute.

As Finn turned and waded back in to help her out, Dusque asked, “Someone you know?”

“Droid that works closely with someone I work for,” was all he said as he helped her from the water.

Seeing that the droid was a protocol unit, she sighed inwardly.

“Hello, there,” he introduced himself. “I am See-Threepio, human–cyborg relations specialist.” And he even managed a half bow.

“How did you find us?” Finn asked as he guided Dusque up the shore.

“We tracked your descent,” the droid explained, “and I was sent out here just in case.”

“In case one or both of us survived?” Finn said wryly. He cocked his head toward Dusque. “We need to get her to a medcenter.”

“I’ll be fine,” she told him, eager to get away from the water.

“There are several competent Too-Onebees where we are going,” C-3PO assured them, “if you can wait. It would be better that way, if possible, but it is a long walk from here and some parts are quite steep.”

“I’ll manage,” she assured Finn, almost ignoring the droid completely.

“All right, but we’ll take it slow,” he finally agreed. He put his arm lightly around her waist, and Dusque didn’t mind the support.

As she and Finn walked up the beach together, C-3PO led the way.

“Oh, dear, I hate sand. It always lodges in my gears.” He turned and looked at Finn. “Did I ever tell you about the time on Tatooine when I …”

He droned on and on but Finn and Dusque hardly noticed a word he said.

The walk to their final destination was long and difficult. Several times, Dusque had to readjust the tension on the makeshift bandages around her rib cage. But she didn’t slow down, and they made fairly good time.

It was not the first time that she had been on Corellia, but Dusque had never been to the area they were hiking through. As best as she could estimate, they had crashed fairly close to Tyrena. C-3PO seemed to be leading them northwest, up into the hills and mountains, but when she asked Finn just how far they had to go, he surprised her with his answer.

“I have no idea,” he told her.

“Haven’t you been to this camp before?”

“I haven’t been to that many, and this one is a closely guarded secret because of who’s there right now,” he explained.

“Doesn’t it get frustrating?” Dusque asked. “All the secrecy … How is it different from the tactics the Empire uses?”

Finn studied her closely for a moment, and Dusque wondered if she had offended him. However, she was too sore and too tired to try to defend herself, so she just breathed in the soothing forest air and waited for him to reply.

“You’re right,” Finn said after a long pause. “Many of the tactics are the same. That’s the danger in all of this,” he continued more softly. “You have to keep your motives true, or you could find yourself on the other side with no idea how it happened.”

Dusque wasn’t sure what to say to that. She and Finn continued on without speaking. C-3PO was a different matter: Oblivious to whether anyone was listening to him, he rambled on and on about the difficulties he faced in his day-to-day operations. The only time he was silent was when Dusque spotted a pack of canids between a few of the tall trees and hissed at him to be quiet.

“Unless you want to be trampled by those rooting pigs, shut up,” she whispered urgently.

Finn flashed her a winning smile and they passed the animals in the brush without incident. For the remainder of the hike, C-3PO stewed in what seemed to be offended silence. Dusque was not put out by it in the least.

As they trotted down the incline of yet another hill, Dusque saw a small collection of stone structures, all very flat and probably no more than one level above ground. From the look of the place and Finn’s earlier comments, she got the impression that the camp was temporary, which made sense, since the Rebels never knew when they’d have to flee suddenly. Still, there were several fortifications, and she could see sentries patrolling about.

They were greeted by a soldier who recognized C-3PO and waved them in. He looked very young to Dusque, but what surprised her more than his age was the fact that he seemed genuinely glad to see that they had arrived safely, strangers he had never met before but who shared his dreams. Dusque nodded to him, and he gave her a smile and a quick salute before sobering and resuming his duties of scanning their surroundings, his weapon at the ready.

They headed down a stone walkway and entered one of the largest edifices in the compound. The place was teeming with Rebel soldiers, but few spared the newcomers more than a cursory glance. Dusque assumed that this was because they had obviously been cleared by security. She watched as C-3PO walked over to a compact command center, where he was accosted by a small R2 unit. The little white-and-blue domed droid beeped and chirped excitedly at C-3PO.

C-3PO grew more animated. “Yes,” he told the little droid excitedly, “it was extremely dangerous, but I managed to maneuver them through it and arrive here safely.”

Dusque, smirking at C-3PO’s version of the tale, chuckled when the R2 unit emitted an off-pitch squawk and the protocol droid stiffened into an offended stance. Her laughter caused her to wince again.

“Threepio,” Finn called out, “where’s your medcenter?”

The bronze droid broke away from what looked like the beginning of an argument with the R2 unit and pointed out where Finn should take Dusque. He then returned to his squabbling with the little droid. Dusque suspected they were great companions and probably carried on like that for hours at a time. The fact that many of the Rebel soldiers moved past them without interest seemed proof enough to her that her reasoning was sound.

Finn escorted Dusque around the complex. She was amazed at how much activity was going on, among not only human soldiers, but other species and droids, too. She couldn’t remember her lab ever being this active over anything. Compared to the Rebel base, her lab was passionless—that was the only word she could think of to describe it. The thought depressed her. As they passed by what seemed to be someone’s office, Finn paused and stuck his head in the door. The office occupant, a young man with hair as black as Finn’s and dressed in a pilot’s suit, waved to them.

“Wedge,” Finn greeted him, smiling hugely.

“Finn!” The man called Wedge started to rise.

“Hold on, buddy,” Finn said, raising one hand, palm out. “Let me get her to the medics and I’ll be back. We need to talk.”

Wedge nodded and sat back down behind his desk, as serious as he had been when they had first passed by. Dusque wondered how the Rebels managed to remain so focused and so dedicated. And then she wondered if most of them had someone like Tendau in their past, driving them on. More than likely, they all did, she mused.

“Here you go,” Finn said, ushering her into a tiny but well-stocked med room. A 2–1B droid stopped adjusting some equipment and glided over to them.

“How can I assist you?” it asked.

“I think I’ve got some cracked ribs,” Dusque told it. “Would you take a look?”

“Of course,” it replied. “Please sit down.” And it indicated a nearby bed.

“You’ll be okay?” Finn asked.

“Go ahead and catch up with your comrade,” she told him easily. “Everything’s fine now.” And with those words, she leaned back on the bed. The relief to be here, where she could be treated at last, was too much for her: her control started to splinter, and all the agony she was in was written on her face. Seeing that, Finn hesitated.

“I’ll only be a few minutes,” he assured her.

With closed eyes, Dusque waved him away. “I’ll be fine.” And he left.

While the droid passed a scanner over her ribs and back, Dusque studied the bustling base from her cot. Through the open doorway, she could see various personnel moving about, as well as C-3POs, binary loadlifters, and other draft droids. In the center of the hub stood a tiny woman. Dusque estimated that the petite, brown-haired whirlwind was a good head or so shorter than she was, but what the woman lacked in stature, she clearly made up for with drive.

As the 2–1B started to treat her broken ribs, Dusque could see that the woman appeared not only to be helping by carrying supplies, but also to be giving orders. It slowly became clear to Dusque that it was the woman who was in command at this base. She marveled at how that could be. Having spent her entire life in service to the Empire, she had never come across a woman who held any sort of rank even close to what she suspected this woman did. And she looked no older than Dusque.

Dusque felt something emotional inside herself shift. Surrounded by these Rebels, from the young sentry at the gate willing to die not out of fear of retribution from his superiors but for a dream, to the petite woman in white who commanded the respect of those around her, Dusque realized that theirs was a dream worth dying for. The words that Tendau had spoken to her in what seemed to be a lifetime ago on Rori crystallized for her.

When the time comes, you will see your path like a beacon before your eyes, he had told her, and she realized he was right. She had found her way.

“Your ribs are bruised, but not broken,” the 2–1B announced, interrupting her reverie. “I’m applying bactabandages to help speed the healing.”

Dusque breathed in a shallow sigh of relief and was surprised to find that it didn’t hurt. Whatever the 2–1B was doing to her ribs, it was certainly getting rid of the pain. As soon as the droid was finished with her treatment, she got up and moved about experimentally.

Finn returned looking grim, but his expression lightened when he saw that she was up and maneuvering around without pain. “How do you feel?” he asked her.

“Good as new,” she informed him. “Actually, better than new.”

He looked at her quizzically. Dusque decided she would share her epiphany with him, so he would truly know she had embraced his cause.

But he cut her off before she could start. “Good to hear. We need to go now and receive the rest of our orders,” he explained, his grim expression back. “We’re almost out of time.”

Realizing how serious he was, Dusque sobered up, as well. “Lead on,” she told him. She turned and thanked the med droid, then followed after Finn.

Together they wound their way around the labyrinth that was the base and made their way to the second floor. There, near what Dusque thought might be a large-style holoprojector, was the woman in white. There were a few others in the room, but most were busy, taking readings or communicating with other troops stationed elsewhere. The only other person in the room was a young man who looked only slightly older than the eager sentry by the gates.

With blond hair streaked by the sun, he was obviously someone who had spent his few years outdoors. He was dressed simply enough in a shirt and trousers, but a strange, cylindrical device swung from the belt at his hip. She didn’t recognize the technology, and that puzzled her, because she prided herself in knowing all the latest equipment. When she looked up, she realized that his sky-blue eyes were staring intensely at her. There was something ancient about those eyes, and she shivered, although she wasn’t cold. She broke away from his gaze when she heard the woman address Finn.

“I’m so glad you’re both here and safe,” the small woman said sincerely. Dusque thought her eyes looked warm and comforting. “When Han reported that you had been shot down, we feared the worst.”

“How is he?” Finn asked, and Dusque heard a hard tone in his question. The woman did, as well.

“Don’t worry, Finn,” she said, laying a comforting hand on his forearm. “Han’s fine. It was a near thing, but he and Chewie escaped the Imperial fighters. I don’t know how he does it,” she added with a chuckle, “but that bucket of bolts he calls a ship got him away again.” She was silent for a moment and Dusque thought she sensed more than just comradelike concern for the dashing pilot.

“I cannot say how glad I am that you are all right,” the woman continued, addressing Dusque.

“Thank you,” she replied and, after a brief hesitation, asked, “Who are you?”

The petite woman and Finn exchanged a short glance between them. “You didn’t tell her?” she asked Finn.

“No point in it until we got here,” he answered, “if we got here at all.”

“Finn and I have known each other for more years than I care to name. I am Leia Organa,” she introduced herself. “I’m sorry, I wish we had more time, but we don’t.”

“I understand,” Dusque replied. She thought that she knew the name from somewhere, but she wasn’t sure. “Can you still use me?” she asked. “Since the Empire executed my friend, I might no longer be in good standing with them. And all this will have been for nothing.”

Leia nodded. “We heard about what happened to Tendau. I’m sorry,” she added, and Dusque was touched by her sympathy. Leia was a military leader, but she clearly had not lost sight of her compassion, or the awareness that it was real people who perished, not numbers on a datapad.

“We weren’t able to discover why a warrant was issued for him but, fortunately, none has been issued for you,” Leia went on.

“So her cover is still valid?” Finn asked.

“Yes,” Leia replied. She faced Dusque. “Because of your background in xenobiology and your title as an Imperial bioengineer, no one will question why you would explore such a relatively unpopulated planet. You can move about without arousing too much suspicion. That’s why we needed someone in your position, with your impressive abilities. No one less would do. And because of your personal history,” she continued, “I hoped that you would be willing to help us.”

Dusque was suddenly overwhelmed by the reality of the situation. Finn had said much the same thing to her when they had first met, but she had not understood; she had been unable to see past her own insecurities. Now, seeing the large number of people Leia commanded, she understood. If all the Princess had needed was a body or someone of moderate ability, she had ample supply right here in the hidden base. But Leia had asked for her. She was momentarily speechless.

“Judging by what it took for you to get here, I don’t think I’m wrong in my presumption,” Leia added.

The choice was truly before Dusque, and she knew her answer would change everything. It was a chance to make a real difference. And there would be no going back. For the first time in her life, Dusque felt no fear.

“I want to help,” she answered.

Leia studied her appraisingly, then nodded curtly. “Good,” she said without fanfare. “Your superiors don’t know where you are, do they?”

Dusque shook her head. “I didn’t report in because I didn’t want to give them any idea where I was, especially if there was a chance I might be wanted.”

“Safe thinking,” Leia said approvingly.

“And don’t worry,” Dusque added, flushed with pleasure at the compliment, “I haven’t been off their radar long enough for them to be concerned yet.”

Leia nodded. “That’s good. Now,” she said, all business again. “The list we need to recover is on Dantooine.”

Dusque heard Finn let out a deep breath and she wondered why he had been holding it the whole time. Probably afraid I was going to back out, she thought.

“We had a base there for some time,” Leia explained, “until someone betrayed us. Fortunately, we were able to evacuate the entire complex in under a day. In that haste, however, we were forced to abandon and destroy some supplies and information. This list of contacts and sympathizers was encoded into a holocron by several different agents, some of whom are no longer alive. No one person has ever known all the names in order to protect the contacts—this holocron is the only place all these names appear together. Several Rebels were able to hide the holocron within the ruins of an ancient Jedi temple for safekeeping just days before Alderaan was destroyed.” She paused, and a shadow crossed her face. “These are dark times for us.”

Dusque suddenly remembered where she had heard of Leia before. She was a former Senator—and Princess, if memory served—from Alderaan. Dusque looked at her thoughtfully. Here was a woman who had lost everything, faced overwhelming tragedy, and found the strength to continue and to persevere.

“We need to retrieve that list before the Empire does,” Leia continued after a moment’s silence. “We know now that the Empire is aware of the list and has sent agents after it. Time is of the essence.

“I want you two to find the holocron and bring it back to me here. If you aren’t able to return with it safely, then destroy it. Don’t even risk transmitting the information back to us. Better those named remain anonymous and alive than fall into the hands of the Empire.”

Dusque looked at Finn and then back at Leia. “We can do it,” she promised the petite powerhouse. “We won’t fail you.”

“There’s an exploration shuttle waiting for you at the other end of the base. There’s no more time,” Leia finished. “You need to leave now.”

As Dusque and Finn left the chamber, Leia quietly breathed, “May the Force be with you.”

When the two had left, Leia sighed deeply. She hoped that they would be successful. The holocron was a vital piece in the effort to overthrow the Emperor and restore freedom to the galaxy. If nothing else, the people represented on that list deserved their safety and their lives. But she also realized that she might have just sent another two people to their doom.

She turned and saw Luke. “Why were you so quiet?” she asked. He appeared deep in thought, and she moved closer to him and lay a delicate hand over his. “What is it? Do you sense something?” She found herself trembling slightly with concern. His burgeoning powers both frightened and intrigued her.

Luke had a faraway look in his eyes. When he finally spoke, it was as if from a great distance. “I don’t know exactly,” he said, “but I have a bad feeling about this.” And then he grew silent.

Leia wondered just what her newest recruit and one of her oldest allies were flying into.

TEN

The shuttle was waiting for them at the far end of the base. Finn had been strangely quiet on the way there, and Dusque wondered what he was so worried about.

“What is it?” she asked as they boarded the tiny ship.

Finn scrutinized her silently. The quiet was maddening. Dusque couldn’t understand his behavior.

“Please,” she entreated him, “tell me what you’re thinking.”

Whether it was the tone of her voice or the look in her eyes, it had the desired effect on Finn. He relented a little.

“I was just thinking about what you said back there, to Princess Leia … You meant it, didn’t you? About the Alliance, that is. This isn’t just for the Hammerhead anymore. You believe in this cause?”

While she winced inwardly again at his casual reference to Tendau, she excused his choice of words, realizing that with all the death he must see, he would have to desensitize himself to a certain extent to deal with it all. She decided he needed to hear her words again, as reassurance that she was with him all the way.

“When you first brought me into this, I wanted only revenge for Tendau,” she said. “You’re right. But after what I’ve seen and done, I realize that the Alliance is the right path. And I believe it here,” she finished, placing a hand over her heart. “Please trust me.”

Finn seemed to be struggling with something internally.

“Don’t you believe me?” she asked.

He swallowed hard. “I do now. I thought you just wanted to see blood spilled for your colleague, and I’ll admit I was willing to leverage your anger to get your help. But I did doubt that you believed in any of this, and I figured our mission was a one-time deal for you. Now, though …” He trailed away.

Without saying another word, he turned and busied himself with checking their supplies. Dusque smiled to herself, sure she understood his turmoil. Now she was the one who knew what to do and had a purpose equal to his. She guessed he was frightened by the implications. So she went to inventory some of the other equipment on board, and left him in peace.

The Rebel forces had supplied the small vessel well. There were fresh clothes, perfect for explorers and surveyors. Along with datapads, rudimentary camp supplies, and electrobinoculars, there was also a well-stocked medkit, along with portable stimpaks and plenty of small containers for samples. There was almost everything that Dusque would have asked for herself if she were on an actual mission to sample genetic material.

Finn had moved away from a workbench area and squatted on the floor, feeling the grooves of the floor panels. When his fingers caught on a release, he opened up the cover to reveal a cache of a different kind. He motioned for Dusque to come over. When she did, she whistled appreciatively.

There was a deadly array of blasters and short-range rifles, along with survival knives and a few other weapons. There was also an electronic lock breaker, comlinks, sensor tags, and even several thermal detonators. She looked at Finn and felt the gravity of what they were walking into.

“If something happens,” he said, answering her unasked question, “we blow the list and everything else. Nothing left.”

Dusque found she didn’t have the words to answer him, so she nodded silently.

There was a whistle from the comm unit, and they turned in unison. Finn slid into the pilot’s seat and grabbed the headset. Dusque finished up the inventory and prepared herself for the flight.

“Go ahead,” she heard Finn say, but because he was using the headset, she couldn’t hear who was on the other end.

“Yes,” he answered, “we’re set to go now. There’ll be no further communications until we return with the item. Finn out.” And he pulled the headset off roughly.

He was tense, she thought, as she was. But she also wondered if he was a little unsure. Since the crash on the Mon Calamari’s vessel, Dusque had had a nagging doubt about his piloting skills. Maybe, she thought, he was having them now, too. She wondered how she could help.

She stuck her head in the cockpit. “You know, you don’t have to hide what’s being said anymore. I understand the risks, so don’t feel like you need to shield me.”

“We’re in the business of secrets,” he answered, “and so are you, now. ’Fraid you’re going to have to accept that. It’s almost time, so you’d better strap in.” With that, he turned his attention to the myriad switches and flashing lights that made up the control system. Dusque ducked back out and went to get settled in her seat.

“All set?” he called out after a minute.

“Just strapping in now,” she replied. She pulled the sturdy restraints over her shoulders and across her torso, locking them in tight.

“As soon as we’re out of the gravity well, feel free to come up,” he told her.

The shuttle shuddered a little as it rocketed through the atmosphere, and Dusque thought briefly that she was coming to hate space travel almost as much as C-3PO seemed to, judging from one of his many tales of anguish she hadn’t managed to tune out completely.

Then she chuckled to herself. “Great, now I’m starting to think like a protocol droid.”

“What?” Finn called back to her.

“Nothing,” she replied, embarrassed to be caught talking to herself.

Looking out the viewport, Dusque watched as Corellia shrank from view, a beautiful blue-green dot that soon enough became indistinguishable from the rest of the stars in the velvet blackness. She watched the lights wink and twinkle and was once again amazed that so many of those dots teemed with life. She had always been fascinated by the variety of life in the galaxy—otherwise she would not have chosen the profession of bioengineer. But now she realized she had more appreciation for that life—for all lives, each one unique and individual and precious. She felt that she had been a removed observer but was now a true participant, like a wrix that no longer saw in black and white, but could see and appreciate colors.

“Coming up?” Finn asked, breaking her reverie. She undid her straps and joined him in the cockpit.

“We don’t have too much time before we reach Dantooine,” he began, and Dusque thought he was going to make some sort of declaration to her in case something happened to one or both of them. It was, after all, a very real possibility.

“Yes?” she asked.

“I’d like to show you some of the controls, so that you could fly this thing in case …” He left the rest unsaid.

Not what she had hoped to hear, but she understood his concerns. “All right,” she replied.

For nearly an hour, he gave her the basic rundown on how the ship operated, from using the deflector shields to jettisoning cargo if needed. Dusque tried to take in as muchas possible, but was daunted by the enormity of the job. Finally, perhaps sensing her growing frustration, Finn stood up.

“I’m going to go back and change, get geared up, so I’ll leave you to it for a while,” he told her. “We’ve made the jump to hyperspace, but go ahead and go over the controls for yourself. Holler if you have any questions.” And he moved toward the rear of the shuttle.

Dusque sighed and went over the mental checklist he had given her. She had newfound respect for pilots, because even with all the technology at their disposal, doing the job well was extremely difficult. She thought that if she had to, she could probably get the thing up in the air, but wasn’t sure she’d be able to fly it beyond that, and she didn’t even want to think about landing. She studied the controls, but the more she looked at them, the more they all started to look alike. She was rubbing her eyes in frustration when a signal blared, startling her. She glanced at the board and was pleased to realize that she remembered what the signal meant: it was time to drop out of hyperspace.

Finn came hurrying up front, wearing a standard-issue, all-weather environmental suit.

“We’ll be in orbit shortly,” he told her, sitting down. “Why don’t you go and get changed? You have a few moments before we have to strap in for landing.”

As Dusque hurried back, she felt her mouth dry out. She was approaching the moment of truth, and the thought of the task that lay in front of them made her heart pound. Her fingers trembled slightly when she snapped the closures on her environmental suit and strapped on the sport blaster that was permissible for nonmilitary personnel. Telling herself to relax, she stuck several power packs into her sack and strapped on a survival knife. Then she decided to conceal a heavy blaster inside her tunic. Her outer cloak was fabricated from tough fiberplast, so she took the calculated risk that the weapon would be hidden well enough.

Then a flash on the auxiliary control board caught her eye, and she turned to look. Had that been a blip on the radar monitor? Wanting to be sure, she stared at the monitor and waited. After a short time, it happened again. It was as though something was following them, trying to stay just out of range.

She ran forward to the cockpit. “Someone is following us!” she told Finn.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, sounding incredulous.

“Look at the radar!” she exclaimed, waving her hand at the monitor as she slid into the co-pilot’s seat.

For several long moments, both of them watched the monitor.

Finally Finn sighed and shook his head. “There’s nothing there,” he informed her.

“But there was,” she insisted.

“Look,” he told her, reaching out to lay a hand on her shoulder, “we’re both tense. You probably saw a meteor or an asteroid shoot by. It’s a very common mistake new pilots make.”

Dusque sat there, frustrated, with her arms crossed. She was sure she had seen something on the screen. Rather than argue with Finn over it, since without proof it looked like a losing battle anyway, she took up a silent vigil over the monitor, determined to catch it out. However, the screen remained accusingly blank, and Dusque started to think it had been a natural celestial occurrence after all.

“We’re coming up on the Imperial outpost,” Finn announced at last. “Get ready for landing. And no sign of anything following us,” he added without mockery.

“I guess I imagined it,” she admitted, feeling foolish. She wanted him to think she was competent—and then was annoyed with herself for caring so much what he thought of her.

As soon as they landed, they were contacted by the outpost command center.

“Prepare to be inspected,” a voice announced over the comm unit. Dusque and Finn exchanged a tense glance before Finn responded.

“Hatchway open, we’re ready for boarding,” he said into the comm.

The heavy tread of armor reminded Dusque of the spaceport on Moenia, when the stormtroopers had come for Tendau. Her blood pounding in her ears, she struggled to maintain an outward look of calm. Finn appeared stoic, but then he winked at her just as a stormtrooper entered the cockpit. That one gesture relieved her of an immense amount of tension. She inhaled deeply and stood to address the trooper.

“Everything in order?” she asked, seizing control of the moment.

“We’re still checking your cargo,” the armored stormtrooper replied through his transmitter.

Once again, Dusque was struck by how impersonal, how inhuman, every aspect of the Empire was. Even a voice lost all warmth when heard through their armor.

“Your clearance codes, please,” the stormtrooper added.

Dusque handed him her credentials, along with Finn’s falsified ones. The stormtrooper was momentarily put off when he saw that Dusque was the senior member of the group. Judging by his reaction, Dusque guessed he had never come across a woman in charge before. He continued to scrutinize them, and Dusque wondered just how good a job the Rebels had done with Finn’s forgeries.

“Everything appears to be—” the stormtrooper began, before he was interrupted.

“Come back here and take a look at these,” another officer said.

Dusque’s heart skipped a beat. She looked once at Finn and her mind raced. She was afraid that she had somehow not secured the panel correctly over their cache of weapons. Nausea swept through her when the first stormtrooper called her name.

“Come back here.” It was clearly not a request but an order. Finn moved to join her, but Dusque, her arm by her side, discreetly waved her hand to stop him.

“If need be,” she whispered, “I can make a run for it and you can blast out of here.”

She hoped he understood what she meant. If they were found out, he might be able to pilot the ship away while she distracted the stormtroopers by bolting out of the hatch and running. That way, at least one of them would survive. For a moment she was taken aback by this new Dusque: never before had she been so willing to put herself directly in the path of death. And certainly not for anything so nebulous as a cause.

“Yes?” she asked, and was proud of the fearlessness in her voice.

She stepped back into the main cabin and saw that several stormtroopers were gathered in a knot. She could not see what they were looking at.

“Explain this,” he ordered, and Dusque feared the worst. She chewed her lip slightly and looked at the open hatchway, estimating how long it would take her to reach the outside before she was either apprehended or shot. Before she could decide, however, the stormtrooper turned and faced her, holding something out to her.

Dusque let out her breath very slowly. Instead of some illegal weapon, the soldier had one of her collection tools in his gauntleted hand.

“It does look rather evil,” she replied easily, “with the trigger and the pointed dispenser unit, doesn’t it? It’s a liquid suspension device.”

The stormtrooper cocked his head and studied the unit again. “What?” he asked.

“Here,” she said, and plucked the device from his fingers. “Sorry, but I don’t want you to get the stuff on yourself. It’s highly viscous.”

“What do you use it for?” he questioned.

“It’s just one of the tools I use to preserve specimens and as a component in medical stimpaks. Don’t see much of this stuff out here, do you?” she commented, assuming an air of authority.

“No,” he replied, “I don’t see much of anything out here.”

She nodded in commiseration. “This isn’t the most glamorous assignment for me, either. Probably because I’m a woman,” she groused.

The stormtrooper nodded and ordered the rest of the troopers off the ship.

“Looks like everything is in order here,” he told her. “Don’t want to make this more difficult for you than it already is,” he added quietly.

“Thank you very much,” she responded and flashed him a grateful smile.

The stormtrooper left with the others and Dusque went back to the cockpit. Finn stood up with a pleased expression on his face.

“Nice,” he told her. “Very nice.”

“Nothing to it,” she sighed and then chuckled. “Let’s move it.”

“After you—” He bowed at the waist. “—fearless leader.”

Dusque grabbed her pack and slung it onto her back. She made one last check of her gear, while Finn did the same. Certain they had everything they could think of, they stepped out into the base and sealed up the ship.

Dusque was struck once more by the sterility of the Imperial base. As she stepped out into the square, small clouds of dust puffed up from the red dirt. There were several flat buildings set up, but the place seemed like a ghost town compared to the Rebel base. There were almost no people around. At first glance, all Dusque saw were a few troopers and a lone Bothan who appeared to be surveying, filling a container with some type of amorphous gemstones. The outpost seemed to be the loneliest spot in the galaxy.

As they moved past the military lookout, a uniformed soldier came running after them. Dusque felt her heart rise up in her throat and she saw that Finn had slipped his hand inside his travel cloak. She did the same, her blaster easily within reach.

“Wait,” the officer called. “We’re not finished with you both just yet.”

Dusque turned around, Finn less than a meter behind her. “I don’t understand,” she said gruffly, forcing a bravado she did not feel. “What is the matter now? You’ve held us up long enough.”

The officer regarded her with openmouthed surprise.

“I am an Imperial bioengineer. The Emperor will hear of this treatment when I am finished with this mission. If you think this post is as remote as it can get, you are sorely mistaken,” she finished with a touch of disdain.

“You haven’t logged in for our records,” the officer replied shamefacedly. “We don’t get many visitors, and the stormtrooper who passed you through forgot. It’s required.”

“Oh,” Dusque said and proceeded to act as though she was somewhat mollified by the officer’s obsequiousness. “I suppose that won’t take very long.”

The officer pulled out a datapad and stylus. He noted her credentials and then Finn’s.

“That should do it, then,” he said. Then he looked at his information and frowned. “Ah,” he cleared his throat.

Dusque turned back around with an angry look on her face. “What?” she asked, sounding extremely put out.

“I need to fill out a reason. Why … um … are you here? We heard no word of it.”

“I am part of an advance group, scanning this world and other unpopulated ones in the Outer Rim,” Dusque said.

“For what purpose?” the officer asked and Dusque thought he seemed genuinely curious.

“For future colonization,” she said.

“Oh …,” he replied.

“Play your sabacc cards right, officer, and you might be the lead garrison for the next major Imperial base,” she finished with a flourish.

As she suspected, the officer perked up when he heard that he might actually be in command of something other than a forgotten post on an empty world. He didn’t even look down at his datapad after that. He straightened up and gave Dusque a genuine salute.

“We’re in order here. Good luck and let me know if we can be of any further assistance to one of the Emperor’s bioengineers.” Then he added, “We have heard of some smuggling activities going on north of here. Perhaps I should send a small detachment with you?”

“I appreciate the offer,” she told him. “Officer …?”

“Fuce,” he replied, “Commander Fuce.”

“I appreciate it, but I suspect your men don’t have the training and skills needed to take samples and conduct surveys. Without that, they would only slow us down. But I appreciate the offer and the warning. And I’ll make sure my superiors know how well informed and helpful you’ve been. Thank you,” she told him.

He saluted again, then turned on his heels and marched back to his station.

Dusque and Finn navigated through the small outpost without any other incidents. Dusque was vaguely aware that except for a few disreputable types hanging about the tiny, nearly deserted cantina, there was no one else around. The place had been forgotten by enemies and friends alike.

When they finally cleared the compound walls, whatever pretense of civilization had existed within those boundaries disappeared. The view opened up to rolling hills and savannas. The lavender grass that grew rampant on the planet turned the entire countryside a soft purple as far as the eye could see. As Dusque was scanning the horizon, the dark clouds finally released their moisture. Big, heavy drops started to fall. She held out her hand and smiled at their luck.

“Perfect,” she said to Finn. “This will help mask our scent from several species of the local wildlife.”

“It is perfect,” he agreed with a strange look in his eye. “You handled yourself very well back there. I was impressed.”

Dusque found herself blushing at his praise and she lowered her head. “I was scared,” she admitted. “Really scared for the first time in my life. And I wasn’t scared for me—I was frightened for all the people on the list, all the people back at that base, all the nameless souls in the galaxy. But most of all, I was afraid for you.”

She felt his hand under her chin, warm and dry, as he tipped her head up.

“I can’t believe I’ve met someone like you in my life now, here at this moment and we should be involved in this …” He shook his head sadly.

“I know,” she told him. “There’s no time. But if we’re successful …” She trailed off, unwilling to presume anything.

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her passionately. For a moment, under the boughs of the twisted biba tree, there was no Galactic Civil War, just two people.

“We have here,” he said when the kiss ended, “and we have now. There’s no point in dwelling on a tomorrow that may never come.”

It was Dusque’s turn to stare at him. “But we have to believe in a tomorrow,” she insisted. “Otherwise there is no purpose in today.”

Finn pulled himself away from her and composed himself. “You’re right,” he agreed eventually. “Sorry, I was caught up in the moment.”

“There’s no need for apology,” she told him.

“No, there is.” But he didn’t explain. Instead he turned away from her and pulled out his scanner, took a brief reading, and then pointed to their left. “North by northeast,” he announced. “We haven’t got much time.”

Troubled, Dusque let him take the lead, and they entered into the uncharted wilderness of Dantooine.

ELEVEN

With the Imperial base far behind them, Dusque and Finn moved quickly but cautiously. The purple fields were littered with all kinds of flowers, and at unguarded moments Dusque found herself thinking that Dantooine was one of the most beautiful planets she had ever seen. It looked like some wild, unkempt garden that had gone to seed. Beyond the lavender hills, olive-colored steppes framed the sky. Even the rain, which continued to fall, and the ominous roll of thunder in the distance couldn’t dampen how she felt.

As they jogged along a small gully, Dusque wondered what was going through Finn’s mind. She knew he cared about her, and she was past the point of denying to herself that she felt something for the lanky, black-haired Rebel. If it hadn’t been for him, she thought, she probably would have been killed with Tendau. His fortuitous arrival had saved her from that certain fate, and he had given her a goal into which to channel her rage and frustration. He had been the one who had started her down the path. If for no other reason, he would be special to her. But nothing was ever that simple.

Before she could think on it further, she heard a thumping in the distance. She slowed her pace, and Finn did, too. They slowly climbed up a steep hill and dropped down to their bellies at the apex. Off to their right was a herd of very large creatures. Dusque berated herself for being careless enough to nearly blunder into them.

She suddenly realized that this was exactly why Finn was being so strange and removed. He knew better than to let anything else cloud his judgment on something so crucial as their mission. She told herself she should do like him and remain focused.

The creatures stood three times as tall as a human, but most of that height came from the neck and head. They had thick, squat bodies with four short legs. Their hide was light on their bellies and darkened along their backs. Wide stripes added to their camouflage, so that when they tired of grazing and lay down, they became difficult to pick out on the steppes. And their elongated heads were covered with horns.

“Piket longhorn,” Dusque whispered to Finn.

The ground rumbled under them when one of the animals decided to lie down for a nap. It ungracefully tumbled onto its side, as though dead.

“They’re not going anywhere now,” Dusque commented.

“Are they aggressive?” Finn asked.

“Not normally. Occasionally there is the rogue one to worry about, but mostly they’re peaceful grazers.”

“Big grazers,” Finn corrected, and she saw he had regained his dry humor.

“Very big,” she agreed. “But if they’re staying, we are going to need to move around them. And we need to watch for other, deadlier creatures. Believe it or not, these guys are the prey, not the predators.”

“Great,” Finn replied, raising and lowering his eyebrows. “I’d hate to see whatever it is that eats them.”

As they moved quietly back down the hill, the thunder grew much closer. The sounds helped mask any noise they might have made. As they ran back up the opposite side of the gully, Dusque and Finn saw another herd of piket ahead of them. Off to their left was a long, narrow lake that went on for a fair distance, and they both realized they had no choice. They secured their gear and dived in.

Once a little way out from the piket, Finn pulled on Dusque’s arm to get her attention. She turned around fearfully, treading water, and they looked at each other.

“Let’s cross over to the other side,” he said, pointing away from the piket.

Sputtering water, Dusque said, “But if we go on like this, hugging the shore, we can get past them and not lose too much ground.”

“I know,” Finn replied, “but getting out sooner makes more sense.”

“Don’t do it just for me,” she argued, paddling about awkwardly.

“We won’t lose that much time,” he assured her. Without waiting for an answer, he started to swim to the other side.

Dusque shook her head angrily and followed him, frustrated with herself for letting him take over, and with him, for taking over.

“Sorry,” she mumbled after he gave her a hand out of the water.

“You save us from stumbling into a pack of very large animals and you apologize?” He grinned. “So we take the scenic route, so what?”

They started up again, although they had to veer to the west because of the lake. The rain started to slow, but the sky was still an ominous gray, blending into the lavender hills. For a brief time, Dusque and Finn did not come across any other living thing, and the only sound that disturbed the silence was the soggy squish their boots made in the soft ground. Soon enough, though, several forms started to separate themselves from the misty hillside.

Dusque recognized the grazers immediately. Thune, they were called. There were five of them. Each was the size of a small shuttle, with a massive head and legs and gray hide that appeared wrinkled and hard. One lifted its head and looked directly at the two humans, and Dusque could hear Finn’s sharp intake of breath. From the center of the thune’s face swung a huge, noselike appendage; thin, full ears circled its head like a halo or a collar.

Dusque touched Finn’s arm. “It should be okay to move through them, provided we don’t make any quick movements,” she whispered.

Finn eyed the beasts warily, especially noting their very large feet. “You sure?”

“Yes,” she replied. “We’ll be fine so long as they don’t stampede.”

“Terrific,” he muttered under his breath.

With caution, they started to walk slowly through the group of five individuals. Dusque couldn’t keep from smiling. She had never had the opportunity to observe these magnificent creatures up close. The temptation to touch one of them was overwhelming. She reached out a hand and lightly trailed her fingers against the thune’s tough hide. The creature didn’t even seem to know that something had touched it.

Suddenly, one of the other thune began flapping the collar of its ears rapidly back and forth.

Finn moved up beside Dusque and gripped her arm. She could tell he was tensing to bolt.

“It’s okay,” she told him. “That’s not a threatening gesture. She’s just trying to cool herself down.”

“She’s fanning herself?” he asked in disbelief.

“Sort of,” Dusque replied. “Her ears are filled with thousands of blood vessels, and as you can see, the skin is fairly thin there. By flapping her ears, she cools the blood in that area and then that blood courses through the rest of her body, lowering her overall temperature.”

“Oh.” Finn sounded only marginally convinced.

Dusque laughed gently. “Come on, it’s safe. See?” She pointed to the largest thune. “The matriarch is moving them away from us.”

Together they walked through the herd’s territory and kept going, trying to regain the ground they had lost. Suddenly, Finn grabbed Dusque’s arm.

“Down!” he whispered urgently, and yanked her into some bushes.

She looked at him in surprise, and he raised his finger to his lip, signaling for quiet. She watched as he drew his blaster and started to crawl along, low to the ground. When he waved at her to follow, she pulled out the heavy blaster she had brought with her and crept after him. She was rewarded by a look of surprise.

“Where’d that come from?” he asked. “What happened to the small one?”

Dusque shook her head. “A woman’s got to have some secrets.”

Finn’s mouth turned up in a smirk, despite the situation. But his good humor faded as soon as he turned his attention to what was just below the hill. He motioned for Dusque to take a look. Down in the small valley below, there were humanoids moving about.

There were about seven that she could see, and all but one were male. Larger and more brutish looking than the average humanoid, they were covered in thick, dark hair and wore simple animal hides and furs. They carried about only the most rudimentary tools—clubs and stone-head axes—and they were hunting.

“It might get a little rough here,” Finn warned.

“Why?” she asked.

“We’ve lost some time because of our detour; we can’t afford to lose any more, with what’s in the balance.” He started to take aim.

Dusque pushed his barrel aside. “We can’t. Those are Dantari. From the few accounts that exist, they are peaceful, simple people.”

Finn regarded her for a moment. “Are those few worth all the many lives that are at stake?” he asked with deadly seriousness.

After brief deliberation, she said carefully, “I think that if we were to hurt these people, we would be no better than those who serve the Empire. The people on that list want to help the Rebel Alliance, and that means that they are willing to risk their lives for complete strangers, no matter what the species. These are exactly the lives that they are willing to sacrifice themselves for.”

Finn slowly lowered his gun. “I guess you’re right.” He sounded sheepish. “I just want to get that device and blast out of here.”

“I know,” she answered. “So do I. But I don’t want it this badly.”

Finn nodded, but he looked frustrated. Turning away from her, he began crawling back the way they had come, and Dusque followed in silence. Neither spoke until both were certain they were downwind of the Dantari.

“We’re going to have to go farther north than we planned and then cut eastward,” Finn whispered at last.

“We’ll need to keep our eyes out for any more of those people. Normally, they just range along the ocean,” Dusque told him, trying to recall what she had learned of the Dantari in her studies. “If they’ve come this far in to hunt, they may be part of a larger group.”

He nodded but did not reply. Dusque wondered if he was angry with her for telling him what to do, or angry at himself for not thinking things through more on his own. He remained silent as they rushed to detour around the Dantari and start regaining the ground they had lost. The rain tapered off, but the skies stayed overcast. Dusque, uncertain how to mend what felt like a breach between them, left him to his silence. But when she saw something decidedly unnatural in the distance, she spoke without thinking.

“What’s that?” It looked like a flat object on a hill. As they crept closer they saw, rising out of the mist like some mythical creature rising from its own ashes, a modular structure.

“Well, I’ll be …” Finn exhaled.

“What is it?” Dusque asked again, more nervous now that she could see several other, similar structures beyond the first one.

“It’s the old Rebel base,” he told her. When he saw her unease, he added, “It’s been abandoned for almost two years. Come on.”

“I thought we needed to make up for lost time,” she reminded him.

“I just want to make a quick check that nothing was left behind,” he explained, starting to run up the hill toward the base.

“But Leia said that the Imperials were already here. Don’t you think they would’ve found anything if it had been left behind?” Dusque asked, jogging along beside him.

“They don’t always know where to look,” he told her.

“What happened here?” she asked as they arrived at the outer walls of what she was beginning to realize was quite a substantial base.

“I only heard the story secondhand, but I’ll tell you what I know.” He seemed about to go on when he stopped and turned to the right. Dusque looked past him to see a long canine-type creature pacing back and forth. Either it hadn’t smelled them yet, or it didn’t care.

“What is it?” Finn asked.

Dusque squinted to try to make out the creature. “I think it’s a huurton. Probably a huntress, if she’s on her own. Umm, maybe we should put a little distance between us,” she suggested. “She could be very deadly.”

“Right,” he replied, and he led the way to an opening in the wall.

Once inside the old base, Dusque saw that it was a huge facility. In the structures closest to them, some of the windows were smashed and doors were ajar. Plants had started to grow over the buildings, and the whole area was desolate and somber. She wondered what it must have been like when it was alive with people.

“What happened?” she asked Finn again.

“As I understand it, this base was quite successful for many years,” he began as they walked slowly through the facility, “most likely because of its remote location. I don’t know how it happened or even how the Rebel soldier found it, but about a year and a half ago, someone slipped an Imperial tracking device into a cargo shipment.

“By some good fortune, it was discovered and the word went out to evacuate. These structures—” He stopped to tap on the wall of the one that they were passing on their left. “—are put together out of temporary, self-constructing modules. They were crafted to be movable at a moment’s notice.”

“Then if they left them behind, the Rebels must have had to flee really quickly,” Dusque mused.

“As I understand it,” Finn replied, “they all got out within a day.”

Dusque inhaled deeply, trying to picture the hundreds, if not thousands, of troops who must have streamed out of the buildings. “I guess they made it just in time,” she said.

“Supposedly, the Imperials didn’t find them until Leia told them about the base,” he added.

Dusque stared at him in shock. “What? Leia would never betray anyone!” She told herself she couldn’t be that certain about someone she barely knew, but somehow she had absolutely no doubts about Princess Leia’s personal strength and commitment to the cause.

“She was a prisoner on the Emperor’s Death Star,” he told her gravely. “From what she told me, they tortured her and used mind probes, but she didn’t give them the location of the Rebel base. Then they tried a different ploy: they threatened to destroy her home planet. So she gave up the location here”—he waved an arm to indicate the ruined base around them—“on Dantooine.”

“I guess I can understand …,” Dusque said. “But the fact that she betrayed the others still seems … inhuman.”

“No, no, you’ve got it wrong! She already knew that the base had been evacuated. It was only a matter of time before the Imperials would have raided it.”

Now the story was beginning to make some sense. “She thought it would buy her more time.”

“Yes, but they destroyed Alderaan anyway.”

Dusque nodded in understanding. When she thought back on it, she remembered hearing that scientists from a different department had been working on a project of some magnitude a year or so before the destruction of Alderaan. Some of those same scientists had disappeared from their regular labs, and rumor had said that they’d been sequestered for some special project. She wondered …

“Would it have been so bad,” Finn asked her quietly, interrupting her musings, “if she had betrayed the Alliance for those she loved?”

“I don’t know,” Dusque answered honestly. “I can’t say with any certainty what I would do, in a similar situation. But I think we follow this cause because it’s the right thing to do. And I think that has to come before any of our personal loves. While dreamers may die, the dream lives on.”

Finn fell silent. She wondered if he had been asking more about her than about Leia’s choices. Perhaps, she thought, he wondered if she would betray the Rebel Alliance for him. Once more, she felt as if she were being tested, and was afraid she had failed.

“Let’s take a quick pass through the command center,” Finn suggested, “and then keep going.”

“All right,” Dusque agreed, “but we should be really careful. If there was one huurton here, there are probably others.”

“Right,” he agreed. Then he looked at her. “I see that you were an even better choice to work with than I originally thought,” he said. “It never even occurred to me to consider your expertise with animals.”

“That’s why they call me a bioengineer,” she said lightly, trying not to smile too widely at his compliment. But she had a feeling he could tell she was pleased, because he flashed her a grin before turning to move on.

They passed a series of smaller structures all in a row before climbing a set of stairs that led them to the command center. A glance inside each open door showed that the smaller buildings were barracks—and that they had been pretty well ransacked by the Imperial soldiers who had searched the place. The state of the barracks did not bode well for what they might find in the command center, but it was still worth a look, Finn explained.

At the next level, they encountered a huurton mother and her pups. Seeing her, Finn paused and looked at Dusque.

“As long as we steer clear of her,” she assured him, “we should be fine. She’ll probably herd her brood away from us.”

“Got it,” Finn acknowledged.

Carefully sketching a large circle around the huurtons, they entered what had been the heart of the former base. Dusque was overwhelmed by the damage that had been done to it. Curious, she approached a series of control panels that seemed to have been looted, but not destroyed.

“Finn,” she called, “take a look at this.”

He trotted over to her and studied what was left of the equipment.

“Would the Imperials have done this?” she asked.

“No,” Finn answered slowly. “They wouldn’t have had any interest in looting. Not to this degree, at any rate.”

“Then who?”

Finn thought for a moment and then said, “Remember, that officer said they had been having problems with smugglers.”

“You’re right,” she said then. “I think he called them the Gray Talon. You think it was them?”

“Either them or someone else in the same profession. I saw more evidence of that over here.” He indicated a smaller chamber. Dusque poked her head in and saw that it was a room that had probably been occupied by a higher-ranking officer. There was a long table that had been knocked over and shattered, the pieces scattered across the remains of a woven floor covering. The walls were bare, with the exception of one picture that was hanging askew. Dusque shivered, although the air in the base was not cold.

“What’s the matter?” Finn asked as he stood next to her. “Cold?”

“No, I just want to get out of here,” she told him. She felt as though a grave site had been desecrated, although as far as she knew, no one had died.

Finn nodded in silent understanding. “Just let me make one quick pass and then we’ll leave, okay?”

“All right,” she agreed, “but I’m going to wait outside. Call me on the comlink if you need me.” As she left, she made sure to turn on the small, handheld communication device attached to her belt.

Outside, she made her way onto the observation platform. From there, she could see that several groups of huurtons had made their homes in and around the abandoned base. In a way, she found the sight oddly comforting. It was almost as though the fearsome predators were guarding the remains of the place so that no one else would defile it.

The rain had stopped completely, but darkness was growing as night approached. She worried that Finn had been right, that taking the longer route had been a mistake. Now they would reach the Jedi ruins in the dead of night, at the earliest. Not only would that make their search that much more challenging, but it would mean the night predators would be awake and on the prowl.

Finn came out of the command center and walked over to her. “Nothing,” he said, in response to her quizzical look. “We might as well keep moving.”

“Mm-hmm,” she agreed. “But take a look: there’s a good view from up here.” She pointed to the lower levels. “See? There are huurtons over in the eastern and northern quadrants of the base. We’ll need to avoid those areas when we leave. It’s getting dark, too,” she added, voicing the obvious.

“Yes, it is.” He glanced up. “At least the rain’s stopped.”

She smiled. “What I meant was, I’m sorry my delay cost us the daylight hours.”

Finn was silent for a moment. “Don’t be,” he finally told her. “Besides, it was my choice to take the time to explore this base,” he added. “So we share the responsibility for the delay, and cancel each other out, right?” His grin made her feel a lot better.

Feeling lighter, she followed Finn through the deserted complex to another gap in the surrounding wall. As they trotted down the hillside, avoiding the various pockets of huurtons, Dusque paused to take a last look at the Rebel base. Shrouded in the mists, it seemed like a lonely guard, waiting for a time when such places would no longer be needed.

They headed off in an easterly direction, following the coordinates that Leia had given them before they had departed Corellia. The terrain became more hilly, bordering on mountainous, and the number of biba trees started to diminish, replaced by more conifers and evergreens. Small ferns dotted the hillsides, and the lavender grass started to thin out.

They stopped only once, to drink from a small stream that they passed. While they rested, Dusque foraged around a bit, using her halo lamp. She found some berries and even a melon. She shared them with Finn and ate quietly, wondering what would happen when they reached their destination. She was still musing while they got ready to move on, so she wasn’t prepared when a large voritor lizard broke through from the underbrush and charged her.

Before she had a chance to draw her weapon, Finn’s blaster shots lit the area like lightning. The lizard growled in anger but was delayed only long enough for Dusque to draw her own blaster and start firing. Even though it was attacked on two fronts, the two-meter-long lizard was not deterred. It used its clawed feet to dig into the soil and pull itself inexorably toward Dusque. She dropped to one knee to get a better angle. With its two prominent dorsal fins, she found it difficult to get a good aim on a vulnerable region.

Dusque felt her hand tremble, and for a moment she thought that she was holding on to the grip so tightly that her hand was cramping. But then she realized that what she was feeling was the vibration of the weapon, alerting her to the fact that its power supply was nearly depleted. Grateful for Finn’s lessons, she gave the creature one last blast and followed that by tumbling to her right. Swiftly, she popped out the used pack and replaced it with a new one.

The creature spun around, trying to keep Dusque in sight. Lashing out with its impressive tail, it caught Finn unaware, knocking his feet out from under him. He fell backward. The lizard started to turn on him, and Dusque realized that their blasters alone weren’t going to stop it. While firing with one hand, she fished around in her pack with the other. When her hand closed around the object she was searching for, she shouted to Finn.

“Move!”

Without any hesitation, he scrambled to his feet and started to run. As she had expected, bolting immediately made him the primary prey in the eyes of the lizard. Dusque used that opportunity to activate the device in her hand and run after them both.

“Keep running,” she yelled. “Don’t stop for anything.”

She took careful aim and fired at the voritor. Angry, it swung its head toward her threateningly, snapping its vicious jaws. Dusque knew she had one shot. When the lizard lunged at her, she threw the thermal detonator into its mouth and dived away from the creature, covering her head with her arm. If she had missed, she knew the next thing she would feel would be the reptile’s teeth tearing into her. What she felt instead was the sudden heat from the explosion of the tiny bomb.

She felt bits of the voritor’s body rain down on her. And behind the incessant ringing in her ears, she could hear Finn calling her name. As she rolled around and brushed bits of the very deceased reptile off, she saw Finn limping toward her. She rose to her feet and shook her head, trying to clear the ringing from her ears. Finn appeared eager to aid her, because he grabbed her by the shoulders and started shaking her, too.

“You idiot,” she barely heard him say. “You could have gotten us killed.”

“What?” she asked. “I thought the lizard was about to do that for sure.”

“That was a class-A thermal detonator. They’re supposed to have a blast radius of twenty meters. The baradium core must have been compromised somehow.”

“What?” she asked again, partially because she could still only hear about half of what he was saying, and partially because she couldn’t believe he was angry that they were alive.

Finn relented a bit as he calmed down. “That was quite a chance you took,” he said more loudly.

“Only option I saw left. Our blasters just weren’t bringing the voritor down. They’re notorious for incredibly tough hides. In fact, no one is even sure how long these creatures live. It could be hundreds, maybe even thousands of years,” she explained.

Finn’s stern face lost some of its resolve. He gradually smiled at Dusque, whose ears were no longer ringing as badly as they had been. Shaking his head, he said, “Leave it to you to give me a dissertation on the life span of a killer lizard right after you nearly blew us to bits along with it.” And then he laughed.

“Well,” she replied somewhat sheepishly, “I couldn’t think of any other way to stop it.”

He limped closer to her and gave her a brief hug. “Hey, we’re alive, so who am I to complain?”

“You’re hurt,” she commented.

“Not bad … probably just a bruise from that thing’s tail. I’ll be fine.”

She was unconvinced. “I’ve got a small medkit with me.”

“Don’t worry. I just need to keep moving, so it doesn’t stiffen up,” he told her. “I’ll be fine.”

“All right,” she replied. “Are we close?”

“Just over the next ridge, if these coordinates are accurate.”

Even as they started to climb the hill, Dusque saw smaller scavengers move in to finish up what remained of the dead lizard. Nothing went to waste on the harsh world; something was always waiting in the shadows to take advantage of the situation. That was life everywhere, she reflected. She was saddened by the thought that civilized beings seemed bound by the same laws of nature—Empire and Rebels alike, in a way. Except she was more convinced than ever that if hope lay anywhere, it lay with the Rebels.

There was a roaring in her ears. She shook her head slightly. She thought her hearing had cleared, but the roaring seemed to be growing in intensity rather than diminishing. When she reached the top of the hill, just behind Finn, she realized that the roaring had been not residual damage to her ears, but a massive waterfall some sixty meters away. It spilled out from a steep, treeless ridge. Still, it was what was in front of the waterfall that caused Dusque to catch her breath. As a moon struggled to peek out from behind some clouds, she could see from that weak light that there was a huge arch not too far away, as well as other crumbled relics of structures: the Jedi ruins.

TWELVE

“We’re here,” Finn whispered.

Dusque followed as he walked carefully down from their vantage point into the ruins themselves. She felt awed, though she wasn’t sure why. Not much remained—just a huge foundation of what must have been a large building back in some distant time.

“What used to be here?” she asked Finn.

“I don’t know. Supposedly a Jedi Master established a training center here some four millennia ago, but I think these were ruins even then,” he told her uncertainly.

Dusque found herself drawn to a grand staircase that led up to the remains of a tower. She marched upward and almost didn’t see that there was a break in the stone stairs. She caught herself at the last moment, arms pinwheeling madly as she regained her balance. She stood looking at the gap in the staircase and contemplated trying to make the jump, curiously attracted to the yawning darkness above. All that remained of the tower seemed to be its foundation, but she wanted to see it.

“Dusque,” she heard Finn call.

She debated for a moment, but then turned and cautiously descended the ancient stone steps. Below, she saw Finn standing closer to another foundation, this one perhaps a quarter of the size of the one Dusque had been investigating. He had pulled out his portable scanner and was turning slowly in a circle.

“What are you doing?” she asked curiously.

“The holocron would have been tagged; I’m hoping to pick up a signal from the sensor,” he told her. He continued to turn, and then stopped. “I think I’ve found it,” he whispered. She could sense the suppressed excitement in his tone and stance.

“Where?”

He put down the instrument and faced the powerful waterfall. Dusque knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth.

“Behind that waterfall,” he told her.

“More water,” she said.

“The last time,” he promised her.

As they marched across the ruined courtyard in front of the tower, Dusque glanced at the large archway forty meters or so away. She thought she saw a strange, greenish blue flicker in the night.

“Did you see that?” she asked Finn, pointing. “It almost looked like a fire. But a strange one.”

He looked over, then shrugged. “I don’t see it,” he said, and she was reminded of his similar comments on the shuttle.

As though reading her mind again, Finn added, “That doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. We’ll look into it after we retrieve our prize, okay?”

“All right,” she agreed, somewhat mollified that he was at least considering it.

Their footsteps echoed strangely on the deserted courtyard, and Dusque wondered how many feet had tread on the same stones over the generations. She found herself looking over her shoulder more than once. The place, though obviously deserted, seemed to possess some kind of spirit.

As they moved onto the ground behind the large foundation, Finn turned and looked at her. “Do you feel something?” he asked.

She nodded. “Since we entered those ruins. It was like someone was watching us. And something else … like something I felt once in a dream.” She felt chills race up and down her spine.

“I just felt uneasy,” Finn said. He didn’t add anything more, but looked at her strangely. Then he turned without another word and waded into the water. Dusque steeled herself and followed after him.

The icy cold of the water had a sobering effect on Dusque. She no longer felt as though eyes were on her, and she was grateful that she could focus on the task at hand. Swimming close behind Finn, she swallowed hard when she saw that she was going to have to go right through the pounding water. She started to call out to him to wait, but his dark form disappeared under the rush of the waterfall. She realized she was going to have to force herself through.

She squeezed her eyes shut, took a deep breath, and plunged in. The sound was deafening, and she felt herself batted down by the sheer force. She pushed herself up and opened her eyes when she felt her head was out of the water. Then she saw that they had reached a ledge—part of an intricate cave system. Finn was standing only a few meters away, watching her. Uncertain whether to be proud that he wasn’t helping her, or annoyed, she slung her leg onto the ledge and pulled herself up. She checked to make sure her pack was intact and then wrung out her wet hair. Flinging the tangled mane behind her, she caught up to Finn.

“How far down is it?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “The portable scanner seems to have shorted out.”

Dusque saw that the small device did seem to have stopped functioning. She thought that the water might have caused it, although this type of scanner was designed to last a long time and withstand extremely harsh environments.

“May I take a look?” she asked, having used similar devices over the years.

Finn handed it over easily. Dusque popped open the back panel and studied the circuitry by the light of her halo lamp. It appeared as though a connection had come loose. She attempted to reconnect it, then flipped the device around and tried to recheck the coordinates. But the device only sputtered and flashed.

“You’re right,” she told Finn. “Looks like the connectors are fried.” She laid the device down on the ground. “No use carrying the excess baggage.”

“Because of the short, I’m not sure when I was able to last take a reliable reading, but it seemed that the holocron was probably no more than a couple of hundred meters down,” he told her.

Dusque walked past him to look at the tunnels that lay before them. “Doesn’t look like they descend very steeply, does it? What may only be a short distance down may take a little while longer to get to, if the slope stays gentle.”

“We’d better get started,” he told her.

“Hold on,” she said. “Let me check one thing.”

Finn waited patiently while Dusque rummaged through her pack. Buried under power packs and stimpaks, there was something she hoped she had brought. She smiled triumphantly when her fingers brushed against two small aerosol canisters. She pulled them out and handed one to Finn.

“What is this?” he asked, examining the container.

“I noticed there were a few on the shuttle. I just couldn’t remember if I had taken them or not. I got a little turned around after the stormtroopers boarded the ship,” she said. “Spray the entire contents all over yourself. It’ll help mask your scent.”

She started spraying herself, and after watching her dubiously for a moment, Finn did likewise. When he was through, he raised his arm up close to his nose and sniffed at himself. “I don’t smell anything,” he said, baffled.

“That’s the idea. Hopefully, nothing else will either.”

Dusque dropped her travel cloak in a heap by the malfunctioning scanner, afraid that its flowing material might catch on the rough tunnel walls. She turned to Finn and signaled that she was ready. Following her example, he had shed his outer garments and readjusted his weapons so that they were all accessible. He motioned for her to go, and she started down the tunnel, surprised that he had her take the lead.

As they suspected, the path descended very gradually. They both scanned the walls and recesses of the tunnel, not certain where the holocron might have been secreted or even how it might have been hidden. They walked slowly, trying to minimize the echoes of their footfalls. As the roar of the waterfall grew more distant, Dusque realized that there was moisture farther down as she heard the telltale patter of drips hitting the rock floor.

Of course there would be water, she told herself. How else could the tunnels have been formed? But the rock looked rough, as though it had been hewn by something, not smooth, as it would have been if water had worn it away.

She had just adjusted her halo lamp to give her as wide a view as possible when she heard the drips come from a surprising location. She and Finn were on a narrow bridge of sorts, something having eroded sections of the cave away. The view from either edge was dizzying, and she felt a moment of vertigo. Since the rock walls all looked identical, she momentarily couldn’t tell which way was up or down, and she lost her center of balance.

Closing her eyes, she took several, long deep breaths and wrapped her arms tightly about herself. That helped ground her so that when she reopened her eyes, she no longer felt disoriented.

“Dizzying, isn’t it?” Finn whispered.

“Yes,” Dusque admitted, glad she wasn’t the only one who had felt it. She moved to the edge of the natural bridge and peered over the side. The cave was honeycombed with tunnels, and she thought she caught sight of something skittering off deeper down. They continued on until the tunnel split into two divergent paths.

“What do you think?” Finn asked her quietly.

Dusque chewed her lip thoughtfully and glanced in both directions. “I think we should split up,” she finally announced.

“What?” He sounded shocked.

“You were right earlier about time running out. We need to make up for lost time now,” she declared. “This is our last chance to do that.”

“Are you sure?” He certainly didn’t sound convinced.

“Yes, I am. We’ve got the comlinks if we get into trouble, or if we find the holocron.”

“Let’s check and make sure the comlinks still work,” Finn suggested. “After all, if the scanner could short out …”

“Good idea,” Dusque agreed and they checked their communicators. Both were still in working order.

“I’ll go left,” she told him. “And be careful, I think there’s something down here.”

“You be careful, too. Don’t take any unnecessary chances,” he warned. “I mean it.”

“You should have told me that back on Corellia,” she retorted, then winked at him. He flashed her a smile in return, and Dusque was startled by how his teeth gleamed back at her in the gloom, like those of some predator.

She moved slowly down the dark tunnel and felt a shiver. It had been easy enough while Finn stood next to her to tell him that they needed to split up, but now that she was engulfed in the darkness of the cave, she felt very alone and vulnerable. She had a moment of regret at her decision but still knew in her heart it had been the right one to make. And then she realized something: Finn had let her make the call. In fact, pretty much since they had left the abandoned Rebel base, he’d turned over the leadership reins to her. She didn’t know what surprised her more: that he had done it, or that she had accepted it so naturally.

So much had changed, she mused. And although it felt like a lifetime, it had really only been a few days.

She shook her head in wonder and then froze as she heard something. At first, she tried to tell herself that it was just the water, but the sound was not rhythmic or predictable like the drips that echoed softly through the tunnel system. Swallowing hard, she slipped her hand down to draw her blaster. She felt only marginally better with the cold metal in her hand. But she still saw nothing.

As she walked deeper into the tunnels, she thought the path she had chosen was splitting again, but it turned out that it had simply widened, forming a natural pocket in the tunnel. When she directed her light into it, something glinted back at her. She felt a rush of excitement, thinking that she had discovered the holocron. It was a perfect place to hide it, she thought, off the main track as it was. She moved closer to investigate.

Her elation changed to disappointment and concern when the shining object turned out to be a humanoid skull. As she scanned the area, she saw a mostly intact skeleton stretched out and picked clean. Although not what she had hoped to find, it did confirm that there might be something else in the caves with them. She grabbed her comlink and signaled Finn.

“Did you find it?” Coming from the small speaker, his voice sounded tinny.

“No,” she replied, “but I did find some humanoid remains. Keep your guard up.”

“Copy that,” he replied.

Dusque replaced her comlink on her belt and continued down the tunnel. She found that since she had verified the presence of predators, she was straining to hear every last sound. Without warning, she heard the scurrying again, and this time it was on top of her. From around a bend she hadn’t detected, a large rodent came hopping straight toward her. She didn’t even have time to draw her weapon before the monstrosity was less than a meter away. She held her breath and froze to the spot.

Larger than most canids, the creature appeared to be covered in armored plates. It had an elongated nose, which suggested that it relied predominately on its sense of smell. As it hopped on its larger rear legs, it paused almost on top of Dusque’s boots. It stood on its back legs and sniffed the air curiously. Dusque didn’t move a muscle and prayed the comlink wouldn’t suddenly go off.

While the creature stood on her, Dusque saw something start to ooze from its clicking jaws. As the liquid hit the tunnel floor with a spatter, there was a slight sizzle. She realized that it was bile, a powerful alkaloid that helped the creature break down and absorb fats. Now she knew why the skeletal remains were so smooth. The corpse had been simply digested away. She realized that it was a bile-drenched quenker that stood on her feet, something not many saw and lived to tell about. While she sincerely wished that she would not be its next victim, the scientist in her hoped that she might be able to salvage a sample of the animal’s genetic material off her boot when she got out of there.

After what seemed like an eternity, the quenker lowered itself and hopped up the tunnel. Dusque let out a shaky breath, but her elation was short lived. She realized that she would probably have to pass it at least one more time before she got out of the cave. She wasn’t sure how long the masking aerosol would last, and she was torn. She wanted to warn Finn, but she feared that if he had found himself in a similar situation, the sound of the comlink would undoubtedly startle the creature and alert it to his presence. She accepted that fact that he was on his own, and that it had been her decision, her choice to live with. She began to grasp the enormity of what Princess Leia must live with every day, and she wondered again how the woman found the strength to do it.

Taking a deep breath, she continued down the tunnel. She had to admit, it was an ideal spot to hide something precious. She couldn’t think of a reason anyone would come down here, and the quenkers—she was certain there were more than just the one—would make excellent natural guards. She wondered if any Rebels had died secreting the holocron. And she wondered if she and Finn would share their fate.

If I die here, at least I will have done something with my life, she thought. I’ll be remembered, even if it’s only for a short time. The thought warmed her and gave her the courage to go on.

The tunnel wound sharply to the left and then opened into a large chamber. Once again, there were two paths to choose from and a healthy sprinkling of humanoid remains in both directions. Not too far ahead, Dusque heard more skittering and another, unidentifiable sound. She decided she didn’t need to see what had made that particular noise, so she chose the tunnel that veered away from it.

As she moved to the right, she realized that she was no longer hearing water echoing in the distance. She suspected that the tunnel she had picked was going to come to an end soon, simply another offshoot that led to nowhere. Shortly she discovered that she was both right and wrong: The tunnel did end in another cul-de-sac, but it was not empty.

She was startled to see an arch made from three slabs of stone freestanding in the center of the recess, only slightly taller than an average human. There was no chance that it was a natural occurrence—the stones didn’t look as if they’d been cut from any of the nearby rock walls. She was sure they had been very deliberately placed. After checking around and behind the arch, she holstered her gun and walked through.

On the other side of the arch was a circle of smaller stones, each one small enough that even Dusque could have placed them there herself. In the center was a small fire pit, and above it was a rudimentary spit. As Dusque examined it, she wondered briefly if one of the Dantari had somehow set up a small encampment there, but she dismissed the idea as illogical. While the Dantari were simple people, they were practical. Quenkers would not be worth hunting: the risk–reward factor was disproportionate. Someone else had been here, but because the pit was cold—which she verified by holding her hand over the ashes in the center—there was no way of knowing if whoever it was might still be in the area.

As she crouched near the fire pit, she had an odd thought. She thrust both of her hands into the ashes and started to root around. Stirring up a small cloud of ash, she tried not to cough aloud. She was about to give up, feeling foolish, when she felt something unusual in the ashes. She got her hand around it and pulled it from the fire pit.

Dusque stretched out her palm flat and held the soot-encrusted object at eye level. She gently blew the ashes from it and then caught her breath in amazement. A perfect cube, no bigger than her hand, twinkled in the glow of her halo lamp. Her mouth opened in awe as she turned the object first to the left and then to the right, studying it.

The outer edges of the object were etched metal, while a crystal matrix gleamed and pulsed in the center. She fell back on her rump, as though someone had punched her in the stomach. She knew how important the device was, but she hadn’t expected it to be so beautiful. For several long moments, Dusque forgot everything else around her and stared at the delicate-looking construct. She had no idea how long she stared at it or how long she might have been mesmerized by it if her comlink hadn’t suddenly chirped at her. Shocked back into reality, she scrambled to grab the communicator.

Before Finn was able to transmit anything, she whispered, “I’ve got it.”

“What?” Finn asked.

“I found it,” she repeated, still staring at the holocron.

“You are amazing,” he replied, clearly elated. “Let’s start back up. I was just checking in with you because I haven’t seen anything down here.”

Dusque was about to end the communication when she remembered the rats. “Finn,” she added, serious once more, “be careful. The tunnels are full of quenkers.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” he replied.

“The aerosol seems to work, but I don’t know for how long.”

“Okay,” he answered. “Meet you back up at the divide. You watch yourself,” he added.

“Copy that. Dusque out.”

She marveled at the holocron once more before tearing her eyes from it and placing it carefully in her sack. She took once last look around at the stone campsite and wondered who might have used it and what they might have known about the holocron. She couldn’t believe that it had come to rest in the center of the pit accidentally. She was momentarily frustrated that she had a puzzle before her that she might never know the answer to. With a sigh, she resolved to let it go. She quietly left the strange chamber.

As she started up the tunnel, Dusque kept a watch for quenkers, but she didn’t see any. Rather than be pleased, she found their absence disturbing. If they weren’t near her, they were probably hunting something. She hoped it was the creature that had made the strange sound deeper in the cave. Then she heard several short bursts of blasterfire.

“Finn,” she whispered passionately, and started to run.

As she rounded a bend in the tunnel, the sound of blasterfire was almost deafening. The echoes from the blasts sounded on and on. About twenty meters ahead of her, she saw Finn, blasters drawn. He was surrounded by three quenkers, each one dripping acidic bile. Although he was holding them back, she could see that they were starting to close in on him. She dropped down on one knee and, taking careful aim, started to blast away at the quenker closest to her.

“Dusque!” he yelled.

She continued to fire away at the creature, and a part of her rational mind was amazed at their resilience and wondered what in the chemical makeup of their bony hides made them so impervious to blasterfire. The rest of her wanted nothing more than to blast the creature into oblivion.

She could see that she had caught the attention of not only the quenker she was attacking, but also the one that was closest to Finn. Her distraction bought him a little breathing room, and he was able to reload his nearly empty blaster.

After what seemed an eternity, the first quenker showed signs of faltering. Unsteady on its back legs, it began to tremble. Redoubling her fire on it, Dusque edged closer, trying to stay in the optimal range for her weapon. She kept her arms outstretched, firing until her blaster was mostly drained. Fortunately, the quenker expired before her power pack did. The rodent tumbled to its side in a great heap and twitched once before lying still.

Dusque refreshed her blaster and started firing on the one Finn wasn’t attacking. It had already suffered severe damage from both their weapons, and at her renewed fire it broke off its attack and hopped weakly down the tunnel. From the corner of her eye, Dusque saw that the quenker didn’t get very far before expiring like its littermate. There was only the one left. But Dusque found she didn’t need to assist much; Finn had basically already killed it. The animal was just too stubborn to know it was dead already.

“C’mon and die,” she heard Finn say through gritted teeth. As though the quenker heard him, it promptly fell over, finally aware that it had, indeed, died.

Both Finn and Dusque were breathing hard. Dusque found that she was trembling from the exertion, but was elated with their temporary success. She smiled at Finn and leaned against the tunnel wall to catch her breath. She saw that Finn’s chest was heaving, as well. Ignoring his exhaustion, he crouched down to poke at the dead rodent.

“Careful,” Dusque warned. “The saliva coming out of its mouth has acid in it.” But unable to resist, she knelt down and collected a sample of the bile in a specially sealed container.

“Is there anything on this planet that’s not out to kill us?” he quipped when she was done.

Dusque, however, answered him seriously. “Well, there is the little fabool. It’s a creature that just sort of bobs around like a balloon. It’s pretty harmless.”

Finn laughed. “I was joking!”

“Oh,” Dusque replied. “I guess I can’t stop being a scientist. We are what we are.”

Finn grew silent and lost his smile. “You’re probably right,” he replied.

“We should get out of here before the smell of blood draws out more of these things,” she told him.

“Before we go,” Finn asked quietly, “can I see it?”

“Of course.” Dusque realized that she wanted to see the holocron again, as well, part of her still not believing that she had found it.

She pulled it out of her pack and held it out on her flat palm. It twinkled in the low light of their halo lamps, and Dusque saw that Finn was as mesmerized as she was.

“Where was it?” he asked.

“There was an offshoot of the tunnel and what looked like a primitive campsite,” she explained. “I found it there, but I have no idea whose site it was.”

“And it was just lying there?” he asked.

“No, it was in the fire pit under some ashes,” she answered slowly, thinking how foolish it sounded in retrospect.

Finn looked up with some amazement. “What made you look in there?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders in bewilderment. “It wasn’t logical, but I don’t think logic has anything to do with this.”

“No, I think you’re right,” he agreed. “And I think we should start to make tracks out of here.”

Dusque started to hand it to Finn, but he refused. “You hang on to it.”

She put it away, and together they started the long climb out of the cave. Somehow, perhaps because they were flush with success, climbing out didn’t seem to take as long to Dusque as descending had. Or it’s because I’m not alone, she thought, looking at Finn. He, however, was grim faced once more. Dusque knew that he must have been thinking that they weren’t in the clear yet. She admitted to herself that she had forgotten that simply because she and Finn had the device didn’t mean the Rebel Alliance did. There was still a long way to go.

Eventually, the roar of the waterfall grew louder and Dusque knew they were nearly there. She breathed a sigh of relief that they had managed to avoid any more quenkers. She honestly didn’t know how much more their weapons could have handled.

Soon enough, the back side of the waterfall was visible to Dusque. She moved to stand near the water’s edge, feeling the mist on her cheeks. Whether it was because they had been successful or just because she was alive, she reveled in the feel of the cool water on her skin. They had succeeded and they had done it together. With a gentle smile, she turned around to share the thought with Finn.

He was standing a few meters behind her, an unreadable expression on his face.

Concerned, she took a step toward him. “What’s wrong?” she asked, puzzled.

“I’m sorry,” he told her eventually, fidgeting with his hands. “I’m so sorry.”

Something in his tone scared her. What could he possibly be sorry about? The only thing she could think of was the nearby water, but he hadn’t seemed so anxious previously. And then she heard the sound of a power pack slamming into place.

“If you don’t hand over that pack, you’re going to be a whole lot sorrier,” a voice from behind Dusque called out. She and Finn whirled around to see several humanoids step through the waterfall. Every one of them was armed, and every one of the weapons was pointed right at them.

THIRTEEN

The man who had threatened them stood in front of three others. He was as tall as she was, dressed in a mangy vest and pants. He wore two low-slung holsters, one on each hip. A few tufts of wispy blond hair poked through the torn hat on his head. His shirt was partially open, revealing a silver chain from which hung a pendant with a sigil that looked like a bird’s foot. He had both his blasters leveled at Dusque.

“Are ya deaf?” he demanded. “Whatever you two got while you were in there is the property of the Gray Talon. Now hand it over.”

One of the others moved up to cover Finn, who gave Dusque a helpless look.

“You heard him,” the one beside Finn shouted.

“This is our planet and what’s here is ours.”

“I’ll one ask you one more time,” the leader said, “before I go ahead and take what I want. Hand over your treasure. I don’t take kindly to the idea that someone would want to rob me.”

“Okay,” Dusque replied, not trying to hide the quiver in her voice. “Just don’t shoot.” She proceeded to root around in her bag.

“Hurry,” the leader ordered her. He seemed to be enjoying her fright. “If you do, I promise I’ll kill you quickly. If not, I can make you suffer for days. I’d like that,” he said softly, “but you wouldn’t. Pretty thing like you shouldn’t have to suffer.”

Dusque poked around frantically in her pack and then her fingers closed around what she had been searching for. When she stopped moving, the Gray Talon member with the two blasters flicked one of his weapons in Finn’s direction.

“If you don’t give it to me, I’ll have my partner kill him right in front of your lovely eyes.”

As she pulled the container out of her bag, she popped the cap with her thumb.

“Here it is,” she shouted, and tossed the vial of quenker bile directly into the pirate’s face.

Screaming in rage and pain, he dropped his blasters and clawed at his eyes. Dusque, seeing him double over in agony, grabbed him by his vest and pulled him close. She reached down with one hand and pulled her sporting blaster free. Using the leader’s body as a shield, she started shooting at the two men who were still closest to the waterfall. She managed to kill one of the two pirates with her first shot. She missed the second, and he charged at her, knocking her under the water.

Finn used Dusque’s distraction to the fullest. Swinging his right arm up, he triggered the mechanism in his sleeve that released a deadly knife into his hand. In one motion, he brought that hand straight up and under the pirate’s rib cage. The Gray Talon member was dead before Finn had resheathed the bloody weapon. Then he turned and saw that the last pirate was straddling Dusque’s motionless form, and that her head was completely submerged in the cascade from the waterfall.

“Get away from her,” he screamed, launching himself onto the pirate’s back.

Locking an arm around the pirate’s neck, he wrenched him off Dusque. They both tumbled into the water, and a weapon fired once before everything became silent.

Dusque realized vaguely that she could stand up. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the whine of a blaster, but it was hard to make out over the pounding in her own ears. She staggered to her feet, drenched and sputtering. Disoriented, she couldn’t tell what was going on. As she slowly regained her senses, she saw that the cave entrance was littered with bodies. She seemed to be the only one left standing. But where was Finn?

Turning, she saw him lying partially in the water, facedown, along with one of the Gray Talon members. That sight snapped Dusque out of her stupor and galvanized her into action. She ran to Finn on wobbly legs and pulled him from the water. She could see that he had a severe burn on his left leg, but otherwise he appeared uninjured. Struggling with his inert weight, she dragged him up onto the rocky ledge of the cave entrance and dug the medkit out of her sack.

She examined his burned leg and was relieved to see that it didn’t look that bad. She used a bulb of antiseptic wash to irrigate the wound, then applied a small bacta patch on the most severe section of injured tissue. She was almost done when he began to rouse.

“Wh-what?” he asked, sounding confused. When he struggled to rise, Dusque held him down.

“Hold still for a few more moments,” she told him gently.

He winced as she pressed the bandage to his wound. “Have you still got the holocron?”

Dusque realized she hadn’t even thought to check for the device. She placed her hand in her pack and felt its now familiar sharp edges. “Yes, it’s fine,” she soothed.

“Get out of here,” he ordered her, pain evident in his voice.

“No.” She grabbed a stimpak. “This will help you get moving in a minute or so,” she explained, as she injected him in his upper arm with a stim-shot.

“We don’t know how many more of these guys might be lurking around.” His voice sounded stronger, the stimulant already starting to take effect. “You need to get out of here now. Take the holocron and get out.”

“Not a chance,” she said again. “Don’t go and turn into a martyr on me now,” she joked, hoping to distract him from his pain.

He stared at her with clouded eyes. “No chance of that ever happening.”

Dusque chuckled, but he remained silent.

“Better give me another shot,” he finally told her, “if you’re going to waste your time waiting for me.”

She adjusted the stimpak and treated him again. “I don’t want to give you too much more,” she told him. “The more I give you now, the harder you’re going to crash later.”

“If you don’t treat me now and get moving, we won’t have to worry about later,” he told her, struggling to his feet.

Dusque could tell by the set of his jaw it was useless to argue. She put her right arm around his waist to steady him. She knew he was still in pain when he didn’t protest her assistance.

“Okay,” she told him, “one step at a time.”

They hobbled over to the water and waded in together, like two creatures clumsily joined at the waist. Finn hissed as the cold water made contact with his leg.

“Should we stop?” Dusque asked him.

“No,” he said firmly. “Actually feels kind of good against the burn.”

She thought he was probably lying to humor her. The least she could do, she thought, was not slow them down further by trying to stop him every few meters. She guided him through the water as carefully as she could, desperately afraid that she might slip and lose her footing.

“Don’t forget your weapon,” Finn reminded her before they ducked under the waterfall.

“Right,” she said, mentally berating herself for focusing so hard on Finn that she had already forgotten about potential danger. She pulled out her heavy blaster with her left hand, and Finn did the same with his right. With every step, he grew stronger—thanks to the effects of the stimpak—so that when they came through the falls, he was able to hobble about unaided. Keeping their backs to each other, they turned about and scanned the area.

“Looks clear,” Dusque said guardedly.

“For now,” Finn agreed. They walked slowly across the ancient courtyard, their steps the only sound in the night. The clouds had completely cleared, and Dusque could see a moon over the horizon. She tried to remember how many moons Dantooine had, but couldn’t. The stars were brilliant, as they always were without the lights of civilization to compete with. She allowed herself to look up for a moment and take it all in.

When she lowered her head, she saw that Finn was also regarding the stars, but his expression was intensely serious. He seemed to be concentrating hard. Finally he turned to her and said, “This way,” cocking his head toward the left.

Dusque was a little embarrassed that she’d been wasting time stargazing while he, the wounded one, was working on figuring out their position. She wondered if she could ever hope to live up to Finn’s—and Leia’s—confidence in her.

They walked slowly at first, to accommodate Finn’s injury. The longer they continued, however, the better he was able to pick up the pace and walk more sure-footedly. Dusque listened carefully for sounds of animals or other people. Hearing none, she took the chance of initiating a conversation.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Sorry about what?” he asked, obviously surprised.

“For what happened before,” she told him, not wanting to elaborate any more than necessary.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “Why would you be sorry?”

She sighed. “For what happened back at the waterfall. You tried to give me a signal and I missed it.”

He continued to look at her blankly.

“When you said that you were sorry,” she explained. “You know, when you tried to warn me about the Gray Talon and I didn’t get it. I let you down. I’m sorry.”

Finn didn’t reply. Dusque wished she knew what he was thinking—if he was trying to think of a gentle way to reprimand her, or if he might tell her that it didn’t matter. She was pretty sure he was disappointed, though. When he finally spoke, she wasn’t reassured.

“Let’s not talk about that,” he said shortly. “We’ve got a ways to go yet and I don’t want to dwell on that. It’s best forgotten.”

Dusque would have liked him to explain her mistake in specific terms, so she could learn from it and not repeat it, but it seemed she had no choice but to let it go. For now, she amended silently. She would ask him about it later, when they had more time and were out of danger.

The weather continued to hold as they walked on. There were only a few purple-streaked clouds to compete with the brilliant stars, and neither Dusque nor Finn felt the need to illuminate their halo lamps. Gradually the steep hills gave way to gentler, rolling hills. The ferns and mountain flowers, conifers and evergreens melted into the large fields of lavender grass, and the spiky biba trees started to reappear. Dusque knew they were nearing the Imperial base.

A loud tearing sound startled them. Weary and ill equipped for another battle, Dusque and Finn looked around for a place to hide. A small rocky outcropping was all they could find. Dropping to the ground behind it, they drew their weapons and steeled themselves for whatever might be out there.

The roar grew louder, and a huge lizard, longer than several humans laid end to end, burst out of the brush. It snarled and shook its head violently from side to side, something clenched in its teeth. Dusque recognized the lizard as a bol pack runner. It looked malnourished and sickly, and at first she thought that they were safe, because it had obviously caught something … until she realized that what it had in its maw was a juvenile bol.

It thrashed the baby around a few more times and then threw it to the ground. The wounded juvenile emitted a weak call and tried to drag itself away. The adult charged at it, spearing it with one of its two curved horns. Raising the now dead juvenile in the air, the adult flicked its head to one side and tossed the carcass into a heap of plants.

“Are they cannibals?” Finn whispered to Dusque, as the adult bol stood there huffing.

“No, not even during the worst periods of famine,” she replied. “That female is not going to eat her baby. She’s using it for bait. Watch.”

The bol huffed once more, then thudded off a short distance, just past the rise in the hill. The air was heavy with the scent of blood. Soon enough, another creature came out of the brush, drawn by the smell.

It was a lone huurton. It approached slowly, cautiously, but then put on a burst of speed and ran up to the fresh kill. Noisily, it ripped hunks of flesh free with its sharp canines. The adult bol came crashing out of her hiding spot, grabbed the huurton by the back, and shook it in almost the exact fashion that she had her infant. The huurton bleated in agony as it was tossed from one side to the other. The powerful incisors of the bol cut through the thick, woolly hide in a matter of moments. Finally, the huurton went limp in the bol’s huge jaws. The lizard flipped the lifeless body to the ground and began to devour it.

Finn and Dusque watched the feeding for a while without saying a word. Eventually, Finn turned to Dusque and asked, “Why did she do that?”

“Because she was dying and her infant was, too,” she explained.

“So she killed her infant?” he asked with a trace of disgust.

“Obviously the feeding has been scarce around here lately. The adult bol looked thin and her infant was emaciated. She couldn’t feed her baby; that much is certain. Rather than let it face a miserable death by starvation, she killed it.”

“But she deliberately used it as bait!”

“Even stronger than her desire to save her offspring from suffering is her instinct to survive. It makes sense for the preservation of the species. She did what she had to, sacrificed what she had to in order to save herself.” She stopped briefly, suddenly thinking of the Rebels she had encountered—which reminded her that they still had a mission to complete.

“Come on,” she told him. “While she’s feeding, we should be able to slip past her.”

They maneuvered around the feeding bol without alerting her to their presence. Dusque noticed that Finn remained quiet for some time after they had left the scene of feeding carnage behind.

“It still bothers you, doesn’t it?” she asked, breaking the heavy silence between them.

“She killed her own offspring,” he replied. “I can’t think of a more horrendous betrayal.”

“But that’s where you’re wrong,” she said gently. “It was an act of survival. For it to be betrayal, there would have to have been malice involved. Malice and planning,” she added.

Dusque’s comments only seemed to darken his mood. She wished she knew what was bothering him so much; she wanted to help, but he seemed to want to be left to his thoughts. They walked for some distance without saying another word. It wasn’t much longer before a distant glow appeared, close to the horizon. They were almost back to the Imperial base.

Finn slowed to a halt and turned to Dusque. “Make sure your weapons are ready,” he said shortly.

“Why?” she asked. “We had no difficulty when we entered the base. Why should it be any different now?”

“We thought we were alone by the waterfall, too, didn’t we?”

Dusque fell silent at that. Apparently, her failure at the waterfall had changed his opinion of her abilities. She couldn’t bear that thought, and realizing how much his opinion had come to mean to her scared her even more than the evidence of her insecurity.

“What I mean to say is that some time has passed since we passed through there,” he explained in a kinder tone. “Something you need to remember is not to count on anything to remain static. Get comfortable with a situation and you can get complacent. In this business, that is the fastest route to dying. Don’t trust anything.” He said nothing more, but turned to busy himself with his weapon.

Dusque thought about his words as she verified the charge on her heavy blaster. Now that they were so close to success, she wondered if this was just his safety mechanism. She had missed his cue about the Gray Talon—there was no denying that. But how had he seen them so quickly? She knew how to listen and look for cues in the wilderness, but the Gray Talon leader hadn’t been clear of the waterfall when he’d surprised them with his threat. How had Finn known so quickly who was there?

She shook her head. It didn’t matter how he did it. He was better trained than she was. If he’d stayed alive this long, he must be good at his business. Finn was right when he said there were no second chances. Thinking about it, she realized that it made sense that the last leg of a mission would be the most vulnerable time—simply because one would be elated with victory. Elation led to cockiness, which could lead to mistakes, failure, and death. She decided that was why he was riding her so hard: to make sure she stayed alive.

Once she verified that her blaster had a fresh power pack, she had to conceal it on her person. Both she and Finn had abandoned their cloaks at the waterfall along with the short-circuited scanner. She slipped her blaster into the waistband of her trousers and pulled her tunic down to cover the telltale bulge. Finn slid his weapons into the upper portion of his boots and untucked his trousers to hide them.

“I’m all set,” she told him. Suddenly she was struck by another realization. Ever since they had recovered the holocron, Finn had slowly resumed the mantle of leadership. And she had acquiesced easily—mostly because he had made a few pointed remarks that had eroded some of her confidence.

He was hurt pretty badly, she reminded herself. Like a wounded animal, he would have been stripped to his basic self in the moment of absolute agony—and the fact that his main concern, even in the midst of his pain, had been her safety and the success of their mission comforted her. She decided she could take the sudden intensity he was projecting, at least until they were safely away. Then, maybe, she would give him an earful.

“Time to go,” he told her, and led the way past the outer walls of the base to enter the compound proper.

Because it was so late, there was only one guard in front of the command building. The dark Imperial flags rippled in the slight breeze. Dusque didn’t see anyone else around.

“Looks all right,” she offered cautiously.

“Looks like it,” Finn agreed, but he didn’t sound convinced.

“Can you see the ship from here?” she asked.

Finn craned his neck. “Hard to say.”

Dusque took a closer look for herself. Even in the low lights of the base, she could see that another ship had arrived. Its markings and wing structure were unmistakable: an Imperial landing craft. She let out a slow, quiet breath.

“They’re here,” she whispered.

“Yes,” Finn answered darkly.

“Maybe they’re just changing troops or something,” she suggested hopefully.

Finn shot her a foul expression, and even she knew her words sounded lame. She was terrified that, inexperienced as she was, she might have made a critical error that had betrayed the Rebel Alliance. Maybe the Empire had gotten around to issuing a warrant for her because of her friendship with Tendau, or maybe something she had said or hadn’t said to Commander Fuce earlier had tipped them off. Whatever the mistake, she didn’t want Finn or the Alliance to have to pay for it. She handed Finn her pack and started to walk toward the craft.

Finn grabbed her by her arm and yanked her back into the shadows. “What are you doing?” He shoved the bag back into her hands.

“I’m doing what I have to so that I can live with myself,” she replied.

“What are you talking about?”

She looked him deeply in the eyes and confessed, “I must have done something, or else it’s simply because of who I am, but they’ve caught up to us. If I turn myself in, that will give you a brief window when you can escape. I can’t let you or the Rebel Alliance down. Too much depends on this.”

“The only way I’m leaving is with you,” he told her. He unslung his pack and crouched down. He tugged Dusque by the arm until she dropped down, too. He tossed a few sundry items onto the ground before pulling out three round objects. Thermal detonators.

“What did you have in mind?” she asked him.

He flashed her a wicked grin. “A few carefully placed explosions should provide enough cover for both of us to escape,” he told her. “I’ll simply manually reprogram the timer mechanism to give us a few more minutes and alternate them so they go off at staggered times. That’ll keep them running.”

As he quickly adjusted the timers on the switches, Dusque kept an eye out for any activity. The post remained quiet.

“Okay,” he told her. “Take this one and flip the switch when you get near the cantina. I’m going to lay one down by the data terminal near the medcenter, and the last one close to the Imperial craft. Now go!”

Dusque crouched low and scurried over to the cantina. Before releasing the trigger, though, she ducked her head in the door. The cantina was as deserted as the base appeared to be. She tossed the detonator inside and ran back to where she had been standing with Finn. She could see him returning from the Imperial ship, running fast. He crouched down next to her.

“Now we wait for the fireworks,” he said, sounding satisfied.

After a long moment, the detonator in the medcenter went off. An alarm sounded from somewhere, and suddenly troops streamed out of what Dusque had wrongly assumed was an empty building. She noted bleakly that there were far more troopers here now than had been here when they had arrived. Her suspicions were sadly confirmed. They had been found out.

A moment later, the detonator in the cantina exploded, sending debris flying into the air. Finn threw his arms over Dusque to shield her from the initial wreckage that was raining down on them. When he saw that some of the stormtroopers had split up to investigate the new explosion, he jumped to his feet and yanked Dusque up.

“Now’s our chance!” he shouted. She could barely hear him over the sirens and the secondary explosion caused by more of the medical equipment igniting.

Finn gripped a blaster in one hand and held on to her hand with the other. He ran as fast as his injured leg would allow him, tugging on Dusque as he went. She, too, had pulled out her blaster and was looking about wildly, frightened and confused. They were almost to the shuttle when a stormtrooper who was investigating the new explosion near the medcenter saw them.

“They’re over here!” Even Dusque could hear his transmission.

They both opened fire as more stormtroopers started to turn at the sound of the laser blasts. Dusque was grateful for the scope on the blaster that allowed her to aim through the smoke and haze that filled the compound. She fired at anything that moved, even as Finn pulled her behind the Imperial landing craft for cover.

Somehow, in all the smoke and confusion, a stormtrooper slipped along the other side of the craft. Neither Finn nor Dusque saw him. The shuttle had been sealed, and Finn set to work with an electronic lock breaker to open the hatch while Dusque laid down cover fire. The stormtrooper caught her by surprise.

“Drop your weapons!” he shouted.

Whirling around to face him, Dusque could see that he had her in his sights. There was no chance she could swing her arm around fast enough to take him out. But she could block his view of Finn, so that Finn, at least, might get to safety.

“All right,” she shouted, letting the blaster slip from her fingers. She slowly raised her hands, hoping to buy Finn a few more precious seconds.

“Move over here,” the stormtrooper ordered. But just as Dusque was about to comply, two things happened.

Finn shouted, “Got it!” and the detonator under the Imperial ship exploded, knocking Dusque off her feet and incinerating the stormtrooper. Dazed, Dusque felt Finn yank her by her shirt toward the shuttle.

“I got it,” she mumbled. “Just fire this thing up.”

After a brief, questioning look at her, he dashed inside. While the shuttle rumbled to life, Dusque crawled up the hatch stairs and tumbled on board. She staggered to her feet and slammed the door-control panel. The stairs retracted and the hatch sealed up.

“Go, go, go!” she cried to Finn.

He punched the controls and the shuttle took off at a frightening angle. From the viewport, Dusque could see that the small outpost was in flames. The image grew smaller and smaller as they left Dantooine’s atmosphere. Most important, Dusque didn’t see anyone in pursuit. They were safe.

She made her way into the cockpit and slumped down into the free chair. She looked at Finn and almost laughed aloud.

“We did it,” she said. “We really did it.” And she laid her pack, the holocron still nestled inside, on top of the controls for Finn to see.

He turned to her and said, “You’re right. We’re done.”

She wondered why he sounded so sad.

FOURTEEN

As Finn piloted the ship, Dusque stared into the silence of space. They had managed to escape the planet not only with the holocron, but alive. She let her head drop back against the seat and closed her eyes. A contented smile spread across her face.

“You okay?” Finn asked her.

She turned toward him and opened her eyes. “Yes,” she answered. “Yes, I’m fine.” She tried to include him in her smile, but he remained stoic. She frowned slightly, wondering why he was so serious. Then her gaze trailed down to his wounded leg and she saw that it was bleeding.

“C’mon,” she told him. “Let’s go in back so I can treat that more properly.”

“It’ll be fine,” he said dismissively. “Don’t worry.”

“It’ll be even better after I take care of it. We’re safe in hyperspace. No one’s following.”

Finn looked at her and then, to her relief, relented. “All right. I just have to check one thing. Head aft and I’ll meet you there. Okay?”

“Don’t take too long,” Dusque told him. She wondered why men could sometimes be so difficult and fight the only logical choice in front of them.

She got up and walked back to the main cabin. Only a few items had been knocked loose by their abrupt departure, and none of them was too damaged. She picked up some storage containers and returned them to their original locations. She was looking for the more comprehensive medkit she knew was on board. She found it in a cabinet.

Bringing it over to a small table, she sat on the bench behind it. The seat wrapped around the edge of the ship for about three meters. She didn’t understand why on such a small ship, the designers felt the need to place items like this on board. Perhaps, she thought, they recognized how absolutely unnatural space travel was, and so they added such touches to ground travelers and make things seem more familiar somehow. At any rate, it was coming in handy now.

She opened up the kit and started laying out some of the supplies. She was about to call for Finn when she heard him shuffling through the cabin. By his gait, she could tell that his leg was stiffening up; if they didn’t treat it soon, there would probably be some scarring. She got up to help him the rest of the way, but he waved her back.

“I’m not that bad off,” he told her, a ghost of a grin on his face. “At least,” he paused, looking at the supplies and then at Dusque, “I’m not that bad yet. You haven’t started, however.”

Dusque swatted at him playfully, glad that he was becoming more like the man she was getting to know. She was sure that after he was treated properly, his good spirits would return.

“Have a seat,” she said, indicating the bench. He lowered himself down gingerly and extended his injured leg. Dusque pulled over one of the empty containers, set it near him, and, using it as a small stool, cut away his pant leg well above the injury. Finn grimaced.

“Sorry,” she said, as she tossed the piece of cloth off to the side. With the wound more clearly exposed, Dusque could see that the damage was a little worse than she had thought. The bacta patch had probably kept the injury from becoming infected, but it hadn’t done much more than that.

“We shouldn’t have had you walk on it,” she said, after inspecting the wound more closely.

“There wasn’t a choice, was there?”

Shaking her head, she grabbed for a bulb of antiseptic wash. As she irrigated the wound and the surrounding area, Finn winced. He leaned his head back, and in a similar pose to the one Dusque had struck in the cockpit, he closed his eyes. But there was no smile on his tightly clamped mouth.

“That’s what it really comes down to, doesn’t it?” he gritted.

Dusque was so involved in cleaning out his injury that she was only partially listening.

“It’s the choices we make in our lives. And once we make them, we have to live with the consequences of our decisions,” he continued softly.

Dusque looked up and saw that he was staring at her with his jet-black eyes. She paused, holding up a sterilizer for the burn, and finally let some of his words sink in.

“That’s not always true,” she said. “Sometimes decisions can be modified; the results can be changed when someone else comes into the equation.”

She focused her attention back on his leg. “Like this, for example. You were wounded, but because we have the supplies, we can change the outcome. This wound doesn’t have to leave any marks or lasting damage behind. We can effect a change.”

She applied an antibiotic, but was concerned when the salve didn’t penetrate as deeply as she felt it needed to. She searched through the more extensive medkit, pulled out a small canister, and started to apply the contents to Finn’s wound.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“It’s chromostring,” she explained. “It’ll allow a deeper penetration of some of the medications without nerve damage.”

“You know this stuff pretty well,” he remarked.

She glanced up at him and smiled. “Well, believe it or not, sometimes collecting samples and specimens can get a little dangerous.” She was rewarded by a smile from Finn.

As she rummaged through the kit, she continued with her previous train of thought. “While you’re right that we do make choices and have to live with them, sometimes we’re presented with the opportunity to make new ones. Like me, for example. I thought I had my life in order—”

“And I ripped you out of it,” Finn finished for her.

“And you gave me a set of new choices,” she corrected.

“Did I?” he asked. Dusque could swear she heard bitterness in his voice.

But her search in the medkit was distracting her. “Blast,” she swore softly.

“What is it?” Finn asked.

“There’s no tissue regenerator in here,” she said disgustedly. “I’ll have to make do with a couple of larger bacta patches. When we get back to Corellia, we’re going to have to get this treated immediately.” She rummaged through the kit once more, in case she had missed it.

“I thought for certain there would be one in here,” she complained. She finished placing the last of the patches on his leg. “All done. Not quite good as new yet, but it will be.” She smiled at him.

He reached over and caught her chin with his hand. “Sometimes it’s just not possible to foresee everything,” he said in an almost-whisper.

Although the cabin was temperature controlled, Dusque shivered. She placed both of her slim hands on his face. She could feel the rough texture of his skin, a new growth of beard starting to form. She delicately brushed away a lock of his unruly hair so that she could see his eyes more clearly. She realized that with such dark irises, there was no way to see his pupils; it made his eyes seem bottomless. She had never met a man like him before, she thought.

Lost in the depths of his eyes, Dusque wasn’t sure who kissed whom.

After what seemed an eternity, Finn broke away from her.

“Finn—” Dusque began.

A ringing tone from the cockpit interrupted her, and Finn looked relieved. “I—uh—it’s time to drop out of hyperspace,” he stammered.

Bewildered, Dusque didn’t know what to say. “I think I’ll stay back here for a bit. Call me if you need me.”

“All right,” he said with a sad smile.

For a long time Dusque sat alone, wondering what had just happened between them. Thinking about what Finn had said about choices and consequences, she realized he was right. That was what it came down to: deciding who and what you were going to be, and being able to live with those decisions.

She thought back on the last few days and realized that her life had been transformed. She had thought she’d left behind so much, but in retrospect the only thing she had abandoned was an empty shell. Not a real life, but the shadow of one. As she sat and swiveled from side to side in the chair, she realized that she didn’t even feel tired anymore. She felt invigorated and pleased with herself. The only concern she had was Finn.

She had always been so good at keeping people at a distance, from her family to the colleagues in her sterile work environment. The only one who had found a crack in her armor had been Tendau. With his death, that crack seemed to have become a split that Finn had slipped into. She couldn’t deny that she had strong feelings for him. That was something she had never expected.

She had to talk to him—that was all there was to it. When she felt the ship drop out of hyperspace, she figured that now seemed as good a time as any for that conversation. She got up and went forward to the cockpit.

What she saw made her stop dead in her tracks.

“Finn?” she whispered.

He was huddled over the control console, his back toward her. Then, as she moved closer, she saw the holocron. It was sitting in a receptacle on the panel, and a readout nearby showed a bar scale. Horrified, she realized that he was downloading the data from the holocron and transmitting it.

“What are you doing?” she shouted, running the rest of the way to him. Before he could say or do anything, she knocked the holocron out of the computer port. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him hit a switch—and with a dark certainty she knew what he had done. She slammed her fist down on the control panel, uncertain if she had stopped the entire transmission.

“What were you thinking?” she yelled at him. “Don’t you remember what Leia said? Under no circumstances were we to try to transmit any data from the holocron. If we thought we were in trouble, we were to destroy it!”

He looked at her with an unreadable expression. She ran over to the holocron and scooped it up. Looking about, she located the tiny chamber in the sidewall of the cockpit, tossed the holocron into it, and slammed the door shut. Before Finn could raise a hand to stop her, she jettisoned the holocron into space. Then she placed both her hands against the hull, swallowed hard, and tried to regain her composure.

“Why would you risk it?” She moved closer to him and touched his arm. “Why, Finn?”

A flash caught her eye and she noticed a blip on the radar. “Those are probably Imperials following us. They could have intercepted the transmission! We might have done all this for nothing!”

He shook his head. “It’s not Imperials.”

“It’s right there on the radar,” she argued. “And we don’t have time for this, if an Imperial agent is on our tail.”

Finn held his ground. “There’s no way that can be an Imperial agent.”

Dusque was startled by his flat monotone. “How do you know?” she whispered.

“I know there are no agents of the Empire following us because—” He paused and drew in a deep breath. “I am the Imperial agent.”

For a moment, Dusque felt as she had on the stone bridge inside the cave. She didn’t know which way was up or down, and everything seemed slightly unreal. She swallowed again, suddenly feeling hot and claustrophobic.

“What?” she whispered and her voice sounded like it was light-years away.

He turned and faced her fully. “I’m the agent,” he repeated.

“That can’t be,” Dusque cried. “It can’t be. You saved me when Tendau was executed, when the Imperials shot us down—”

“Stop and think for a moment,” he snapped at her. “You’re a scientist—use that analytical brain of yours.”

Dusque actually flinched at the tone of his voice.

“Don’t you think it was just a little too coincidental that after our first meeting, when you said you didn’t want to lose anything more to the Empire and you turned me down, the Hammerhead was so conveniently arrested? And who just happened to be there to drag you away after you saw him murdered?”

Dusque blinked rapidly as her eyes filled with unshed tears. “You killed him?” she whispered.

“I arranged it,” he admitted coldly.

“But I did see him talking with some Bothans in Moenia, and when I asked him about it, he denied it,” she said.

“Did it happen before or after I put the thought into your head that he might be a spy? My guess,” he added, “is that it happened after.”

And Dusque realized she had been more suspicious of everything after her first meeting with Finn. She had jumped to conclusions about Tendau and now knew he had died for nothing; the whole thing had been no more than a ruse to draw her out. She stared at Finn, unable to accept what she was hearing and even more horrified that he looked so angry. She was the only one who had a right to be angry, she thought.

“And now you’re furious that I didn’t somehow figure this all out? Didn’t somehow guess that the man I was falling in love with was a mask? That he didn’t exist at all? Congratulate yourself,” she told him bitterly, “because you are very good at your job.”

His shoulders sagged a little under the weight of her accusing stare.

“Don’t you see?” he entreated her, and he looked again like the man she thought she knew. “Why do you think I asked you about your loyalty? When I asked you where your loyalties were, I had hoped that you were going to turn out to have only been searching for revenge. I had hoped your loyalty to the Empire ran as deeply as mine. After some of what you told me, I thought it did.”

“Don’t mistake fear for loyalty,” she said through gritted teeth. “And don’t try to fool yourself that you’re loyal to them; you’re afraid as much as I was.”

She stood staring at him and she still could not believe what she was hearing. But, unbidden, some of the things he had said and done came back to haunt her.

“It doesn’t make sense,” she said, shaking her head. “If what you say is true and you are loyal to the Empire, why were we attacked on the way to Corellia? That was a little too close to have been planned.”

“It was close,” he admitted. “If I had been piloting the ship alone, I would’ve had a chance to signal where I was and the location of the Rebel base. But I didn’t get to in time.”

Dusque thought back to when the Mon Calamari’s ship had started to plummet and she had heard an explosion. It had come from inside the cockpit; from a weapon that Finn had explained to her wasn’t able to pierce a ship’s hull.

“You killed the pilot,” she whispered, dumbstruck.

Finn nodded. “I was able to get them to break off the attack, but we crashed before I could do more.”

“And once we got to the base,” she finished slowly, “you never had a moment alone.”

“I just figured I would wait until we had retrieved the holocron. Then I could turn everything over to the Empire.”

“So you just used me,” she said bitterly, “to get everything that you wanted. The only thing I don’t understand is why you didn’t just turn me in back at the base. Why create all that damage when your superiors were probably there? I don’t understand.”

Finn was silent.

“Why?” she demanded. “You were, after all, done with me.”

His face abruptly twisted in anguish. “I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” she asked him quietly.

“Because it was you,” he shouted. “There you were,” he admitted more calmly, “ready to march toward your death all to save me and the Rebels, and I just couldn’t let you go. I couldn’t let them have you.”

Dusque could see that he was trembling slightly. There was no reason for him to lie to her now; there was no point.

“It’s not too late,” he told her. “We can both return to the Emperor. I can tell them some of the other Rebels arrived as backup and they were the ones responsible for the chaos at the base. If we return together with the information in this computer”—he tapped the console—“we’ll both be safe. And we can be together,” he pleaded. “Please.”

Dusque was in turmoil. And she was so torn, because she knew exactly how he felt. She knew what it was like to live in the shadow of the Empire. But the man in front of her had helped her step out of that shadow. And if he could do that for her, she thought that maybe, just maybe, she could do the same for him.

“I can’t go back,” she told him and stepped closer. “Not ever. But you don’t have to, either. Remember what you said about choices and consequences? Right here and now, you can choose to change your life. I know the Rebel Alliance—Leia and the others—will forgive you and take you in. It is that ability to forgive, that soul, that separates the Rebels from the Empire.” She moved closer still as she saw he was chewing his lip.

“And I haven’t forgotten how you told me to go on without you at the waterfall, or how you shielded me from the blasts at the outpost. You can tell yourself whatever you like,” she said, moving to stand directly in front of him, “but that was your true self. I know that in here—” She laid her hand on his chest. “—you are a good man. It will be all right. Trust me.” He had never looked more vulnerable to her than he did in that moment.

He pulled her into his arms and embraced her fiercely. She stroked the back of his head and said again, “It will be all right.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m so sorry.”

She pulled slightly away from him, wanting to see his face. When her gray eyes locked with his, she heard a strange sound and felt something odd. Still looking perplexed, Dusque took a step back and felt Finn’s arms drop away. He turned from her, and she lowered her gaze to his right hand. There, covered in blood, was the hunting knife he kept sheathed in his sleeve. She had forgotten about it.

Stunned, she reached for him. “Finn, what have you done?”

At that moment, her legs buckled out from under her. She crashed onto her knees and dumbly looked down at the crimson flower blooming across her shirtfront. She touched it and pulled her hand away to see that it was covered in blood. She looked at Finn in bewilderment. She fell backward into the side of the hull and tried to focus on Finn.

“Why?” Her voice sounded weak and distant.

“I’m sorry,” was all he could say. “I told you that sooner or later everyone betrays those they love to the Empire. It’s inevitable.”

He dropped to her side. Hazily, Dusque wondered if he was going to finish her off, although she believed she was dead already.

“I can’t be with you,” he confessed. “I fear the Empire too much.”

His words echoed strangely in her ears, so similar to the ones she had said to him when they first met. It was as though they were completing a strange dance that had finally come full circle. Only this time, she was the one without fear.

Finn swallowed hard as he looked at her. He reached down, and Dusque couldn’t tell if he still held the knife or not. Before he could touch her, the shuttle jostled ominously.

“We’re being boarded,” Dusque heard him say. She could only lie there and watch as he rose and ran to the rear of the vessel. She heard a hatch open and seal, and then the ship rocked again.

She felt her lids grow heavy. She tried once to stand, and a detached part of her mind was genuinely amazed that she couldn’t even lift her hand any longer. She lay there in a heap.

The shuttle was jostled again, and the movement caused Dusque to open her eyes just a crack. Although her vision was blurring, she could see several figures enter the cabin. None, she noticed, wore Imperial garb. One of them, a blond human male, looked familiar to Dusque, although she couldn’t get her mind to focus on any one topic enough to try to figure out who he was.

He dropped to her side as his two companions went to the back of the ship. He stared at her, a worried look in his sky-blue eyes.

“I know you, don’t I?” Dusque asked weakly.

“My name is Luke Skywalker. You saw me on Corellia.” His voice was young and gentle. While he spoke to her, he pulled out a device and tried to treat the wound in Dusque’s chest.

“The escape pod’s been jettisoned,” one of the others told him.

With the last bit of strength she had, Dusque placed her hand on Luke’s arm and struggled to sit up. “You’ve got to stop him,” she whispered, “before he gets back to his base. Finn is a …” She fell back weakly before she could say the word traitor.

“Blast,” he said. “This anticoagulant isn’t clotting her fast enough.” He ordered one of the Rebel soldiers to retrieve something from their ship.

“Not important,” Dusque mumbled. “You’ve got to stop him. Not important …” Her voice trailed off and her lids started to close.

“Yes, you are,” she heard the young man with the ancient eyes whisper in her ear, and she wondered if that would be the last thing she ever heard. Before she faded away, she realized it was a worthy eulogy.

“You are important,” he said.

FIFTEEN

The heavy mists blanketed the Emperor’s Retreat like a shroud. Standing a solitary watch was a rigid figure. Dressed in dark clothes, Finn listened to the lonely cry of the peko peko. For some reason, the sound reminded him of a woman wailing. Even though it was raining lightly, he didn’t seek shelter, as though he wasn’t worthy of any protection from the elements. Or perhaps, it was because he didn’t seem to feel anything anymore.

“Commander Darktrin,” a deep voice called.

Finn turned about and marched off the stone balcony into a lushly carpeted hallway. The gold-trimmed crimson rug was meant to look sumptuous, but now it reminded Finn of a river of blood—and no matter where he turned, he had to walk through it. Standing in the center of the hall was Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith. His black armor gleamed like polished ebony, although it seemed that rather than reflect light, it took it all in to some secret place like a black hole. The only sound besides the rain was his mechanical breathing.

Finn had only been in Vader’s presence a few times in his service to the Empire. Three of those occasions had been to witness the deaths of men who had failed in their duty to the Dark Lord. Because Finn had been instructed to retrieve and return with the Jedi holocron, he suspected he knew what was about to happen. Strangely, he didn’t feel afraid; he just felt numb. It was as though when he had stabbed Dusque in the heart, he had cut out his own, as well.

“Yes, Lord Vader?” he asked respectfully.

“Your transmission from the Rebel shuttle was incomplete,” Darth Vader began without preamble.

Finn lowered his head. “I understand, my lord. I failed in my task to the Emperor.”

“Yes,” Vader agreed heavily.

“I welcome any punishment you deem fit,” Finn said, raising his head to stare into the skull-like breath mask that forever hid the Sith Lord’s face from view.

Finn stood for some time in Vader’s presence. Not a word was uttered. The only sound remained the heavy intake and exhalation of Vader’s breathing. Unconsciously, Finn found himself breathing in time with him. He did not turn away from Vader’s unblinking stare.

“While it was incomplete,” Vader eventually continued, as he started walking down the hallway, “several names did come through.” He paused and waited for Finn to walk by his side. “So, in a broader sense, the mission was not a total failure,” Vader continued.

“What will you do?” Finn asked.

“Several different agents will be dispatched soon enough to remove the Rebel threat from our midst,” the Dark Lord explained. “Since you have been gone, we have had an increase in recruits. Some show great promise, while others …” He left the statement unfinished.

“And the others, my lord?” Finn inquired, not out of any real interest but because he felt it was required of him.

“And when the others die in their attempts, it will be no great loss,” the Dark Lord finished without any emotion.

“While I have decided to let you live,” Vader continued, “I have not yet decided what punishment is fitting for your failure.”

“I understand, my lord.”

“I am somewhat at a loss to understand,” Vader continued, “why you were not able to transfer the holocron over to my agents at the Dantooine outpost.”

“My lord, I did not realize the woman had placed those charges around the base. I was caught as off guard as the other agents were.”

“Ah,” Vader breathed. “The woman you killed aboard the shuttle.”

“Yes,” Finn said, almost tripping over the words. “She turned out not to be what I had anticipated.”

“Still, you put an end to any threat she might have posed to the Empire. That is partly why I don’t retire you now. And the other,” he rasped, “is because is I still sense great potential in you.”

They walked in silence again. Eventually, Vader stopped and looked at him. “And what of the Rebel base on Corellia? In your report, you make mention of it, and yet I don’t see the coordinates listed anywhere.”

Finn stared at Vader for a long time before he spoke. “The reason is simple enough, my lord,” he eventually said. “When I was taken to the secret location, the Rebels were in the process of breaking it down and emptying the buildings. Former Princess Leia Organa mentioned that they were about to relocate offworld and would send a transmission when we contacted them after our departure for Dantooine.

“Because the woman on board began to suspect my identity, I had to eliminate her before I could find out where they had relocated,” he finished.

Vader nodded. “I see,” he hissed. “Very well,” he said after a brief pause, “we are done for now, Commander.”

Finn saluted and turned to go, but his curiosity had gotten the better of him. Thinking he had nothing to lose, he turned back and cleared his throat. “My lord?” he asked.

“What is it, Commander?” Even though he spoke through a breath mask, there was no mistaking the chill in his tone.

“You said that you sensed potential in me. What did you mean by that?”

Vader walked back to Finn and looked down at him. “You have always been a faithful servant to us,” he began, “but since your return, you seem cleansed.”

“My lord?”

“I sense anger in you where there was none before. And that fire will burn and purify you over time. I am willing to give you that time. For now.” And with that, he turned and departed.

Finn didn’t know what to make of the Sith Lord’s pronouncement. He wandered aimlessly and found himself back on the balcony, watching the clouded sky darken as night drew near.

He’s right, Finn thought. I am angry. Vader thinks I’m angry with the Rebels, but I know the truth. I’m angry with me.

The clouds continued to thicken, denying Finn a view of the stars. He leaned his hands against the cold stone railing and stared at the night. He squeezed his eyes shut, but all he could see behind his lids was Dusque’s face. She haunted his every waking moment.

He realized that it was probably some members of the Rebel Alliance who had boarded their shuttle after he’d left. If they had reached her in time, Dusque might have survived. They would have had to return to Corellia with her, however. Her injury was too severe for a medkit to heal. The only gift he had left to give her was safety. So he had lied to Vader and the others about the location of their base. His heart was his last gift.

The gray skies only served to remind him of Dusque’s eyes, and he realized he had no way of learning if she was alive. He placed a callused hand against his heart, and the single tear he shed became meaningless and insignificant in the rain.

Dusque leaned against the railing and looked out at the Corellian sky. Talus was visible, as well as a few other celestial bodies she recognized. But she wasn’t really looking at them. The dark sky reminded her of Finn’s eyes, and how she could almost lose herself in them. Even though he was gone, she remembered every line of his face. What troubled her most was the look he had worn when he had stabbed her in the chest. She couldn’t decipher it, and that haunted her. Absently she scratched at the mostly healed scar near her breastbone and didn’t notice that a door had opened behind her.

“What are you doing standing out there in the cold? You shouldn’t even be on your feet yet.”

Dusque turned at the sound to see that Princess Leia had entered her chamber. The woman was always in motion, Dusque thought, and she wondered when she ever found time to rest. Dressed in white, her long hair tied back, she seemed more mythical than real at times.

Dusque shifted completely around but made no move to step inside. Her sandy hair blew around her in the breeze like a living thing. “If it hadn’t have been for you—” she nodded to Luke, who was right behind Leia, “—I wouldn’t be standing at all.” And she grinned ruefully at him.

He’s blushing, she thought.

“I’m glad I was there in time,” he said sincerely.

“Yes,” Leia said. “I don’t think you would have survived without him.”

“No,” Dusque agreed, and rubbed at her scar again. “Why were you following?” she asked, wanting to change the subject.

“I had a feeling,” Luke told her.

“His feelings have a way of turning out to be right,” Leia explained. “But when he told me there was something not right about one of you, I’m afraid that I thought it was you. I didn’t know you then,” she added, and Dusque got the sense that she was apologizing.

“It’s all right,” Dusque said easily. “Finn fooled me, too. Here I was, thinking that I was going to face the enemy, and he was with me all along, like some false shadow. I’m sorry I didn’t learn the truth before he got his hands on the holocron. What do you think happened to him?”

“Since our scouts haven’t seen or heard anything, I can only assume that either he died in space or was executed for not fulfilling his mission. Otherwise,” Leia reasoned, “he would have exposed us and our base, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“What’ll happen now?” Dusque asked, uncertain if Leia’s hypothesis made her feel better or worse.

“Well,” Leia said with authority, “we were able to get all the information from the shuttle. As best as our technicians can tell, it appears that Finn downloaded the data from the holocron, but wasn’t able to transmit all of it to the Empire.”

“Do you know what names he managed to send out?” Dusque asked.

“No,” Leia replied seriously. “The technicians can tell how many packets of information were sent out, but they can’t say which.”

Dusque shook her head. “So what will you do now?”

“I will be sending out agents to every name that we retrieved, not only to activate them but to warn them, as well. Since we have no way of knowing who might be in danger, we’ll have to find them all.” Leia sighed. “It won’t be any small task, either. These people are spread throughout the galaxy.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to destroy the holocron sooner,” Dusque told her.

“Don’t be,” Leia consoled. “You did all that you could.”

“Dusque,” Luke said, and looked at her earnestly, “you did the right thing. And I’m glad you’re all right.”

“Thank you,” she replied.

He turned to the Princess. “Leia, we’ll talk later about this?”

“Yes,” the Princess replied. And with that, the ex-farm-boy from Tatooine left.

Leia faced Dusque, and her brown eyes softened. “I should go and let you get some rest.” She laid a gentle hand on Dusque’s shoulder. “You do still need it. And I’m sure one of our surgical droids can remove that scar.”

Dusque moved one hand up to trace the long, knotted lump of scar tissue. “No,” she said eventually. “I want to keep it. It’ll remind me where my heart is.” And she grew silent.

“You will always have a place here, with us,” Leia told her.

Dusque looked at Leia. “Thank you.” She held out her hand and Leia clasped it warmly, covering it with both of hers.

“No,” she corrected Dusque gently, “Thank you. I could not be more proud of your actions if you were my own sister.”

Dusque lowered her gaze, suddenly moved. Leia released her hand and started to leave. As she reached the door, she turned and was once again a commander in chief. “Now get back into bed. That’s an order.”

Dusque smiled. She thought again how tactful Leia was, always seeming to know the right thing to say at the right time. The ex-Senator must have been a very effective politician in her time.

Dusque walked back out onto the balcony. One thing that hadn’t changed was that she still felt more comfortable under the stars than under a roof. She was glad there was a certain amount of constancy still left in her life.

“Ah, Finn,” she said aloud. There was no hiding the bitterness in her voice. “I look at the sky and I see you.” For a moment, she couldn’t speak, couldn’t even think about the pain he had caused her.

Although she wouldn’t admit it to anyone, she was filled with hatred. Much of it was directed at Finn. She hated him for being weak, for betraying her and the Rebel Alliance, for not loving her enough to leave behind his allegiance to the Emperor. But most of all, she hated herself for still loving him.

“It’s because of you that I’m here. That much I owe you,” she admitted. She thought about what Leia had said about Finn being dead, but couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it. It was the only explanation that made sense; otherwise the Imperial forces would have already come down on their heads. And yet, she doubted.

The wind picked up, but Dusque didn’t notice the cold. She stared out at the stars, her hair blowing about her face in a great cloud. Besides hatred, she was filled with a great conviction.

“You’re out there, somewhere,” she whispered into the night. “When we meet again, we will both know who we are: a traitor and a Rebel soldier. May the Force help us both.”

For my mother, Inge M. Whitney, who in the summer of ’77 said to me, “Have you heard about a movie called Star Wars? I think you’re going to want to see it.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Eban Trey, my favorite Rodian, for showing me around the galaxy, and my husband, Roderic, my favorite test player. And a special thank-you to Sue Rostoni and Haden Blackman for all their information and guidance. Finally, to Shelly Shapiro for steering me through the whole project.

About the Author

Voronica Whitney-Robinson has worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, a veterinary assistant in New Zealand, and a marine biologist in Seattle. She has written four novels for Wizards of the Coast. She lives with her husband in Washington State.

Other Titles by Voronica Whitney-Robinson

NOVELS
Spectre of the Black Rose (with James Lowder)
Halls of Stormweather
Sands of the Soul
Crimson Gold

GAME PRODUCTS
Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom (contributing author)
Ravenloft Gazetteer IV (contributing author)

STAR WARS—LEGENDS

What is a legend? According to the Random House Dictionary, a legend is “a nonhistorical or unverifiable story handed down by tradition from earlier times and popularly accepted as historical.” Merriam-Webster defines it as “a story from the past that is believed by many people but cannot be proved to be true.” And Wikipedia says, “Legends are tales that, because of the tie to a historical event or location, are believable, though not necessarily believed.” Because of this inherent believability, legends tend to live on in a culture, told and retold even though they are generally regarded as fiction.

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a legend was born: The story of Luke Skywalker and his fellow heroes, Princess Leia and Han Solo. Three blockbuster movies introduced these characters and their stories to millions of people who embraced these tales and began to build upon them, as is done with myths everywhere. And thus novels, short stories, and comic books were published, expanding the Star Wars universe introduced in the original trilogy and later enhanced by the prequel movies and the animated TV series The Clone Wars. The enormous body of work that grew around the films and The Clone Wars came to be known as The Expanded Universe.

Now, as new movies, television shows, and books move into the realm of the official canon, The Expanded Universe must take its place firmly in the realm of legends. But, like all great legends, the fact that we can’t prove the veracity of every detail doesn’t make the stories any less entertaining or worthy of being read. These legends remain true to the spirit of Star Wars and in that way are another avenue through which we can get to know and understand our beloved heroes in that galaxy far, far away.

—Del Rey Books, May 2014

Turn the page or jump to the timeline of Star Wars Legends novels to learn more.

CHAPTER 1

FATMAN SHIVERED, her metal groaning, as Zeerid pushed her through Ord Mantell’s atmosphere. Friction turned the air to fire, and Zeerid watched the orange glow of the flames through the transparisteel of the freighter’s cockpit.

He was gripping the stick too tightly, he realized, and relaxed.

He hated atmosphere entries, always had, the long forty-count when heat, speed, and ionized particles caused a temporary sensor blackout. He never knew what kind of sky he’d encounter when he came out of the dark. Back when he’d carted Havoc Squadron commandos in a Republic gully jumper, he and his fellow pilots had likened the blackout to diving blind off a seaside cliff.

You always hope to hit deep water, they’d say. But sooner or later the tide goes out and you go hard into rock.

Or hard into a blistering crossfire. Didn’t matter, really. The effect would be the same.

“Coming out of the dark,” he said as the flame diminished and the sky opened below.

No one acknowledged the words. He flew Fatman alone, worked alone. The only things he carted anymore were weapons for The Exchange. He had his reasons, but he tried hard not to think too hard about what he was doing.

He leveled the ship off, straightened, and ran a quick sweep of the surrounding sky. The sensors picked up nothing.

“Deep water and it feels fine,” he said, smiling.

On most planets, the moment he cleared the atmosphere he’d have been busy dodging interdiction by the planetary government. But not on Ord Mantell. The planet was a hive of crime syndicates, mercenaries, bounty hunters, smugglers, weapons dealers, and spicerunners.

And those were just the people who ran the place.

Factional wars and assassinations occupied their attention, not governance, and certainly not law enforcement. The upper and lower latitudes of the planet in particular were sparsely settled and almost never patrolled, a literal no-being’s-land. Zeerid would have been surprised if the government had survsats running orbits over the area.

And all that suited him fine.

Fatman broke through a thick pink blanket of clouds, and the brown, blue, and white of Ord Mantell’s northern hemisphere filled out Zeerid’s field of vision. Snow and ice peppered the canopy, frozen shrapnel, beating a steady rhythm on Fatman’s hull. The setting sun suffused a large swath of the world with orange and red. The northern sea roiled below him, choppy and dark, the irregular white circles of breaking surf denoting the thousands of uncharted islands that poked through the water’s surface. To the west, far in the distance, he could make out the hazy edge of a continent and the thin spine of snowcapped, cloud-topped mountains that ran along its north–south axis.

Motion drew his eye. A flock of leatherwings, too small to cause a sensor blip, flew two hundred meters to starboard and well below him, the tents of their huge, membranous wings flapping slowly in the freezing wind, the arc of the flock like a parenthesis. They were heading south for warmer air and paid him no heed as he flew over and past them, their dull, black eyes blinking against the snow and ice.

He pulled back on the ion engines and slowed still further. A yawn forced itself past his teeth. He sat up straight and tried to blink away the fatigue, but it was as stubborn as an angry bantha. He’d given the ship to the autopilot and dozed during the hyperspace run from Vulta, but that was all the rack he’d had in the last two standard days. It was catching up to him.

He scratched at the stubble of his beard, rubbed the back of his neck, and plugged the drop coordinates into the navicomp. The comp linked with one of Ord Mantell’s unsecured geosyncsats and fed back the location and course to Fatman. Zeerid’s HUD displayed it on the cockpit canopy. He eyed the location and put his finger on the destination.

“Some island no one has ever heard of, up here where no one ever goes. Sounds about right.”

Zeerid turned the ship over to the autopilot, and it banked him toward the island.

His mind wandered as Fatman cut through the sky. The steady patter of ice and snow on the canopy sang him a lullaby. His thoughts drifted back through the clouds to the past, to the days before the accident, before he’d left the marines. Back then, he’d worn the uniform proudly and had still been able to look himself in the mirror—

He caught himself, caught the burgeoning self-pity, and stopped the thoughts cold. He knew where it would lead.

“Stow that, soldier,” he said to himself.

He was what he was, and things were what they were.

“Focus on the work, Z-man.”

He checked his location against the coordinates in the navicomp. Almost there.

“Gear up and get frosty,” he said, echoing the words he used to say to his commandos. “Ninety seconds to the LZ.”

He continued his ritual, checking the charge on his blasters, tightening the straps on his composite armor vest, getting his mind right.

Ahead, he saw the island where he would make the drop: ten square klicks of volcanic rock fringed with a bad haircut of waist-high scrub whipping in the wind. The place would probably be underwater and gone next year.

He angled lower, flew a wide circle, unable to see much detail due to the snow. He ran a scanner sweep, as always, and the chirp of his instrumentation surprised him. A ship was already on the island. He checked his wrist chrono and saw that he was a full twenty standard minutes early. He’d made this run three times and Arigo—he was sure the man’s real name was not Arigo—had never before arrived early.

He descended to a few hundred meters to get a better look.

Arigo’s freighter, the Doghouse, shaped not unlike the body of a legless beetle, sat in a clearing on the east side of the island. Its landing ramp was down and stuck out of its belly like a tongue. Halogens glared into the fading twilight and reflected off the falling snow, turning the flakes into glittering jewels. He saw three men lingering around the ramp, though he was too far away to notice any details other than their white winter parkas.

They spotted Fatman, and one waved a gloved hand.

Zeerid licked his lips and frowned.

Something felt off.

Flares went up from the freighter and burst in the air—green, red, red, green.

That was the correct sequence.

He circled one more time, staring down through the swirl of snow, but saw nothing to cause alarm, no other ships on the island or in the surrounding sea. He pushed aside his concern and chalked his feelings up to the usual tension caused by dealing with miscreants and criminals.

In any event, he could not afford to mess up a drop of several hundred million credits of hardware because he felt skittish. The ultimate buyer—whoever that was—would be unhappy, and The Exchange would take the lost profits from Zeerid in blood and broken bones, then tack it on to the debt he already owed them. He’d lost track of exactly how much that was, but knew it was at least two million credits on the note for Fatman plus almost half that again on advances for Arra’s medical treatment, though he’d kept Arra’s existence a secret and his handler thought the latter were for gambling losses.

“LZ is secure.” He hoped saying it would make it so. “Going in.”

The hum of the reverse thrusters and a swirl of blown snow presaged the thump of Fatman’s touching down on the rock. He landed less than fifty meters from Arigo’s ship.

For a moment he sat in the cockpit, perfectly still, staring at the falling snow, knowing there’d be another drop after this one, then another, then another, and he’d still owe The Exchange more than he’d ever be able to pay. He was on a treadmill with no idea how to get off.

Didn’t matter, though. The point was to earn for Arra, maybe get her a hoverchair instead of that wheeled antique. Better yet, prostheses.

He blew out a breath, stood, and tried to find his calm as he threw on a winter parka and fingerless gloves. In the cargo hold, he had to pick his way though the maze of shipping containers. He avoided looking directly at the thick black lettering on their sides, though he knew it by heart, had seen such crates many times in his military career.

DANGER–MUNITIONS.
FOR MILITARY USE ONLY.
KEEP AWAY FROM INTENSE HEAT
OR OTHER ENERGY SOURCES.

In the crates were upward of three hundred million credits’ worth of crew-served laser cannons, MPAPPs, grenades, and enough ammunition to keep even the craziest fire team grinning and sinning for months.

Near the bay’s landing ramp, he saw that three of the four securing straps had come loose from one of the crates of grenades. He was lucky the crate hadn’t bounced around in transit. Maybe the straps had snapped when he set down on the island. He chose to believe that rather than admit to his own sloppiness.

He did not bother reattaching the straps. Arigo’s men would have to undo them to unload anyway.

He loosened his blasters in their holsters and pushed the button to open the bay and lower the ramp. The door descended and snow and cold blew in, the tang of ocean salt. He stepped out into the wind. The light of the setting sun made him squint. He’d been in only artificial light for upward of twelve hours. His boots crunched on the snow-dusted black rock. His exhalations steamed away in the wind.

Two of the men from Arigo’s freighter detached themselves from their ship and met him halfway. Both were human and bearded. One had a patched eye and a scar like a lightning stroke down one cheek. Both wore blasters on their hips. Like Zeerid, both had the butt straps undone.

Recognizing neither of them rekindled Zeerid’s earlier concerns. He had a mind for faces, and both of the men were strangers.

The drop was starting to taste sour.

“Where’s Arigo?” Zeerid asked.

“Doin’ what Arigo does,” Scar said, and gestured vaguely. “Sent us instead. No worries, though, right?”

No Scar shifted on his feet, antsy, twitchy.

Zeerid nodded, kept his face expressionless as his heart rate amped up and adrenaline started making him warm. Everything smelled wrong, and he’d learned over the years to trust his sense of smell.

“You Zeerid?” Scar asked.

“Z-man.”

No one called him Zeerid except his sister-in-law.

And Aryn, once. But Aryn had been long ago.

“Z-man,” echoed No Scar, shifting on his feet and half giggling.

“Sound funny to you?” Zeerid asked him.

Before No Scar could answer, Scar asked, “Where’s the cargo?”

Zeerid looked past the two men before him to the third, who lingered near the landing ramp of Arigo’s ship. The man’s body language—too focused on the verbal exchange, too coiled—reinforced Zeerid’s worry. He reminded Zeerid of the way rooks looked when facing Imperials for the first time, all attitude and hair trigger.

Suspicion stacked up into certainty. The drop didn’t just smell bad, it was bad.

Arigo was dead, and the crew before him worked for some other faction on Ord Mantell, or worked for some organization sideways to The Exchange. Whatever. Didn’t matter to Zeerid. He never bothered to follow who was fighting who, so he just trusted no one.

But what did matter to him was that the three men standing before him probably had tortured information from Arigo and would kill Zeerid as soon as they confirmed the presence of the cargo.

And there could be still more men hidden aboard the freighter.

It seemed he’d descended out of atmospheric blackout and into a crossfire after all.

What else was new?

“Why you call that ship Fatman?” No Scar asked. Arigo must have told them the name of Zeerid’s ship because Fatman bore no identifying markings. Zeerid used fake ship registries on almost every planet on which he docked.

“ ’Cause it takes a lot to fill her belly.”

“Ship’s a she, though. Right? Why not Fatwoman?”

“Seemed disrespectful.”

No Scar frowned. “Huh? To who?”

Zeerid did not bother to answer. All he’d wanted to do was drop off the munitions, retire some of his debt to The Exchange, and get back to his daughter before he had to get back out in the black and get dirty again.

“Something wrong?” Scar asked, his tone wary. “You look upset.”

“No,” Zeerid said, and forced a half smile. “Everything’s the same as always.”

The men plastered on uncertain grins, unclear on Zeerid’s meaning.

“Right,” Scar said. “Same as always.”

Knowing how things would go, Zeerid felt the calm he usually did when danger impended. He flashed for a moment on Arra’s face, on what she’d do if he died on Ord Mantell, on some no-name island. He pushed the thoughts away. No distractions.

“Cargo is in the main bay. Send your man around. The ship’s open.”

The expressions on the faces of both men hardened, the change nearly imperceptible but clear to Zeerid, a transformation that betrayed their intention to murder. Scar ordered No Scar to go check the cargo.

“He’ll need a lifter,” Zeerid said, readying himself, focusing on speed and precision. “That stuff ain’t a few kilos.”

No Scar stopped within reach of Zeerid, looking back at Scar for guidance, his expression uncertain.

“Nah,” said Scar, his hand hovering near his holster, the motion too casual to be casual. “I just want him to make sure it’s all there. Then I’ll let my people know to release payment.”

He held up his arm as if to show Zeerid a wrist comlink, but the parka covered it.

“It’s all there,” Zeerid said.

“Go on,” said Scar to No Scar. “Check it.”

“Oh,” Zeerid said, and snapped his fingers. “There is one other thing …”

No Scar sighed, stopped, faced him, eyebrows raised in a question, breath steaming out of his nostrils. “What’s that?”

Zeerid made a knife of his left hand and drove his fingertips into No Scar’s throat. While No Scar crumpled to the snow, gagging, Zeerid jerked one of his blasters free of its hip holster and put a hole through Scar’s chest before the man could do anything more than take a surprised step backward and put his hand on the grip of his own weapon. Scar staggered back two more steps, his mouth working but making no sound, his right arm held up, palm out, as if he could stop the shot that had already killed him.

As Scar toppled to the ground, Zeerid took a wild shot at the third man near the Doghouse’s landing ramp but missed high. The third man made himself small beside the Doghouse, drew his blaster pistol, and shouted into a wrist comlink. Zeerid saw movement within the cargo bay of Arigo’s ship—more men with ill intent.

No way to know how many.

He cursed, fired a covering shot, then turned and ran for Fatman. A blaster shot put a smoking black furrow through the sleeve of his parka but missed flesh. Another rang off the hull of Fatman. A third shot hit him square in the back. It felt like getting run over by a speeder. The impact drove the air from his lungs and plowed him face-first into the snow.

He smelled smoke. His armored vest had ablated the shot.

Adrenaline got him to his feet just as fast as he had gone down. Gasping, trying to refill his lungs, he ducked behind a landing skid for cover and wiped the snow from his face. He poked his head out for a moment to look back, saw that No Scar had stopped gagging and started being dead, that Scar stayed politely still, and that six more men were dashing toward him, two armed with blaster rifles and the rest with pistols.

His armor would not stop a rifle bolt.

A shot slammed into the landing skid, another into the snow at his feet, another, another.

“Stang!” he cursed.

The safety of Fatman’s landing ramp and cargo bay, only a few steps from him, somehow looked ten kilometers away.

He took a blaster in each hand, stretched his arms around to either side of the landing skid, and fired as fast he could he pull the trigger in the direction of the onrushing men. He could not see and did not care if he hit anyone, he just wanted to get them on the ground. After he’d squeezed off more than a dozen shots with no return fire, he darted out from the behind the skid and toward the ramp.

He reached it before the shooters recovered enough to let loose another barrage. A few bolts chased him up the ramp, ringing off the metal. Sparks flew and the smell of melted plastoid mixed with the ocean air. He ran past the button to raise the ramp, struck at it, and hurried on toward the cockpit. Only after he’d nearly cleared the cargo bay did it register with him that he wasn’t hearing the whir of turning gears.

He whirled around, cursed.

In his haste, he’d missed the button to raise the landing ramp.

He heard shouts from outside and dared not go back. He could close the bay from the control panel in the cockpit. But he had to hurry.

He pelted through Fatman’s corridors, shouldered open the door to the cockpit, and started punching in the launch sequence. Fatman’s thrusters went live and the ship lurched upward. Blasterfire thumped off the hull but did no harm. He tried to look down out of the canopy, but the ship was angled upward and he could not see the ground. He punched the control to move it forward and heard the distant squeal of metal on metal. It had come from the cargo bay.

Something was slipping around in there.

The loose container of grenades.

And he’d still forgotten to seal the bay.

Cursing himself for a fool, he flicked the switch that brought up the ramp then sealed the cargo bay and evacuated it of oxygen. If anyone had gotten aboard, they would suffocate in there.

He took the controls in hand and fired Fatman’s engines. The ship shot upward. He turned her as he rose, took a look back at the island.

For a moment, he was confused by what he saw. But realization dawned.

When Fatman had lurched up and forward, the remaining straps securing the container of grenades had snapped and the whole shipping container had slid right out the open landing ramp.

He was lucky it hadn’t exploded.

The men who had ambushed him were gathered around the crate, probably wondering what was inside. A quick head count put their number at six, so he figured none had gotten on board Fatman. And none of them seemed to be making for Arigo’s ship, so Zeerid assumed they had no intention of pursuing him in the air. Maybe they were happy enough with the one container.

Amateurs, then. Pirates, maybe.

Zeerid knew he would have to answer to Oren, his handler, not only for the deal going sour but also for the lost grenades.

Kriffing treadmill just kept going faster and faster.

He considered throwing Fatman’s ion engines on full, clearing Ord Mantell’s gravity well, and heading into hyperspace, but changed his mind. He was annoyed and thought he had a better idea.

He wheeled the freighter around and accelerated.

“Weapons going live,” he said, and activated the over-and-under plasma cannons mounted on Fatman’s sides.

The men on the ground, having assumed he would flee, did not notice him coming until he had closed to five hundred meters. Faces stared up at him, hands pointed, and the men started to scramble. A few blaster shots from one of the men traced red lines through the sky, but a blaster could not harm the ship.

Zeerid took aim. The targeting computer centered on the crate.

“LZ is hot,” he said, and lit them up. For an instant pulsing orange lines connected the ship to the island, the ship to the crate of grenades. Then, as the grenades exploded, the lines blossomed into an orange cloud of heat, light, and smoke that engulfed the area. Shrapnel pattered against the canopy, metal this time, not ice, and the shock wave rocked Fatman slightly as Zeerid peeled the ship off and headed skyward.

He glanced back, saw six, motionless, smoking forms scattered around the blast radius.

“That was for you, Arigo.”

He would still have some explaining to do, but at least he’d taken care of the ambushers. That had to be worth something to The Exchange.

Or so he hoped.

DARTH MALGUS STRODE THE AUTOWALK, the steady rap of his boots on the pavement the tick of a chrono counting down the limited time remaining to the Republic.

Speeders, swoops, and aircars roared above him in unending streams, the motorized circulatory system of the Republic’s heart. Skyrises, bridges, lifts, and plazas covered the entire surface of Coruscant to a height of kilometers, all of it the trappings of a wealthy, decadent civilization, a sheath that sought to hide the rot in a cocoon of duracrete and transparisteel.

But Malgus smelled the decay under the veneer, and he would show them the price of weakness, of complacency.

Soon it would all burn.

He would lay waste to Coruscant. He knew this. He had known it for decades.

Memories floated up from the depths of his mind. He recalled his first pilgrimage to Korriban, remembered the profound sense of holiness he had felt as he walked in isolation through its rocky deserts, through the dusty canyons lined with the tombs of his ancient Sith forebears. He had felt the Force everywhere, had exulted in it, and in his isolation it had showed him a vision. He had seen systems in flames, the fall of a galaxy-spanning government.

He had believed then, had known then and ever since, that the destruction of the Jedi and their Republic would fall to him.

“What are you thinking of, Veradun?” Eleena asked him.

Only Eleena called him by his given name, and only when they were alone. He enjoyed the smooth way the syllables rolled off her tongue and lips, but he tolerated it from no others.

“I am thinking of fire,” he said, the hated respirator partially muffling his voice.

She walked beside him, as beautiful and dangerous as an elegantly crafted lanvarok. She clucked her tongue at his words, eyed him sidelong, but said nothing. Her lavender skin looked luminescent in the setting sun.

Crowds thronged the plaza in which they walked, laughing, scowling, chatting. A human child, a young girl, caught Malgus’s eye when she squealed with delight and ran to the waiting arms of a dark-haired woman, presumably her mother. The girl must have felt his gaze. She looked at him from over her mother’s shoulder, her small face pinched in a question. He stared at her as he walked and she looked away, burying her face in her mother’s neck.

Other than the girl, no one else marked his passage. The citizens of the Republic felt safe so deep in the Core, and the sheer number of beings on Coruscant granted him anonymity. He walked among his prey, cowled, armored under his cloak, unnoticed and unknown, but heavy with purpose.

“This is a beautiful world,” Eleena said.

“Not for very much longer.”

His words seemed to startle her, though he could not imagine why. “Veradun …”

He saw her swallow, look away. Whatever words she intended after his name seemed stuck on the scar that marred her throat.

“You may speak your mind, Eleena.”

Still she looked away, taking in the scenery around them, as if memorizing Coruscant before Malgus and the Empire lit it aflame.

“When will the fighting end?”

The premise of the question confounded him. “What do you mean?”

“Your life is war, Veradun. Our life. When will it end? It cannot always be so.”

He nodded then, understanding the flavor of the conversation to come. She would try to disguise self-perceived wisdom behind questions. As usual, he was of two minds about it. On the one hand, she was but a servant, a woman who provided him companionship when he wished it. On the other hand, she was Eleena. His Eleena.

“You choose to fight beside me, Eleena. You have killed many in the name of the Empire.”

The lavender skin of her cheeks darkened to purple. “I have not killed for the Empire. I fight, and kill, for you. You know this. But you … you fight for the Empire? Only for the Empire?”

“No. I fight because that is what I was made to do and the Empire is the instrument through which I realize my purpose. The Empire is war made manifest. That is why it is perfect.”

She shook her head. “Perfect? Millions die in its wars. Billions.”

“Beings die in war. That is the price that must be paid.”

She stared at a group of children following an adult, perhaps a teacher. “The price for what? Why constant war? Why constant expansion? What is it the Empire wants? What is it you want?”

Behind his respirator, he smiled as he might when entertaining the questions of a precocious child.

“Want is not the point. I serve the Force. The Force is conflict. The Empire is conflict. The two are congruent.”

“You speak as if it were mathematics.”

“It is.”

“The Jedi do not think so.”

He fought down a flash of anger. “The Jedi understand the Force only partially. Some of them are even powerful in its use. But they fail to comprehend the fundamental nature of the Force, that it is conflict. That a light side and a dark side exist is proof of this.”

He thought the conversation over, but she did not relent.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why conflict? Why would the Force exist to foment conflict and death?”

He sighed, becoming agitated. “Because the survivors of the conflict come to understand the Force more deeply. Their understanding evolves. That is purpose enough.”

Her expression showed that she still did not understand. His tone sharpened as his exasperation grew.

“Conflict drives a more perfect understanding of the Force. The Empire expands and creates conflict. In that regard, the Empire is an instrument of the Force. You see? The Jedi do not understand this. They use the Force to repress themselves and others, to enforce their version of tolerance, harmony. They are fools. And they will see that after today.”

For a time, Eleena said nothing, and the hum and buzz of Coruscant filled the silent gulf between them. When she finally spoke, she sounded like the shy girl he had first rescued from the slave pens of Geonosis.

“Constant war will be your life? Our life? Nothing more?”

He understood her motives at last. She wanted their relationship to change, wanted it, too, to evolve. But his dedication to the perfection of the Empire, which allowed him to perfect his understanding of the Force, precluded any preeminent attachments.

“I am a Sith warrior,” he said.

“And things with us will always be as they are?”

“Master and servant. This displeases you?”

“You do not treat me as your servant. Not always.”

He let a hardness he did not feel creep into his voice. “Yet a servant you are. Do not forget it.”

The lavender skin of her cheeks darkened to purple, but not with shame, with anger. She stopped, turned, and stared directly into his face. He felt as if the cowl and respirator he wore hid nothing from her.

“I know your nature better than you know yourself. I nursed you after the Battle of Alderaan, when you lay near death from that Jedi witch. You speak the words in earnest—conflict, evolution, perfection—but belief does not reach your heart.”

He stared at her, the twin stalks of her lekku framing the lovely symmetry of her face. She held his eyes, unflinching, the scar that stretched across her throat visible under her collar.

Struck by her beauty, he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to him. She did not resist and pressed her curves against him. He slipped his respirator to the side and kissed her with his ruined lips, kissed her hard.

“Perhaps you do not know me as well as you imagine,” he said, his voice unmuffled by the mechanical filter of his respirator.

As a boy, he had killed a Twi’lek servant woman in his adoptive father’s house, his first kill. She had committed some minor offense he could no longer recall and that had never mattered. He had not killed her because of her misdeed. He’d killed her to assure himself that he could kill. He still recalled the pride with which his adoptive father had regarded the Twi’lek’s corpse. Soon afterward, Malgus had been sent to the Sith Academy on Dromund Kaas. “I think I do know you,” she said, defiant.

He smiled, she smiled, and he released her. He replaced his respirator and checked the chrono on his wrist.

If all went as planned, the defense grid should come down in moments.

A surge of emotion went through him, born in his certainty that his entire life had for its purpose the next hour, that the Force had brought him to the moment when he would engineer the fall of the Republic and the ascendance of the Empire.

His comlink received a message. He tapped a key to decrypt it.

It is done, the words read.

The Mandalorian had done her job. He did not know the woman’s real name, so in his mind she had become a title, the Mandalorian. He knew only that she worked for money, hated the Jedi for some personal reason known only to herself, and was extraordinarily skilled.

The message told him that the planet’s defense grid had gone dark, yet none of the thousands of sentients who shared the plaza with him looked concerned. No alarm had sounded. Military and security ships were not racing through the sky. The civilian and military authorities were oblivious to the fact that Coruscant’s security net had been compromised.

But they would notice it before long. And they would disbelieve what their instruments told them. They would run a test to determine if the readings were accurate.

By then, Coruscant would be aflame.

We are moving, he keyed into the device. Meet us within.

He took one last look around, at the children and their parents playing, laughing, eating, everyone going about their lives, unaware that everything was about to change.

“Come,” he said to Eleena, and picked up his pace. His cloak swirled around him. So, too, his anger.

Moments later he received another coded transmission, this one from the hijacked drop ship.

Jump complete. On approach. Arrival in ninety seconds.

Ahead, he saw the four towers surrounding the stacked tiers of the Jedi Temple, its ancient stone as orange as fire in the light of the setting sun. The civilians seemed to give it a wide berth, as if it were a holy place rather than one of sacrilege.

He would reduce it to rubble.

He walked toward it and fate walked beside him.

Statues of long-dead Jedi Masters lined the approach to the Temple’s enormous doorway. The setting sun stretched the statue’s tenebrous forms across the duracrete. He walked through the shadows and past them, noting some names: Odan-Urr, Ooroo, Arca Jeth.

“You have been deceived,” he whispered to them. “Your time is past.”

Most of the Jedi Order’s current Masters were away, either participating in the sham negotiations on Alderaan or protecting Republic interests offplanet, but the Temple was not entirely unguarded. Three uniformed Republic soldiers, blaster rifles in hand, stood watchful near the doors. He sensed two more on a high ledge to his left.

Eleena tensed beside him, but she did not falter.

He checked his chrono again. Fifty-three seconds.

The three soldiers, wary, watched him and Eleena approach. One of them spoke into a wrist comlink, perhaps querying a command center within.

They would not know what to make of Malgus. Despite the war, they felt safe in their enclave in the center of the Republic. He would teach them otherwise.

“Stop right there,” one of them said.

“I cannot stop,” Malgus said, too softly to hear behind the respirator. “Not ever.”

STILL HEART, still mind, these things eluded Aryn, floated before her like snowflakes in sun, visible for a moment, then melted and gone. She fiddled with the smooth coral beads of the Nautolan tranquillity bracelet Master Zallow had given her when she’d been promoted to Jedi Knight. Silently counting the smooth, slick beads, sliding them over their chain one after another, she sought the calm of the Force.

No use.

What was wrong with her?

Outside, speeders hummed past the large window that looked out on a bucolic, beautiful Alderaanian landscape suitable for a painting. Inside, she felt turmoil. Ordinarily, she was better able to shield herself from surrounding emotions. She usually considered her empathic sense a boon of the Force, but now …

She realized she was bouncing her leg, stopped. She crossed and uncrossed her legs. Did it again.

Syo sat beside her, callused hands crossed over his lap, as still as the towering statuary of Alderaanian statesmen that lined the domed, marble-tiled hall in which they sat. Light from the setting sun poured through the window, pushing long shadows across the floor. Syo did not look at her when he spoke.

“You are restless.”

“Yes.”

In truth, she felt as if she were a boiling pot, the steam of her emotional state seeking escape around the lid of her control. The air felt charged, agitated. She would have attributed the feelings to the stress of the peace negotiations, but it seemed to her something more. She felt a doom creeping up on her, a darkness. Was the Force trying to tell her something?

“Restlessness ill suits you,” Syo said.

“I know. I feel … odd.”

His expression did not change behind his short beard, but he would know to take her feelings seriously. “Odd? How?”

She found his voice calming, which she supposed was part of the reason he had spoken. “As if … as if something is about to happen. I can explain it no better than that.”

“This originates from the Force, from your empathy?”

“I don’t know. I just … feel like something is about to happen.”

He seemed to consider this, then said, “Something is about to happen.” He indicated with a glance the large double doors to their left, behind which Master Dar’nala and Jedi Knight Satele Shan had begun negotiations with the Sith delegation. “An end to the war, if we are fortunate.”

She shook her head. “Something other than that.” She licked her lips, shifted in her seat.

They sat in silence for a time. Aryn continued to fidget.

Syo cleared his throat, and his brown eyes fixed on a point across the hall. He spoke in a soft tone. “They see your agitation. They interpret it as something it is not.”

She knew. She could feel their contempt, an irritation in her mind akin to a pebble in her boot.

A pair of dark-cloaked Sith, members of the Empire’s delegation to Alderaan, sat on a stone bench along the wall opposite Aryn and Syo. Fifteen meters of polished marble floor, the two rows of Alderaanian statuary, and the gulf of competing philosophies separated Jedi and Sith.

Unlike Aryn, the Sith did not appear agitated. They appeared coiled. Both of them leaned forward, forearms on their knees, eyes on Aryn and Syo, as if they might spring to their feet at any moment. Aryn sensed their derision over her lack of control, could see it in the curl of the male’s lip.

She turned her eyes from the Sith and tried to occupy her mind by reading the names engraved on the pedestals of the statues—Keers Dorana, Velben Orr, others she’d never heard of—but the presence of the Sith pressed against her Force sensitivity. She felt as if she were submerged deep underwater, the pressure pushing against her. She kept waiting for her ears to pop, to grant her release in a flash of pain. But it did not come, and her eyes kept returning to the Sith pair.

The woman, her slight frame lost in the shapelessness of her deep blue robes, glared through narrow, pale eyes. Her long dark hair, pulled into a topknot, hung like a hangman’s noose from her scalp. The slim human man who sat beside her had the same sallow skin as the woman, the same pale eyes, the same glare. Aryn assumed them to be siblings. His dark hair and long beard—braided and forked into two tines—could not hide a face so lined with scars and pitted with pockmarks that it reminded Aryn of the ground after an artillery barrage. Her eyes fell to the thin hilt of the man’s lightsaber, the bulky, squared-off hilt of the woman’s.

She imagined their parents had noticed brother and sister’s Force potential when they had been young and shipped them off to Dromund Kaas for indoctrination. She knew that’s what they did with Force-sensitives in the Empire. If true, the Sith sitting across from her hadn’t really fallen to the dark side; they’d never had a chance to rise and become anything else.

She wondered how she might have turned out had she been born in the Empire. Would she have trained at Dromund Kaas, her empathy put in service to pain and torture?

“Do not pity them,” Syo said in Bocce, as if reading her thoughts. Bocce sounded awkward on his lips. “Or doubt yourself.”

His insight surprised her only slightly. He knew her well. “Who is the empath now?” she answered in the same tongue.

“They chose their path. As we all do.”

“I know,” she said.

She shook her head over the wasted potential, and the eyes of both Sith tracked her movement with the alert, focused gaze of predators tracking prey. The Academy at Dromund Kaas had turned them into hunters, and they saw the universe through a hunter’s eyes. Perhaps that explained the war in microcosm.

But it did nothing to explain the proposed peace.

And perhaps that was why Aryn felt so ill at ease.

The offer to negotiate an end to the war had come like a lightning strike from the Sith Emperor, unbidden, unexpected, sending a jolt through the government of the Republic. The Empire and the Republic had agreed to a meeting on Alderaan, the scene of an earlier Republic victory in the war, the number and makeup of the two delegations limited and strictly proscribed. To her surprise, Aryn was among the Jedi selected, though she was stationed perpetually outside the negotiation room.

“You have been honored by this selection,” Master Zallow had told her before she took the ship for Alderaan, and she knew it to be true, yet she had felt uneasy since leaving Coruscant. She felt even less at ease on Alderaan. It wasn’t that she had fought on Alderaan before. It was … something else.

“I am fine,” she said to Syo, hoping that saying it would work a spell and make it so. “Lack of sleep perhaps.”

“Be at ease,” he said. “Everything will work out.”

She nodded, trying to believe it. She closed her eyes on the Sith and fell back on Master Zallow’s teachings. She felt the Force within and around her, a matrix of glowing lines created by the intersection of all living things. As always, the line of Master Zallow glowed as brightly as a guiding star in her inner space.

She missed him, his calm presence, his wisdom.

Focusing inward, she picked a point in her mind, made it a hole, and let her unease drain into it.

Calm settled on her.

When she opened her eyes, she fixed them on the male Sith. Something in his expression, a knowing look in his eye, half hidden by his sneer, troubled Aryn, but she kept her face neutral and held his gaze, as still as a sculpture.

“I see you,” the Sith said from across the room.

“And I you,” she answered, her voice steady.

THE OLD REPUBLIC

(5,000–33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

Long—long—ago in a galaxy far, far away … some twenty-five thousand years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: A New Hope … a large number of star systems and species in the center of the galaxy came together to form the Galactic Republic, governed by a Chancellor and a Senate from the capital city-world of Coruscant. As the Republic expanded via the hyperspace lanes, it absorbed new member worlds from newly discovered star systems; it also expanded its military to deal with the hostile civilizations, slavers, pirates, and gangster-species such as the slug-like Hutts that were encountered in the outward exploration. But the most vital defenders of the Republic were the Jedi Knights. Originally a reclusive order dedicated to studying the mysteries of the life energy known as the Force, the Jedi became the Republic’s guardians, charged by the Senate with keeping the peace—with wise words if possible; with lightsabers if not.

But the Jedi weren’t the only Force-users in the galaxy. An ancient civil war had pitted those Jedi who used the Force selflessly against those who allowed themselves to be ruled by their ambitions—which the Jedi warned led to the dark side of the Force. Defeated in that long-ago war, the dark siders fled beyond the galactic frontier, where they built a civilization of their own: the Sith Empire.

The first great conflict between the Republic and the Sith Empire occurred when two hyperspace explorers stumbled on the Sith worlds, giving the Sith Lord Naga Sadow and his dark side warriors a direct invasion route into the Republic’s central worlds. This war resulted in the first destruction of the Sith Empire—but it was hardly the last. For the next four thousand years, skirmishes between the Republic and Sith grew into wars, with the scales always tilting toward one or the other, and peace never lasting. The galaxy was a place of almost constant strife: Sith armies against Republic armies; Force-using Sith Lords against Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights; and the dreaded nomadic mercenaries called Mandalorians bringing muscle and firepower wherever they stood to gain.

Then, a thousand years before A New Hope and the Battle of Yavin, the Jedi defeated the Sith at the Battle of Ruusan, decimating the so-called Brotherhood of Darkness that was the heart of the Sith Empire—and most of its power.

One Sith Lord survived—Darth Bane—and his vision for the Sith differed from that of his predecessors. He instituted a new doctrine: No longer would the followers of the dark side build empires or amass great armies of Force-users. There would be only two Sith at a time: a Master and an apprentice. From that time on, the Sith remained in hiding, biding their time and plotting their revenge, while the rest of the galaxy enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace, so long and strong that the Republic eventually dismantled its standing armies.

But while the Republic seemed strong, its institutions had begun to rot. Greedy corporations sought profits above all else and a corrupt Senate did nothing to stop them, until the corporations reduced many planets to raw materials for factories and entire species became subjects for exploitation. Individual Jedi continued to defend the Republic’s citizens and obey the will of the Force, but the Jedi Order to which they answered grew increasingly out of touch. And a new Sith mastermind, Darth Sidious, at last saw a way to restore Sith domination over the galaxy and its inhabitants, and quietly worked to set in motion the revenge of the Sith …

If you’re a reader new to the Old Republic era, here are three great starting points:

• The Old Republic: Deceived, by Paul S. Kemp: Kemp tells the tale of the Republic’s betrayal by the Sith Empire, and features Darth Malgus, an intriguing, complicated villain.

• Knight Errant, by John Jackson Miller: Alone in Sith territory, the headstrong Jedi Kerra Holt seeks to thwart the designs of an eccentric clan of fearsome, powerful, and bizarre Sith Lords.

• Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, by Drew Karpyshyn: A portrait of one of the most famous Sith Lords, from his horrifying childhood to an adulthood spent in the implacable pursuit of vengeance.

Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars Legends novel set in the Old Republic era.

1

Dessel was lost in the suffering of his job, barely even aware of his surroundings. His arms ached from the endless pounding of the hydraulic jack. Small bits of rock skipped off the cavern wall as he bored through, ricocheting off his protective goggles and stinging his exposed face and hands. Clouds of atomized dust filled the air, obscuring his vision, and the screeching whine of the jack filled the cavern, drowning out all other sounds as it burrowed centimeter by agonizing centimeter into the thick vein of cortosis woven into the rock before him.

Impervious to both heat and energy, cortosis was prized in the construction of armor and shielding by both commercial and military interests, especially with the galaxy at war. Highly resistant to blaster bolts, cortosis alloys supposedly could withstand even the blade of a lightsaber. Unfortunately, the very properties that made it so valuable also made it extremely difficult to mine. Plasma torches were virtually useless; it would take days to burn away even a small section of cortosis-laced rock. The only effective way to mine it was through the brute force of hydraulic jacks pounding relentlessly away at a vein, chipping the cortosis free bit by bit.

Cortosis was one of the hardest materials in the galaxy. The force of the pounding quickly wore down the head of a jack, blunting it until it became almost useless. The dust clogged the hydraulic pistons, making them jam. Mining cortosis was hard on the equipment … and even harder on the miners.

Des had been hammering away for nearly six standard hours. The jack weighed more than thirty kilos, and the strain of keeping it raised and pressed against the rock face was taking its toll. His arms were trembling from the exertion. His lungs were gasping for air and choking on the clouds of fine mineral dust thrown up from the jack’s head. Even his teeth hurt: the rattling vibration felt as if it were shaking them loose from his gums.

But the miners on Apatros were paid based on how much cortosis they brought back. If he quit now, another miner would jump in and start working the vein, taking a share of the profits. Des didn’t like to share.

The whine of the jack’s motor took on a higher pitch, becoming a keening wail Des was all too familiar with. At twenty thousand rpm, the motor sucked in dust like a thirsty bantha sucking up water after a long desert crossing. The only way to combat it was by regular cleaning and servicing, and the Outer Rim Oreworks Company preferred to buy cheap equipment and replace it, rather than sinking credits into maintenance. Des knew exactly what was going to happen next—and a second later, it did. The motor blew.

The hydraulics seized with a horrible crunch, and a cloud of black smoke spit out the rear of the jack. Cursing ORO and its corporate policies, Des released his cramped finger from the trigger and tossed the spent piece of equipment to the floor.

“Move aside, kid,” a voice said.

Gerd, one of the other miners, stepped up and tried to shoulder Des out of the way so he could work the vein with his own jack. Gerd had been working the mines for nearly twenty standard years, and it had turned his body into a mass of hard, knotted muscle. But Des had been working the mines for ten years himself, ever since he was a teenager, and he was just as solid as the older man—and a little bigger. He didn’t budge.

“I’m not done here,” he said. “Jack died, that’s all. Hand me yours and I’ll keep at it for a while.”

“You know the rules, kid. You stop working and someone else is allowed to move in.”

Technically, Gerd was right. But nobody ever jumped another miner’s claim over an equipment malfunction. Not unless he was trying to pick a fight.

Des took a quick look around. The chamber was empty except for the two of them, standing less than half a meter apart. Not a surprise; Des usually chose caverns far off the main tunnel network. It had to be more than mere coincidence that Gerd was here.

Des had known Gerd for as long as he could remember. The middle-aged man had been friends with Hurst, Des’s father. Back when Des first started working the mines at thirteen, he had taken a lot of abuse from the bigger miners. His father had been the worst tormentor, but Gerd had been one of the main instigators, dishing out more than his fair share of teasing, insults, and the occasional cuff on the ear.

Their harassments had ended shortly after Des’s father died of a massive heart attack. It wasn’t because the miners felt sorry for the orphaned young man, though. By the time Hurst died, the tall, skinny teenager they loved to bully had become a mountain of muscle with heavy hands and a fierce temper. Mining was a tough job; it was the closest thing to hard labor outside a Republic prison colony. Whoever worked the mines on Apatros got big—and Des just happened to become the biggest of them all. Half a dozen black eyes, countless bloody noses, and one broken jaw in the space of a month was all it took for Hurst’s old friends to decide they’d be happier if they left Des alone.

Yet it was almost as if they blamed him for Hurst’s death, and every few months one of them tried again. Gerd had always been smart enough to keep his distance—until now.

“I don’t see any of your friends here with you, old man,” Des said. “So back off my claim, and nobody gets hurt.”

Gerd spat on the ground at Des’s feet. “You don’t even know what day it is, do you, boy? Kriffing disgrace is what you are!”

They were standing close enough to each other that Des could smell the sour Corellian whiskey on Gerd’s breath. The man was drunk. Drunk enough to come looking for a fight, but still sober enough to hold his own.

“Five years ago today,” Gerd said, shaking his head sadly. “Five years ago today your own father died, and you don’t even remember!”

Des rarely even thought about his father anymore. He hadn’t been sorry to see him go. His earliest memories were of his father smacking him. He didn’t even remember the reason; Hurst rarely needed one.

“Can’t say I miss Hurst the same way you do, Gerd.”

“Hurst?” Gerd snorted. “He raised you by himself after your mama died, and you don’t even have the respect to call him Dad? You ungrateful son-of-a-Kath-hound!”

Des glared down menacingly at Gerd, but the shorter man was too full of drink and self-righteous indignation to be intimidated.

“Should’ve expected this from a mudcrutch whelp like you,” Gerd continued. “Hurst always said you were no good. He knew there was something wrong with you … Bane.”

Des narrowed his eyes, but didn’t rise to the bait. Hurst had called him by that name when he was drunk. Bane. He had blamed his son for his wife’s death. Blamed him for being stuck on Apatros. He considered his only child to be the bane of his existence, a fact he’d tended to spit out at Des in his drunken rages.

Bane. It represented everything spiteful, petty, and mean about his father. It struck at the innermost fears of every child: fear of disappointment, fear of abandonment, fear of violence. As a kid, that name had hurt more than all the smacks from his father’s heavy fists. But Des wasn’t a kid anymore. Over time he’d learned to ignore it, along with all the rest of the hateful bile that spilled from his father’s mouth.

“I don’t have time for this,” he muttered. “I’ve got work to do.”

With one hand he grabbed the hydraulic jack from Gerd’s grasp. He put the other hand on Gerd’s shoulder and shoved him away. Stumbling back, the inebriated man caught his heel on a rock and fell roughly to the ground.

He stood up with a snarl, his hands balling into fists. “Guess your daddy’s been gone too long, boy. You need someone to beat the sense back into you!”

Gerd was drunk, but he was no fool, Des realized. Des was bigger, stronger, younger … but he’d spent the last six hours working a hydraulic jack. He was covered in grime and the sweat was dripping off his face. His shirt was drenched. Gerd’s uniform, on the other hand, was still relatively clean: no dust, no sweat stains. He must have been planning this all day, taking it easy and sitting back while Des wore himself out.

But Des wasn’t about to back down from a fight. Throwing Gerd’s jack to the ground, he dropped into a crouch, feet wide and arms held out in front of him.

Gerd charged forward, swinging his right fist in a vicious uppercut. Des reached out and caught the punch with the open palm of his left hand, absorbing the force of the blow. His right hand snapped forward and grabbed the underside of Gerd’s right wrist; as he pulled the older man forward, Des ducked down and turned, driving his shoulder into Gerd’s chest. Using his opponent’s own momentum against him, Des straightened up and yanked hard on Gerd’s wrist, flipping him up and over so that he crashed to the ground on his back.

The fight should have ended right then; Des had a split second where he could have dropped his knee onto his opponent, driving the breath from his lungs and pinning him to the ground while he pounded Gerd with his fists. But it didn’t happen. His back, exhausted from hours of hefting the thirty-kilo jack, spasmed.

The pain was agonizing; instinctively Des straightened up, clutching at the knotted lumbar muscles. It gave Gerd a chance to roll out of the way and get back to his feet.

Somehow Des managed to drop into his fighting crouch again. His back howled in protest, and he grimaced as red-hot daggers of pain shot through his body. Gerd saw the grimace and laughed.

“Cramping up there, boy? You should know better than to try and fight after a six-hour shift in the mines.”

Gerd charged forward again. This time his hands weren’t fists, but claws grasping and grabbing at anything they could find, trying to nullify the younger man’s height and reach by getting in close. Des tried to scramble out of the way, but his legs were too stiff and sore to get him clear. One hand grabbed his shirt, the other got hold of his belt as Gerd pulled both of them to the ground.

They grappled together, wrestling on the hard, uneven stone of the cavern floor. Gerd had his face buried against Dessel’s chest to protect it, keeping Des from landing a solid elbow or head-butt. He still had a grip on Des’s belt, but now his other hand was free and punching blindly up to where he guessed Des’s face would be. Des was forced to wrap his arms in and around Gerd’s own, interlocking them so neither man could throw a punch.

With their limbs pinned, strategy and technique meant little. The fight had become a test of strength and endurance, with the two combatants slowly wearing each other down. Dessel tried to roll Gerd over onto his back, but his weary body betrayed him. His limbs were heavy and soft; he couldn’t get the leverage he needed. Instead it was Gerd who was able to twist and turn, wrenching one of his hands free while still keeping his face pressed tight against Des’s chest so it wouldn’t be exposed.

Des wasn’t so lucky … his face was open and vulnerable. Gerd struck a blow with his free hand, but he didn’t hit with a closed fist. Instead he drove his thumb hard into Des’s cheek, only a few centimeters from his real target. He struck again with the thumb, looking to gouge out one of his opponent’s eyes and leave him blind and writhing in pain.

It took Des a second to realize what was happening; his tired mind had become as slow and clumsy as his body. He turned his face away just as the second blow landed, the thumb jamming painfully into the cartilage of his upper ear.

Dark rage exploded inside Des: a burst of fiery passion that burned away the exhaustion and fatigue. Suddenly his mind was clear, and his body felt strong and rejuvenated. He knew what he was going to do next. More importantly, he knew with absolute certainty what Gerd would do next, too.

He couldn’t explain how he knew; sometimes he could just anticipate an opponent’s next move. Instinct, some might have said. Des felt it was something more. It was too detailed—too specific—to be simple instinct. It was more like a vision, a brief glimpse into the future. And whenever it happened, Des always knew what to do, as if something was guiding and directing his actions.

When the next blow came, Des was more than ready for it. He could picture it perfectly in his mind. He knew exactly when it was coming and precisely where it would strike. This time he turned his head in the opposite direction, exposing his face to the incoming blow—and opening his mouth. He bit down hard, his timing perfect, and his teeth sank deep into the dirty flesh of Gerd’s probing thumb.

Gerd screamed as Des clamped his jaw shut, severing the tendons and striking bone. He wondered if he could bite clean through and then—as if the very thought made it happen—he severed Gerd’s thumb.

The screams became shrieks as Gerd released his grasp and rolled away, clasping his maimed hand with his whole one. Crimson blood welled up through the fingers trying to stanch the flow from his stump.

Standing up slowly, Des spat the thumb out onto the ground. The taste of blood was hot in his mouth. His body felt strong and reenergized, as if some great power surged through his veins. All the fight had been taken out of his opponent; Des could do anything he wanted to Gerd now.

The older man rolled back and forth on the floor, his hand clutched to his chest. He was moaning and sobbing, begging for mercy, pleading for help.

Des shook his head in disgust; Gerd had brought this on himself. It had started as a simple fistfight. The loser would have ended up with a black eye and some bruises, but nothing more. Then the older man had taken things to another level by trying to blind him, and he’d responded in kind. Des had learned long ago not to escalate a fight unless he was willing to pay the price of losing. Now Gerd had learned that lesson, too.

Des had a temper, but he wasn’t the kind to keep beating on a helpless opponent. Without looking back at his defeated foe, he left the cavern and headed back up the tunnel to tell one of the foremen what had happened so someone could come tend to Gerd’s injury.

He wasn’t worried about the consequences. The medics could reattach Gerd’s thumb, so at worst Des would be fined a day or two’s wages. The corporation didn’t really care what its employees did, as long as they kept coming back to mine the cortosis. Fights were common among the miners, and ORO almost always turned a blind eye, though this particular fight had been more vicious than most—savage and short, with a brutal end.

Just like life on Apatros.

2

Sitting in the back of the land cruiser used to transport miners between Apatros’s only colony and the mines, Des felt exhausted. All he wanted was to get back to his bunk in the barracks and sleep. The adrenaline had drained out of him, leaving him hyperaware of the stiffness and soreness of his body. He slumped down in his seat and gazed around the interior of the cruiser.

Normally, there would have been twenty other miners crammed into the speeder with him, but this one was empty except for him and the pilot. After the fight with Gerd, the foreman had suspended Des without pay, effective immediately, and had ordered the transport to take him back to the colony.

“This kind of thing is getting old, Des,” the foreman had said with a frown. “We’ve got to make an example of you this time. You can’t work the mines until Gerd is healed up and back on the job.”

What he really meant was, You can’t earn any credits until Gerd comes back. He’d still be charged room and board, of course. Every day that he sat around doing nothing would go onto his tab, adding to the debt he was working so desperately to pay off.

Des figured it would be four or five days until Gerd was able to handle a hydraulic jack again. The on-site medic had reattached the severed thumb using a vibroscalpel and synthflesh. A few days of kolto injections and some cheap meds to dull the pain, and Gerd would be back at it. Bacta therapy could have him back in a day; but bacta was expensive, and ORO wouldn’t spring for it unless Gerd had miner’s insurance … which Des highly doubted.

Most miners never bothered with the company-sponsored insurance program. It was expensive, for one thing. What with room, board, and the fees covering the cost of transport to and from the mines, most thought they gave ORO more than enough of their hard-earned pay without adding insurance premiums onto the stack.

It wasn’t just the cost, though. It was almost as if the men and women who worked the cortosis mines were in denial, refusing to admit the potential dangers and hazards they encountered every day. Getting insurance would force them to take a look at the cold, hard facts.

Few miners ever reached their golden years. The tunnels claimed many, burying bodies in cave-ins or incinerating them when somebody tapped into a pocket of explosive gases trapped in the rock. Even those who made it out of the mines tended not to survive long into their retirement. The mines took their toll. Sixty-year-old men were left with bodies that looked and felt like they were ninety, broken shells worn down by decades of hard physical labor and exposure to airborne contaminants that slipped through the substandard ORO filters.

When Des’s father died—with no insurance, of course—all Des got out of it was the privilege of taking on his father’s accumulated debt. Hurst had spent more time drinking and gambling than mining. To pay for his monthly room and board he’d often had to borrow credits from ORO at an interest rate that would be criminal anywhere but in the Outer Rim. The debt kept piling up, month to month and year to year, but Hurst didn’t seem to care. He was a single parent with a son he resented, trapped in a brutal job he despised; he had given up any hope of escaping Apatros long before the heart attack claimed him.

The Hutt spawn probably would have been glad to know his son had gotten stuck with his bill.

The transport sped above the barren rocks of the small planet’s flatlands with no sound but the endless drone of the engines. The featureless wastes flew by in a blur, until the view out the window was nothing but a curtain of shapeless gray. The effect was hypnotic: Des could feel his tired mind and body eager to drift into deep and dreamless sleep.

This was how they got you. Work you to exhaustion, dull your senses, numb your will into submission … until you accepted your lot and wasted your entire life in the grit and grime of the cortosis mines. All in the relentless service of the Outer Rim Oreworks Company. It was a surprisingly effective trap; it worked on men like Gerd and Hurst. But it wasn’t going to work on Des.

Even with his father’s crushing debt, Des knew he’d pay ORO off someday and leave this life behind. He was destined for something greater than this small, insignificant existence. He knew this with absolute certainty, and it was this knowledge that gave him the strength to carry on in the face of the relentless, sometimes hopeless grind. It gave him the strength to fight, even when part of him felt like giving up.

He was suspended, unable to work the mines, but there were other ways to earn credits. With a great effort he forced himself to stand up. The floor swayed under his feet as the speeder made constant adjustments to maintain its programmed cruising altitude of half a meter above ground level. He took a second to get used to the rolling rhythm of the transport, then half walked, half staggered up the aisle between the seats to the pilot at the front. He didn’t recognize the man, but they all tended to look the same anyway: grim, unsmiling features, dull eyes, and always wearing an expression as if they were on the verge of a blinding headache.

“Hey,” Des said, trying to sound nonchalant, “any ships come in to the spaceport today?”

There was no reason for the pilot to keep his attention fixed on the path ahead. The forty-minute trip between the mines and the colony was a straight line across an empty plain; some of the pilots even stole naps along the route. Yet this one refused to turn and look at Des as he answered.

“Cargo ship touched down a few hours ago,” he said in a bored voice. “Military. Republic cargo ship.”

Des smiled. “They staying for a while?”

The pilot didn’t answer; he only snorted and shook his head at the stupidity of the question. Des nodded and stumbled back toward his seat at the rear of the transport. He knew the answer, too.

Cortosis was used in the hulls of everything from fighters to capital ships, as well as being woven into the body armor of the troops. And as the war against the Sith dragged on, the Republic’s need for cortosis kept increasing. Every few weeks a Republic freighter would touch down on Apatros. The next day it would leave again, its cargo bays filled with the valuable mineral. Until then the crew—officers and enlisted soldiers alike—would have nothing to do but wait. From past experience, Des knew that whenever Republic soldiers had a few hours to kill they liked to play cards. And wherever people played cards, there was money to be made.

Lowering himself back onto his seat at the rear of the speeder, Des decided that maybe he wasn’t quite ready to hit his bunk after all.

By the time the transport stopped on the edges of the colony, Des’s body was tingling with anticipation. He hopped out and sauntered toward his barracks at a leisurely pace, fighting his own eagerness and the urge to run. Even now, he imagined, the Republic soldiers and their credits would be sitting at the gaming tables in the colony’s only cantina.

Still, there was no point in rushing over there. It was late afternoon, the sun just beginning its descent beyond the horizon to the north. By now most of the miners from the night shift would be awake. Many of them would already be at the cantina, whiling away the time until they had to make the journey out to the mines to start their shift. For the next two hours Des knew he’d be lucky to find a place to sit down in the cantina, never mind finding an empty seat at a pazaak or sabacc table. Meanwhile, it would be another few hours before the men working the day shift climbed onto the waiting transports to head back to their homes; he’d get to the cantina long before any of them.

Back at his barracks, he stripped off his grime-stained coveralls and climbed into the deserted communal showers, scouring the sweat and fine rock dust from his body. Then he changed into some clean clothes and sauntered out into the street, making his way slowly toward the cantina on the far side of town.

The cantina didn’t have a name; it didn’t need one. Nobody ever had any trouble finding it. Apatros was a small world, barely more than a moon with an atmosphere and some indigenous plant life. There were precious few places to go: the mines, the colony, or the barren wastes in between. The mines were a massive complex encompassing the caves and tunnels dug by ORO, as well as the refining and processing branches of ORO’s operations.

The spaceports were located there, too. Freighters left daily with shipments of cortosis bound for some wealthier world closer to Coruscant and the Galactic Core, and incoming vessels bringing equipment and supplies to keep the mines running arrived every other day. Employees who weren’t strong enough to mine cortosis worked in the refining plants or the spaceport. The pay wasn’t as good, but they tended to live longer.

But no matter where people worked, they all came home to the same place at the end of their shifts. The colony was nothing more than a ramshackle town of temporary barracks thrown together by ORO to house the few hundred workers expected to keep the mines running. Like the world itself, the colony was officially known as Apatros. To those who lived there, it was more commonly referred to as “the muck-huts.” Every building was the same shade of dingy gray durasteel, the exterior weathered and worn. The insides of the buildings were virtually identical, temporary workers’ barracks that had become all too permanent. Each structure housed four small private rooms meant for two people, but often holding three or more. Sometimes entire families shared one of those rooms, unless they could find the credits for the outrageous rents ORO charged for more space. Each room had bunks built into the walls and a single door that opened onto a narrow hall; a communal bathroom and shower were located at the end. The doors tended to squeak on ill-fitting hinges that were never tended to; the roofs were a patchwork of quick fixes to seal up the leaks that inevitably sprang whenever it rained. Broken windows were taped against the wind and cold, but never replaced. A thin layer of dust accumulated over everything, but few of the residents ever bothered to sweep out their domiciles.

The entire colony was less than a kilometer on each square side, making it possible to walk from any given building to any of the other identical structures in fewer than twenty standard minutes. Despite the unrelenting similarity of the architecture, navigating the colony was easy. The barracks had been placed in straight rows and columns, forming a grid of utilitarian streets between the uniformly spaced domiciles. The streets couldn’t exactly be called clean, though they were hardly festering with garbage. ORO cleared trash and refuse just often enough to keep conditions sanitary, since an outbreak of diseases bred by filth would adversely affect the mine’s production. However, the company didn’t seem to mind the cluttered junk that inevitably accumulated throughout the town. Broken-down generators, rusted-out machinery, corroded scraps of metal, and discarded, worn-out tools crowded the narrow streets between the barracks.

There were only two structures in the colony that were in any way distinguished from the rest. One was the ORO market, the only store onworld. It had once been a barracks, but the bunks had been replaced with shelves, and the communal shower area was now a secure storage room. A small black-and-white sign had been fastened to the wall outside, listing the hours of operation. There were no displays to lure shoppers in, and no advertising. The market stocked only the most basic items, all at scandelous markups. Credit was gladly advanced against future wages at ORO’s typically high interest rate, guaranteeing that buyers would spend even more hours in the mine working off their purchases.

The other dissimilar building was the cantina itself, a magnificent triumph of beauty and design when compared with the dismal homogeny of the rest of the colony. The cantina was built a few hundred meters beyond the edge of the town, set well apart from the gray grid of barracks. It stood only three stories high, but because every other structure was limited to a single floor it dominated the landscape. Not that it needed to be that tall. Inside the cantina everything was located on the ground floor; the upper stories were merely a façade constructed for show by Groshik, the Neimoidian owner and bartender. Above the first-floor ceiling, the second and third floors didn’t really exist—there were only the rising walls and a dome made of tinted violet glass, illuminated from within. Matching violet lights covered the pale blue exterior walls. On almost any world the effect would have been ostentatious and tacky, but amid the gray of Apatros it was doubly so. Groshik often proclaimed that he had intentionally made his cantina as garish as possible, simply to offend the ORO powers-that-be. The sentiment made him popular with the miners, but Des doubted if ORO really cared one way or the other. Groshik could paint his cantina any color he wanted, as long as he gave the corporation its cut of the profits each week.

The twenty-standard-hour day of Apatros was split evenly between the two shifts of miners. Des and the rest of the early crew worked from 0800 to 1800; his counterparts worked from 1800 to 0800. Groshik, in an effort to maximize profits, opened each afternoon at 1300 and didn’t close for ten straight hours. This allowed him to serve the night-crew workers before they started and catch the day crew when that shift was over. He’d close at 0300, clean for two hours, sleep for six, then get up at 1100 and start the process all over again. His routine was well known to all the miners; the Neimoidian was as regular as the rising and setting of Apatros’s pale orange sun.

As Des crossed the distance between the edge of the colony proper and the cantina’s welcoming door, he could already hear the sounds coming from inside: loud music, laughter, chatter, clinking glasses. It was almost 1600 now. The day shift had two hours to go before quitting time, but the cantina was still packed with nightshift workers looking to have a drink or something to eat before they boarded the shuttles that would take them to the mines.

Des didn’t recognize any faces: the day and night crews rarely crossed paths. The patrons were mostly humans, with a few Twi’leks, Sullustans, and Cereans filling out the crowd. Des was surprised to notice a Rodian, too. Apparently the night crew were more tolerant of other species than the day shift. There were no waitresses, servers, or dancers; the only employee in the cantina was Groshik himself. Anyone who wanted a drink had to come up to the large bar built into the back wall and order it.

Des pushed his way through the crowd. Groshik saw him coming and momentarily dipped out of sight behind the bar, reappearing with a mug of Gizer ale just as Des reached the counter.

“You’re here early today,” Groshik said as he set the drink down with a heavy thud. His low, gravelly voice was difficult to hear above the din of the crowd. His words always had a guttural quality, as if he were speaking from the very back of his throat.

The Neimoidian liked him, though Des wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because he’d watched Des grow up from a young kid to a man; maybe he just felt sorry Des had been stuck with such a rankweed for a father. Whatever the reason, there was a standing arrangement between the two: Des never had to pay for a drink if it was poured without being asked for. Des gratefully accepted the gift and downed it in one long draft, then slammed the empty mug back down onto the table.

“Ran into a bit of trouble with Gerd,” he replied, wiping his mouth. “I bit his thumb off, so they let me go home early.”

Groshik tilted his head to one side and fixed his enormous red eyes on Des. The sour expression on his amphibian-like face didn’t change, but his body shook ever so slightly. Des knew him well enough to realize the Neimoidian was laughing.

“Seems like a fair trade,” Groshik croaked, refilling the mug.

Des didn’t guzzle the second drink as he had the first. Groshik rarely gave him more than one on the house, and he didn’t want to abuse the bartender’s generosity.

He turned his attention to the crowd. The Republic visitors were easy to spot. Four humans—two men, two women—and a male Ithorian in crisp navy uniforms. It wasn’t just their clothes that made them stand out, though. They all stood straight and tall, whereas most of the miners tended to hunch forward, as if carrying a great weight on their backs.

On one side of the main room, a smaller section was roped off from the rest of the cantina. It was the only part of the place Groshik had nothing to do with. The ORO Company allowed gambling on Apatros, but only if it was in charge of the tables. Officially this was to keep anyone from cheating, but everyone knew ORO’s real concern was keeping the wagers in check. It didn’t want one of its employees to win big and pay off all his or her debts in one lucky night. By keeping the maximum limits low, ORO made sure it was more profitable to work the mines than the tables.

In the gaming section were four more naval soldiers wearing the uniform of the Republic fleet, along with a dozen or so miners. A Twi’lek woman with the rank of petty officer on her lapel was playing pazaak. A young ensign was sitting at the sabacc table, talking loudly to everyone around him, though nobody seemed to be listening to him. Two more officers—both human, one male, one female—also sat at the sabacc table. The woman was a lieutenant; the man bore the insignia of a full commander. Des assumed they were the senior officers in charge of the mission to receive the cortosis shipment.

“I see you’ve noticed our recruiters,” Groshik muttered.

The war against the Sith—officially nothing more than a series of protracted military engagements, even though the whole galaxy knew it was a war—required a steady stream of young and eager cadets for the front lines. And for some reason the Republic always expected the citizens on the Outer Rim worlds to jump at the chance to join them. Whenever a Republic military crew passed through Apatros, the officers tried to round up new recruits. They’d buy a round of drinks, then use it as an excuse to start up a conversation, usually about the glorious and heroic life of being a soldier. Sometimes they’d play up the brutality of the Sith. Other times they’d spin promises of a better life in the Republic military—all the while pretending to be friendly and sympathetic to the locals, hoping a few would join their cause.

Des suspected they received some kind of bonus for any new recruit they conned into signing up. Unfortunately for them, they weren’t going to find too many takers on Apatros. The Republic wasn’t too popular on the Rim; people here, including Des, knew the Core Worlds exploited small, remote planets like Apatros for their own gain. The Sith found a lot of anti-Republic sympathizers out here on the fringes of civilized space; that was one of the reasons their numbers kept growing as the war dragged on.

Despite their dissatisfaction with the Core Worlds, people still might have signed up with the recruiters if the Republic wasn’t so concerned with following the absolute letter of the law. Anyone hoping to escape Apatros and the clutches of the mining corporation was in for a rude shock: debts to ORO still had to be paid, even by recruits protecting the galaxy against the rising Sith threat. If someone owed money to a legitimate corporation, the Republic fleet would garnish his or her wages until those debts were paid. Not too many miners were excited about the prospect of joining a war only to have the privilege of not getting paid.

Some of the miners resented the senior officers and their constant push to lure naïve young men and women into joining their cause. It didn’t bother Des, though. He’d listen to them prattle on all night, as long as they kept playing cards. He figured it was a small price to pay for getting his hands on their credits.

His eagerness must have shown, at least to Groshik. “Any chance you heard a Republic crew was stopping by and then picked a fight with Gerd just so you could get here early?”

Des shook his head. “No. Just a happy coincidence, is all. What angle are they working this time? Glory of the Republic?”

“Trying to warn us about the horrors of the Brotherhood of Darkness,” was the carefully neutral reply. “Not going over too well.”

The cantina owner kept his real opinions to himself when it came to matters of politics. His customers were free to talk about any subject they wanted, but no matter how heated their arguments became, he always refused to take sides.

“Bad for business,” he had explained once. “Agree with someone and they’ll be your friend for the rest of the night. Cross them and they might hate you for weeks.” Neimoidians were known for their shrewd business sense, and Groshik was no exception.

A miner pushed his way up to the bar and demanded a drink. When Groshik went to fill the order, Des turned to study the gaming area. There weren’t any free seats at the sabacc table, so for the time being he was forced into the role of spectator. For well over an hour he studied the plays and the wagers of the newcomers, paying particular attention to the senior officers. They tended to be better players than the enlisted troops, probably because they had more credits to lose.

The game on Apatros followed a modified version of the Bespin Standard rules. The basics of the game were simple: make a hand as close to twenty-three as possible without going over. Each round, a player had to either bet to stay in the hand, or fold. Any player who chose to stay in could draw a new card, discard a card, or place a card into the interference field to lock in its value. At the end of any round a player could come up, revealing his or her hand and forcing all other players to show their cards, as well. Best hand at the table won the hand pot. Any score over twenty-three, or below negative twenty-three, was a bomb-out that required the player to pay a penalty. And if a player had a hand that totaled exactly twenty-three—a pure sabacc—he or she won the sabacc pot as a bonus. But what with random shifts that could unexpectedly change the value of cards from round to round, and other players coming up early, a pure sabacc was a lot harder to achieve than it sounded.

Sabacc was more than a game of luck. It was about strategy and style, knowing when to bluff and when to back down, knowing how to adapt to the ever-changing cards. Some players were too cautious, never betting more than the minimum raise even when they had a good hand. Others were too aggressive, trying to bully the rest of the table with outrageous bets even when they had nothing. A player’s natural tendencies showed through if you knew what to look for.

The ensign, for example, was clearly new to the game. He kept staying in with weak hands instead of folding his cards. He was a chaser, not satisfied with cards good enough to collect the hand pot. He was always looking for the perfect hand, hoping to win big and collect the sabacc pot that kept on growing until it was won. As a result, he kept getting caught with bomb-out hands and having to pay a penalty. It didn’t seem to slow his betting, though. He was one of those players with more credits than sense, which suited Des just fine.

To be an expert sabacc player, you had to know how to control the table. It didn’t take Des many hands to realize the Republic commander was doing just that. He knew how to bet big and make other players fold winning hands. He knew when to bet small to lure others into playing hands they should have folded. He didn’t worry much about his own cards; he knew that the secret to sabacc was figuring out what everyone else was holding … and then letting them think they knew what cards he was holding. It was only when all the hands were revealed and he was raking in the chips that his opponents would realize how wrong they’d been.

He was good, Des had to admit. Better than most of the Republic players who passed through. Despite his pleasant appearance, he was ruthless in scooping up pot after pot. But Des had a good feeling; sometimes he just knew he couldn’t lose. He was going to win tonight … and win big.

There was a groan from one of the miners at the table. “Another round and that sabacc pot was mine!” he said, shaking his head. “You’re lucky you came up when you did,” he added, speaking to the commander.

Des knew it wasn’t luck. The miner had been so excited, he was twitching in his seat. Anyone with half a brain could see he was working toward a powerful hand. The commander had seen it and made his move, cutting the hand short and chopping the other gambler’s hopes off at the knees.

“That’s it,” the miner said, pushing away from the table. “I’m tapped out.”

“Looks like now’s your chance,” Groshik whispered under his breath as he swept past to pour another drink. “Good luck.”

I don’t need luck tonight, Des thought. He crossed the floor of the cantina and stepped over the nanosilk rope into the ORO-controlled gaming room.

RISE OF THE EMPIRE

(33–0 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

This is the era of the Star Wars prequel films, in which Darth Sidious’s schemes lead to the devastating Clone Wars, the betrayal and destruction of the Jedi Order, and the Republic’s transformation into the Empire. It also begins the tragic story of Anakin Skywalker, the boy identified by the Jedi as the Chosen One of ancient prophecy, the one destined to bring balance to the Force. But, as seen in the movies, Anakin’s passions lead him to the dark side, and he becomes the legendary masked and helmeted villain Darth Vader.

Before his fall, however, Anakin spends many years being trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi. When the Clone Wars break out, pitting the Republic against the secessionist Trade Federation, Anakin becomes a war hero and one of the galaxy’s greatest Jedi Knights. But his love for the Naboo Queen and Senator Padmé Amidala, and his friendship with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine—secretly known as the Sith Lord Darth Sidious—will be his undoing …

If you’re a reader looking to jump into the Rise of the Empire era, here are four great starting points:

• Labyrinth of Evil, by James Luceno: Luceno’s tale of the last days of the Clone Wars is equal parts compelling detective story and breakneck adventure, leading directly into the beginning of Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith.

• Republic Commando: Hard Contact, by Karen Traviss: The first of the Republic Commando books introduces us to a band of clone soldiers, their trainers, and the Jedi generals who lead them, mixing incisive character studies with a deep understanding of the lives of soldiers at war.

• Death Troopers, by Joe Schreiber: A story of horror aboard a Star Destroyer that you’ll need to read with the lights on. Supporting roles by Han Solo and his Wookiee sidekick, Chewbacca, are just icing on the cake.

• The Han Solo Adventures, by Brian Daley: Han and Chewie come to glorious life in these three swashbuckling tales of smuggling, romance, and danger in the early days before they meet Luke and Leia.

Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars Legends novel set in the Rise of the Empire era.

1/Purge

THE NIGHTS WERE THE WORST.

Even before his father’s death, Trig Longo had come to dread the long hours after lockdown, the shadows and sounds and the chronically unstable gulf of silence that drew out in between them. Night after night he lay still on his bunk and stared up at the dripping durasteel ceiling of the cell in search of sleep or some acceptable substitute. Sometimes he would actually start to drift off, floating away in that comforting sensation of weightlessness, only to be rattled awake—heart pounding, throat tight, stomach muscles sprung and fluttering—by some shout or a cry, an inmate having a nightmare.

There was no shortage of nightmares aboard the Imperial Prison Barge Purge.

Trig didn’t know exactly how many prisoners the Purge was currently carrying. He guessed maybe five hundred, human and otherwise, scraped from every corner of the galaxy, just as he and his family had been picked up eight standard weeks before. Sometimes the incoming shuttles returned almost empty; on other occasions they came packed with squabbling alien life-forms and alleged Rebel sympathizers of every stripe and species. There were assassins for hire and sociopaths the likes of which Trig had never seen, thin-lipped things that cackled and sneered in seditious languages that, to Trig’s ears, were little more than clicks and hisses.

Every one of them seemed to harbor its own obscure appetites and personal grudges, personal histories blighted with shameful secrets and obscure vendettas. Being cautious became harder; soon you needed eyes in the back of your head—which some of them actually possessed. Two weeks earlier in the mess hall, Trig had noticed a tall, silent inmate sitting with its back to him but watching him nonetheless with a single raw-red eye in the back of its skull. Every day the red-eyed thing seemed to be sitting a little nearer. Then one day, without explanation, it was gone.

Except from his dreams.

Sighing, Trig levered himself up on his elbows and looked through the bars onto the corridor. Gen Pop had cycled down to minimum power for the night, edging the long gangway in permanent gray twilight. The Rodians in the cell across from his had gone to sleep or were feigning it. He forced himself to sit there, regulating his breathing, listening to the faint echoes of the convicts’ uneasy groans and murmurs. Every so often a mouse droid or low-level maintenance unit, one of hundreds occupying the barge, would scramble by on some preprogrammed errand or another. And of course, below it all—low and not quite beneath the scope of hearing—was the omnipresent thrum of the barge’s turbines gnashing endlessly through space.

For as long as they’d been aboard, Trig still hadn’t gotten used to that last sound, the way it shook the Purge to its framework, rising up through his legs and rattling his bones and nerves. There was no escaping it, the way it undermined every moment of life, as familiar as his own pulse.

Trig thought back to sitting in the infirmary just two weeks earlier, watching his father draw one last shaky breath, and the silence afterward as the medical droids disconnected the biomonitors from the old man’s ruined body and prepared to haul it away. As the last of the monitors fell silent, he’d heard that low steady thunder of the engines, one more unnecessary reminder of where he was and where he was going. He remembered how that noise had made him feel lost and small and inescapably sad—some special form of artificial gravity that seemed to work directly against his heart.

He had known then, as he knew now, that it really only meant one thing, the ruthlessly grinding effort of the Empire consolidating its power.

Forget politics, his father had always said. Just give ’em something they need, or they’ll eat you alive.

And now they’d been eaten alive anyway, despite the fact that they’d never been sympathizers, no more than low-level grifters scooped up on a routine Imperial sweep. The engines of tyranny ground on, bearing them forward across the galaxy toward some remote penal moon. Trig sensed that noise would continue, would carry on indefinitely, echoing right up until—

“Trig?”

It was Kale’s voice behind him, unexpected, and Trig flinched a little at the sound of it. He looked back and saw his older brother gazing back at him, Kale’s handsomely rumpled, sleep-slackened face just a ghostly three-quarter profile suspended in the cell’s gloom. Kale looked like he was still only partly awake and unsure whether or not he was dreaming any of this.

“What’s wrong?” Kale asked, a drowsy murmur that came out: Wussrong?

Trig cleared his throat. His voice had started changing recently, and he was acutely aware of how it broke high and low when he wasn’t paying strict attention. “Nothing.”

“You worried about tomorrow?”

“Me?” Trig snorted. “Come on.”

“ ’S okay if you are.” Kale seemed to consider this and then uttered a bemused grunt. “You’d be crazy not to be.”

“You’re not scared,” Trig said. “Dad would never have—”

“I’ll go alone.”

“No.” The word snapped from his throat with almost painful angularity. “We need to stick together, that’s what Dad said.”

“You’re only thirteen,” Kale said. “Maybe you’re not, you know …”

“Fourteen next month.” Trig felt another flare of emotion at the mention of his age. “Old enough.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“Well, sleep on it, see if you feel different in the morning …” Kale’s enunciation was already beginning to go muddled as he slumped back down on his bunk, leaving Trig sitting up with his eyes still riveted to the long dark concourse outside the cell, Gen Pop, that had become their no-longer-new home.

Sleep on it, he thought, and in that exact moment, miraculously, as if by power of suggestion, sleep actually began to seem like a possibility. Trig lay back and let the heaviness of his own fatigue cover him like a blanket, superseding anxiety and fear. He tried to focus on the sound of Kale’s breathing, deep and reassuring, in and out, in and out.

Then somewhere in the depths of the levels, an inhuman voice wailed. Trig sat up, caught his breath, and felt a chill tighten the skin of his shoulders, arms, and back, crawling over his flesh millimeter by millimeter, bristling the small hairs on the back of his neck. Over in his bunk the already sleeping Kale rolled over and grumbled something incoherent.

There was another scream, weaker this time. Trig told himself it was just one of the other convicts, just another nightmare rolling off the all-night assembly line of the nightmare factory.

But it hadn’t sounded like a nightmare.

It sounded like a convict, whatever life-form it was, was under attack.

Or going crazy.

He sat perfectly still, squeezed his eyes tight, and waited for the pounding of his heart to slow down, just please slow down. But it didn’t. He thought of the thing in the cafeteria, the disappeared inmate whose name he’d never know, watching him with its red staring eye. How many other eyes were on him that he never saw?

Sleep on it.

But he already knew there would be no more sleeping here tonight.

2/Meat Nest

IN TRIG’S OLD LIFE, BACK ON CIMAROSA, BREAKFAST had been the best meal of the day. Besides being an expert trafficker in contraband, a veteran fringe dweller who cut countless deals with thieves, spies, and counterfeiters, Von Longo had also been one of the galaxy’s greatest unrecognized breakfast chefs. Eat a good meal early, Longo always told his boys. You never know if it’s going to be your last.

Here on the Purge, however, breakfast was rarely edible and sometimes actually seemed to shiver in the steady vibrations as though still alive on the plate. This morning Trig found himself gazing down at a pasty mass of colorless goo spooned into shaved gristle, the whole thing plastered together in sticky wads like some kind of meat nest assembled by carnivorous flying insects. He was still nudging the stuff listlessly around his tray when Kale finally raised his eyebrows and peered at him.

“You sleep at all last night?” Kale asked.

“A little.”

“You’re not eating.”

“What, you mean this?” Trig poked at the contents of the tray again and shuddered. “I’m not hungry,” he said, and watched Kale shovel the last bite of his own breakfast into his mouth with disturbing gusto. “You think the food will be any better when we get to the detention moon?”

“Little brother, I think we’ll be lucky if we don’t end up on the menu.”

Trig gave him a bleak look. “Don’t give ’em any ideas.”

“Hey, lighten up.” Kale wiped his mouth on his sleeve and grinned. “Little guy like you, they’ll probably just use you for an appetizer.”

Trig put his fork down again with a snort to show that he got the joke. Although he couldn’t have articulated it, his big brother’s easygoing bravado—so obviously inherited from their old man—made him downright envious. Kale wasn’t wired for fear. It just didn’t stick to him somehow. The only thing that ever really seemed to trouble him was the prospect of not getting another helping of whatever the COO-2180s behind the lunch counter had been slopping onto the inmates’ trays.

Out of nowhere, from the ridiculous to the sublime, Trig found himself thinking about his father again. Their final conversation hung in his memory with stinging vividness. Just before he’d passed away in the infirmary, the old man had reached up, clutched Trig’s hand in both of his, and whispered, “Watch over your brother.” Caught off-guard, Trig had just nodded and stammered out that he would, of course he would—but soon afterward he realized that his dad, in his final moments, must have been confused about which son he was talking to. There was no reason he’d ask Trig to look after Kale. It would be like assigning the safekeeping of a wampa to a Kowakian monkey-lizard.

“What’s wrong with you, anyway?” Kale asked from across the table.

“I’m fine.”

“Come on. ’Fess up.”

Trig pushed the tray aside. “I don’t see how they can serve us this stuff day after day, that’s all.”

“Hey, that reminds me.” As if on cue, Kale flicked his eyes over at Trig’s tray. “You gonna eat that?”

When the alarm shrilled out the end of the meal, he and Kale stood up and slipped through the mess hall along with the sea of other inmates. From overhead observation decks, a retinue of uniformed Imperial corrections officers and armed stormtroopers stood watch, observing their passage into the common area with soulless black eyes.

Down below, the prisoners sauntered in packs, muttering and laughing among themselves, deliberately dragging out the process as much as possible to exploit whatever small amount of leniency the guards granted them. There was a sticky, smelly closeness to their unwashed bodies, and Trig thought of the phrase meat nest again, and felt a little nauseated. This whole place was a meat nest.

Little by little, with studied casualness, he and Kale slowed down, falling farther back from the crowd. Although he didn’t say a word, a subtle change had already worked its way through Kale’s posture, straightening his spine and shoulders, a serene vigilance moving over his face, supplanting the old insouciant gleam. His eyes darted right and left now, never stopping anywhere for longer than a moment or two.

“You ready for this?” he asked, barely moving his lips.

“Sure,” Trig said, nodding. “You?”

“Full on.” Nothing about Kale’s face seemed to indicate that he was speaking at all. “Remember when we get down there, it’s gonna be close quarters. Whatever you do, always maintain eye contact. Don’t look away for a second.”

“Got it.”

“And if anything starts to feel wrong about it, and I mean anything whatsoever, we just walk away.” Now Kale did glance at his brother’s face, perhaps catching a whiff of his apprehension. “I don’t think Sixtus would try anything, but I can’t vouch for Myss. Dad never trusted him.”

“Maybe …” Trig started, and stopped himself. He realized that he was about to suggest calling off the whole deal, not because he was nervous—although he certainly was—but because Kale seemed to be having second thoughts, too.

“We can do this,” Kale went on. “Dad taught us everything we need to know. The whole thing should take no more than a minute or two, and we’ll be back out of there and back in full view. Any longer than that and it gets dangerous.” He jerked his head around and looked hard at Trig. “And I go first. Clear?”

Trig nodded and felt a hand drop on his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.

3/Where the Bad Air Goes

TRIG TURNED AND LOOKED UP AT THE FIGURE STANDING in front of him.

“You.” It was a piggy-eyed guard whose name he didn’t remember, peering back at him through a pair of tinted, decidedly nonregulation optic shields. “What are you doing all the way back here?”

Trig tried to answer but found his reply lodged somewhere just beneath his gullet. Kale stepped in, offering up an easy, disarming smile. “Just walking, sir.”

“Was I talking to you, convict?” the guard said, and without waiting for an answer, pivoted his attention back to Trig. “Well?”

“He’s right, sir,” Trig said. “We were just walking.”

“What, you’re too good to move along with the rest of the scum?”

“We try to avoid scum whenever possible,” Trig said, and then added, “Sir.”

The guard’s eyes slitted behind the lenses. “You yanking me, convict?”

“No, sir.”

“ ’Cause the last maggot that yanked me’s doing a month in the hole.”

“Understood, sir.”

The guard glowered at him, twitching his head slightly to one side as if searching out some angle at which Trig’s unblemished teenage face might somehow become threatening, or even make sense, amid this larger mass of incarcerated criminals. Watching his expression, Trig punished himself by imagining a glimmer of recognition in those squinty eyes, and for an instant he thought how bizarre it might be if the guard had said, You’re Von Longo’s boys, aren’t you? I heard what happened to your father. He was a good man.

But of course no guard on this barge thought Longo had been a good man, or even bothered to learn his name, and now he was dead and already so completely forgotten that he might as well have never lived, and the guard just shook his head.

“Move along,” the guard muttered, and walked away.

The moment they were out of earshot, Kale elbowed Trig in the shoulder.

“We try to avoid scum whenever possible?” A tiny grin dimpled the corners of Kale’s mouth. “What, did you just make that up on the spot?”

Trig was unable to restrain a smile of his own. It felt liberating, probably because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d allowed himself anything less than a troubled grimace. “You think he bought it?”

“I think you almost bought it.” Kale reached up without looking over and tousled his fingers through Trig’s hair. “Keep smarting off like that, convict, and you will be down in solitary with the real dangerous types.”

“I hear there’s a couple of hard guys down there now locked up tight,” Trig said. “Could be our future customers.”

Kale favored him with a glance of approval. “You’ve got a lot more of Dad in you than I thought,” he said and, with one last look at the prisoners in front of them, nodded ever so slightly to the left. “Come on, follow me. And don’t get crazy, okay?”

“Sure.” Trig sensed Kale slowing his pace, dropping back several strides, scarcely enough to be noticed, and adjusted his step to match his brother’s. Up ahead the main concourse broke off into three prongs, branching off into a series of lesser throughways that crisscrossed the detention levels at every imaginable vector and angle.

During his time aboard, Trig had made it his business to learn as much about the Purge’s layout as possible. Eavesdropping on conversations between guards and maintenance droids, he’d learned early on that there were six main detention levels, each one housing about twenty to thirty individual holding cells. Above that was the mess hall, followed by the admin offices, prison staff quarters, and the infirmary. Nobody talked much about solitary, down at the bottom of the barge—nor was there much speculation about the literally hundreds of meters of narrow access routes, sublevels, and dimly lit concourses that honeycombed every level.

Falling into single file, Kale and Trig slipped through an open gateway, striding along the damp prefab walls, down a flight of steps, deeper in the jaundiced subcutaneous bowels of Gen Pop. The air down here immediately became thicker, darker, and dramatically less breathable, on its way to an array of refurbished air scrubbers before circulating back through the barge.

“Well, well,” a voice said. “The Longo brothers ride again.”

Trig caught a quick breath, hoping it didn’t sound like a gasp. In front of him, Kale froze, instinctively extending a hand behind him, and both of them peered into the open space that made up their immediate future. It took no extra time for Trig’s vision to adjust. He could already make out the forms of several inmates, all members of the Delphanian Face Gang, and in front of them, Aur Myss.

Whether Myss’s nearly vertical sneer was a genetic accident or the result of one of his legendary knife fights was a matter of perpetual speculation among the other inmates. Below the flattened suede accordion of his nose, a row of mismatched tribal piercings dangled from the drooping lower lip, collected like trophies from all the other crew leaders while Myss and his boss, Sixtus Cleft, had slowly consolidated the Face Gang’s position as the Purge’s preeminent prison crew.

“You’re right on time,” Myss said, piercings jingling as he spoke.

Kale nodded. “We’re always prompt.”

“An admirable trait for a prison rat.”

“That’s why you chose to do business with us.”

“One of many reasons,” Myss said, “I’m sure.”

Kale smiled. “Did you bring the payment?”

“Oh yes.” Myss produced a sibilant gurgle that might have been laughter, and extended one spade-claw hand, pointing down at the empty floor in front of him. “It’s right there in front of you. Don’t you see it?”

Trig sensed, or perhaps only imagined, his older brother stiffening, preparing for trouble, and willed Kale to stay calm. It appeared to work. For the time being at least, Kale kept his posture erect and didn’t look away, careful to keep his own voice steady and calm. “Is this some kind of a joke?”

“Perhaps.” Myss looked at the Delphanian foot soldiers standing on either side of him, grinning and sniggering. “Maybe you just don’t share our sense of humor.”

“Our deal with Sixtus—”

“Sixtus is dead.”

Kale stared at him. “What?”

“A terrible tragedy.” Myss was almost whispering and the mushy sibilance in between words, Trig realized, was definitely laughter this time, accompanied by the faint metallic jingle of his piercings. “ICO Wembly found him in his cell this morning with his throat slashed. I’m the new skipper now.” He stopped, and then his voice abruptly frosted over. “And alas, the terms of our deal have changed.”

“You can’t do that,” Trig cut in, unable to hold back any longer. “Sixtus and our dad—”

“No, it’s all right,” Kale said, still not taking his eyes off Myss, and when he spoke again he sounded absolutely calm. “I’m just sorry things worked out this way.”

Myss appeared genuinely curious. “Oh?”

“None of this is necessary.” Kale’s voice was so casual it was almost like listening to their father talk, that same mellifluous we-can-work-this-out inflection that had gotten them out of so many dicey exchanges in the past. “We’ve built a mutually beneficial relationship here, and it’s crazy to jeopardize it with rash decisions.”

“Rash decisions?”

Kale waved a hand in the air. “Of course we’ll be happy to tell you where the blasters and power packs are hidden, free of charge. Take them with my compliments. Consider it my gift to you as the new leader of the Face Gang. And everyone walks out of here to do business another day.”

“A generous proposal.” Myss seemed to consider the idea for a long moment. “There’s only one problem.”

“What’s that?”

Myss glanced at the Delphanian inmates slathering next to him on either side. “I already promised my men that they could kill you.”

“I see.” Kale hove up a dramatic sigh. “In that case, I guess we don’t have a deal, huh?”

“No.”

“I suppose there’s only one thing left to do.”

Aur Myss tilted his chin upward slightly. “And that would be?”

At first none of them moved, and Trig had no idea what was going to happen. Then, before he realized it, Kale’s hand blurred forward, moving faster than Trig could even see, his fingers hooking down to rip the piercings out of Myss’s face.

The Delphanian shrieked in surprise and pain and one of his hands flew up to cover his wounded, spurting lips and nose. Simultaneously the two inmates who had been flanking him burst forward in a rush, and Kale grabbed his brother’s shoulder, spun him hard around, and thrust him back in the direction they’d come.

“Run,” Kale shouted, and they did, Trig first, Kale behind him, both of them flying back up the corridor they’d just come down. Behind them the Delphanians’ boots clanged off the metal floor, and Trig could hear them shouting, coming closer. There was no way he and his brother could possibly outrun them. And even if by some quirk of fate they did escape, Aur Myss would be waiting for them tomorrow and the next day and—

Rounding the bend, Trig almost collided with a guard standing directly in front of him. The ICO put up both hands in a reflexive warding-off gesture, and the sudden stop that kept Trig from slamming into him was followed an instant later by Kale hitting him from behind.

“What’s going on here?” the guard asked.

“Nothing, sir, we just …” Trig started, and it occurred to him that there was no reason why the guards should be this far down the walkways to begin with.

And then, between the pounding rhythm of his own heart, he realized something else.

The Purge had fallen absolutely silent.

The vibrations that had unsettled him, broadcasting their emanations up through the bones of his feet, ankles, and knees, had gone completely still.

For the first time since he’d come aboard, the engines had stopped.

REBELLION
(0–5 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

This is the period of the classic Star Wars movie trilogy—A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi—in which a ragtag band of Rebels battles the Empire, and Luke Skywalker learns the ways of the Force and must avoid his father’s fate.

During this time, the Empire controls nearly the entire settled galaxy. Out in the Rim worlds, Imperial stormtroopers suppress uprisings with brutal efficiency, many alien species have been enslaved, and entire star systems are brutally exploited by the Empire’s war machine. In the central systems, however, most citizens support the Empire, weighing misgivings about its harsh methods against the memories of the horror and chaos of the Clone Wars. Few dare to openly oppose Emperor Palpatine’s rule.

But the Rebel Alliance is growing. Rebel cells strike in secret from hidden bases scattered among the stars, encouraging some of the braver Senators to speak out against the Empire. When the Rebels learn that the Empire is building the Death Star, a space station with enough firepower to destroy entire planets, Princess Leia Organa, who represents her homeworld, Alderaan, in the Senate and is secretly a high-ranking member of the Rebel Alliance, receives the plans for the battle station and flees in search of the exiled Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Thus begin the events that lead her to meet the smuggler and soon-to-be hero Han Solo, to discover her long-lost brother, Luke Skywalker, and to help the Rebellion take down the Emperor and restore democracy to the galaxy: the events of the three films A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.

If you’re a reader looking for places to jump in and explore the Rebellion-era novels, here are five great places to start:

• Death Star, by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry: The story of the construction of the massive battle station, touching on the lives of the builders, planners, soldiers, and support staff who populate the monstrous vessel, as well as the masterminds behind the design and those who intend to make use of it: the Emperor and Darth Vader.

• The Mandalorian Armor, by K. W. Jeter: The famous bounty hunter Boba Fett stars in a twisty tale of betrayal within the galactic underworld, highlighted by a riveting confrontation between bounty hunters and a band of Hutts.

• Shadows of the Empire, by Steve Perry: A tale of the shadowy parts of the Empire and an underworld criminal mastermind who is out to kill Luke Skywalker, while our other heroes try to figure out how to rescue Han Solo, who has been frozen in carbonite for delivery to Jabba the Hutt.

• Tales of the Bounty Hunters, edited by Kevin J. Anderson: The bounty hunters summoned by Darth Vader to capture the Millennium Falcon tell their stories in this anthology of short tales, culminating with Daniel Keys Moran’s elegiac “The Last One Standing.”

• Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, by Matthew Stover: A tale set shortly after the events of Return of the Jedi, in which Luke must defeat the flamboyant dark sider known as Lord Shadowspawn while the pilots of Rogue Squadron duel his servants amid tumbling asteroids.

Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars Legends novel set in the Rebellion era.

CHAPTER 1

The CORELLIAN QUEEN WAS A LEGEND: THE GREATEST luxury liner ever to ply the spaceways, an interstellar pleasure palace forever beyond the grasp of all but the galaxy’s super-elite—beings whose wealth transcended description. Rumor had it that for the price of a single cocktail in one of the Queen’s least-exclusive dining clubs, one might buy a starship; for the price of a meal, one could buy not only the starship, but the port in which it docked, and the factory that had built it. A being could not simply pay for a berth on the Corellian Queen; mere wealth would never suffice. To embark upon the ultimate journey into hedonistic excess, one first had to demonstrate that one’s breeding and manners were as exquisite as would be the pain of paying one’s bar bill. All of which made the Corellian Queen one of the most irresistible terrorist targets ever: who better to terrorize than the elite of the Elite, the Powers among the powerful, the greatest of the Great?

And so when some presumably unscrupulous routing clerk in the vast midreaches of the Nebula Line corporation quietly offered for sale, to select parties from Kindlabethia to Nar Shaddaa, a hint as to the route of the Corellian Queen’s upcoming cruise, it attracted considerable interest.

Two pertinent facts remained concealed, however, from the winning bidder. The first pertinent fact was that this presumably unscrupulous routing clerk was neither unscrupulous nor, in fact, a routing clerk, but was a skilled and resourceful agent of the intelligence service of the New Republic. The second pertinent fact was that the Corellian Queen was not cruising at all that season, having been replaced by a breakaway disposable shell built to conceal a substantial fraction of a starfighter wing, led by—as was customary in such operations—the crack pilots of Rogue Squadron.

IT WAS APPROXIMATELY THE MOMENT THAT R4-G7 squalled a proximity alarm through his X-wing’s sensor panel and his HUD lit up with image codes for six TIE Defenders on his tail that Lieutenant Derek “Hobbie” Klivian, late of the Alliance to Restore Freedom to the Galaxy, currently of the New Republic, began to suspect that Commander Antilles’s brilliant ambush had never been brilliant at all, not even a little, and he said so. In no uncertain terms. Stripped of its blistering profanity, his comment was “Wedge? This plan was stupid. You hear me? Stupid, stupid, stuYOW—!”

The yow was a product of multiple cannon hits that disintegrated his right dorsal cannon and most of the extended wing it had been attached to. This kicked his fighter into a tumble that he fought with both hands on the yoke and both feet kicking attitude jets and almost had under control until the pair of the Defenders closest on his tail blossomed into expanding spheres of flame and debris fragments. The twin shock fronts overtook him at exactly the wrong instant and sent him flipping end-over-end straight at another Defender formation streaking toward him head-on. Then tail-on, then head-on again, and so forth.

His ship’s comlink crackled as Wedge Antilles’s fighter flashed past him close enough that he could see the grin on the commander’s face. “That’s ’stupid plan, sir,” Lieutenant.”

“I suppose you think that’s funny.”

“Well, if he doesn’t,” put in Hobbie’s wingman, “I sure do.”

“When I want your opinion, Janson, I’ll dust your ship and scan for it in the wreckage.” The skewed whirl of stars around his cockpit gave his stomach a yank that threatened to make the slab of smoked terrafin loin he’d had for breakfast violently reemerge. Struggling grimly with the controls, he managed to angle his ship’s whirl just a hair, which let him twitch his ship’s nose toward the four pursuing marauders as he spun. Red fire lashed from his three surviving cannons, and the Defenders’ formation split open like an overripe snekfruit.

Hobbie only dusted one with the cannons, but the pair of proximity-fused flechette torpedoes he had thoughtfully triggered at the same time flared in diverging arcs to intercept the enemy fighters; these torpedo arcs terminated in spectacular explosions that cracked the three remaining Defenders like rotten snuffle eggs.

“Now, that was satisfying,” he said, still fighting his controls to stabilize the crippled X-wing. “Eyeball soufflé!”

“Better watch it, Hobbie—keep that up, and somebody might start to think you can fly that thing.”

“Are you in this fight, Janson? Or are you just gonna hang back and smirk while I do all the heavy lifting?”

“Haven’t decided yet.” Wes Janson’s X-wing came out of nowhere, streaking in a tight bank across Hobbie’s subjective vertical. “Maybe I can lend a hand. Or, say, a couple torps.”

Two brilliant blue stars leapt from Janson’s torpedo tubes and streaked for the oncoming TIEs.

“Uh, Wes?” Hobbie said, flinching. “Those weren’t the flechette torps, were they?”

“Sure. What else?”

“Have you noticed that I’m currently having just a little trouble maneuvering?”

“What do you mean?” Janson asked as though honestly puzzled. Then, after a second spent watching Hobbie’s ship tumbling helplessly directly toward his torpedoes’ targets, he said, “Oh. Uh … sorry?”

The flechette torpedoes carried by Rogue Squadron had been designed and built specifically for this operation, and they had one primary purpose: to take out TIE Defenders.

The TIE Defender was the Empire’s premier space-superiority fighter. It was faster and more maneuverable than the Incom T-65 (better known as the X-wing); faster even than the heavily modified and updated 65Bs of Rogue Squadron. The Defender was also more heavily armed, packing twin ion cannons to supplement its lasers, as well as dual-use launch tubes that could fire either proton torpedoes or concussion missiles. The shields generated by its twin Novaldex deflector generators were nearly as powerful as those found on capital ships. However, the Defenders were not equipped with particle shields, depending instead on their titanium-reinforced hull to absorb the impact of material objects.

Each proton torpedo shell had been loaded with thousands of tiny jagged bits of durasteel, packed around a core of conventional explosive. On detonation, these tiny bits of durasteel became an expanding sphere of shrapnel; though traveling with respectable velocity of their own, they were most effective when set off in the path of oncoming Defenders, because impact energy, after all, is determined by relative velocity. At starfighter combat speeds, flying into a cloud of durasteel pellets could transform one’s ship from a starfighter into a very, very expensive cheese grater.

The four medial fighters of the oncoming Defender formation hit the flechette cloud and just … shredded. The lateral wingers managed to bank off an instant before they would have been overtaken by two sequential detonations, as the explosion of one Defender’s power core triggered the other three’s cores an eyeblink later, so that the unfortunate Lieutenant Klivian was now tumbling directly toward a miniature plasma nebula that blazed with enough hard radiation to cook him like a bantha steak on an obsidian fry-rock at double noon on Tatooine.

“You’re not gonna make it, Hobbie,” Janson called. “Punch out.”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Hobbie snarled under his breath, still struggling grimly with the X-wing’s controls. The fighter’s tumble began to slow. “I’ve got it, Wes!”

“No, you don’t! Punch out, Hobbie—PUNCH OUT!”

“I’ve got it—I’m gonna make it! I’m gonna—” He was interrupted by the final flip of his X-wing, which brought his nose into line with the sight of the leading edge of the spherical debris field expanding toward him at a respectable fraction of lightspeed, and Hobbie Klivian, acknowledged master of both profanity and obscenity, human and otherwise, not to mention casual vulgarities from a dozen species and hundreds of star systems, found that he had nothing to say except, “Aw, nuts.”

He stood the X-wing on its tail, sublights blasting for a tangent, but he had learned long ago that of all the Rogues, he was the one who should know better than to trust his luck. He reached for the eject trigger.

Just as his hand found the trigger, the ship jounced and clanged as if he had his head trapped inside a Wookiee dinner gong at nightmeal. The metaphorical Wookiee cook must have been hungry, too, because the clanging went on and on and kept getting louder, and the eject still, mysteriously, didn’t seem to be working at all. This mystery was solved, however, by the brief shriek of atmosphere through a ragged fist-sized hole in the X-wing’s canopy. This hole was ragged because, Hobbie discovered, the fragment that had made this opening had been slowed by punching through the X-wing’s titanium-alloy ventral armor. Not to mention the X-wing’s control panel, where it had not only ripped away the entire eject trigger assembly, but had vaporized Hobbie’s left hand.

He glared at his vacant wrist with more annoyance than shock or panic; instead of blood or cauterized flesh, his wrist jetted only sparks and smoke from overheated servomotors. He hadn’t had a real left arm since sometime before Yavin.

Of more concern was the continuing shriek of escaping atmosphere, because he discovered that it was coming from his environment suit’s nitroxy generator.

He thought, Oh, this sucks. After everything he had survived in the Galactic Civil War, he was about to be killed by a minor equipment malfunction. He amended his previous thought: This really sucks.

He didn’t bother to say it out loud, because there wasn’t enough air in his cockpit to carry the sound.

There being no other useful thing he could do with his severed left wrist, he jammed it into the hole in his canopy. His suit’s autoseal plastered itself to the jagged edges, but the nitroxy generator didn’t seem mollified; in fact, it was starting to feel like he had an unshielded fusion core strapped to his spine.

Oh, yeah, he thought. The other hole.

He palmed the cockpit harness’s snap release, twisted, and stretched out his left leg, feeling downward with the toe of his boot. He found a hole—and the rising pressure sucked the entire boot right out the bottom of his fighter before the autoseal engaged to close that hole, too. He felt another impact or two down there, but he couldn’t really tell if something might have ripped his foot off.

It had been a few years since he’d had his original left leg.

With the cockpit sealed, his nitroxy unit gradually calmed down, filling the space with a breathable atmosphere that smelled only faintly of scorched hair, and he began to think he might live through this after all. His only problem now was that he was deharnessed and stretched sideways in an extraordinarily uncomfortable twist that left him unable to even turn his head enough to see where he was going. “Arfour,” he said quietly, “can you please get us back to the PRP?”

His current position did let him see, however, his astromech’s response to the task of navigating toward the primary rendezvous point, which was a spit of gap sparks and a halo of sporadic electrical discharge from what was left of its turret dome. Which was slightly less than half.

He sighed. “Okay, ejection failure. And astromech damage. Crippled here,” he said into his comm. “Awaiting manual pickup.”

“Little busy right now, Hobbie. We’ll get to you after we dust these TIEs.”

“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere. Except, y’know, thataway. Slowly. Real slowly.”

He spent the rest of the battle hoping for a bit of help from the Force when Wedge sent out the pickup detail. Please, he prayed silently, please let it be Tycho. Or Nin, or Standro. Anyone but Janson.

He continued this plea as a sort of meditation, kind of the way Luke would talk about this stuff: he closed his eyes and visualized Wedge himself showing up to tow his X-wing back to the jump point. After a while, he found this image unconvincing—somehow he was never that lucky—and so he cycled through the other Rogues, and when those began to bore him, he decided it’d be Luke himself. Or Leia. Or, say, Wynssa Starflare, who always managed to look absolutely stellar as the strong, independent damsel-sometimes-in-distress in those prewar Imperial holodramas, because, y’know, as long as he was imagining something that was never gonna happen, he might as well make it entertaining.

It turned out to be entertaining enough that he managed to pass the balance of the battle drifting off to sleep with a smile on his face.

This smile lasted right up to the point where a particularly brilliant flash stabbed through his eyelids and he awoke, glumly certain that whatever had exploded right next to his ship was finally about to snuff him. But then there came another flash, and another, and with a painful twist of his body he was able to see Wes Janson’s fighter cruising alongside, only meters away. He was also able to see the handheld imager Janson had pressed against his cockpit’s canopy, with which Janson continued to snap picture after picture.

Hobbie closed his eyes again. He would have preferred the explosion.

“Just had to get a few shots.” Janson’s grin was positively wicked. “You look like some kind of weird cross between a starfighter pilot and a Batravian gumplucker.”

Hobbie shook his head exhaustedly; dealing with Janson’s pathetic excuse for a sense of humor always made him tired. “Wes, I don’t even know what that is.”

“Sure you do, Hobbie. A starfighter pilot is a guy who flies an X-wing without getting blown up. Check the Basic Dictionary. Though I can understand how you’d get confused.”

“No, I mean the—” Hobbie bit his lip hard enough that he tasted blood. “Um, Wes?”

“Yeah, buddy?”

“Have I told you today how much I really, really hate you?”

“Oh, sure—your lips say ‘I hate you,’ but your eyes say—”

“That someday I’ll murder you in your sleep?”

Janson chuckled. “More or less.”

“It’s all over, huh?”

“This part is. Most of ’em got away.”

“How many’d we lose?”

“Just Eight and Eleven. But Avan and Feylis ejected clean. Nothing a couple weeks in a bacta tank won’t cure. And then there’s my Batravian gumplucker wingman …”

“You’re the wingman, knucklehead. Maybe I should say, wingnut.” Hobbie sighed again. “I guess Wedge is happy, anyway. Everything’s proceeding according to plan …”

“I HATE when you say that.”

“Yeah? How come?”

“Don’t know. It just … gives me the whingeing jimmies. Let me get this tow cable attached, and you might as well sleep; it’s a long cruise to the PRP.”

“Suits me just fine,” Hobbie said, closing his eyes again. “I have this dream I really want to get back to …”

“GOOD JOB, WEDGE.” GENERAL LANDO CALRISSIAN, commander of Special Operations for the New Republic, nodded grave approval toward the flickering bluish holoform of Wedge Antilles that hovered a centimeter above his console. “No casualties?”

“Nothing serious, General. Hobbie—Lieutenant Klivian—needs another left hand …”

Lando smiled. “How many does that make, all told?”

“I’ve lost count. How’s it going on your end?”

“Good and less than good.” Lando punched up his readout of the tracking report. “Looks like our marauders are based in the Taspan system.”

Wedge’s brilliant plan had become brilliant entirely by necessity; the usual method of locating a hidden marauder base—subjecting a captured pilot or two to a neural probe—had turned out to be much more difficult than anyone could have anticipated. Shadowspawn seemed very determined to maintain his privacy; through dozens of raids over nearly two months, many deep inside Republic territory and costing thousands of civilian lives, not one of Shadowspawn’s marauders had ever been taken alive.

This was more than a simple refusal to surrender, though the marauders had shown a distressing tendency, when they found themselves in imminent danger, to shout out words to the effect of For Shadowspawn and the Empire! Forward the Restoration! and blow themselves up. Forensic engineers examining wreckage of destroyed TIE Defenders hypothesized that the starfighters were equipped with some unexplained type of deadman interlock, which would destroy the ship—and obliterate the pilot—even if the pilot merely lost consciousness.

The brilliant part of Wedge’s brilliant plan had been to conceal hundreds of thousands of miniature solid-state transponders among the flechettes inside Rogue Squadron’s custom-made torpedoes, before giving the marauders a fairly decent pasting and letting the rest escape. Unlike ordinary tracking devices, these transponders gave off no signal of their own—thus requiring no power supply, and rendering them effectively undetectable. These transponders were entirely inert until triggered by a very specific subspace signal, which they then echoed in a very specific way. And since the only transponders of this very specific type in the entire galaxy were loaded in Rogue Squadron’s torpedo tubes, drifting at the ambush point in deep space along the Corellian Run, and lodged in various parts of the armored hulls of a certain group of TIE Defenders, locating the system to which said Defenders had fled was actually not complicated at all.

Wedge’s holoform took on a vaguely puzzled look. “Taspan. Sounds familiar, but I can’t place it …”

“The Inner Rim, off the Hydian Way.”

“That would be the less-than-good part.”

“Yeah. No straight lanes in or out—and most of the legs run through systems still held by Imperials.”

“Almost makes you wish for one of Palpatine’s old planet-killers.”

“Almost.” Lando’s smile had faded, and he didn’t sound like he was joking. “The Empire had a weapons facility on Taspan II—it’s where they tested their various designs of gravity-well projectors—”

“That’s it!” The image snapped its fingers silently, the sound eliminated by the holoprojector’s noise filter. “The Big Crush!”

Lando nodded. “The Big Crush.”

“I heard there was nothing left at Taspan but an asteroid field, like the Graveyard of Alderaan.”

“There’s an inner planet—Taspan I is a minor resort world called Mindor. Not well known, but really beautiful; my parents had a summer house there when I was a kid.”

“Any progress on this Shadowspawn character himself?”

“We’ve only managed to determine that no one by that name was ever registered as an Imperial official. Clearly an assumed identity.”

“The guy’s got to be some kind of nutjob.”

“I doubt it. His choice of base is positively inspired; the debris from the Big Crush hasn’t had time to settle into stable orbits.”

“So it is like the Graveyard of Alderaan.”

“It’s worse, Wedge. A lot worse.”

Wedge’s image appeared to be giving a low whistle; the holoprojector’s noise filter screened it out. “Sounds ugly. How are we supposed to get at them?”

“You’re not.” Lando took a deep breath before continuing. “This is exactly the type of situation for which we developed the Rapid Response Task Force.”

Wedge’s image gave a slow, understanding nod. “Hit ’em with our Big Stick, then. Slap ’em good and run like hell.”

“It’s the best shot we’ve got.”

“You’re probably right; you usually are. But it’ll sting, to not be there.”

“Right enough. But we have other problems—and the RRTF is in very capable hands.”

“Got that right.” Wedge suddenly grinned. “Speaking of those capable hands, pass along my regards to General Skywalker, will you?”

“I will do that, Wedge. I will indeed.”

THE NEW REPUBLIC
(5–25 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

The destruction of the second Death Star and the death of Emperor Palpatine—the climactic conclusion of Return of the Jedi—has shaken the Empire to its core. While the remnant of the loyal Imperials settles in for a long, drawn-out last stand, the victorious Rebel Alliance and its supporters found a galactic governing authority they name the New Republic. Troops and warships are donated to the cause, as New Republic military leaders forge plans to seize Imperial fortress worlds, invade the Core Worlds, and retake Coruscant itself. Eventually, the Imperial Remnant is pushed back to a small part of the Outer Rim, and the New Republic is finally able to focus on restoring just and democratic government to the galaxy.

At last the heroes of the Rebellion are free to pursue their own lives. Han and Leia marry … but before the birth of their twins, Jacen and Jaina, the galaxy is once again torn asunder by war, as the Imperial forces—under the control of military mastermind Grand Admiral Thrawn—step up their campaign of raids against the New Republic. Even after Thrawn is defeated, the Imperial forces forge on, harrying the New Republic and Luke’s nascent Jedi academy—the start of Luke’s dream to rebuild the Jedi Order from the ground up. Plagues, insurrections, and rogue warlords add to the chaos and push the New Republic back a step for every two steps it takes forward in its quest for peace and prosperity for all. Meanwhile, Leia becomes Chief of State of the New Republic, and the Solos’ third child, a boy they name Anakin, after his grandfather, is born; Luke has met Mara Jade, a secret dark side apprentice to the Emperor whom he helps bring into the light, and the two subsequently fall in love and marry.

Finally, after a series of further setbacks and plots against the young galactic government and Luke’s Jedi, a peace treaty formally ends the long conflict between the New Republic and the remnants of the Empire. The events of these years are the answer to the question … “What happened after the movies?”

If you’re a reader looking to dive into the New Republic era, here are three great starting points:

• X-Wing: Rogue Squadron, by Michael A. Stackpole: A taste of life at the edge, Rogue Squadron and the subsequent X-Wing novels bring to life Wedge Antilles and his brave, sometimes rambunctious fellow pilots in fast-paced adventures that switch smoothly and easily between entertaining repartee and tense battlefield action.

• Heir to the Empire, by Timothy Zahn: The book that reintroduced a generation of fans to Star Wars is full of the elements that made the movies great—space battles, intriguing villains, and derring-do.

• Before the Storm, by Michael P. Kube-McDowell: With a harder sci-fi edge to Star Wars, this novel features the classic heroes Han, Luke, and Leia, and explores everything from military forensics to the nature of the Force.

Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars Legends novel set in the New Republic era.

1

You’re good, Corran, but you’re no Luke Skywalker. Corran Horn’s cheeks still burned at the memory of Commander Antilles’s evaluation of his last simulator exercise. The line had been a simple comment, not meant to be cruel nor delivered that way, but it cut deep into Corran. I’ve never tried to suggest I’m that good of a pilot.

He shook his head. No, you just wanted it to be self-evident and easily recognized by everyone around you. Reaching out he flicked the starter switches for the X-wing simulator’s engines. “Green One has four starts and is go.” All around him in the cockpit various switches, buttons, and monitors flashed to life. “Primary and secondary power is at full.”

Ooryl Qrygg, his Gand wingman, reported similar start-up success in a high-pitched voice. “Green Two is operational.”

Green Three and Four checked in, then the external screens came alive projecting an empty starfield. “Whistler, have you finished the navigation calculations?”

The green and white R2 unit seated behind Corran hooted, then the navdata spilled out over Corran’s main monitor. He punched a button sending the same coordinates out to the other pilots in Green Flight. “Go to light speed and rendezvous on the Redemption.”

As Corran engaged the X-wing’s hyperdrive, the stars elongated themselves into white cylinders, then snapped back into pinpoints and began to revolve slowly, transforming themselves into a tunnel of white light. Corran fought the urge to use the stick to compensate for the roll. In space, and especially hyperspace, up and down were relative. How his ship moved through hyperspace didn’t really matter—as long as it remained on the course Whistler had calculated and had attained sufficient velocity before entering hyperspace, he’d arrive intact.

Flying into a black hole would actually make this run easier. Every pilot dreaded the Redemption run. The scenario was based on an Imperial attack on evacuation ships back before the first Death Star had been destroyed. While the Redemption waited for three Medevac shuttles and the corvette Korolev to dock and off-load wounded, the Imperial frigate Warspite danced around the system and dumped out TIE fighters and added bombers to the mix to do as much damage as they could.

The bombers, with a full load of missiles, could do a lot of damage. All the pilots called the Redemption scenario by another name: the Requiem scenario. The Warspite would only deploy four starfighters and a half-dozen bombers—known in pilot slang as “eyeballs” and “dupes” respectively—but it would do so in a pattern that made it all but impossible for the pilots to save the Korolev. The corvette was just one big target, and the TIE bombers had no trouble unloading all their missiles into it.

Stellar pinpoints elongated again as the fighter came out of hyperspace. Off to the port side Corran saw the Redemption. Moments later Whistler reported that the other fighters and all three Medevac shuttles had arrived. The fighters checked in and the first shuttle began its docking maneuver with the Redemption.

“Green One, this is Green Four.”

“Go ahead, Four.”

“By the book, or are we doing something fancy?”

Corran hesitated before answering. By book, Nawara Ven had referred to the general wisdom about the scenario. It stated that one pilot should play fleethund and race out to engage the first TIE flight while the other three fighters remained in close as backup. As long as three fighters stayed at home, it appeared, the Warspite dropped ships off at a considerable distance from the Korolev. When they didn’t, it got bolder and the whole scenario became very bloody.

The problem with going by the book was that it wasn’t a very good strategy. It meant one pilot had to deal with five TIEs—two eyeballs and three dupes—all by himself, then turn around and engage five more. Even with them coming in waves, the chances of being able to succeed against those odds were slim.

Doing it any other way was disastrous. Besides, what loyal son of Corellia ever had any use for odds?

“By the book. Keep the home fires burning and pick up after me.”

“Done. Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Corran reached up with his right hand and pressed it against the lucky charm he wore on a chain around his neck. Though he could barely feel the coin through his gloves and the thick material of his flight suit, the familiar sensation of the metal resting against his breastbone brought a smile to his face. It worked for you a lot, Dad, let’s hope all its luck hasn’t run out yet.

He openly acknowledged that he’d been depending quite a bit on luck to see him through the difficulties of settling in with the Alliance forces. Learning the slang took some work—moving from calling TIE starfighters “eyeballs” to calling Interceptors “squints” made a certain amount of sense, but many other terms had been born of logic that escaped him. Everything about the Rebellion seemed odd in comparison to his previous life and fitting in had not been easy.

Nor will be winning this scenario.

The Korolev materialized and moved toward the Redemption, prompting Corran to begin his final check. He’d mulled the scenario over in his mind time and time again. In previous runs, when he served as a home guard to someone else’s fleethund, he’d had Whistler record traces on the TIE timing patterns, flight styles, and attack vectors. While different cadets flew the TIE half of the simulations, the craft dictated their performance and a lot of their initial run sequence had been preprogrammed.

A sharp squawk from Whistler alerted Corran to the Warspite’s arrival. “Great, eleven klicks aft.” Pulling the stick around to the right, Corran brought the X-wing into a wide turn. At the end of it he punched the throttle up to full power. Hitting another switch up to the right, he locked the S-foils into attack position. “Green One engaging.”

Rhysati’s voice came cool and strong through the radio. “Be all over them like drool on a Hutt.”

“I’ll do my best, Green Three.” Corran smiled and waggled the X-wing as he flew back through the Alliance formation and out toward the Warspite. Whistler announced the appearance of three TIE bombers with a low tone, then brought the sound up as two TIE fighters joined them.

“Whistler, tag the bombers as targets one, two, and three.” As the R2 unit complied with that order, Corran pushed shield power full to front and brought his laser targeting program up on the main monitor. With his left hand he adjusted the sighting calibration knob on the stick and got the two fighters. Good, looks like three klicks between the eyeballs and the bombers.

Corran’s right hand again brushed the coin beneath his flight suit. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then settled his hand on the stick and let his thumb hover over the firing button. At two klicks the heads-up display painted a yellow box around the lead TIE fighter. The box went green as the fighter’s image locked into the HUD’s targeting cross and Whistler’s shrill bleat filled the cockpit. Corran’s thumb hit the button, sending three bursts of laser bolts at the lead fighter.

The first set missed but the second and third blasted through the spherical cockpit. The hexagonal solar panels snapped off and spun forward through space while the ion engines exploded into an expanding ball of incandescent gas.

Corran kicked the X-wing up in a ninety-degree snap-roll and sliced through the center of the explosion. Laser fire from the second fighter lit up his forward shields, making it impossible for him to get a good visual line on the TIE. Whistler yowled, complaining about being a target. Corran hurried a shot and knew he hit, but the TIE flashed past and continued on in at the Korolev.

Time to write a new chapter for the book on the Requiem scenario. Corran throttled back almost all the way to zero and let the X-wing decelerate. “Whistler, bring up target one.”

The image of the first TIE bomber filled his monitor. Corran switched over to proton torpedo target control. The HUD changed to a larger box and Whistler began beeping as he worked supplying data to the targeting computer for a missile lock.

“Green One, your velocity is down to one percent. Do you need help?”

“Negative, Green Two.”

“Corran, what are you doing?”

“Making the book a short story.” I hope.

The HUD went red and Whistler’s tone became constant. Corran punched the button and launched the first missile. “Acquire target two.” The HUD flashed yellow, then red, and the pilot launched the second missile.

Numbers scrolled away to zero as the missiles streaked in at their targets. Two kilometers away the first missile hit, shredding the first TIE bomber. Seconds later the second missile hit its target. A novalike explosion lit the simulator’s cockpit, then melted into the blackness of space.

“Acquire target three.”

Even as he gave the order he knew the rate of closure between the bomber and his ship would make the last missile shot all but impossible. “Cancel three.” Corran throttled up again as the third bomber sailed past and brought his ship around. He switched back to laser targeting and climbed right up on the bomber’s stern.

The dupe’s pilot tried to evade him. He juked the double-hulled ship to the left, then started a long turn to the right, but Corran was of no mind to lose him. He cut his speed, which kept the bomber in front of him, then followed it in its turn. As he leveled out again on its tail, he triggered two laser bursts and the targeting computer reported hull damage.

The bomber’s right wing came up in a roll and Corran did the same thing. Had he continued to fly level, the X-wing’s lasers would have passed on either side of the bomber’s fuselage, giving the bomber a few seconds more of life. Keeping the bomber centered in his crosshairs, Corran hit twice more and the bulky craft disintegrated before him.

Pushing his throttle to full, Corran scanned for the fighter he’d missed. He found it two klicks out and going in toward the Korolev. He also found five more TIEs coming in from the other side of the corvette, eighteen kilometers away. Damn, the bomber took more time than I had to give it.

He brought the torpedo targeting program back up and locked on to the remaining fighter. The HUD seemed to take forever before it went red and acquired a lock. Corran fired a missile and watched it blast through the fighter, then turned his attention to the new TIEs.

“Green One, do you want us to engage?”

Corran shook his head. “Negative, Two. Warspite is still here and could dump another flight.” He sighed. “Move to intercept the fighters, but don’t go beyond a klick from the Korolev.”

“On it.”

Good, they can tie the fighters up while I dust these dupes. Corran studied the navigational data Whistler was giving him. The Korolev, the bombers, and his X-wing formed a shrinking triangle. If he flew directly at the bombers he would end up flying in an arc, which would take more time than he had and let them get close enough to launch their missiles at the corvette. That would be less than useless as far as he was concerned.

“Whistler, plot me an intercept point six klicks out from the Korolev.”

The R2 whistled blithely, as if that calculation was so simple even Corran should have been able to do it in his head. Steering toward it, Corran saw he’d have just over a minute to deal with the bombers before they were in firing range on the Korolev. Not enough time.

Flicking two switches, Corran redirected generator energy from recharging his shields and lasers into the engines. It took the acceleration compensator a second to cycle up, so the ship’s burst of speed pushed Corran back into the padding of his command seat. This better work.

“Green One, the Warspite has hyped. Are we released to engage fighters?”

“Affirmative, Three. Go get them.” Corran frowned for a second, knowing his fellow pilots would make short work of the TIE fighters. They would deny him a clean sweep, but he’d willingly trade two TIEs for the corvette. Commander Antilles might have gotten them all himself, but then he’s got two Death Stars painted on the side of his X-wing.

“Whistler, mark each of the bombers four, five, and six.” Range to intercept was three klicks and he had added thirty seconds to his fighting time. “Acquire four.”

The targeting computer showed him to be coming in at a forty-five-degree angle to the flight path of his target, which meant he was way off target. He quickly punched the generator back into recharging lasers and his shields, then pulled even more energy from his quartet of Incom 4L4 fusial thrust engines and shunted it into recharging his weapons and shields.

The resource redirection brought his speed down. Corran pulled back on the stick, easing the X-wing into a turn that brought him head-on into the bombers. Tapping the stick to the left, he centered the targeting box on the first of the dupes.

The HUD started yellow, then quickly went red. Corran fired a missile. “Acquire five.” The HUD started red and Whistler’s keen echoed through the cockpit. The Corellian fired a second missile. “Acquire six.”

Whistler screeched.

Corran looked down at his display. Scrolling up the screen, sandwiched between the reports of missile hits on the three bombers, he saw a notation about Green Two. “Green Two, report.”

“He’s gone, One.”

“A fighter got him?”

“No time to chat …” The comm call from the Twi’lek in Green Four ended in a hiss of static.

“Rhysati?”

“Got one, Corran, but this last one is good.”

“Hang on.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Whistler, acquire six.”

The R2 unit hissed. The last bomber had already shot past the intercept point and was bearing in on the Korolev. The pilot had the wide-bodied craft slowly spinning, making it a difficult target for a missile lock. The Korolev, being as big as it was, would present large enough of a target that even a rolling ship could get a lock on it.

And once he has that lock, the Korolev is so much space junk. Corran switched back to lasers and pushed his X-wing forward. Even though two klicks separated them, he triggered a couple of laser blasts. He knew his chances of hitting were not good at that range, but the light from the bolts would shoot past the TIE and give the pilot something to think about. And I want him thinking about me, not that nerf-vette grazing there.

Corran redirected all power back into the engines and shot forward. Two more laser blasts caused the TIE bomber to shy a bit, but it had pushed into target-acquisition range. The ship’s roll began to slow as the pilot fixated on his target, then, as Corran brought his lasers to bear, the bomber jinked and cut away to port.

The Corellian’s eyes narrowed. Bror Jace has got to be flying that thing. He thinks it’s payback time. The other pilot, a human from Thyferra, was—in Corran’s opinion—the second best pilot in the training squadron. He’s going to kill the Korolev and I’ll never hear the end of it. Unless …

Corran pulled all his shield energy forward and left his aft as naked as the shieldless TIE bomber. Following Jace through a barrel roll, he kept the throttle full forward. As they leveled out again Corran triggered a snapshot at the bomber. It caught a piece of one wing, but Jace dove beneath the X-wing’s line of fire. Here we go!

Corran shoved his stick forward to follow the bomber’s dive, but because his rate of speed was a good twenty percent faster than that of Jace’s ship, the X-wing moved into a broad loop. By the time Corran inverted to finish the turn off, Jace’s bomber came back up and banked in on the X-wing’s tail.

Before the bomber could unload a missile or two into his aft, Corran broke the fighter hard to port and carved across the bomber’s line of fire. Basic maneuver with a basic response. Without even glancing at his instruments, and paying no attention to Whistler’s squealed warning, Corran cut engine power back into recharging his shields. One more second.

Jace’s response to Corran’s break had been a reverse-throttle hop. By bringing the nose of the bomber up in a steep climb, then rolling out in the direction of the turn, Jace managed to stay inside the arc of the X-wing’s turn. As the bomber leveled off, it closed very quickly with the X-wing—too quickly for a missile lock, but not a laser shot.

The TIE bomber shrieked in at the X-wing. Collision warning klaxons wailed. Corran could feel Jace’s excitement as the X-wing loomed larger. He knew the other pilot would snap off a quick shot, then come around again, angry at having overshot the X-wing, but happy to smoke Corran before taking the Korolev.

The X-wing pilot hit a switch and shifted all shield power to the aft shields.

The deflector shield materialized as a demisphere approximately twenty meters behind the X-wing. Designed to dissipate both energy and kinetic weapons, it had no trouble protecting the fighter from the bomber’s twin laser blasts. Had the bomber used missiles, the shields could even have handled all the damage they could do, though that would have been enough to destroy the shields themselves.

The TIE bomber, which massed far more than the missiles it carried, should have punched through the shields and might even have destroyed the fighter, but it hit at an angle and glanced off. The collision did blast away half the power of the aft shield and bounced the X-wing around, but otherwise left the snubfighter undamaged.

The same could not be said of the unshielded bomber. The impact with the shield was roughly equivalent to a vehicle hitting a ferrocrete wall at sixty kilometers per hour. While that might not do a land vehicle much damage, land vehicles are decidedly less delicate than starfighters. The starboard wing crumpled inward, wrapping itself around the bomber’s cockpit. Both pods of the ship twisted out of alignment so the engines shot it off into an uncontrolled tumble through the simulator’s dataspace.

“Green Three, did you copy that?”

Corran got no response. “Whistler, what happened to Three?”

The R2 unit gave him a mournful tone.

Sithspawn. Corran flipped the shield control to equalize things fore and aft. “Where is he?”

The image of a lone TIE fighter making a strafing run on the Korolev appeared on Corran’s monitor. The clumsy little craft skittered along over the corvette’s surface, easily dodging its weak return fire. That’s seriously gutsy for a TIE fighter. Corran smiled. Or arrogant, and time to make him pay for that arrogance.

The Corellian brought his proton torpedo targeting program up and locked on to the TIE. It tried to break the lock, but turbolaser fire from the Korolev boxed it in. Corran’s HUD went red and he triggered the torpedo. “Scratch one eyeball.”

The missile shot straight in at the fighter, but the pilot broke hard to port and away, causing the missile to overshoot the target. Nice flying! Corran brought his X-wing over and started down to loop in behind the TIE, but as he did so, the TIE vanished from his forward screen and reappeared in his aft arc. Yanking the stick hard to the right and pulling it back, Corran wrestled the X-wing up and to starboard, then inverted and rolled out to the left.

A laser shot jolted a tremor through the simulator’s couch. Lucky thing I had all shields aft! Corran reinforced them with energy from his lasers, then evened them out fore and aft. Jinking the fighter right and left, he avoided laser shots coming in from behind, but they all came in far closer than he liked.

He knew Jace had been in the bomber, and Jace was the only pilot in the unit who could have stayed with him. Except for our leader. Corran smiled broadly. Coming to see how good I really am, Commander Antilles? Let me give you a clinic. “Make sure you’re in there solid, Whistler, because we’re going for a little ride.”

Corran refused to let the R2’s moan slow him down. A snap-roll brought the X-wing up on its port wing. Pulling back on the stick yanked the fighter’s nose up away from the original line of flight. The TIE stayed with him, then tightened up on the arc to close distance. Corran then rolled another ninety degrees and continued the turn into a dive. Throttling back, Corran hung in the dive for three seconds, then hauled back hard on the stick and cruised up into the TIE fighter’s aft.

The X-wing’s laser fire missed wide to the right as the TIE cut to the left. Corran kicked his speed up to full and broke with the TIE. He let the X-wing rise above the plane of the break, then put the fighter through a twisting roll that ate up enough time to bring him again into the TIE’s rear. The TIE snapped to the right and Corran looped out left.

He watched the tracking display as the distance between them grew to be a kilometer and a half, then slowed. Fine, you want to go nose to nose? I’ve got shields and you don’t. If Commander Antilles wanted to commit virtual suicide, Corran was happy to oblige him. He tugged the stick back to his sternum and rolled out in an inversion loop. Coming at you!

The two starfighters closed swiftly. Corran centered his foe in the crosshairs and waited for a dead shot. Without shields the TIE fighter would die with one burst, and Corran wanted the kill to be clean. His HUD flicked green as the TIE juked in and out of the center, then locked green as they closed.

The TIE started firing at maximum range and scored hits. At that distance the lasers did no real damage against the shields, prompting Corran to wonder why Wedge was wasting the energy. Then, as the HUD’s green color started to flicker, realization dawned. The bright bursts on the shields are a distraction to my targeting! I better kill him now!

Corran tightened down on the trigger button, sending red laser needles stabbing out at the closing TIE fighter. He couldn’t tell if he had hit anything. Lights flashed in the cockpit and Whistler started screeching furiously. Corran’s main monitor went black, his shields were down, and his weapons controls were dead.

The pilot looked left and right. “Where is he, Whistler?”

The monitor in front of him flickered to life and a diagnostic report began to scroll by. Bloodred bordered the damage reports. “Scanners, out; lasers, out; shields, out; engine, out! I’m a wallowing Hutt just hanging here in space.”

With the X-wing’s scanners being dead, the R2 droid couldn’t locate the TIE fighter if it was outside the droid’s scanner range. Whistler informed Corran of this with an anxious bleat.

“Easy, Whistler, get me my shields back first. Hurry.” Corran continued to look around for the TIE fighter. Letting me stew, are you, sir? You’ll finish the Korolev then come for me. The pilot frowned and felt a cold chill run down his spine. You’re right, I’m no Luke Skywalker. I’m glad you think I’m not bad, but I want to be the best!

Suddenly the starfield went black and the simulator pod hissed as it cracked open. The canopy lifted up and the sound of laughter filled the cockpit. Corran almost flicked the blast shield down on his helmet to prevent his three friends from seeing his embarrassed blush. Nope, might as well take my punishment. He stood and doffed his helmet, then shook his head. “At least it’s over.”

The Twi’lek, Nawara Ven, clapped his hands. “Such modesty, Corran.”

“Huh?”

The blond woman next to the Twi’lek beamed up at him. “You won the Redemption scenario.”

“What?”

The grey-green Gand nodded his head and placed his helmet on the nose of Corran’s simulator. “You had nine kills. Jace is not pleased.”

“Thanks for the good news, Ooryl, but I still got killed in there.” Corran hopped out of the simulator. “The pilot who got you three—Commander Antilles—he got me, too.”

The Twi’lek shrugged. “He’s been at this a bit longer than I have, so it is not a surprise he got me.”

Rhysati shook her head, letting her golden hair drape down over her shoulders. “The surprise was that he took so long to get us, really. Are you certain he killed you?”

Corran frowned. “I don’t think I got a mission end message.”

“Clearly you have too little experience of dying in these simulators because you’d know if you did.” Rhysati laughed lightly. “He may have hit you, Corran, but he didn’t kill you. You survived and won.”

Corran blinked, then smiled. “And I got Bror before he got the Korolev. I’ll take that.”

“As well you should.” A brown-haired man with crystal blue eyes shouldered his way between Ooryl and Nawara. “You’re an exceptionally good pilot.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The man offered Corran his hand. “Thought I had you, but when you shot out my engines, your missile caught up with me. Nice job.”

Corran shook the man’s hand hesitantly. The man wore a black flight suit with no name or rank insignia on it, though it did have Hoth, Endor, and Bakura battle tabs sewn on the left sleeve. “You know, you’re one hot hand in a TIE.”

“Nice of you to say, Mr. Horn—I’m a bit rusty, but I really enjoyed this run.” He released Corran’s hand. “Next time I’ll give you more of a fight.”

A woman wearing a Lieutenant’s uniform touched the TIE pilot on the arm. “Admiral Ackbar is ready to see you now, sir. If you will follow me.”

The TIE pilot nodded to the four X-wing pilots. “Good flying, all of you. Congratulations on winning the scenario.”

Corran stared at the man’s retreating back. “I thought Commander Antilles was in that TIE. I mean it had to be someone as good as him to get you three.”

The ends of Nawara Ven’s head tails twitched. “Apparently he is that good.”

Rhysati nodded. “He flew circles around me.”

“At least you saw him.” The Gand drummed his trio of fingers against the hull of Corran’s simulator. “He caught Ooryl as Ooryl fixed on his wingman. Ooryl is free hydrogen in simspace. That man is very good.”

“Sure, but who is he?” Corran frowned. “He’s not Luke Skywalker, obviously, but he was with Rogue Squadron at Bakura and survived Endor.”

The Twi’lek’s red eyes sparked. “The Endor tab had a black dot in the middle—he survived the Death Star run.”

Rhysati looped her right arm around Corran’s neck and brought her fist up gently under his chin. “What difference does it make who he is?”

“Rhys, he shot up three of our best pilots, had me dead in space, and says he’s a bit rusty! I want to know who he is because he’s decidedly dangerous.”

“He is that, but today he’s not the most dangerous pilot. That’s you.” She linked her other arm through Nawara’s right elbow. “So, Corran, you forget you were a Security officer and, Nawara, you forget you were a lawyer and let this thing drop. Today we’re all pilots, we’re all on the same side”—she smiled sweetly—“and the man who beat the Redemption scenario is about to make good on all those dinner and drink promises he made to talk his wingmates into helping him win.”

THE NEW JEDI ORDER

(25–40 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

A quarter century after A New Hope and the destruction of the Death Star, the galaxy is free of wide-scale conflicts—but the New Republic must contend with many regional brushfires. And Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Order faces its own growing pains: Some New Republic officials want to rein in the Jedi, leading Luke to wonder if the Jedi Council should be restored.

On the planet Rhommamool, Leia Organa Solo, Mara Jade Skywalker, and Jaina Solo meet with a mysterious rabble-rouser named Nom Anor. Anor rejects Leia’s diplomatic entreaties, but she’s more disturbed by what she finds when she reaches out to him in the Force: nothing. It’s as if he isn’t there.

Anor is a secret agent of the Yuuzhan Vong, powerful warriors from another galaxy who regard technology as blasphemous, relying on biological constructs to serve as their starships, weapons, and communicators. Long ago, a devastating war destroyed much of the Yuuzhan Vong’s galaxy and cut them off from the Force, sending their clans across the intergalactic void in search of a new home. Now they are at the edge of the Star Wars galaxy, ready to invade.

As head of the New Jedi Order, Luke is central to the galaxy’s defense; Leia’s skills as a former Chief of State and respected political adviser are also called on. The five-year war shakes the galaxy to its foundations. Technologically advanced worlds within the Yuuzhan Vong invasion corridor are subjected to the newcomers’ biotechnology and altered into strange hybrids combining what they had been with the new Yuuzhan Vong ecosystem. Entire species are enslaved—or eradicated. The New Republic is ill prepared to meet the extragalactic threat, with regional rivalries, political dissension, and concern over the Imperial Remnant limiting the effectiveness of its military response. Wrangling in the Senate snarls the war plans, as do disagreements between planetary fleets and armies, while assassination and war thin the ranks of the New Republic’s leaders. Officers and pilots who battled for so long against the Empire, such as Admiral Ackbar and Wedge Antilles, work feverishly to figure out how to outmaneuver their new enemies.

The invasion sorely challenges the Jedi, as well. Some take it upon themselves to meet the Yuuzhan Vong threat head-on, disdaining foot-dragging by politicians—and some of those skirt the dark side of the Force, giving in to their anger and fear as the Yuuzhan Vong ruin worlds and lives. The Yuuzhan Vong come to recognize the Jedi as the biggest threat to their plans, and begin hunting them down using New Republic traitors and bioengineered killers. At the forefront of the war against the Jedi are the Solo children—now teenagers and Jedi Knights in their own right. By the time the war is over, the Solo family will never be the same again.

The other heroes of the Rebellion, too, face personal struggles and tragedies. Luke fears for the life of his wife, Mara—infected with a Yuuzhan Vong–engineered disease—and for that of his newborn son, Ben, hunted by the Jedi’s enemies. Han and Leia’s losses are even harder to bear, as their oldest friends and children risk everything to stop the Yuuzhan Vong.

If you’re a reader looking to explore the epic tale of the Yuuzhan Vong war and the era of Luke’s New Jedi Order, the best place to start is with the first book in the series:

• The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime, by R. A. Salvatore: The first novel in the series introduces the pitiless Yuuzhan Vong and immediately makes clear that the heroes of the Rebellion are in mortal danger.

Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars Legends novel set in the New Jedi Order era.

ONE
Fraying Fabric

It was too peaceful out here, surrounded by the vacuum of space and with only the continual hum of the twin ion drives breaking the silence. While she loved these moments of peace, Leia Organa Solo also viewed them as an emotional trap, for she had been around long enough to understand the turmoil she would find at the end of this ride.

Like the end of every ride, lately.

Leia paused a moment before she entered the bridge of the Jade Sabre, the new shuttle her brother, Luke, had built for his wife, Mara Jade. Before her, and apparently oblivious to her, Mara and Jaina sat comfortably, side by side at the controls, talking and smiling. Leia focused on her daughter, Jaina, sixteen years old, but with the mature and calm demeanor of a veteran pilot. Jaina looked a lot like Leia, with long dark hair and brown eyes contrasting sharply with her smooth and creamy skin. Indeed, Leia saw much of herself in the girl—no, not girl, Leia corrected her own thoughts, but young woman. That same sparkle behind the brown eyes, mischievous, adventurous, determined.

That notion set Leia back a bit, for she recognized then that when she looked at Jaina, she was seeing not a reflection of herself but an image of the girl she had once been. A twinge of sadness caught her as she considered her own life now: a diplomat, a bureaucrat, a mediator, always trying to calm things down, always working for the peace and prosperity of the New Republic. Did she miss the days when the most common noise around her had been the sharp blare of a blaster or the hiss of a lightsaber? Was she sorry that those wild times had been replaced by the droning of the ion drives and the sharp bickering of one pride-wounded emissary after another?

Perhaps, Leia had to admit, but in looking at Jaina and those simmering dark eyes, she could take vicarious pleasure.

Another twinge—jealousy?—caught her by surprise, as Mara and Jaina erupted into laughter over some joke Leia had not overheard. But she pushed the absurd notion far from her mind as she considered her sister-in-law, Luke’s wife and Jaina’s tutor—at Jaina’s own request—in the ways of the Jedi. Mara was not a substitute mother for Jaina, but rather a big sister, and when Leia considered the fires that constantly burned in Mara’s green eyes, she understood that the woman could give to Jaina things that Leia could not, and that those lessons and that friendship would prove valuable indeed to her daughter. And so she forced aside her jealousy and was merely glad that Jaina had found such a friend.

She started onto the bridge, but paused again, sensing movement behind her. She knew before looking that it was Bolpuhr, her Noghri bodyguard, and barely gave him a glance as he glided to the side, moving so easily and gracefully that he reminded her of a lace curtain drifting lazily in a gentle breeze. She had accepted young Bolpuhr as her shadow for just that reason, for he was as unobtrusive as any bodyguard could be. Leia marveled at the young Noghri, at how his grace and silence covered a perfectly deadly fighting ability.

She held up her hand, indicating that Bolpuhr should remain out here, and though his usually emotionless face did flash Leia a quick expression of disappointment, she knew he would obey. Bolpuhr, and all the Noghri, would do anything Leia asked of them. He would jump off a cliff or dive into the hot end of an ion engine for her, and the only time she ever saw any sign of discontentment with her orders was when Bolpuhr thought she might be placing him in a difficult position to properly defend her.

As he was thinking now, Leia understood, though why in the world Bolpuhr would fear for her safety on her sister-in-law’s private shuttle was beyond her. Sometimes dedication could be taken a bit too far.

With a nod to Bolpuhr, she turned back to the bridge and crossed through the open doorway. “How much longer?” she asked, and was amused to see both Jaina and Mara jump in surprise at her sudden appearance.

In answer, Jaina increased the magnification on the forward screen, and instead of the unremarkable dots of light, there appeared an image of two planets, one mostly blue and white, the other reddish in hue, seemingly so close together that Leia wondered how it was that the blue-and-white one, the larger of the pair, had not grasped the other in its gravity and turned it into a moon. Parked halfway between them, perhaps a half a million kilometers from either, deck lights glittering in the shadows of the blue-and-white planet, loomed a Mon Calamari battle cruiser, the Mediator, one of the newest ships in the New Republic fleet.

“They’re at their closest,” Mara observed, referring to the planets.

“I beg your indulgence,” came a melodic voice from the doorway, and the protocol droid C-3PO walked into the room. “But I do not believe that is correct.”

“Close enough,” Mara said. She turned to Jaina. “Both Rhommamool and Osarian are ground based, technologically—”

“Rhommamool almost exclusively so!” C-3PO quickly added, drawing a scowl from all three of the women. Oblivious, he rambled on. “Even Osarian’s fleet must be considered marginal, at best. Unless, of course, one is using the Pantang Scale of Aero-techno Advancement, which counts even a simple landspeeder as highly as it would a Star Destroyer. Perfectly ridiculous scale.”

“Thank you, Threepio,” Leia said, her tone indicating that she had heard more than enough.

“They’ve both got missiles that can hit each other from this close distance, though,” Mara continued.

“Oh, yes!” the droid exclaimed. “And given the proximity of their relative elliptical orbits—”

“Thank you, Threepio,” Leia said.

“—they will remain within striking distance for some time,” C-3PO continued without missing a beat. “Months, at least. In fact, they will be even closer in two standard weeks, the closest they will be to each other for a decade to come.”

“Thank you, Threepio!” Mara and Leia said together.

“And the closest they have been for a decade previous,” the droid had to slip in, as the women turned back to their conversation.

Mara shook her head, trying to remember her original point to Jaina. “That’s why your mother chose to come out now.”

“You’re expecting a fight?” Jaina asked, and neither Leia nor Mara missed the sparkle in her eye.

“The Mediator will keep them behaving,” Leia said hopefully. Indeed, the battle cruiser was an impressive warship, an updated and more heavily armed and armored version of the Mon Calamari star cruiser.

Mara looked back to the screen and shook her head, unconvinced. “It’ll take more than a show of force to stop this catastrophe,” she replied.

“Indeed, it has been escalating, by all reports,” C-3PO piped up. “It started as a simple mining dispute over mineral rights, but now the rhetoric is more appropriate for some kind of a holy crusade.”

“It’s the leader on Rhommamool,” Mara remarked. “Nom Anor. He’s reached down and grabbed his followers by their most basic instincts, weaving the dispute against Osarian into a more general matter of tyranny and oppression. Don’t underestimate him.”

“I can’t begin to give you a full list of tyrants like Nom Anor that I’ve dealt with,” Leia said with a resigned shrug.

“I have that very list available,” C-3PO blurted. “Tonkoss Rathba of—”

“Thank you, Threepio,” Leia said, too politely.

“Why, of course, Princess Leia,” the droid replied. “I do so like to be of service. Now where was I? Oh, yes. Tonkoss Rathba of—”

“Not now, Threepio,” Leia insisted, then to Mara, she added, “I’ve seen his type often.”

“Not like him,” Mara replied, somewhat softly, and the sudden weakness in her voice reminded Leia and Jaina that Mara, despite her nearly constant bravado and overabundance of energy, was seriously ill, with a strange and thankfully rare disease that had killed dozens of others and against which the best doctors in the New Republic had proven completely helpless. Of those who had contracted the molecular disorder, only Mara and one other remained alive, and that other person, being studied intently on Coruscant, was fast dying.

“Daluba,” C-3PO went on. “And of course, there was Icknya—”

Leia started to turn to the droid, hoping to politely but firmly shut him up, but Jaina’s cry stopped her abruptly and swung her back to face the screen.

“Incoming ships!” Jaina announced, her voice full of surprise. The telltale blips had appeared on her sensor viewer as if from nowhere.

“Four of them,” Mara confirmed. Even as she spoke, the warning buzzers began to go off. “From Osarian.” She turned her curious expression up to Leia. “They know who we are?”

Leia nodded. “And they know why I’ve come.”

“Then they should know to leave us alone,” Jaina reasoned.

Leia nodded again, but understood better. She had come to the system not to meet with the Osarians—not at first, at least—but with their principal rival, Nom Anor, the cult figure stirring up trouble on Rhommamool. “Tell them to back off,” she instructed Mara.

“Politely?” Mara asked, smiling, and with that dangerous twinkle in her eyes.

“New Republic shuttle,” a halting voice crackled over the comm. “This is Captain Grappa of Osarian First-Force.”

With a flick of a switch, Mara put an image of the captain on the viewscreen, and Leia sighed as the green skin, spiny head ridge, and tapirlike snout came into view.

“Wonderful,” she remarked sarcastically.

“The Osarians have hired Rodians?” Jaina asked.

“Nothing like a few mercenaries to quiet things down,” Leia replied dryly.

“Oh, dear me,” C-3PO remarked, and he shuffled aside nervously.

“You come with us,” Grappa insisted, his multifaceted eyes sparkling eagerly. “To Osa-Prime.”

“Seems the Osarians want to talk with you first,” Mara said.

“They’re afraid that my meeting with Nom Anor will only heighten his stature, both among the Rhommamoolians and throughout the sector,” Leia reasoned, a notion not without credence, and one that she had debated endlessly before making the decision to come here.

“Whatever the reason, they’re closing fast,” Mara replied. Both she and Jaina looked to Leia for instructions, for while the Jade Sabre was Mara’s ship, this was Leia’s mission.

“Princess Leia?” an obviously alarmed C-3PO asked.

Leia sat down in the chair behind Mara, intently studying the screen, which Jaina had switched back to a normal space view. The four approaching fighters were clearly visible.

“Lose them,” she said determinedly, a request that neither of the pilots needed to hear twice. Indeed, Mara had been eager to put the shuttle, with its powerful twin engines and state-of-the-art maneuvering systems, through a real test.

Green eyes sparkling, smile wide, Mara reached for the controls, but then retracted her hands and put them on her lap. “You heard her, Jaina,” she said.

Jaina’s mouth dropped open; so did Leia’s.

“You mean it?” Jaina asked.

Mara’s only reply was an almost bored expression, along with a slight yawn, as if this whole thing was no big deal, and certainly nothing that Jaina couldn’t easily handle.

“Yes!” Jaina whispered, clenching her fists, wearing a smile nearly wide enough to take in her ears. She rubbed her hands together, then reached out to the right, rolling her fingers over the floating-ball control of the inertial compensator. “Strap in,” she ordered, and she dialed it down to 95 percent, as fighter pilots often did so that they could gain a tactile feel to the movements of their ships. Reading the g’s, Jaina had heard it called, and she always preferred flying that way, where fast turns and mighty acceleration could push her back in her seat.

“Not too much,” Leia said with concern.

But her daughter was in her element now, Leia knew, and she’d push the shuttle to its limits. Leia felt the lean as Jaina veered right, angling away from the approaching ships.

“If you run, we shoot you down!” came the uneven voice of Grappa.

“Z-95 Headhunters,” Mara said derisively of the closing craft, an antiquated starfighter, and she flipped off the comm switch and looked back at Leia. “Can’t shoot what you can’t catch,” she explained. “Kick them in,” she added to Jaina, motioning to the primary thrusters, thinking that a burst of the powerful engines would shoot the Jade Sabre right past the befuddled Rodians and their outdated starfighters.

Even as she spoke, though, two more blips appeared on the sensors, streaking out from the shadows around Rhommamool, angling right in line with the Jade Sabre.

“Mara,” Leia said with concern. At that, Mara did reach for the controls. But only for a moment, and then she looked Jaina right in the eye and nodded for the young woman to proceed.

Leia lurched forward in her seat, held back only by the belt, as Jaina reversed throttle and kicked the etheric rudder right. There came a metallic thump behind them—C-3PO hitting the wall, Leia guessed.

Even as the Jade Sabre came to a sudden halt, nose turned starboard, Jaina pumped it out to full throttle and kicked the rudder back to the left, then hard right, fishtailing the ship about in a brutal one-eighty, then working the rudder hard and somewhat choppy in straightening out her direct retreat. As they turned, a laser cannon blast cut across their bow.

“All right, the first four are on our tail,” Mara instructed calmly. The Jade Sabre jolted, hit aft, a blow the shields easily held back.

“Try a—” Mara started to say, but she lost the words, and nearly her lunch, as Jaina pulled a snap roll right, and then another right behind it.

“Oh, we’ll be killed!” came C-3PO’s cry from the doorway, and Leia managed to turn her head to see the droid leaning in against the metal jamb, and then to see him fly away, with a pitiful cry, as Jaina kicked the etheric rudder again, putting the ship into another sudden fishtail.

A pair of Headhunters streaked past the viewscreen, but just for a split second, for Jaina vectored away at a different angle, and at single-engine full throttle, pressing Leia back in her seat. Leia wanted to say something to Jaina then, some words of encouragement or advice, but found her words stuck in her throat. And not for any g forces.

It was the sight of Jaina, the fire in her brown eyes, the determined set of her jaw, the sheer concentration. At that moment, Leia knew.

Her daughter was a woman now, and with all the grit of her father and mother combined.

Mara glanced over her right shoulder, between Jaina and Leia, and both followed her lead long enough to see that two of the initial four had altered course accordingly and were fast closing, laser cannons blasting away.

“Hold on,” a confident Jaina warned, and she pulled back the stick, lifting the Jade Sabre’s nose, then shoved it forward, dropping the shuttle into a sudden, inverted loop.

“We’re doomed!” C-3PO cried from the hallway—the hallway ceiling, Leia knew.

Halfway around, Jaina broke the loop with a snap roll, then kicked her into a fishtail and a barrel roll, bringing her about to nearly their original course, but with the initial four behind them. Now she did kick in both ion drives, as if to use sheer speed to split the gap between the two incoming fighters.

Both angled out suddenly, then turned back in, widening that escape route but giving them a longer shooting angle at the shuttle, and an easier turn to pursue.

“They’re good,” Mara warned, but, like Leia, she found her words lost in her throat, as Jaina, teeth gritted to fight back the g’s, reversed throttle.

“Princess—” The plaintive cry from the corridor ended abruptly in a loud crash.

“Coming in hot!” Mara cried, noting the fighter fast approaching to port.

Jaina didn’t, couldn’t even hear her; she had turned inward now, was feeling the Force coursing through her, was registering every movement of her enemies and reacting instinctively, playing the game three moves ahead. Before Mara had even begun to speak, Jaina had hit the forward attitude adjustment jets, lifting the nose, then she pumped the throttle and kicked the rudder, lifting the Jade Sabre and bringing her nose about to starboard, to directly face the other incoming Headhunter.

And that eager Rodian did come in at them, and hard, and the Jade Sabre’s defensive array screeched and lit up, warning of a lock-on.

“Jaina!” Leia cried.

“He’s got us!” Mara added.

But then the closer ship, coming from port, passed right under the Jade Sabre, and Jaina fired the repulsorlifts, bouncing the Jade Sabre up and sending the poor Headhunter into a wild, spinning roll.

The closing ship from starboard let fly its concussion missile, but it, and the Headhunter, zipped right underneath the elevated Jade Sabre.

Before the three women could even begin to catch their breath, another ship streaked in, an X-wing, the new XJ version of the starfighter, its own laser cannons blasting away from its wingtips. Not at the Jade Sabre, though, but at the Headhunter that had just gone past.

“Who is that?” Leia asked, and Jaina, equally curious, brought the Jade Sabre about hard.

The Headhunter snap-rolled left and dived, but the far superior X-wing stayed on her, lasers scoring hit after hit, depleting her shields and then blasting her apart into a million pieces.

“A Jedi,” Mara and Jaina said together, and Leia, when she paused to collect the Force sensations about her, concurred.

“Fast to the Mediator,” Leia instructed her daughter, and Jaina swung the Jade Sabre about yet again.

“I didn’t know there were any Jedi in the sector,” Leia said to Mara, who could only shrug, equally at a loss.

“Another one’s out,” Jaina informed them, watching the blips on her sensor screen. “And two others are vectoring away.”

“They want no part of a Jedi showing a willingness to shoot back,” Mara remarked.

“Maybe Rodians are smarter than I thought,” Leia said dryly. “Smooth it out,” she instructed her daughter, unbuckling and climbing unsteadily to her feet.

Jaina reluctantly dialed the inertial compensator back to full.

“Only one pursuing,” Jaina informed them as Leia made her way to the door.

“The X-wing,” Mara added, and Leia nodded.

In the hallway outside the bridge, Leia found C-3PO inverted and against the wall, his feet sticking up in the air, his head crunched forward so that his chin was tight against his chest.

“You have to learn to hold on,” Leia said to him, helping him upright. She glanced across the way to Bolpuhr as she spoke, to find the Noghri still standing calmly in the exact spot she had assigned him.

Somehow, she wasn’t amazed.

Jaina took the Jade Sabre at a swift but steady pace toward the distant Mediator. She checked often for pursuit, but it quickly became obvious that the Rodians in their outdated Headhunters wanted no part of this fight.

Leia rejoined them a short while later, to find Jaina in complete control and Mara resting back in her seat, eyes closed. Even when Jaina asked her aunt a question about docking procedures, the woman didn’t respond, didn’t even open her eyes.

“They’ll guide you in,” Leia interjected, and sure enough, a voice from the Mediator crackled over the opened comm, giving explicit directions for entry vector.

Jaina took her in, and Jaina took her down, easily—and after the display of flying she had just given them out with the Headhunters, Leia wasn’t the least bit surprised by her ability to so smoothly tight-dock a ship as large as the Jade Sabre.

That final shudder as Jaina eased off the repulsorlifts and settled the shuttle onto the docking bay floor stirred Mara from her rest. She opened her eyes and, seeing where they were, rose quickly.

And then she swayed and seemed as if she would fall.

Leia and Jaina were there in an instant, catching and steadying her.

She regained her balance and took a deep breath. “Maybe next time you can dial down the inertial compensator to ninety-seven instead of ninety-five,” she said jokingly, straining a smile.

Jaina laughed, but Leia’s face showed her deep concern. “Are you all right?” she asked.

Mara eyed her directly.

“Perhaps we should find a place where you can rest,” Leia said.

“Where we all can rest,” Mara corrected, and her tone told Leia to back off, a reminder that Leia was intruding on a private place for Mara, a place she had explicitly instructed all of her friends, even her husband, not to go. This disease was Mara’s fight alone, to Mara’s thinking, a battle that had forced her to reconsider everything she thought about her life, past, present, and future, and everything she thought about death.

Leia held her stare for a moment longer, but replaced her own concerned expression with one of acceptance. Mara did not want to be coddled or cuddled. She was determined to live on in an existence that did not name her disease as the most pressing and important facet of her entire life, to live on as she had before, with the illness being relegated to the position of nuisance, and nothing more.

Of course, Leia understood it to be much more than that, an internal churning that required Mara to spend hours and tremendous Force energy merely holding it in check. But that was Mara’s business.

“I hope to meet with Nom Anor tomorrow,” Leia explained, as the three, with C-3PO and Bolpuhr in tow, headed for the lower hatch, then moved down to the landing bay. A contingent of New Republic Honor Guard stood waiting there, along with Commander Ackdool, a Mon Calamarian with large, probing eyes, a fishlike face, and salmon-colored skin. “By all reports, we should all be rested before dealing with him.”

“Believe those reports,” Mara said.

“And first, it seems I get to meet with our savior Jedi,” Leia added dryly, looking back behind the Jade Sabre to see the X-wing gliding in to rest.

“Wurth Skidder,” Jaina remarked, recognizing the markings under the canopy on the starfighter.

“Why am I not surprised?” Leia asked, and she blew a sigh.

Ackdool came over to them, then, and extended his formal greetings to the distinguished guests, but Leia’s reaction set him back on his heels—indeed, it raised more than a few eyebrows among the members of the Mediator’s Honor Guard.

“Why did you send him out?” Leia snapped, motioning toward the docking X-wing.

Commander Ackdool started to answer, but Leia continued. “If we had needed assistance, we would have called for it.”

“Of course, Princess Leia,” Commander Ackdool said with a polite bow.

“They why send him out?”

“Why do you assume that Wurth Skidder flew out at my command?” the cool Commander Ackdool dared to respond. “Why would you assume that Wurth Skidder heeds any order I might give?”

“Couple o’ ridge-head parachutes floating over Osarian, if those Rodians had any luck,” came the singsong voice of Wurth Skidder. The cocky young man was fast approaching, pulling off his helmet and giving his shock of blond hair a tousle as he walked.

Leia stepped out to intercept him and took another quick step for no better reason than to make the Jedi stop short. “Wurth Skidder,” she said.

“Princess,” the man replied with a bow.

“Did you have a little fun out there?”

“More than a little,” the Jedi said with a wide grin and a sniffle—and he always seemed to be sniffling, and his hair always looked as if he had just walked in from a Tatooine sandstorm. “Fun for me, I mean, and not for the Rodians.”

“And the cost of your fun?” Leia asked.

That took the smile from Wurth Skidder’s face, and he looked at Leia curiously, obviously not understanding.

“The cost,” Leia explained. “What did your little excursion cost?”

“A couple of proton torpedos,” Wurth replied with a shrug.

“A little fuel.”

“And a year of diplomatic missions to calm down the Osarians,” Leia retorted.

“But they shot first,” Wurth protested.

“Do you even understand that your stupidity likely escalated an already impossible situation?” Leia’s voice was as firm and cold as anyone present had ever heard it. So cold, in fact, that the always overprotective Bolpuhr, fearing trouble, glided closer to her, hanging back just behind her left shoulder, within fast striking distance of the Jedi.

“They were attacking you,” Wurth Skidder retorted. “Six of them!”

“They were trying to bring us down to Osarian,” Leia harshly explained. “A not-so-unexpected response, given my announced intentions here. And so we planned to avoid them. Avoid! Do you understand that word?”

Wurth Skidder said nothing.

“Avoid them and thus cause no further problems or hard feelings,” Leia went on. “And so we would have, and we would have asked for no explanations from Shunta Osarian Dharrg, all of us pretending that nothing had ever happened.”

“But—”

“And our graciousness in not mentioning this unfortunate incident would have bought me the bargaining capital I need to bring some kind of conciliation from Osarian toward Rhommamool,” Leia continued, anger creeping in thicker with each word. “But now we can’t do that, can we? Now, so that Wurth Skidder could paint another skull on the side of his X-wing, I’ll have to deal with an incident.”

“They shot first,” Wurth Skidder reiterated when it became apparent that Leia was done.

“And better that they had shot last,” Leia replied. “And if Shunta Osarian Dharrg demands reparations, we’ll agree, with all apologies, and any monies to be paid will come from Wurth Skidder’s private funds.”

The Jedi squared his shoulders at the suggestion, but then Leia hit him with a sudden and devastating shot. “My brother will see to it.”

Wurth Skidder bowed again, glared at Leia and all around, then turned on his heel and walked briskly away.

“My apologies, Princess Leia,” Ackdool said. “But I have no real authority over Jedi Skidder. I had thought it a blessing when he arrived two weeks ago. His Jedi skills should certainly come in handy against any terrorist attempts—and we have heard rumors of many—against the Mediator.”

“And you are indeed within striking distance of surface missiles,” C-3PO added, but he stopped short, this time catching on to the many disapproving looks that came his way.

“I did not know that Jedi Skidder would prove so …” Ackdool paused, searching for the right word. “Intractable.”

“Stubborn, you mean,” Leia said. As they all started away, Leia did manage a bit of a smile when she heard Mara behind her tell Jaina, “Maybe Nom Anor has met his match.”

C-9PO, a protocol droid, its copper coloring tinged red from the constantly blowing dusts of Rhommamool, skittered down an alley to the side of the main avenue of Redhaven and peeked out cautiously at the tumult beyond. The fanatical followers of Nom Anor, the Red Knights of Life, had gone on the rampage again, riding throughout the city in an apparent purge of landspeeders on their tutakans, eight-legged lizards with enormous tusks that climbed right up past their black eyes and curled in like white eyebrows.

“Ride the beasts given by Life!” one Red Knight screamed at a poor civilian as the wrinkled Dressellian merchant was dragged from the cockpit and punched and pushed to the ground.

“Perversion!” several other Red Knights cried in unison. “Life-pretender!” And they set upon the landspeeder with their tubal-iron pummelstaves, smashing the windshield, bashing in the side moldings, crushing the steering wheel and other controls, even knocking one of the rear drive’s cylindrical engines from its mounts.

Satisfied that the craft was wrecked beyond repair, they pulled the Dressellian to his feet and shoved him to and fro, warning him to ride creatures, not machines—or, better still, to use the legs that nature had provided and walk. Then they beat him back down to the ground and moved on, some climbing back atop the tutakans, others running beside.

The landspeeder continued to hover, though it had only a couple of repulsors still firing. It looked more like a twisted lump of beaten metal than a vehicle, tilting to one side because of the unequal weight distribution and the weakened lift capacity.

“Oh, dear me,” the protocol droid said, ducking low as the contingent stormed past.

Tap, tap, tap came the ringing of metal on metal against the top of the droid’s head. C-9PO slowly turned about and saw the fringe of the telltale black capes, and the red-dyed hides.

With a screech, the droid stood up and tried to run away, but a pummelstave smashed in the side of his leg and he went facedown in the red dust. He lifted his head, but rising up on his arms only gave the two Red Knights a better handhold as they walked past, each scooping the droid under one shoulder and dragging him along.

“Got a Ninepio,” one of the pair called out to his lizard-riding buddies, and a cheer went up.

The doomed droid knew the destination: the Square of Hopeful Redemption.

C-9PO was glad that he wasn’t programmed to experience pain.

* * *

“It was a stupid thing to do,” Leia said firmly.

“Wurth thought he was helping us,” Jaina reminded, but Leia wasn’t buying that argument.

“Wurth was trying to find his own thrills,” she corrected.

“And that hotshot attitude of his will reinforce the ring of truth to Nom Anor’s diatribes against the Jedi,” Mara said. “He’s not without followers on Osarian.” As she finished, she looked down at the table, at the pile of leaflets Commander Ackdool had given them, colorful propaganda railing against the New Republic, against the Jedi, and against anything mechanical and technological, and somehow tying all of these supposed ills to the cultural disease that engulfed the society of the planet Osarian.

“Why does Nom Anor hate the Jedi?” Jaina asked. “What do we have to do with the struggle between Osarian and Rhommamool? I never even heard of these planets until you mentioned that we’d be coming here.”

“The Jedi have nothing to do with this struggle,” Leia replied. “Or at least, they didn’t until Wurth Skidder’s antics.”

“Nom Anor hates the New Republic,” Mara added. “And he hates the Jedi as symbols of the New Republic.”

“Is there anything Nom Anor doesn’t hate?” Leia asked dryly.

“Don’t take him lightly,” Mara warned yet again. “His religious cry to abandon technology and machines, to look for truth in the natural elements and life of the universe, and to resist the joining of planets in false confederations resonates deeply in many people, particularly those who have been the victims of such planetary alliances, like the miners of Rhommamool.”

Leia didn’t disagree. She had spent many hours before and during the journey here reading the history of the two planets, and she knew that the situation on Rhommamool was much more complicated than that. While many of the miners had traveled to the inhospitable red planet voluntarily, there were quite a number who were the descendants of the original “colonists”—involuntary immigrants sent there to work the mines because of high crimes they had committed.

Whatever the truth of the situation, though, Leia couldn’t deny that Rhommamool was the perfect breeding ground for zealots like Nom Anor. Life there was tough—even basics like water could be hard to come by—while the prosperous Osarians lived in comfort on white sandy beaches and crystal-clear lakes.

“I still don’t understand how any of that concerns the Jedi,” Jaina remarked.

“Nom Anor was stirring up anger against the Jedi long before he ever came to Rhommamool,” Mara explained. “Here, he’s just found a convenient receptacle for his wrath.”

“And with the Jedi Knights scattered throughout the galaxy, and so many of them following their own agendas, Nom Anor might just find plenty of ammunition to add to his arguments,” Leia added grimly. “I’m glad that my brother is thinking of reestablishing the Jedi Council.”

Mara nodded, but Jaina seemed less convinced. “Jacen doesn’t think that’s such a good idea,” she reminded her mother.

Leia shrugged. Her oldest son, Jaina’s twin, had indeed expressed serious doubts about the course of the Jedi Knights.

“If we can’t bring some sense of order to the galaxy, particularly to isolated planets like Osarian and Rhommamool, then we’re no better than the Empire,” Mara remarked.

“We’re better than the Empire,” Leia insisted.

“Not in Nom Anor’s eyes,” Jaina said.

And Mara reiterated her warning to Leia not to take the man lightly. “He’s the strangest man I ever met,” she explained, and given her past exploits with notorious sorts like Jabba the Hutt and Talon Karrde, that was quite a statement. “Even when I tried to use the Force to gain a better perspective on him, I drew …” Mara paused, as if looking for some way to properly express the feeling. “A blank,” she decided. “As if the Force had nothing to do with him.”

Leia and Jaina looked at her curiously.

“No,” Mara corrected. “More like he had nothing to do with the Force.”

The perfect disconnected ideologue, Leia thought, and she expressed her feelings with a single sarcastic word: “Wonderful.”

He stood on the platform surrounded by his fanatical Red Knights. Before him, ten thousand Rhommamoolians crowded into every open space of the great public square of Redhaven, once the primary trading spaceport of the planet. But those facilities had been leveled in the early days of the uprising, with the Rhommamoolians declaring their independence from Osarian. And more recently, since the coming of Nom Anor as spearhead of the revolution, the place had been renamed the Square of Hopeful Redemption.

Here, the citizens came to declare freedom from Osarian.

Here, the followers came to renounce the New Republic.

Here, the believers came to renounce the Jedi.

And here, the fanatics came to discredit progress and technology, to cry out for a simpler time, when the strength of a being’s legs, and not the weight of his purse, determined how far he could travel, and the strength of his hands, and not the weight of his purse, allowed him to harvest the gifts of nature.

Nom Anor loved it all, the adulation and the fanatical, bordering on suicidal, devotion. He cared nothing for Rhommamool or its inhabitants, cared nothing for the foolish cries for some ridiculous “simpler time.”

But how he loved the chaos his words and followers inflicted upon the order of the galaxy. How he loved the brooding undercurrent of resentment toward the New Republic, and the simmering anger aimed at the Jedi Knights, these supercreatures of the galaxy.

Wouldn’t his superiors be pleased?

Nom Anor flipped his shiny black cape back from his shoulder and held his fist upraised into the air, drawing shrieks of appreciation. In the center of the square, where once had stood the Portmaster’s Pavilion, now was a huge pit, thirty meters in diameter and ten deep. Whistles and whines emanated from that pit, along with cries for mercy and pitifully polite words of protest—the voices of droids collected by the folk of Rhommamool and dropped into the hole.

Great cheers erupted from all corners of the square as a pair of the Red Knights entered from one avenue, dragging a 9PO protocol droid between them. They went to the edge of the pit, took up the poor 9PO by the arms and the legs, and on a three-count, launched him onto the pile of metal consisting of the astromech and mine-sniffer droids, the Redhaven street-cleaner droids, and the personal butler droids of the wealthier Rhommamoolian citizens.

When the hooting and cheering died down, Nom Anor opened his hands, revealing a single small stone. Then he clenched his fist again, squeezing with tremendous power, crushing the stone in his grasp so that dust and flecks of rock splinters slipped out the sides.

The signal to begin.

As one the crowd surged forward, lifting great chunks of stone, the debris from the wreckage of the pavilion. They came to the edge of the pit one after another and hurled their heavy missiles at the pile of droids.

The stoning went on for the rest of the afternoon, until the red glare of the sun thinned to a brilliant crimson line along the horizon, until the dozens and dozens of droids were no more than scrap metal and sparking wires.

And Nom Anor, silent and dignified, watched it all somberly, accepting this great tribute his followers had paid to him, this public execution of the hated droids.

LEGACY ERA
(40+ YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

The Yuuzhan Vong have been defeated, but the galaxy has been slow to recover from their depredations, with powerful worlds chafing at the economic burdens and military restrictions put upon them by the nascent Galactic Alliance, once-powerful species seeking to rise again, newly prosperous worlds testing their influence, and long-buried secrets coming to light. The result of all this instability is civil war. Faced with a Galactic Alliance that has fallen away from its values, Luke and the Jedi Order must decide where their loyalties lie—and so, too, must the heroes of the Rebellion.

While hostilities spread across the Core Worlds, lurking in the shadows is a Sith adept who wastes no time in taking advantage of the galactic chaos to wage a very personal war against the Skywalkers and the Solos. Luke will face terrible loss, Han and Leia will be tested as never before, and their daughter, Jaina, will learn just what it means to fulfill her destiny as “the Sword of the Jedi.” And even as the Galactic Alliance pulls the galaxy back from the brink of total disaster, the Skywalker–Solo clan will never be the same again.

The mop-up is difficult. Luke Skywalker is exiled from Coruscant, and while he and his son, Jedi Knight Ben Skywalker, set out on a quest to discover what caused such darkness to befall the galaxy and their family, Han and Leia are left to raise their granddaughter, Allana, and help shepherd the government back into some semblance of order. But little do any of them know that a long-lost tribe of Sith is making its way toward the Core, determined to fulfill their destiny of dominance over the galaxy … and that both Sith and Jedi are about to run headlong into a terrifying creature of untold Force abilities and an insatiable appetite for power …

If you’re a reader new to the Legacy era, here are four great starting points:

• Legacy of the Force: Betrayal, by Aaron Allston: The first in the nine-book Legacy of the Force series, setting the stage for galactic civil war and a fall to darkness.

• Millennium Falcon, by James Luceno: Han Solo’s famous freighter becomes a character in her own right as Han, Leia, their granddaughter Allana, and the droid C-3PO set out on an adventure that brings to light the ship’s colorful, mysterious past.

• Crosscurrent, by Paul S. Kemp: A remnant of the Old Republic comes into Luke Skywalker’s time in a tale of insane clones and time-traveling Jedi and Sith.

• Fate of the Jedi: Outcast, by Aaron Allston: The nine-book Fate of the Jedi series blasts off with the new adventures of Luke and Ben Skywalker—Jedi Master and apprentice, father and son—in search of answers to a terrifying question.

Read on for excerpts from Star Wars Legends novels set in the Legacy era.

chapter one

CORUSCANT

“He doesn’t exist.” With those words, spoken without any conscious thought or effort on his part, Luke Skywalker sat upright in bed and looked around at the dimly illuminated chamber.

There wasn’t much to see. Members of the Jedi order, even Masters such as Luke, didn’t accumulate much personal property. Within view were chairs situated in front of unlit computer screens; a wall rack holding plasteel staves and other practice weapons; a table littered with personal effects such as datapads, notes scrawled on scraps of flimsi, datachips holding reports from various Jedi Masters, and a crude and not at all accurate sandglass statuette in Luke’s image sent to him by a child from Tatooine. Inset into the stone-veneer walls were drawers holding his and Mara’s limited selection of clothes. Their lightsabers were behind Luke, resting on a shelf on the headboard of their bed.

His wife, Mara Jade Skywalker, had more personal items and equipment, of course. Disguises, weapons, communications gear, falsified documents. A former spy, she had never given up the trappings of that trade, but those items weren’t here. Luke wasn’t sure where she kept them. She didn’t bother him with such details.

Beside him, she stirred, and he glanced down at her. Her red hair, kept a medium length this season, was an unruly mess, but there was no sleepiness in her eyes when they opened. In brighter light, he knew, those eyes were an amazing green. “Who doesn’t exist?” she asked.

“I don’t know. An enemy.”

“You dreamed about him?”

He nodded. “I’ve had the dream a couple of times before. It’s not just a dream. It’s coming to me through currents in the Force. He’s all wrapped up in shadows—a dark hooded cloak, but more than that, shadows of light and …” Luke shook his head, struggling for the correct word. “And ignorance. And denial. And he brings great pain to the galaxy … and to me.”

“Well, if he brings pain to the galaxy, you’re obviously going to feel it.”

“No, to me personally, in addition to his other evil.” Luke sighed and lay down again. “It’s too vague. And when I’m awake, when I try to peer into the future to find him, I can’t.”

“Because he doesn’t exist.”

“That’s what the dream tells me.” Luke hissed in aggravation.

“Could it be Raynar?”

Luke considered. Raynar Thul, former Jedi Knight, presumed dead during the Yuuzhan Vong war, had been discovered a few years earlier—horribly burned during the war, mentally transformed in the years since through his involvement with the insectoid Killik race. That transformation had been a malevolent one, and the Jedi order had had to deal with him. Now he languished in a well-protected cell deep within the Jedi Temple, undergoing treatment for his mental and physical afflictions.

Treatment. Treatment meant change; perhaps, in changing, Raynar was becoming something new, and Luke’s presentment pointed toward the being Raynar would someday become.

Luke shook his head and pushed the possibility away. “In this vision, I don’t sense Raynar’s alienness. Mentally, emotionally, whoever it is remains human, or near human. There’s even the possibility that it’s my father.”

“Darth Vader.”

“No. Before he was Darth Vader. Or just when he was becoming Vader.” Luke’s gaze lost focus as he tried to recapture the dream. “What little of his face I can see reminds me of the features of Anakin Skywalker as a Jedi. But his eyes … as I watch, they turn a molten gold or orange, transforming from Force-use and anger …”

“I have an idea.”

“Tell me.”

“Let’s wait until he shows up, then crush him.”

Luke smiled. “All right.” He closed his eyes and his breathing slowed, an effort to return to sleep.

Within a minute the rhythm of his breathing became that of natural sleep.

But Mara lay awake, her attention on the ceiling—beyond it, through dozens of floor levels of the Jedi enclave to the skies of Coruscant above—and searched for any hint, any flicker of what it was that was causing her husband worry.

She found no sign of it. And she, too, slept.

ADUMAR

The gleaming pearl-gray turbolift doors slid open sideways, and warm air bearing an aroma that advertised death and destruction washed over Jacen Solo, his cousin Ben Skywalker, and their guide.

Jacen took a deep breath and held it. The odors of this subterranean factory were not the smells of corrupted flesh or gangrenous wounds—smells Jacen was familiar with—but those of labor and industry. The great chamber before them had been a missile manufacturing center for decades, and no amount of rigorous cleaning would ever be quite able to eliminate the odors of sweat, machine lubricant, newly fabricated composite materials, solid fuel propellants, and high explosives that filled the air.

Jacen expelled the breath and stepped out of the turbolift, then walked the handful of steps up to the rail overlooking the chamber. He walked rapidly so that his Jedi cloak would billow a little as he strode, so that his boot heels would ring on the metal flooring of this observation catwalk, and so his apprentice and guide would be left behind for a moment. This was a performance for his guide and all the other representatives of the Dammant Killers company. Jacen knew he was carrying off his role quite well; the company officials he’d been dealing with remained properly intimidated. But he didn’t know whether to attribute his success to his bearing and manner, his lean, brooding, and handsome looks, or his name—for on this world of Adumar, with its history of fascination with pilots, the name of Jacen’s father, Han Solo, went a very long way.

His guide, a slender, balding man named Testan ke Harran, moved up to the rail to Jacen’s right. Contrasting with the dull grays and blues that were common on this factory’s walls and its workers’ uniforms, Testan was a riot of color—his tunic, with its nearly knee-length hem and its flowing sleeves, was the precise orange of X-wing fighter pilot uniforms, though decorated with purple crisscross lines breaking it down into a flickering expanse of small diamond shapes, and his trousers, belt, and scarf were a gleaming gold.

Testan stroked his lustrous black beard, the gesture a failed attempt to conceal the man’s nervousness. Jacen felt, rather than saw, Ben move up on the other side of Testan.

“You can see,” Testan said, “ar workars enjoy very fan conditions.”

Ben cleared his throat. “He says their workers enjoy very fine conditions.”

Jacen nodded absently. He understood Testan’s words, and it had taken him little time to learn and understand the Adumari accent, but this was another act, a ploy to keep the Adumari off-balance. He leaned forward to give the manufacturing floor below his full attention.

The room was large enough to act as a hangar and maintenance bay for four full squadrons of X-wing snubfighters. Tall duracrete partitions divided the space into eight lanes, each of which enclosed an assembly line; materials entered through small portals in the wall to the left, rolled along on luminous white conveyor belts, and eventually exited through portals on the far right. Laborers in gray jumpsuits flanked the belts and worked on the materials as they passed.

On the nearest belt, immediately below Jacen, the materials being worked on appeared to be compact visual sensor assemblies. The conveyor belt brought in eight such units and stopped. Moving quickly, the laborers plugged small cables into the units and turned to look into monitors, which showed black-and-white images of jumpsuited waists and worker hands. The workers turned the units this way and that, confirming that the sensors were properly calibrated.

One monitor never lit up with a view from the sensor. The worker on that unit unplugged it and set it on a table running parallel to the conveyor belt. A moment later, the other workers on this section unplugged their sensor units and the conveyor belt jerked into motion again, carrying the remaining seven units to the next station.

One lane over, the conveyor belt remained in constant motion, carrying sensor unit housings along. The workers on that belt, fewer in number than the sensor testers, reached out occasionally to turn a housing, to look inside, to examine the exterior for cracks or warping. Some workers, distributed at intervals along the line, rapped each housing with a small rubber-headed hammer. Jacen assumed they were listening for a musical tone he could not possibly hear at this distance over the roar of noise from the floor.

Another lane away from him, the workers were clad not in jumpsuits but in full-coverage hazardous materials suits of a lighter and more reflective gray than the usual worker outfit. Their conveyor belt carried white plates bearing irregular balls the size of a human head but a nearly luminous green. The belt stopped as each set of eight such balls entered the lane, giving the workers time to plunge needlelike sensors into each ball. They, too, checked monitors for a few seconds before withdrawing the needles to allow the balls to continue on. Jacen knew that poisonous green—it was the color of the high explosive Adumari manufacturers used to fabricate the concussion missiles they exported.

While Jacen made his initial survey, Ben kept their guide occupied. “Do you wax your beard?” he asked.

“I do not.”

“It just seems very shiny. Do you oil it?”

Testan’s voice was a little more irritated in tone. “I do not oil it. I condition it. And I brush it.”

“Do you brush it with butter?”

Jacen finally looked to the right, past Testan and at his cousin. Ben was thirteen standard years of age, not tall but well muscled, with a fine-featured freckled face under a mass of flame-red hair. Ben turned, his face impassive, to look at Jacen, then said, “The Jedi Knight acknowledges that this factory seems to meet the minimum, the absolute minimum, required safety and comfort standards of a Galactic Alliance military contractor.”

Jacen nodded. The nod meant Good improvisation. He was exerting no Force skill to communicate words to Ben; Ben’s role was to pretend to act as his mentor’s translator, when his actual function was to convince the locals that adult Jedi were even more aloof and mysterious than they had thought.

“No, no, no.” Testan drew a sleeve over his brow, dabbing away a little perspiration. “We are wall above minimam standards. Those duracrete barriers? They will vent any explosive farce upward, saving the majority of workars in case of calamity. Workar shifts are only two-fifths the day in length, unlike the old days.”

Ben repeated Testan’s words, and Jacen shrugged.

Ben imitated his motion. The gesture caused his own Jedi robe to gape open, revealing the lightsaber hanging from his belt.

Testan glanced at it, then looked back at Jacen, clearly worried. “Your apprentice—” Unsure, he looked to Ben again. “You are very young, are you not, to be wearing such a weapon?”

Ben gave him a blank look. “It’s a practice lightsaber.”

“Ah.” Testan nodded as though he understood.

And there it was. Perhaps it was just the thought of a thirteen-year-old with a deadly cutting implement at hand, but Testan’s defenses slipped enough that the worry began to pour through.

It was like the game in which children are told, “For the next hour, do not think about banthas.” Try as they might, they would, within minutes or even seconds, think about a bantha.

Testan’s control finally gave way and he thought about the banthas—or, rather, a place he wasn’t supposed to go, even to think about. Jacen could feel Testan try to clamp down on the thought. Something in the increased potency of that worry told Jacen that they must be nearer to the source of his concern than during previous parts of their factory tour.

When Testan turned back, Jacen looked directly at him and said, “There is something here. Something wrong.” They were the first words he’d spoken in Testan’s presence.

Testan shook his head. “No. Evrything is fan.”

Jacen looked past him, toward the wall to the far right of the chamber. It was gray and regular, a series of metal panels each the height of a man and twice as wide stacked like bricks. He began a slow, deliberate scrutiny, traversing right to left. His gaze swept the walls, the assembly lines, the elevated observation chamber directly opposite the turbolifts by which they had entered, and continued along the wall to the left.

As his attention reached the middle of the left wall, along the observation balcony, he felt another pulse of worry from Testan. Ben cleared his throat, a signal; the boy, though nowhere near as sensitive in the Force as Jacen, had gotten the same feeling.

Jacen set off along the balcony in that direction. This time the ringing of his boots and billowing of his cloak were a side effect of his speed rather than an act.

“You wish to see the observation chambar?” Testan hurried to keep up. His anxiety was growing, and there was something within it, like a shiny stone at the bottom of a murky pond.

Jacen reached into that pond to draw out the prize within.

It was a memory of a door. It was broad and gray, closing from above as men and women—in dark blue jumpsuits, the outfits of supervisors in this facility—scurried out ahead of its closing. When it settled in place, it was identical to the wall panels Jacen saw ahead of him in the here and now.

Jacen glanced over his shoulder at Testan. “Your thoughts betray you.”

Testan paled. “No, there is nothing to betray.”

Jacen rounded the observation balcony corner, took a few more steps, and skidded to a halt in front of one of the wall sections.

It was here. He knew because he could feel something beyond.

Conflict. He himself was there, fighting. So was Ben. It was a faint glimpse of the future, and he and his apprentice would be in peril beyond.

He jerked his head toward the wall.

Ben brought out his lightsaber and switched it on. With a snap-hiss sound, its blue blade of coherent energy extended to full length.

Ben plunged the blade into the wall panel and began to drag it around in a large circle.

Testan, his voice pained, said, “He told us it was a practice weapon.”

Jacen gave him an innocent look. “It’s true from a certain point of view. He does practice with it.” In his nervousness, Testan didn’t seem to notice that Jacen was understanding him clearly now.

Ben completed his circle and gave the meter-and-a-half-high section he’d outlined a little kick. It fell away into a well-lit chamber, clanging on the floor beyond; the edges still glowed with the heat the lightsaber had poured into them.

Ben stepped through. Jacen ducked to follow. He heard Testan muttering—doubtless an alert into a comlink. Jacen didn’t bother to interfere. They’d just been within clear sight of hundreds of workers and the observation chamber. Dealing with Testan wouldn’t keep the alarm from being broadcast.

The room beyond Ben’s improvised doorway was actually a corridor, four meters wide and eight high, every surface made up of the same dull gray metal rectangles found in the outer chamber, greenish white light pouring from the luminous ceiling. To the left, the corridor ended after a few meters, and that end was heavily packed with tall plasteel transport containers. They were marked DANGER, DO NOT DROP, and DAMMANT KILLER MODEL 16, QUANTITY 24.

To the right, the corridor extended another forty meters and then opened up; the rail and drop-off at the end suggested that it opened onto another observation balcony above another fabrication chamber.

Now making the turn from the balcony into the corridor and running toward them were half a dozen troops armed with blaster rifles. Their orange jumpsuits were reminiscent of X-wing pilot uniforms, but the green carapace armor over their lower legs, torsos, lower arms, and heads was more like stormtrooper speeder bike armor painted the wrong color.

And then behind the first six troops came another six, and then another eight …

Jacen brought his lightsaber out and snapped it into life; the incandescent green of his blade was reflected as highlights against the walls and the armor of the oncoming troops. “Stay behind me,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Ben’s sigh was audible, and Jacen grinned.

The foremost trooper, who bore gold bars on his helmet and wrists, shouted, his voice mechanically amplified: “Stop whar you are! This saction is restricted!”

Jacen moved forward at a walk. He rotated his wrist, moving his lightsaber blade around in front of him in a pattern vaguely reminiscent of butterfly wings. He shouted back, “Could you speak up? I’m a little deaf.”

Ben snickered. “Good one.”

“You may not entar this saction!”

They were now twenty meters from the ranks of troopers ahead.

Jacen continued twirling his blade in a practice form. “Fewer people will be hurt if you just get out of my way.” It was a sort of ritual thing to say. Massed enemy forces almost never backed down, despite the reputation of the Jedi—a reputation that became more widespread, more supernatural, with each year the Jedi prospered under Luke Skywalker’s leadership.

The phrase was ritual in another way, too. Once upon a time, Jacen would have felt tragedy surround him when his actions resulted in the deaths of common soldiers, common guards. But over time he’d lost that sense. There was a wearying inevitability to leaders sending their troops to die against more powerful enemies. It had been happening as long as there were violent leaders and obedient followers. In death, these people became one with the Force, and when Jacen had accepted that fact, his sense of tragedy had largely evaporated.

He took another two steps and the trooper commander called, “Fire!”

The troopers began firing. Jacen gave himself over to the Force, to his awareness of his surroundings, to his sudden oneness with the men and women trying to kill him.

He simply ignored most of the blaster bolts. When he felt them angling in toward him, he twirled his lightsaber blade in line and batted them away, usually back toward the crowd of troopers. In the first few seconds of their assault, four troopers fell to blasts launched by their friends. The smell of burned flesh began to fill the corridor.

Jacen felt danger from behind; felt Ben react to it. Jacen didn’t shift his attention; he continued his march forward. He’d prefer to be able to protect the inexperienced youth, but the boy was good at blaster defense practice. Hard as it was to trust a Jedi whose skills were just developing, he had to. To teach, to learn, he had to trust.

Jacen intercepted the next blaster shot that came his way and batted it toward the trooper commander. It struck the man in the helmet and caromed off, burning out against the ceiling; a portion four meters square of the ceiling’s illumination winked out, darkening the corridor. The commander fell. The shot was probably not fatal—protected by his helmet, the man would have forehead and scalp burns, probably a concussion, but he was unlikely to die.

The strategy had its desired effect. The troopers saw their commander fall. They continued firing but also exchanged looks. Jacen never broke pace, and a trooper with silver stripes on his helmet called “Back, back.” In good order, the troopers began a withdrawal.

Behind him, Jacen heard more blasterfire and the distinctive zap of a lightsaber blade intercepting it, deflecting it. Within the flow of the Force, Jacen felt a shot coming in toward his back, felt it being slapped aside, saw and felt it as it hit the wall to his right. The heat from the shot warmed his right shoulder.

But the defenders continued their retreat, and soon the last of them was around the corner. Jacen’s path to the railing was clear. He strode up to it.

Over the rail, a dozen meters down, was another assembly-line pit, where line after line of munitions components was being assembled—though at the moment all the lines were stopped, their anonymous jumpsuited workers staring up at Jacen.

Jacen’s movement out of the corridor brought him within sight of the orange-and-green defenders, who were now arrayed in disciplined rows along the walkway to Jacen’s left. As soon as he reached the railing they opened fire again. Their tighter formation allowed them to concentrate their fire, and Jacen found himself deflecting more shots than before.

He felt rather than saw Ben scoot into position behind him, but no blaster bolts came at him from that direction. “What now?” Ben asked.

“Finish the mission.” Jacen caught a too-close bolt on his blade near the hilt; unable to aim the deflection, he saw the bolt flash down into the assembly area. It hit a monitor screen. The men and women near the screen dived for cover. Jacen winced; a fraction of a degree of arc difference and that bolt could have hit an explosives package. As inured as he was to causing death, he didn’t want to cause it by accident.

“But you’re in charge—”

“I’m busy.” Jacen took a step forward to give himself more maneuvering and swinging space and concentrated on his attackers. He needed to protect himself and Ben now, to defend a broader area. He focused on batting bolt after bolt back into the ranks of the attackers, saw one, two, three of the soldiers fall.

There was a lull in the barrage of fire. Jacen took a moment to glance over his shoulder. Ben stood at the railing, staring down into the manufacturing line, and to his eye he held a small but expensive holocam unit—the sort carried by wealthy vacationers and holocam hobbyists all over the galaxy.

As Jacen returned his attention to the soldiers, Ben began talking: “Um, this is Ben Skywalker. Jedi Knight Jacen Solo and I are in a, I don’t know, secret part of the Dammant Killers plant under the city of Cartann on the planet Adumar. You’re looking at a missile manufacturing line. It’s making missiles that are not being reported to the GA. They’re selling to planets that aren’t supposed to be getting them. Dammant is breaking the rules. Oh, and the noise you’re hearing? Their guys are trying to kill us.”

Jacen felt Ben’s motion as the boy swung to record the blaster-versus-lightsaber conflict.

“Is that enough?” Ben asked.

Jacen shook his head. “Get the whole chamber. And while you’re doing it, figure out what we’re supposed to do next.”

“I was kind of thinking we ought to get out of here.”

With the tip of his lightsaber blade, Jacen caught a blast that was crackling in toward his right shin. He popped the blast back toward its firer. It hit the woman’s blaster rifle, searing it into an unrecognizable lump, causing her green shoulder armor momentarily to catch fire. She retreated, one of her fellow soldiers patting out her flames. Now there were fewer than fifteen soldiers standing against the Jedi, and their temporary commander was obviously rethinking his make-a-stand orders.

“Good. How?”

“Well, the way we came in—no. They’d be waiting for us.”

“Correct.”

“And you never want to fight the enemy on ground he’s chosen if you can avoid it.”

Jacen grinned. Ben’s words, so adult, were a quote from Han Solo, a man whose wisdom was often questionable—except on matters of personal survival. “Also correct.”

“So … the ends of those assembly lines?”

“Good. So go.”

Jacen heard the scrape of a heel as Ben vaulted over the rail. Not waiting, Jacen leapt laterally, clearing the rail by half a meter, and spun as he fell. Ahead of and below him, Ben was just landing in a crouch on the nearest assembly line, which was loaded with opalescent shell casings. As Jacen landed, bent knees and a little upward push from the Force easing the impact, Ben raced forward, reflexively swatting aside the grasping hand of a too-bold line worker, and crouched as he lunged through the diminutive portal at the end of the line.

Jacen followed. He heard and felt the heat of blaster bolts hitting the assembly line behind him. He swung his lightsaber back over his shoulder, intercepting one bolt, taking the full force of the impact rather than deflecting the bolt into a neighboring line.

No line workers tried to grab him, and in seconds he was squeezing through the portal.

GALACTIC ALLIANCE DIPLOMATIC SHUTTLE, HIGH CORUSCANT ORBIT

ONE BY ONE, THE STARS OVERHEAD BEGAN TO DISAPPEAR, swallowed by some enormous darkness interposing itself from above and behind the shuttle. Sharply pointed at its most forward position, broadening behind, the flood of blackness advanced, blotting out more and more of the unblinking starfield, until darkness was all there was to see.

Then, all across the length and breadth of the ominous shape, lights came on—blue and white running lights, tiny red hatch and security lights, sudden glows from within transparisteel viewports, one large rectangular whiteness limned by atmosphere shields. The lights showed the vast triangle to be the underside of an Imperial Star Destroyer, painted black, forbidding a moment ago, now comparatively cheerful in its proper running configuration. It was the Gilad Pellaeon, newly arrived from the Imperial Remnant, and its officers clearly knew how to put on a show.

Jaina Solo, sitting with the others in the dimly lit passenger compartment of the government VIP shuttle, watched the entire display through the overhead transparisteel canopy and laughed out loud.

The Bothan in the sumptuously padded chair next to hers gave her a curious look. His mottled red and tan fur twitched, either from suppressed irritation or embarrassment at Jaina’s outburst. “What do you find so amusing?”

“Oh, both the obviousness of it and the skill with which it was performed. It’s so very, You used to think of us as dark and scary, but now we’re just your stylish allies.” Jaina lowered her voice so that her next comment would not carry to the passengers in the seats behind. “The press will love it. That image will play on the holonews broadcasts constantly. Mark my words.”

“Was that little show a Jagged Fel detail?”

Jaina tilted her head, considering. “I don’t know. He could have come up with it, but he usually doesn’t spend his time planning displays or events. When he does, though, they’re usually pretty … effective.”

The shuttle rose toward the Gilad Pellaeon’s main landing bay. In moments, it was through the square atmosphere barrier shield and drifting sideways to land on the deck nearby. The landing place was clearly marked—hundreds of beings, most wearing gray Imperial uniforms or the distinctive white armor of the Imperial stormtrooper, waited in the bay, and the one circular spot where none stood was just the right size for the Galactic Alliance shuttle.

The passengers rose as the shuttle settled into place. The Bothan smoothed his tunic, a cheerful blue decorated with a golden sliver pattern suggesting claws. “Time to go to work. You won’t let me get killed, will you?”

Jaina let her eyes widen. “Is that what I was supposed to be doing here?” she asked in droll tones. “I should have brought my lightsaber.”

The Bothan offered a long-suffering sigh and turned toward the exit.

They descended the shuttle’s boarding ramp. With no duties required of her other than to keep alert and be the Jedi face at this preliminary meeting, Jaina was able to stand back and observe. She was struck with the unreality of it all. The niece and daughter of three of the most famous enemies of the Empire during the First Galactic Civil War of a few decades earlier, she was now witness to events that might bring the Galactic Empire—or Imperial Remnant, as it was called everywhere outside its own borders—into the Galactic Alliance on a lasting basis.

And at the center of the plan was the man, flanked by Imperial officers, who now approached the Bothan. Slightly under average size, though towering well above Jaina’s diminutive height, he was dark-haired, with a trim beard and mustache that gave him a rakish look, and was handsome in a way that became more pronounced when he glowered. A scar on his forehead ran up into his hairline and seemed to continue as a lock of white hair from that point. He wore expensive but subdued black civilian garments, neck-to-toe, that would be inconspicuous anywhere on Coruscant but stood out in sharp relief to the gray and white uniforms, white armor, and colorful Alliance clothes surrounding him.

He had one moment to glance at Jaina. The look probably appeared neutral to onlookers, but for her it carried just a twinkle of humor, a touch of exasperation that the two of them had to put up with all these delays. Then an Alliance functionary, notable for his blandness, made introductions: “Imperial Head of State the most honorable Jagged Fel, may I present Senator Tiurrg Drey’lye of Bothawui, head of the Senate Unification Preparations Committee.”

Jagged Fel took the Senator’s hand. “I’m pleased to be working with you.”

“And delighted to meet you. Chief of State Daala sends her compliments and looks forward to meeting you when you make planetfall.”

Jag nodded. “And now, I believe, protocol insists that we open a bottle or a dozen of wine and make some preliminary discussion of security, introduction protocols, and so on.”

“Fortunately about the wine, and regrettably about everything else, you are correct.”

At the end of two full standard hours—Jaina knew from regular, surreptitious consultations of her chrono—Jag was able to convince the Senator and his retinue to accept a tour of the Gilad Pellaeon. He was also able to request a private consultation with the sole representative of the Jedi Order present. Moments later, the gray-walled conference room was empty of everyone but Jag and Jaina.

Jag glanced toward the door. “Security seal, access limited to Jagged Fel and Jedi Jaina Solo, voice identification, activate.” The door hissed in response as it sealed. Then Jag returned his attention to Jaina.

She let an expression of anger and accusation cross her face. “You’re not fooling anyone, Fel. You’re planning for an Imperial invasion of Alliance space.”

Jag nodded. “I’ve been planning it for quite a while. Come here.”

She moved to him, settled into his lap, and was suddenly but not unexpectedly caught in his embrace. They kissed urgently, hungrily.

Finally Jaina drew back and smiled at him. “This isn’t going to be a routine part of your consultations with every Jedi.”

“Uh, no. That would cause some trouble here and at home. But I actually do have business with the Jedi that does not involve the Galactic Alliance, at least not initially.”

“What sort of business?”

“Whether or not the Galactic Empire joins with the Galactic Alliance, I think there ought to be an official Jedi presence in the Empire. A second Temple, a branch, an offshoot, whatever. Providing advice and insight to the Head of State.”

“And protection?”

He shrugged. “Less of an issue. I’m doing all right. Two years in this position and not dead yet.”

“Emperor Palpatine went nearly twenty-five years.”

“I guess that makes him my hero.”

Jaina snorted. “Don’t even say that in jest … Jag, if the Remnant doesn’t join the Alliance, I’m not sure the Jedi can have a presence without Alliance approval.”

“The Order still keeps its training facility for youngsters in Hapan space. And the Hapans haven’t rejoined.”

“You sound annoyed. The Hapans still giving you trouble?”

“Let’s not talk about that.”

“Besides, moving the school back to Alliance space is just a matter of time, logistics, and finances; there’s no question that it will happen. On the other hand, it’s very likely that the government would withhold approval for a Jedi branch in the Remnant, just out of spite, if the Remnant doesn’t join.”

“Well, there’s such a thing as an unofficial presence. And there’s such a thing as rival schools, schismatic branches, and places for former Jedi to go when they can’t be at the Temple.”

Jaina smiled again, but now there was suspicion in her expression. “You just want to have this so I’ll be assigned to come to the Remnant and set it up.”

“That’s a motive, but not the only one. Remember, to the Moffs and to a lot of the Imperial population, the Jedi have been bogeymen since Palpatine died. At the very least, I don’t want them to be inappropriately afraid of the woman I’m in love with.”

Jaina was silent for a moment. “Have we talked enough politics?”

“I think so.”

“Good.”

HORN FAMILY QUARTERS,
KALLAD’S DREAM VACATION HOSTEL,
CORUSCANT

Yawning, hair tousled, clad in a blue dressing robe, Valin Horn knew that he did not look anything like an experienced Jedi Knight. He looked like an unshaven, unkempt bachelor, which he also was. But here, in these rented quarters, there would be only family to see him—at least until he had breakfast, shaved, and dressed.

The Horns did not live here, of course. His mother, Mirax, was the anchor for the immediate family. Manager of a variety of interlinked businesses—trading, interplanetary finances, gambling and recreation, and, if rumors were true, still a little smuggling here and there—she maintained her home and business address on Corellia. Corran, her husband and Valin’s father, was a Jedi Master, much of his life spent on missions away from the family, but his true home was where his heart resided, wherever Mirax lived. Valin and his sister, Jysella, also Jedi, lived wherever their missions sent them, and also counted Mirax as the center of the family.

Now Mirax had rented temporary quarters on Coruscant so the family could collect on one of its rare occasions, this time for the Unification Summit, where she and Corran would separately give depositions on the relationships among the Confederation states, the Imperial Remnant, and the Galactic Alliance as they related to trade and Jedi activities. Mirax had insisted that Valin and Jysella leave their Temple quarters and stay with their parents while these events were taking place, and few forces in the galaxy could stand before her decision—Luke Skywalker certainly knew better than to try.

Moving from the refresher toward the kitchen and dining nook, Valin brushed a lock of brown hair out of his eyes and grinned. Much as he might put up a public show of protest—the independent young man who did not need parents to direct his actions or tell him where to sleep—he hardly minded. It was good to see family. And both Corran and Mirax were better cooks than the ones at the Jedi Temple.

There was no sound of conversation from the kitchen, but there was some clattering of pans, so at least one of his parents must still be on hand. As he stepped from the hallway into the dining nook, Valin saw that it was his mother, her back to him as she worked at the stove. He pulled a chair from the table and sat. “Good morning.”

“A joke, so early?” Mirax did not turn to face him, but her tone was cheerful. “No morning is good. I come light-years from Corellia to be with my family, and what happens? I have to keep Jedi hours to see them. Don’t you know that I’m an executive? And a lazy one?”

“I forgot.” Valin took a deep breath, sampling the smells of breakfast. His mother was making hotcakes Corellian-style, nerf sausage links on the side, and caf was brewing. For a moment, Valin was transported back to his childhood, to the family breakfasts that had been somewhat more common before the Yuuzhan Vong came, before Valin and Jysella had started down the Jedi path. “Where are Dad and Sella?”

“Your father is out getting some back-door information from other Jedi Masters for his deposition.” Mirax pulled a plate from a cabinet and began sliding hotcakes and links onto it. “Your sister left early and wouldn’t say what she was doing, which I assume either means it’s Jedi business I can’t know about or that she’s seeing some man she doesn’t want me to know about.”

“Or both.”

“Or both.” Mirax turned and moved over to put the plate down before him. She set utensils beside it.

The plate was heaped high with food, and Valin recoiled from it in mock horror. “Stang, Mom, you’re feeding your son, not a squadron of Gamorreans.” Then he caught sight of his mother’s face and he was suddenly no longer in a joking mood.

This wasn’t his mother.

Oh, the woman had Mirax’s features. She had the round face that admirers had called “cute” far more often than “beautiful,” much to Mirax’s chagrin. She had Mirax’s generous, curving lips that smiled so readily and expressively, and Mirax’s bright, lively brown eyes. She had Mirax’s hair, a glossy black with flecks of gray, worn shoulder-length to fit readily under a pilot’s helmet, even though she piloted far less often these days. She was Mirax to every freckle and dimple.

But she was not Mirax.

The woman, whoever she was, caught sight of Valin’s confusion. “Something wrong?”

“Uh, no.” Stunned, Valin looked down at his plate.

He had to think—logically, correctly, and fast. He might be in grave danger right now, though the Force currently gave him no indication of imminent attack. The true Mirax, wherever she was, might be in serious trouble or worse. Valin tried in vain to slow his heart rate and speed up his thinking processes.

Fact: Mirax had been here but had been replaced by an imposter. Presumably the real Mirax was gone; Valin could not sense anyone but himself and the imposter in the immediate vicinity. The imposter had remained behind for some reason that had to relate to Valin, Jysella, or Corran. It couldn’t have been to capture Valin, as she could have done that with drugs or other methods while he slept, so the food was probably not drugged.

Under Not-Mirax’s concerned gaze, he took a tentative bite of sausage and turned a reassuring smile he didn’t feel toward her.

Fact: Creating an imposter this perfect must have taken a fortune in money, an incredible amount of research, and a volunteer willing to let her features be permanently carved into the likeness of another’s. Or perhaps this was a clone, raised and trained for the purpose of simulating Mirax. Or maybe she was a droid, one of the very expensive, very rare human replica droids. Or maybe a shape-shifter. Whichever, the simulation was nearly perfect. Valin hadn’t recognized the deception until …

Until what? What had tipped him off? He took another bite, not registering the sausage’s taste or temperature, and maintained the face-hurting smile as he tried to recall the detail that had alerted him that this wasn’t his mother.

He couldn’t figure it out. It was just an instant realization, too fleeting to remember, too overwhelming to reject.

Would Corran be able to see through the deception? Would Jysella? Surely, they had to be able to. But what if they couldn’t? Valin would accuse this woman and be thought insane.

Were Corran and Jysella even still at liberty? Still alive? At this moment, the Not-Mirax’s colleagues could be spiriting the two of them away with the true Mirax. Or Corran and Jysella could be lying, bleeding, at the bottom of an access shaft, their lives draining away.

Valin couldn’t think straight. The situation was too overwhelming, the mystery too deep, and the only person here who knew the answers was the one who wore the face of his mother.

He stood, sending his chair clattering backward, and fixed the false Mirax with a hard look. “Just a moment.” He dashed to his room.

His lightsaber was still where he’d left it, on the nightstand beside his bed. He snatched it up and gave it a near-instantaneous examination. Battery power was still optimal; there was no sign that it had been tampered with.

He returned to the dining room with the weapon in his hand. Not-Mirax, clearly confused and beginning to look a little alarmed, stood by the stove, staring at him.

Valin ignited the lightsaber, its snap-hiss of activation startlingly loud, and held the point of the gleaming energy blade against the food on his plate. Hotcakes shriveled and blackened from contact with the weapon’s plasma. Valin gave Not-Mirax an approving nod. “Flesh does the same thing under the same conditions, you know.”

“Valin, what’s wrong?”

“You may address me as Jedi Horn. You don’t have the right to use my personal name.” Valin swung the lightsaber around in a practice form, allowing the blade to come within a few centimeters of the glow rod fixture overhead, the wall, the dining table, and the woman with his mother’s face. “You probably know from your research that the Jedi don’t worry much about amputations.”

Not-Mirax shrank back away from him, both hands on the stove edge behind her. “What?”

“We know that a severed limb can readily be replaced by a prosthetic that looks identical to the real thing. Prosthetics offer sensation and do everything flesh can. They’re ideal substitutes in every way, except for requiring maintenance. So we don’t feel too badly when we have to cut the arm or leg off a very bad person. But I assure you, that very bad person remembers the pain forever.”

“Valin, I’m going to call your father now.” Not-Mirax sidled toward the blue bantha-hide carrybag she had left on a side table.

Valin positioned the tip of his lightsaber directly beneath her chin. At the distance of half a centimeter, its containing force field kept her from feeling any heat from the blade, but a slight twitch on Valin’s part could maim or kill her instantly. She froze.

“No, you’re not. You know what you’re going to do instead?”

Not-Mirax’s voice wavered. “What?”

“You’re going to tell me what you’ve done with my mother!” The last several words emerged as a bellow, driven by fear and anger. Valin knew that he looked as angry as he sounded; he could feel blood reddening his face, could even see redness begin to suffuse everything in his vision.

“Boy, put the blade down.” Those were not the woman’s words. They came from behind. Valin spun, bringing his blade up into a defensive position.

In the doorway stood a man, middle-aged, clean-shaven, his hair graying from brown. He was of below-average height, his eyes a startling green. He wore the brown robes of a Jedi. His hands were on his belt, his own lightsaber still dangling from it.

He was Valin’s father, Jedi Master Corran Horn. But he wasn’t, any more than the woman behind Valin was Mirax Horn.

Valin felt a wave of despair wash over him. Both parents replaced. Odds were growing that the real Corran and Mirax were already dead.

Yet Valin’s voice was soft when he spoke. “They may have made you a virtual double for my father. But they can’t have given you his expertise with the lightsaber.”

“You don’t want to do what you’re thinking about, son.”

“When I cut you in half, that’s all the proof anyone will ever need that you’re not the real Corran Horn.”

Valin lunged.

The STAR WARS Legends Novels Timeline

BEFORE THE REPUBLIC 37,000–25,000 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

25793 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void

OLD REPUBLIC 5000–67 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories

3954 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

The Old Republic: Revan

3650 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

The Old Republic: Deceived

Red Harvest

The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance

The Old Republic: Annihilation

1032 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

Knight Errant

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

Darth Bane: Rule of Two

Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil

RISE OF THE EMPIRE 67–0 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

67 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

Darth Plagueis

33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

Darth Maul: Saboteur[*]

Cloak of Deception

Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter

Maul: Lockdown

32 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

STAR WARS: EPISODE I: The Phantom Menace

Rogue Planet

Outbound Flight

The Approaching Storm

22 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

STAR WARS: EPISODE II: Attack of the Clones

22-19 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

The Clone Wars: Wild Space

The Clone Wars: No Prisoners

Clone Wars Gambit

Stealth

Siege

Republic Commando

Hard Contact

Triple Zero

True Colors

Order 66

Shatterpoint

The Cestus Deception

The Hive[*]

MedStar I: Battle Surgeons

MedStar II: Jedi Healer

Jedi Trial

Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

Labyrinth of Evil

19 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

STAR WARS: EPISODE III: Revenge of the Sith

Kenobi

Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader

Imperial Commando: 501st

Coruscant Nights

Jedi Twilight

Street of Shadows

Patterns of Force

The Last Jedi

10 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

The Han Solo Trilogy

The Paradise Snare

The Hutt Gambit

Rebel Dawn

The Adventures of Lando Calrissian

The Force Unleashed

The Han Solo Adventures

Death Troopers

The Force Unleashed II

REBELLION 0–5 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

Death Star

Shadow Games

STAR WARS: EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE

Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina

Tales from the Empire

Tales from the New Republic

Winner Lose All[*]

Scoundrels

Allegiance

Choices of One

Honor Among Thieves

Galaxies: The Ruins of Dantooine

Splinter of the Mind’s Eye

Empire and Rebellion: Razor’s Edge

3 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

STAR WARS: EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

Tales of the Bounty Hunters

Shadows of the Empire

4 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

STAR WARS: EPISODE VI: RETURN OF THE JEDI

Tales from Jabba’s Palace

The Bounty Hunter Wars

The Mandalorian Armor

Slave Ship

Hard Merchandise

The Truce at Bakura

Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor

NEW REPUBLIC 5–25 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

X-Wing

Rogue Squadron

Wedge’s Gamble

The Krytos Trap

The Bacta War

Wraith Squadron

Iron Fist

Solo Command

The Courtship of Princess Leia

A Forest Apart[*]

Tatooine Ghost

The Thrawn Trilogy

Heir to the Empire

Dark Force Rising

The Last Command

X-Wing: Isard’s Revenge

The Jedi Academy Trilogy

Jedi Search

Dark Apprentice

Champions of the Force

I, Jedi

Children of the Jedi

Darksaber

Planet of Twilight

X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar

The Crystal Star

The Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy

Before the Storm

Shield of Lies

Tyrant’s Test

The New Rebellion

The Corellian Trilogy

Ambush at Corellia

Assault at Selonia

Showdown at Centerpoint

The Hand of Thrawn Duology

Specter of the Past

Vision of the Future

Scourge

Fool’s Bargain[*]

Survivor’s Quest

NEW JEDI ORDER 25–40 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

Boba Fett: A Practical Man[*]

The New Jedi Order

Vector Prime

Dark Tide I: Onslaught

Dark Tide II: Ruin

Agents of Chaos I: Hero’s Trial

Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse

Balance Point

Recovery[*]

Edge of Victory I: Conquest

Edge of Victory II: Rebirth

Star by Star

Dark Journey

Enemy Lines I: Rebel Dream

Enemy Lines II: Rebel Stand

Traitor

Destiny’s Way

Ylesia[*]

Force Heretic I: Remnant

Force Heretic II: Refugee

Force Heretic III: Reunion

The Final Prophecy

The Unifying Force

35 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

The Dark Nest Trilogy

The Joiner King

The Unseen Queen

The Swarm War

LEGACY 40+ YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

Legacy of the Force

Betrayal

Bloodlines

Tempest

Exile

Sacrifice

Inferno

Fury

Revelation

Invincible

Crosscurrent

Riptide

Millennium Falcon

43 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

Fate of the Jedi

Outcast

Omen

Abyss

Backlash

Allies

Vortex

Conviction

Ascension

Apocalypse

X-Wing: Mercy Kill

45 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

Crucible

*An eBook novella