by Jude Watson
Copyright © 2008 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or TM. All rights reserved.
Cover illustration by Drew Struzan
Book design by Phil Falco
Published by Disney • Lucasfilm Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Lucasfilm Press, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California, 91201.
ISBN 978-1-4847-2019-6
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Contents
Guide to Characters
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
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE LAST OF THE JEDI
Obi-Wan Kenobi: the great Jedi Master; now in exile on Tatooine
Ferus Olin: former Jedi Padawan and apprentice to Siri Tachi; now a double-agent working for the Empire in order to undermine it wherever he can
Solace: formerly the Jedi Knight Fy-Tor Ana; became a bounty hunter after the Empire was established
Garen Muln: weakened by long months of hiding after Order 66; resides on the secret asteroid base that Ferus Olin has established
Ry-Gaul: on the run since Order 66; found by Solace
THE ERASED
A loose confederation of those who have been marked for death by the Empire who give up their official identities and disappear; centered on Coruscant
Dexter (Dex) Jettster: former owner of Dex’s Diner; establishes a safehouse in Coruscant’s Orange District
Oryon: former head of a prominent Bothan spy network during the Clone Wars; divides his time between Ferus’s secret asteroid base and Dex’s hideout
Keets Freely: former award-winning investigative journalist targeted for death by the Empire; now hiding out in Dex’s safehouse
Curran Caladian: former Senatorial aide from Svivreni and cousin to Tyro Caladian, the deceased Senatorial aide and friend to Obi-Wan Kenobi; marked for death due to his outspoken resistance to the establishment of the Empire; lives in Dex’s safehouse
KEEPERS OF THE BASE
Raina Quill: renowned pilot from the Acherin struggle against the Empire
Toma: former general and commander of the resistance force on Acherin
THE ELEVEN
Resistance movement on Bellassa beginning to be known throughout the Empire. First established by eleven men and women but grown to include hundreds in the city of Ussa and more supporters planet-wide.
Roan Lands: one of the original Eleven; friend and partner to Ferus Olin; killed by Darth Vader
Dona Telamark: a supporter of the Eleven; hid Ferus Olin in her mountain retreat after his escape from an Imperial prison
Wil: part of the original Eleven; now its lead coordinator
Dr. Amie Antin: loaned her medical services to the group, then joined later; now the second-in-command but also spying as a doctor in the EmPal SuRecon on Coruscant
FRIENDS
Trever Flume: Ferus Olin’s thirteen-year-old companion; former street kid and black market operator on Bellassa; now an honorary member of the Bellassan Eleven and a resistance fighter presently on Coruscant on a secret mission
Clive Flax: former musician; corporate spy turned double agent during the Clone Wars; friend to Ferus and Roan; escaped with Ferus from the Imperial prison world of Dontamo
Astri Oddo: formerly Astri Oddo Divinian; left the politician Bog Divinian after he joined with Sano Sauro and the Separatists; now on the run hiding from Bog; expert slicer specializing in macro-frame computer code systems
Lune Oddo Divinian: Force-adept eight-year-old; son of Astri and Bog Divinian; now hidden on a secret asteroid base under the tutelage of Garen Muln
Linna Naltree: husband and wife; friends of Jedi Ry-Gaul
Flame: mysterious and wealthy friend to the Eleven and other resistance groups; now on Coruscant
OTHERS
Breha, Queen of Alderaan: wife of Bail Organa and adoptive mother of Leia; daughter of Padmé Amidala and Anakin Skywalker
Bail Organa: husband of Breha and adoptive father of Leia; a Senator on Alderaan
Hydra: head of the Empire’s evil Inquisitors
Jenna Zan Arbor: an evil scientist employed by the Empire; working on an anti-memory drug on Coruscant
Bail Organa stood at the window and watched his daughter Leia run through the gardens. Every day she learned new skills and grew steadier on her feet. His wife, Breha, sat cross-legged on the grass, laughing as Leia picked flowers.
Bail found that he was holding his breath. He let it out slowly.
They had thought the incident was nothing. An accident averted, nothing more than that. Leia had been with one of her caregivers, Memily, who worked in the kitchen but also volunteered to help out with the children. They had gone to a park at the other end of the city of Aldera to play, somewhere Leia had never been before. The park ended in high sandstone bluffs that overlooked the sea. There were fences along the perimeter, cleverly designed in a latticework that looked like white branches but were actually durasteel.
Except one of the areas was weakened, and Memily had been about to lean against it to admire the view.
Bail still wasn’t sure exactly what had happened. Memily had told him the story, still shaken from the experience. She’d sworn that Leia, who was not yet a year old, had suddenly twisted her head and thrown her laserball directly at the spot. The laserball had hit the fence, which had shook so hard that Memily had been warned of its instability.
Perhaps Memily wouldn’t have fallen. Perhaps the fence would have held. Perhaps Leia had just randomly thrown the laserball.
Recounting this, Memily had fixed Bail with her large dark eyes. She was a young woman from the country, still a bit cowed by the atmosphere at the royal palace. “It was like she knew, sir,” she’d said. “Like she saw something before it happened. I saw it in her eyes. Then she smiled at me and…kept on playing.”
Memily was completely trustworthy; everyone in Bail’s palace was. All those who lived on the grounds were either family or were related to the family’s most trusted allies. Memily was the daughter of an old friend. Bail knew that she would have never talked about the incident to anyone but him.
But somehow this tiny incident, this minuscule ripple in the middle of an ordinary day, had been reported to the Empire.
Someone had seen it, and someone had talked, and maybe that person had told the story at the spaceport, a place from which someone might have taken it back to Coruscant. Spies were everywhere now. The Empire paid handsomely for the merest scraps of information. So someone, at some point, had thought that the Empire might be interested in word of a child with amazing reflexes.
Imperial informers were now a part of life in the galaxy, Bail supposed, but he didn’t believe there were any on Alderaan. The society here was too close-knit, and everyone was bitterly opposed to the new Imperial order. It was just bad luck that the news had gone so far�
��all the way to the Imperial Inquisitors.
Bad luck. Was that it? A Jedi wouldn’t say so. A Jedi would say that the dark side of the Force now moved through the galaxy, tempting some, encouraging others to exercise their worst impulses.
The good news was that nobody knew that the child was Leia. There was just a report of a child, neither male nor female, and a caregiver who had quickly hustled her away. He couldn’t fault Memily for that, but it had attracted attention.
Bail glanced around the room, at the transparisteel doors that marched along one entire wall, so that the gardens would be seen in full display. Leia called this room the “inside-outside room.” The palace had always been an open place. That was the Alderaan way. Any citizen could come to the door and knock. Bail had security placed here during the Clone Wars, but it was minimal. Breha had fought him even about that. She would not change her planet’s traditions for the sake of a repellent regime, she said, her chin lifted in that way he knew so well.
She was right, actually. If the Empire wanted access to this place, they would get in no matter how much security he ordered.
Now two Imperial Inquisitors were due to arrive later that day. He had told Breha to take Leia away for the duration. He could see them now, heading toward the private gates the family used to enter and exit the official palace compound. Bail felt better knowing that Leia wouldn’t be at home.
Not that an Inquisitor would pick up anything strange. Leia was a normal toddler. Advanced for her age, yes, but he’d never seen any evidence of Force sensitivity in her. He had hoped, instead, that whatever she had inherited from her true parents had been all from Padmé. Her intelligence, her courage, perhaps some of her grace…not just her brown eyes.
Yet part of Anakin Skywalker was there, too. Bail had hoped it wouldn’t be. In this galaxy, ability with the Force would be a burden to his child, not a gift.
So much to hide, Bail thought. The Inquisitors would come, and they would walk the city, and they would comb through records, and they would invade the privacy of the citizens of Alderaan, and if Bail had anything to do about it, they would find nothing and leave. The report of a toddler with an amazing pitching arm would be tossed aside, as well it should, lost among the millions of tips the Imperial investigators received from those trying to curry favor, trying to move up in the system.
Bail sighed. He would have to cooperate. But he wasn’t about to make it easy.
Ferus Olin resisted the urge to tug at the collar of his Inquisitor’s robe. To him the robe was unnecessarily ominous-looking. The hoods were designed to conceal the face. He had remarked to his fellow Inquisitor, Hydra, that it seemed counter-productive to wear such a frightening costume if you were trying to coax information out of reluctant subjects, but Hydra had merely stared at him with her flat, expressionless gaze and said, “The Empire does not coax.”
Right. He knew he should really pay attention to this new Imperial lingo. They didn’t coax, they didn’t ask, they didn’t defer, they didn’t take into account that anyone they came in contact with was in fact a living, breathing creature. Ruthless efficiency was the only way to go.
Ferus hated being a double agent. If the Emperor hadn’t given him this particular job, he would have dropped away and gone back to the resistance. But given the chance to head up the Inquisitors who were tracking down rumors of Force-adepts, he couldn’t turn it down. If he could locate them, he could save them. And if locating them took being an Inquisitor for awhile, he would do it.
But this robe…he’d been in two Imperial prisons so far and this robe felt like the third.
If it hadn’t been for Obi-Wan Kenobi, he wouldn’t be on Alderaan at all. All that solitude was making Obi-Wan even more of a mystery man than usual. Obi-Wan had his secrets, and he was keeping them. That didn’t stop him, however, from issuing edicts to Ferus every once in awhile. When Ferus had listed the Force-sensitive prospects, for some reason this nameless toddler on Alderaan had gotten Obi-Wan’s attention.
Imperial Inquisitor Hydra sat beside him, her expression neutral. She never said a word if she didn’t have to. Her hood shadowed her face, and it was rare that he caught a glimpse of her expression. She didn’t seem to have an emotion about anything. They’d traveled together for two days now, and she had never complained about delays or bad food or the faulty engine light that had grounded them for five hours at a decrepit spaceport.
She piloted the airspeeder, zooming through the space lanes of Aldera without regard to anyone else. The palace lay on a slight rise at the edge of the city, overlooking the vast lake. It was a gracious complex of buildings surrounded by gardens and orchards. Terraces on various levels afforded the inhabitants plenty of air and light in Alderaan’s temperate climate. Hydra brought the airspeeder down, releasing the repulsorlift motor so that the airspeeder crushed a plot of clover.
Ferus gathered himself for the encounter. Bail Organa was a personal hero of his. He had followed Organa’s career in the Senate, heard his speeches, read his writings. His passion for justice was never an occasion for ego or grandstanding; his quiet resolve was, for Ferus, the essence of what a politician should be and rarely was.
And Bail would despise him.
Not only was he entering his house as an enemy, but Bail no doubt knew his background. He would accept the official Imperial line that Ferus had been a great hero of the Bellassan resistance before seeing the error of his ways and joining the Empire. In other words, Bail would see him as a traitor to every ideal he held dear.
Ferus and Hydra approached the palace and walked through the gates. Ferus was surprised at the lack of security. It had to be there, but he sensed no hidden alarms or sensors. No weapons were allowed on Alderaan, but still, he would have expected some sort of protection for the Queen and her large extended family.
They followed a winding path through ancient trees with thick trunks of dark golden wood. The gardens were in bloom, and all the flowers were bursts of color against the dense dark greens of the foliage.
The path led them to a wide front door that was intricately carved from what looked like the massive trunk of one of the majestic trees that surrounded the palace. Bail Organa opened the door himself as they approached.
Ferus gave a slight bow.
“We come as designates of the Emperor,” he said.
“You may enter.”
Bail turned and walked stiffly back into his home. Every muscle in his body told them how little he thought of them and how quickly he wanted them gone.
Ferus glanced at Hydra, but as usual couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She walked swiftly, her hands concealed in her robes.
Bail led them to what must have been the palace’s most formal room, used for ceremonial affairs. It was paneled with wood and topped by a domed ceiling. Inside, two women waited. Ferus recognized Breha, tall and beautiful in her white gown of plain cloth. The other woman resembled her, but was taller, with a round, pretty face and coils of dark hair around her ears.
“My wife Breha, Queen of Alderaan, and my sister-in-law, Deara, advisor to the Queen,” Bail said shortly.
There was no furniture in the room, and they stood directly in the center just underneath a massive lighting fixture in the shape of a sun.
“What has brought you to Alderaan?” Bail asked.
“It is the charge of the Imperial Inquisitors to promote stability in the galaxy.” Ferus trotted out the words he had been told to say before any request for information. He forged on despite the contempt evident in Bail’s expression. “In order to do this, the cooperation of Senators and rulers is expected. A report has been filed by one of your citizens—”
“One of our citizens, you say,” Breha said. “I don’t think so. Alderaan citizens do not spy on each other.”
Ferus wasn’t about to debate this. Breha was most likely right. But it infuriated Ferus that his level of security clearance did not extend to the names of Imperial operatives, even code names. He didn’t know who, ex
actly, had turned in the report of the unusual toddler.
“A report has been filed,” he repeated courteously, “that makes it necessary for us to pursue an investigation onsite. We would like your permission to search the official records of Alderaan, including security reports, domestic surveillance—”
“The royal court does not spy on its citizens!” Bail’s voice whipped out and echoed in the chamber.
“We leave that to you,” Deara added.
“—and any and all recorded communications and citizen registries,” Ferus finished. He kept his tone polite and respectful, but it did nothing to lessen Bail’s obvious rage.
They all knew the outcome. Bail and Breha would give permission because they had to. They knew very well that even asking for permission was just a symbolic gesture. The Emperor had given himself the power to open any planetary records that he wished. Ferus was sure that one day soon, even this meaningless exchange wouldn’t be necessary. For the present, the Emperor was still concerned with appearances.
Bail’s eyes burned through him. “You don’t need our permission,” he said, spitting out the words. “So why put us through the hypocrisy of asking for it? Do what you will. We have nothing to hide.”
As one, Bail, Breha, and Deara turned their backs on the Inquisitors and walked out.
As Ferus and Hydra climbed back into the airspeeder, Ferus said, “I think we should try the office of Official Records first.”
“You were deferential to Bail Organa,” Hydra replied, surprising him. “Why?”
“He’s a Senator.”
“He is the main opposition to the Emperor in the Senate. He works to destroy the Empire.”
“It’s easier if you avoid confrontation when you’re digging on someone else’s ground.”
“That is a curious statement,” Hydra said. “Alderaan belongs to the Empire. This is our ground.”
Oops, Ferus thought. He had to be more careful. “I’m speaking of perception,” he said. “If we push the Senator too hard, he may close access to us in ways we aren’t even aware of. We don’t have a lock on this planet…yet.”