GEARS OF WAR: JACINTO’S REMNANT
GEARS OF WAR: ANVIL GATE
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.
prologue
The object of her desire was walking down the opposite side of the skylane, moving along a pedwalk so choked with vines and yorik coral that even the zap gangs traveled single-file. He was two levels below and ten meters ahead, and he kept stopping to study door membranes and peer into the windows of coral-crusted buildings. Then he would just stand there in the gloom, alone and empty-handed, as though no Jedi need fear the dangers of the undercity … as though he ruled the twilight depths down where Coruscant changed to Yuuzhan’tar.
Jacen Solo was as arrogant as ever—and this time, it would be his undoing.
The angle was perfect, almost too perfect. If she struck now, he would be dead almost as soon as he hit the pedwalk. Even if corpse robbers did not drop the body into the skylane, the only hint of what had killed him would be a tiny barb in his neck and a trace of venom in his nervous system. Nobody would know that his death had been an execution … not even Jacen.
But Alema Rar needed them to know. She needed to see the shock of recognition in Jacen’s eyes when he collapsed, to feel his fear burning in the Force as his heart cramped into an unbeating knot. She needed to hold him dying in her arms and suck the last breath from his lips, to hear his father roaring curses and watch his mother wailing in grief.
That last part, Alema needed more than anything.
She had spent years pondering what she could take from Leia Solo that would be the equal of everything Leia had taken from her. An instep and five toes? That would be a fair trade for the half-of-a-foot Leia had cut off on Tenupe. And the Princess’s eyes and ears would do for the lekku she had severed aboard the Admiral Ackbar. But what of the giant spidersloth to which Leia had fed her in the Tenupian jungle? How was Alema to match that?
Because this was not about revenge, not about cruelty. It was about Balance. The spidersloth had nearly killed her, had bitten her almost in half and left her slender dancer’s body roped with white scars, an ugly lopsided thing that only a Rodian would desire. Now Alema had to take something equal from Leia, something that would shatter her to the core … because that’s what Jedi did. They served the Balance.
And the first thing Alema wanted to take was Jacen, who was moving along the pedwalk toward the corner of an intersecting skylane. She had wanted to take him for a long time, since the day he had returned so mysterious and powerful from his five-year sojourn to study the Force. And now she would have him—perhaps not in the way she had once desired, but she would have him.
Eager to keep her prey in sight, Alema hurried back toward the nearest pedestrian bridge. It was fifty meters away, but she could not risk Force-leaping across the skylane after Jacen rounded the corner. This region was teeming with Ferals, the half-wild survivors of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion who continued to live a primitive existence deep in the undercity. If they saw Alema do something that remarkable, Jacen would sense their shock.
As Alema drew near the bridge, a faint nettling came to the stump of her amputated lekku. She stopped and slipped as far into the shadows as the coral would allow, then stood motionless, listening to the Ferals murmur behind their door membranes. When no danger appeared, she extended her Force-awareness a few meters and felt a pair of nervous presences behind her.
Alema turned to find the sunken-eyed faces of two young humans smirking up from the floor. They were hiding along the back of the pedwalk, in a shadowy stairwell so ringed with yorik coral that she had not noticed it. When they realized she was looking at them, the boys snickered and started to slip back down the stairwell.
Alema caught them in the Force. They cried out in shock and grabbed at the wall, cutting their hands on the yorik coral as they tried to keep from being pulled back into view. With thin brows and small, round-ended noses, they were clearly brothers. She raised her lip in a twisted half smile, enjoying the sense of power that rushed through her veins as their shock changed to fear.
“And what did you two have planned for us?” Alema always referred to herself in the plural. It was a habit she had acquired when she became a Killik Joiner, and one that she had no interest in losing. Using the singular would mean admitting that her nest was gone—that Jacen and Luke and the rest of the Jedi had destroyed Gorog—and that was not true, not while Alema still lived. “Robbery? Murder? Ravagery?”
The brothers shook their heads and started to open their mouths, but were clearly too repulsed by her deformities to speak.
“You’re staring.” Alema Force-pinned them against the wall. “That’s rude.”
“Put us down!” the larger ordered. With a lean face and a shadowy line of mustache fuzz on his upper lip, he was probably a year or two into human adolescence. “We didn’t mean nothing. It’s just …”
His gaze slid from Alema’s face toward the lekku stump hanging behind her shoulder, then quickly began to drop. Alema had traded her provocative attire for more traditional Jedi garb, but even those shape-concealing robes were not enough to hide her disfigurements—the lopsided twist of her body, and the way one atrophied arm hung at her side. As the boy’s gaze fell, she sensed in the Force his growing revulsion—actually experienced the disgust he felt when he looked at her.
“It’s just what?” Alema demanded. In her anger, she was pressing both boys against the wall so hard they began to wheeze. “Go ahead. Tell us.”
It was the younger brother who answered. “It’s just …” He nodded at the lightsaber hanging from her belt. “You’re a Jedi!”
Alema smiled coldly. “Aren’t you clever? Pretending you’ve never seen a Jedi Knight before.” She glanced ten meters down the pedwalk, to where a knobby-scaled radank had backed a screeching Falleen into a tangle of slashvines, then looked back to the boy. “But we have the Force. We know what you were looking at.”
Allowing the older brother to fall free, she pointed down the pedwalk and Force-hurled his younger sibling into the slashvines next to the Falleen. The startled radank reared back on its hind legs, front feet raised and claws unsheathed, then extended its thin proboscis and began to sniff the new prey. The boy whimpered and called for help.
Alema looked b
ack to the older one, who was already trying to inch his way toward his brother, and waved him on.
“Go.” She gave a cruel little laugh. “After the radank is finished with you, you’ll know how we feel.”
The boy’s eyes flashed with fear, but he pulled a shiv of sharpened durasteel from his sleeve and raced down the pedwalk to help his brother. Alema turned toward the bridge and, as the snarl and shriek of combat erupted behind her, allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction. The boys had mocked her disfigurement, and now they would be disfigured themselves. The Balance had been preserved.
She continued up the pedwalk, then started across the bridge. Her stump began to nettle again, and she wondered if someone was watching her. Jacen had seemed to be alone when he left his apartment, but—as commander of the Galactic Alliance Guard—he would know to expect assassins. Maybe his young apprentice, Ben Skywalker, had followed a few moments later to watch his back.
Alema gently extended her Force-awareness into the shadows behind her, searching for that flicker of pure bright power that always betrayed the Force presence of earnest young Jedi Knights. She felt nothing and decided that maybe the cause of her uneasiness was a raucous zap gang ahead. They had claimed the middle of the bridge for their own and were taking turns trying to push a frightened Gamorrean female over the safety rail. As Alema approached, they spread across the bridge and leered at her twisted form. They were all young human males, all wearing white tabards over various pieces of plastoid armor.
“What do you think you are?” the leader asked, eyeing Alema’s black robes. He was a large youth with a three-day growth of beard and a badly swollen cheek. “Some kind of Jedi?”
“We have no time for your games,” Alema replied coolly. “Go back and play with your Gamorrean.” She made a shooing motion with the backs of her fingers, at the same time touching his mind through the Force. “You might have more fun if you let her do the pushing.”
Swollen Cheek frowned, then turned to his companions. “She doesn’t have time for us.” He started after the Gamorrean, who was lumbering toward the far end of the bridge as fast as her thick legs could take her. “Get her! We’ll try something new this time!”
The zap gang spun as one and raced away. Alema followed, catching up as they surrounded the Gamorrean and began to argue about who would be shoved into the safety rail first. Alema slipped past and smiled to herself. Balance.
At the other end of the bridge, Jacen was nowhere to be seen. He had either rounded the corner of the building or entered a doorway while Alema was dealing with the city’s riffraff. She drew her lightsaber and advanced up the pedwalk, half expecting to feel the emitter nozzle of a lightsaber pressing into her ribs just before Jacen activated the blade.
The most dangerous thing Alema met was a foraging skrat pack, which skittered away into a tangle of slashvines almost as soon as she saw it. The only other oddity was the sporadic stream of Ferals disappearing through a door membrane near the corner of the building. They were of many species—Bith, Bothan, Ho’Din—and they were all bearing the carcasses of dead animals, including hawk-bats, granite slugs, a few slimy yanskacs. Once, there was even a Chevin clutching what looked like a dead Ewok in its huge claw. They were probably just Ferals returning home with the day’s hunt, but as Alema passed in front of the doorway, she kept her lightsaber at the ready.
No one leapt out to attack her, but she sensed a trio of Force presences on the other side of the membrane. Alema did not bother to investigate; had it been Jacen lurking behind the door, she would have sensed nothing at all. Instead, she exchanged her lightsaber for a short blowgun and armed it with a small cone-dart from a sealed container in her utility belt. She had eight more such darts—one for each of the Solos and the Skywalkers, plus two extras—all fashioned from the stinger and venom sac of a deadly Tenupian wasber.
The poison was fairly quick—at least on human-sized creatures—but more important, it was certain. It co-opted the white blood cells sent to fight infection, turning them into tiny toxin-producing factories. Within moments of being struck, all of the victim’s organs would fall under attack, and within moments of that, his vital systems would start to fail. Jacen would live just long enough for Alema to reveal herself; he would probably die even before he realized that his Jedi poison–neutralizing techniques could not save him.
Alema raised the blowgun to her lips and stepped around the corner, her body already purring with the sweet tingle of murder.
But Jacen seemed determined to disappoint her. The pedwalk was empty and dark, and there was not a sentient soul in sight. Thinking he had lured her into a trap after all, Alema whirled back around the corner, her lungs filled with the air that would send the lethal dart shooting into her ambusher.
There was no ambush. That pedwalk was empty as well, and the only danger Alema sensed was the same faint tingle she had been feeling since before crossing the bridge. Could Jacen Solo be hiding from her?
Alema’s anger welled up inside. It was those boys. They had made her hurt them, and Jacen had always been so sensitive to such things. She cursed the brothers for making her lose control. Her plan had just grown more complicated, and that meant the pair would have to pay—but later. Right now she needed to go after Jacen. The poison on her dart would lose its effectiveness in less than an hour.
Alema returned to the door she had just passed, the one all the Ferals had been entering with their carcasses. Dark and ringed by a thick crust of yorik coral, it looked more like a cavern mouth than a doorway. She pressed a nerve bundle on the doorjamb, and the membrane pulled aside. Standing opposite her was a brawny Nikto with a scaly green face and a ring of small horns encircling his eyes. He kept one hand in the pocket of his soiled jerkin, obviously holding a blaster, and Alema could sense two more guards beside him, hiding on either side of the door.
He studied her for an instant, then rasped, “Wrrrong doorrr, lady. Nothing inside to interest you.”
Alema started to reach for the guard in the Force, but stopped when her danger sense grew so strong that her remaining lekku began to tingle as well. She pointed her blowgun at the Nikto’s feet and—using a Force suggestion to ensure he would obey—commanded, “Wait.”
The expression in the Nikto’s eyes changed from threatening to surprised to obedient, and Alema extended her Force-awareness in all directions.
To her astonishment, she brushed a cold presence—something dark and bitter—back up the pedwalk near the bridge. But when she turned to look in that direction, all she saw was the zap gang cheering on the Gamorrean as she belly-bounced their leader into the safety railing.
And the presence did not belong to any of the zappers. It was much too strong in the Force, too focused … then the darkness vanished, and the danger tingle in her lekku subsided as quickly as it had come.
Alema continued to study the pedwalk for a few moments, trying to digest what she had felt. Someone was definitely stalking her, but it could hardly be Jacen. Even had he been careless enough to let her detect him—and he wouldn’t have been—the Jacen she remembered was anything but bitter: solemn and brooding, certainly, but also devoted and sincere.
So who was stalking her? Not Ben. He was too young to be so bitter. And not Jaina. Her temperament was too fiery to feel so cold. Besides, the presence had felt dark … and it made no sense for a dark-sider to be watching Jacen’s back. It had to be something else.
Another possibility dawned on her: Maybe Alema was not the one being followed. Maybe it was Jacen.
Could someone be trying to steal her kill?
Alema turned back to the Nikto, gesturing past him with her blowgun. “Did Jacen Solo go in there?”
“Jacen Solo?” The Nikto shook his head. “Don’t know any Solos.”
“Come now.” Alema used the Force to draw the Nikto out onto the pedwalk. “The news holos reach even down here, and every third report contains his image. The commander of the Galactic Alliance Guard? The savior of Coruscant?�
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“Why would someone like that come here?” The Nikto tried to sound uncertain, but Alema could sense his lie in the subtle tremor of his Force presence. “There’s nothing inside but housing—”
“You dare lie to me?” Alema used the Force to raise her crippled arm, then grabbed him by the throat. “To a Jedi?”
Still calling on the Force, she lifted him off his feet and squeezed until she heard the happy crackle of crushed cartilage. The Nikto’s mouth fell open and a terrible gurgle came from his throat. Alema continued to hold him aloft until his eyes rolled back and his feet began kicking; only when she sensed the other two guards stepping into the doorway did she drop the Nikto on the balcony and turn to find a pair of tentacle-faced Quarren bringing their old E-11 blaster rifles to bear.
Alema waved her blowgun, using the Force to turn their weapons aside, then touched their minds with hers to search out the doubt she knew would be foremost in their thoughts—the fear that they could not stop her from entering, that they would be the ones who died.
“You do not need to die.” Alema spoke in a Force whisper so soft and compelling that it sounded like a thought. “You do not need to stop anyone.”
The guards relaxed. Alema stepped over the dying Nikto and went through the doorway. “No one is coming through the door,” she purred.
As Alema passed between the Quarren, she noticed that one of them had only three face-tentacles. Their beady eyes began to focus on her, and their old E-11 blaster rifles started to swing back toward her.
“You do not need to die.” Alema tapped the muzzles of their weapons aside. “You do not need to see me.”
Their eyes grew unfocused again, and they turned their attention back to the door. Once Alema was safely inside, she faced the two Quarren.
“You know me well,” she said, continuing to speak in her Force whisper. “We have been talking for several minutes.”
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