Mercy Kill

by Aaron Allston

  No. Not now. That’s in the past and in the future, this wire is the now. Concentrate or you’re going to fall off it.

  He reached for the energy, felt the flux begin to flow. It was bright and warm and life-giving, and he called it to himself, sought to wrap it around his form like a suit of armor.

  The Force: Once again, it was there for him. Yes …

  But there was something else there, too. In a place that was removed but somehow right next to him, he felt that pull he had been told about. A hard, powerful coldness, the opposite of what his teachers had presented to him. The antithesis of light. That which Vader embraced.

  The dark side.

  No! He pushed it away. Refused to look at it. Took another deep breath. Felt the Force permeate him, felt it attune itself to him. Or maybe it was the other way around. It didn’t matter.

  When they were one, he started to walk.

  The high wire suddenly seemed as wide as a public sidewalk. It was natural, the Force, but this part always felt like magic, as if he could do miracles using it. He’d seen Yoda raise the X-wing from the swamp using his mind. It was possible to do things that might look like miracles.

  As he lifted his foot to take another step, he remembered other things about his time on Dagobah.

  Under the soft, damp ground, in the cave …

  Darth Vader came toward him.

  Vader! Here! How could that be?

  Luke pulled his lightsaber, lit it, brought it up. The gleaming blue white of his blade met Vader’s reddish beam as they crossed in on-guard salute. The power hum and energy crackle grew louder.

  Suddenly Vader swung, a powerful cut at Luke’s left side—

  Luke jerked his blade up and over, dropped the point, blocked the slash; it hit so hard it vibrated him, nearly tore his lightsaber from his grip—

  He smelled the mold around him, heard the power hum of the lightsabers, saw Vader with a crystal clarity. All his senses came to life, as sharp as they’d ever been, sharp as a warehouse full of vibro-shivs—

  Vader cut again, now at Luke’s head, and Luke’s panicked overhead block barely stopped it, barely—he was so strong!

  Again Vader chopped at him, a blow that would have cut Luke in half had he not jammed his own weapon out, just in time!

  Vader was too strong for him, Luke knew. Only his anger could save him from being killed. He remembered Ben, remembered Vader hacking him down—

  Unthinking rage drove him. Luke whipped his blade around backhanded, all of his arm and shoulder and wrists behind it, and—

  The cut took Vader’s head off.

  Time seemed to drag like some heavy anchor. He stared. Vader’s body dropped, oh-so-slowly … and the severed head fell to the ground and rolled.

  Rolled. Then stopped. There was no blood—

  There came a bright flash, a sudden blast of light and purple smoke, and the mask covering Vader’s face shattered, shattered and vanished, revealing, revealing—

  The face of Luke Skywalker.

  No!

  The insurgent memory had flashed by much faster than the events had actually taken. He had moved but a single step in reality. Amazing what one’s mind could do. Even so, he nearly fell from the wire as he lost contact with the Force.

  Stop this! he told himself.

  He took a deep breath, balanced uneasily, reached for the Force again.

  There, he had it. He steadied, started walking, one with the Force again, flowing.

  Halfway across the wire, he started to run. He told himself it was part of the test. He told himself that the Force was with him and he could live up to his name without fear, that anything was possible to one trained as a Jedi Knight. It was what he had been taught. He wanted to believe it.

  He didn’t want to believe that he ran because he could feel the dark side walking the wire behind him, catfooted and evil, following him. Following like the memory of his face on Vader’s severed head, following and—

  —and gaining …

  Xizor leaned back in his form-chair. The chair, which had a bad circuit he kept meaning to have repaired, took this move as an inquiry. Its voxchip said, “What is your wish, Prince Sheeezor?” It slurred his name, dragging out the first syllable. He shook his head. “Nothing save that you be silent,” he said.

  The chair’s vox shut up. The machineries within the cloned leather seat hummed and adjusted the support to Xizor’s new position. He sighed. He was rich beyond the income of many entire planets, and he had a malfunctioning form-chair that couldn’t even pronounce his name correctly. He made a note to have it replaced, now, today, immediately, as soon as he was finished with his business here this morning.

  He looked at the one-sixth-scale holoproj frozen in front of him, then up at the woman standing across the desk. She was as beautiful, if not as ethnic, as the two Epicanthix women fighters in the holograph between them. But her beauty was of a different order. She had long and silky blond hair, pale and clear blue eyes, an exquisite figure. Normal human males would find her attractive. There were no flaws in Guri’s face or form, but there was a coolness about her, and that was easily explained if you knew the reason: Guri was an HRD, a human replica droid, and unique. She could visually pass for a woman anywhere in the galaxy, could eat, drink, and perform all of the more personal functions of a woman without anybody the wiser. And she was the only one of her kind programmed to be an assassin. She could kill without raising her ersatz heartbeat, never a qualm of conscience.

  She’d cost him nine million credits.

  Xizor steepled his fingers and raised an eyebrow at Guri.

  “The Pike sisters,” Guri said, glancing at the holo. “Genetic twins, not clones. The one on the right is Zan, the other is Zu. Zan has green eyes, Zu has one green and one blue eye, the only noticeable difference. They are masters of teräs käsi, the Bunduki art called ‘steel hands.’ Twenty-six standard years old, no political affiliations, no criminal records in any of the major systems, and, as far as we are able to determine, completely amoral. They are for hire to the highest bidder, and they have never worked for Black Sun. They have also never been defeated in open combat. This”—she nodded at the unmoving holoproj image again—“is what they do for fun when they aren’t working.” Guri’s voice was, in contrast to her appearance, warm, inviting, a rich alto. She activated the hologram.

  Xizor smiled, revealing his own perfect teeth. The holo had shown the two women mopping the floor with eight Imperial stormtroopers in some rat’s nest of a spaceport bar. The soldiers had been big, strong, well trained, and armed. The women weren’t even breathing hard when they finished. “They’ll do,” he said. “Make it happen.”

  Guri nodded once, turned, and left. She looked as good from behind as she did from the front.

  Nine million and worth every decicred. He wished he had a dozen more like her. Unfortunately, her creator was no longer among the living. A pity.

  So. Two more handpicked assassins now under his command. Assassins with no ties to Black Sun, not before and, with Guri’s expert manipulation, not ever.

  Xizor glanced up at the ceiling. He’d had the pattern of the galaxy installed into the glowtiles. When the lights were dim—and they usually were—he had an edge-on view of the home galaxy floating holographically there, with more than a million individual glowing dust-small stars hand-drawn in it. It had taken the artist three months and had cost a warlord’s ransom, but the Dark Prince could not spend what he already had even if he tried hard, and more than that kept flowing in all the time. Credits were nothing; he had billions. A way of keeping score, that was all. Not important.

  He looked at the holograph again. Beautiful and deadly, these two, a combination he enjoyed. He himself was of the Falleen, a species whose distant ancestors had been reptilian, and who had evolved into what was generally considered the most beautiful of all humanoid species. He was over a hundred years old, but he looked thirty. He was tall, had a topknot ponytail jutting up from his otherwi
se bald head and a hard body crafted by stim units. He also exuded natural pheromones that made most of the human-stock species feel instantly attracted to him, and his skin color, normally a dusky green, changed with the rise of those pheromones, shading from the cool into the warm spectrum. His handsomeness and appeal were tools, nothing more. He was the Dark Prince, Underlord of Black Sun, one of the three most powerful men in the galaxy. He could also kick a sunfruit off the top of a tall humanoid’s head without a warm-up stretch, and he could lift twice his own weight over his head using only his own muscles. He could claim a sound—if admittedly devious—mind in a sound body.

  His galactic influence was surpassed only by the Emperor and the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader.

  He smiled at the image before him again. Third—but about to become second, if his plans went as intended. It had been months since he’d overheard the Emperor and Vader talking of a threat they’d perceived, months, and now the preliminaries were done. Xizor was ready to move in earnest.

  “Time?” he said.

  His room computer answered and gave it to him.

  Ah. Only an hour remained before his meeting. It was but a short walk through the protected corridors to Vader’s, not much beyond where the Emperor’s massive gray-green stone and mirror-crystal palace thrust itself up into the high atmosphere. A few kilometers, no more; a brisk stroll would put him there in a few minutes. No hurry. He did not want to arrive early.

  A chime announced a visitor.

  “Enter,” Xizor said. His bodyguards were not here, but there was no need for them in his sanctum—no one could penetrate its defenses. And only a few of his underlings had the right to visit him here, all of them loyal. As loyal as fear could make them.

  One of his sublieutenants, Mayth Duvel, came in and bowed low. “My prince Xizor.”

  “Yes?”

  “I have a petition from the Nezriti Organization. They wish an alliance with Black Sun.”

  Xizor gave Duvel a measured smile. “I’m sure they do.”

  Duvel produced a small package. “They offer a token of their esteem.”

  Xizor took the package, thumbed it open. Inside was a gem. It was an oval-cut, bloodred Tumanian pressure-ruby, a very rare stone, apparently flawless, and easily worth several million credits. The Dark Prince held it up, turned it in his fingers, nodded. Then he tossed it onto his desktop. It bounced once, slid to a stop next to his drinking cup. If it had fallen onto the floor, he would not have bent to retrieve it, and if the cleaning droid came in later and sucked it up, well, so what? “Tell them we’ll consider it.”

  Duvel bowed and backed away.

  When he was gone, Xizor stood, stretched his neck and back. The evolved reptilian ridge over his spine elevated slightly, felt sharp against his fingertips as he rubbed it. There were other applicants waiting to see him, and ordinarily he would sit and attend to their petitions, but not today. Now it was time to go and see Vader. By going there instead of insisting that Vader come here, he was giving away an advantage, appearing to be himself a supplicant. No matter. That was part of it; there must not seem to be any contention between them. No one must suspect that he felt anything but the greatest respect for the Dark Lord of the Sith, not if his plans were going to succeed. And succeed they would, he did not doubt it.

  Because they always did.

  Introduction to the NEW REPUBLIC Era

  (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.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Visible Secrets

  All right, Chewie, try it now.” Han Solo stuffed the comlink back in his pocket and stepped back a bit from the Millennium Falcon, an anxious look on his face. It ought to work this time. But that was what they had figured the time before, and the time before that. He could see into the Falcon’s cockpit viewports from where he stood, and Chewbacca didn’t look all that confident, either. He saw Chewbacca reach for the lift controls. Han realized that he had been holding his breath, and forced himself to exhale.

  The Millennium Falcon shifted slightly on her hard stand, then rose slowly into the evening air. Chewie took her up until the landing pads were at Han’s eye level, and held her there.

  Han pulled out the comlink again and spoke into it. “That’s good,” he said. “Good. Now engage the shields.” The air all around the Falcon seemed to shimmer a bit, and then steadied down.

  Han stepped back just a bit farther, not wishing to be all that close when Chewie cut the repulsors. “All right, Chewie, repulsors—off!”

  The glow of the repulsors dimmed, and the Falcon dropped abruptly—and stopped, suspended in midair, with the landing pads waist-high off the ground. Sparks and scintillations flared and flickered here and there on the hard stand as the shields’ energy webs shifted under stress.

  “Good,” Han said. “Very good.” Short of firing a turbo-laser at the ship from point-blank range, it was about as good a field test of overall shield strength as you could ask for. If the shields could support the weight of the ship, then they could—

  Suddenly the sparking grew brighter, fiercer, just under the number-two landing pad. “Chewie! Repulsors on! It’s going to—”

  With a shuddering
flash of light, the rear shields blew out. The aft landing pads slammed into the hard stand with a bone-rattling impact that sent Han sprawling. The forward end of the ship hung in midair as the rear half bounced on its jacks, back up into the air.

  Just as the rear of the ship was at the peak of its travel, the forward shields died. In the same instant the forward repulsors flared to life. The rear repulsors came on, lighting a split second after the forward units, and flickering a bit. Getting slammed into the pavement like that hadn’t done the rear repulsor coils any good, that was for sure. Still, Chewie had timed the recovery nicely. Han had seen ships flipped onto their backs trying to recover from a failed shield hover.

  Chewie brought the Falcon back down to a gentle landing and cut the repulsors. A moment later the gangway lowered itself and Chewie came out, clearly none too happy with the situation. He made a loud bugling noise, turned back up the gangway, and returned a moment later carrying a shield-tuning set.

  That was not good. After all the years Han had spent with Chewie, he knew better than to let a frustrated Wookiee vent his feelings on a repair job. He was just as likely to tear the shield generator out by the roots as he was to retune it. “Ah, maybe that’s not such a good idea, Chewie. Leave it for now. We’ll come back to it tomorrow.”

  Chewbacca roared and threw the tool kit down.

  “I know, I know, I know,” Han said. “It’s taking longer than it should, and you’re tired of tweaking up subsystems that we optimized last week. But that’s the way it is on a ship like the Falcon. She’s a finely tuned instrument. Everything affects everything else. Adjust one system and everything else reacts. The only way not to go through this would be to scrap her and start over—and you don’t want to scrap the Falcon, do you?”