by Troy Denning
“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 ope
n 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 novels set in the Legacy era.
PROLOGUE
The feeling had returned, a sense of desperation that burned in the Force like a faraway star, clear and bright and beckoning. Jaina Solo found her gaze straying through the justice ship viewport, out into the blue-flecked void that hung behind the slowly spinning cylinder of Detention Center Maxsec Eight. As before, the sensation came from the direction of the Unknown Regions, a call for … what? And from whom? The touch was too wispy to tell. It always was.
“Jedi Solo?” The inquisitor stepped closer to the witness rail. “Shall I repeat the question?”
A tall, stiff woman with a shaved head and deep lines at the corners of her gray eyes, Athadar Gyad had the brusque demeanor of a retired military officer. It was a common affectation among petty Reconstruction Authority bureaucrats, even when the only notation in their service record was a decades-old planetary conscription number.
“When you boarded the Night Lady with Jedi Lowbacca and—”
“Sorry, Inquisitor. I did hear the question.” Jaina shifted her gaze to the accused, a massive Yaka with an expressionless, near-human face. He wore an engraved Ithorian skull on the lateral cover of his cybernetic implant. “Redstar’s crew tried to turn us away.”
A glint of impatience showed in Gyad’s gray eyes. “They attacked you with blasters, isn’t that correct?”
“Right.”
“And it was necessary to defend yourselves with your lightsabers?”
“Right again.”
Gyad remained silent, tacitly inviting her witness to elaborate on the battle. But Jaina was more interested in the sense of desperation she felt in the Force. It was growing stronger by the moment, more urgent and frightened.
“Jedi Solo?” Gyad stepped in front of Jaina, blocking her view out of the inquest salon. “Please direct your attention to me.”
Jaina fixed the woman with an icy stare. “I thought I had answered your question.”
Gyad drew back almost imperceptibly, but continued her examination as though there had been no resentment in Jaina’s voice. “What were you wearing at the time?”
“Our cloaks,” Jaina said.
“Your Jedi cloaks?”
“They’re just cloaks.” Jaina had stood at enough witness rails in
the last few years to know that the inquisitor was trying to bolster a weak case with the mystique of her Jedi witnesses—a sure sign that Gyad did not understand, or respect, the Jedi role in the galaxy. “Jedi don’t wear uniforms.”
“Surely, you can’t mean to suggest that a criminal of Red-star’s intelligence failed to recognize—” Gyad paused to reconsider her phrasing. Tribunal inquisitors were supposed to be impartial investigators, though in practice most limited their efforts to presenting enough evidence to lock away the accused. “Jedi Solo, do you mean to suggest the crew could have legitimately believed you to be pirates?”
“I don’t know what they believed,” Jaina said.
Gyad narrowed her eyes and studied Jaina in silence. Despite Luke Skywalker’s advice after the war to avoid involving the Jedi in the mundane concerns of the new government, the challenge of rebuilding the galaxy obliged much of the order to do just that. There were just too many critical missions that only a Jedi could perform, with too many dire consequences for the Galactic Alliance, and most Reconstruction Authority bureaucrats had come to view the Jedi order as little more than an elite branch of interstellar police.
Finally, Jaina explained, “I was too busy fighting to probe their thoughts.”
Gyad let out a theatrical sigh. “Jedi Solo, isn’t it true that your father once made his living as a smuggler?”
“That was a little before my time, Inquisitor.” Jaina’s retort drew a siss of laughter from the spectator area, where two of her fellow Jedi Knights, Tesar Sebatyne and Lowbacca, sat waiting for her to finish. “And what would that have to do with the price of spice on Nal Hutta?”