by James Luceno
“You serious?”
“You flew that hover like a champ. Seems to me like you’re ready for something bigger.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Sure you could.” Han handed him a headset. “Here, put these on. I’ll show you how this works.”
Trig blinked at him, a hesitant smile finding its way around the corners of his mouth.
“You know, Dr. Cody said before that guy White died, he told her about the shuttle.”
Han nodded. “Right.”
“White said his guys had a name for it.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” Trig said. “Freebird.” He glanced at Han tentatively. “I like that.”
“Freebird, huh?” Han considered. “I guess that sounds about right.” Han pushed back from the controls so Trig could get a closer look. “Come on over, I’ll show you how it’s done.”
Two days later they sold the transport to a group of Black Hammer pirates on Galantos, in a city called Gal’fian’deprisi.
“The sooner I get out of here,” Han groaned, “the less I’ll have to try to say the name.”
They were sitting in a tapcaf outside the starport, Trig looking up from his side of the table, Han and Chewie on one side, he and Zahara on the other. “Where are you headed?”
“With our half of what we got for that transport?” Han grinned. “Buy my ship back.”
“I thought you said it was confiscated by the Imperials.”
“Are you kidding? As corrupt as those local bureaucrats are, they probably had the Falcon at auction before we were even loaded on that prison barge. It’s just a matter of tracking her down.”
“You’re not sticking around?”
“Nah.” Han stood up and extended a hand across the table. “Be seeing you, Doc.” He glanced at Trig. “Kid, take care, huh?”
“You, too.”
“What about you guys, anyway? You got big plans?”
Zahara thought for a moment and nodded.
“Unfinished business.”
Epilogue
Everyone in Hanna City assumed the teenage boy and the woman were brother and sister. Although she was significantly older, they both carried themselves with the same hard-won grace, as if they’d both come through the same fire together. Something in their manner was humble, almost common, and when they traveled, as they did endlessly now, they had little trouble avoiding any difficulties with the Imperials.
The morning that they arrived on Chandrila, they spent hours walking through the planet’s rolling hills, along the shore of Lake Sah’ot. The air here was cool and almost supernaturally clear, crisp enough that they could smell the lush green land far in the distance. It was the kind of place that Trig Longo could imagine settling down in someday, and when he said that to Zahara Cody, she just smiled.
Along the eastern shore they came across a small community of local people, fishermen and farmers. They knew of the family that Zahara asked about, and it wasn’t hard to find the small ranch a kilometer away, perched at the edge of a pasture overlooking the water. When they got there, she approached the door and knocked.
The woman who answered was darkly beautiful, haunted and haunting at the same time, her eyes deeper than space. At her feet, three young children clung to the hem of her frock, gazing fearfully at the two strangers on her doorstep.
“Yes?” she said. “May I help you?”
“Are you Kai?” Zahara asked.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“My name’s Zahara Cody. I worked with your husband aboard the Prison Barge Purge.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” The woman stared at them nervously. “I already spoke to the Empire about this.”
“We’re not here as representatives of the Empire,” Trig said.
The woman didn’t say anything, but her look of wariness grew deeper.
“Your husband had something he meant to pass on to you,” Zahara said. “I just wanted to make sure that you got it.” Reaching into her pocket, she handed the woman a single tattered sheet of flimsi.
The children all gathered closer, craning their necks to watch as Kai opened it up. The smallest of them, too young to read, looked at up his mother. “What is it, Mommy?”
The woman didn’t answer for a long time. Her eyes moved back and forth across the page, and Trig saw tears glimmering there, rising up and spilling over. Then she looked back up at Zahara.
“Thank you.”
Zahara and Trig waited while she read it silently to herself a second time. By the time she finished, the tears were running down her cheeks. She didn’t bother wiping them away, and the oldest child had slipped his arm around her, as if he could somehow protect her from her own sadness.
“Thank you for this,” she said. “Would you … would you like to come inside? I was just making some tea.”
“That sounds good,” Zahara said, and she and Trig stepped inside to the clamor of children and the smell of tea.
About the Author
JOE SCHREIBER is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Star Wars: Death Troopers, as well as Chasing the Dead, Eat the Dark, and No Doors, No Windows. He was born in Michigan but spent his formative years in Alaska, Wyoming, and Northern California. He lives in central Pennsylvania with his wife, two young children, and several original Star Wars action figures. www.scaryparent.blogspot.com
By Joe Schreiber
Star Wars: Red Harvest
Star Wars: Death Troopers
No Doors, No Windows
Chasing the Dead
Eat the Dark
Introduction to the REBELLION Era
(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 crimin
al 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 Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor by Matthew Stover.
Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2010 Del Rey Mass Market Edition
Copyright © 2008 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or ™ where indicated. All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.
Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2008.
eISBN: 978-0-307-79585-4
www.starwars.com
www.delreybooks.com
v3.1
The author respectfully dedicates this novel to the legendary
Alan Dean Foster, and to the memory of the late, great Brian
Daley, for showing us what it looks like
when this stuff is done right.
Thank you, gentlemen. We are in your debt.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to gratefully acknowledge the following people, without whom this novel would not exist in its current form:
Mike Kogge, for suggesting that I look at the end of Luke’s military career; Karen Traviss, for an opportune bit of translation; Sue Rostoni, Leland Chee, and all the folks at Lucasfilm for unflagging support and expert assistance; Shelly Shapiro, my editor at Del Rey, for leap-tall-buildings-in-a-single-bound encouragement, more-powerful-than-a-locomotive patience, and faster-than-a-speeding-bullet skill to shepherd this story from idea to hardcover; and Robyn, my beloved wife and periodic Star Wars widow, who accomplished the most heroic task of all: living with me while I slowly ground my way through this story.
Contents
Master - Table of Contents
Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Briefing
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Debriefing
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.…
BRIEFING
Lorz Geptun stood outside the command cabin door and tried to swallow. Really, this was too much: to be summoned before Luke Skywalker, of all people. A Jedi. Not only a Jedi, but the son of Anakin Skywalker. And now Geptun had to meet him. Face-to-face!
He tugged at the collar of his dress-blue uniform tunic, slid a finger behind it to try to stretch the fabric just a hair more. He grimaced at how difficult he found this simple task to be; surely his tailor had miscalculated—again—because he couldn’t possibly have put on so much weight since he’d had this made. Could he? In, what had it been, three Standard months? A man of his admittedly advanced age—he would never see seventy again—should have settled on a size, and left it at that.
Geptun was not much in favor of dress uniforms, anyway. He’d left his own behind on his homeworld decades before, at the beginning of the Clone Wars, trading it in for mufti; in those days, Republic Intelligence had been a largely covert service, and had had no use for uniforms. He’d left Republic Intelligence not long after it had become Imperial Intelligence; his investigation of the so-called Jedi Rebellion had uncovered entirely too much of certain truths that the Imperial Executive had preferred to conceal, and for a number of years he’d been forced to make a living as a freelance broker of information while doing his best to avoid attracting any official Imperial attention.
Eventually, he’d offered his services to the Rebel Alliance. Though he had little interest in politics—his primary political conviction was a profound interest in his own safety and comfort—he’d recognized that the prospective government the Rebels planned to install would, owing to its youthful amateurish untidiness, afford him a great deal more opportunity for the freedom to make his own way in his own way. Which was another way of saying: to live and work in the lucrative shadows outside official scrutiny.
Which made his current situation all the more ironic.
He sighed. Nothing ever works out how we wish, yes? Doesn’t mean one can’t turn it to one’s advantage. He sighed again and raised a finger to trigger the cabin’s door chime … but before he could, the door slid open, and a voice that sounded a great deal older and wearier than Geptun had expected said, “Inspector Geptun. Please come in.”
Geptun grimaced again. He’d become accustomed, this twenty-plus years past, to a galaxy without Jedi. He wasn’t at all sure he was looking forward to their return.
He took a deep breath and waddled through the door. “General Skywalker,” he said with a slight bow—no salute, as the Judicial Service was outside the military chain of command—and a pleasant smile. “How may I be of service?”
The young general sat on the edge of his desk, head lowered and hands clasped before him. He wore close-fitting civilian clothing of a somber black, very much in the style his celebrated father had made famous. Geptun reflected with a flash of annoyance that if he’d known Skywalker would be out of uniform, he would have come to this meeting in a comfortable blazer instead of this bloody jookley suit.
Skywalker lifted his head as though he had felt Geptun’s annoyance—and he might very well have, Geptun reminded himself. Bloody Jedi. “Inspector Lorz Geptun,” Skywalker said slowly. “I know a little about you, Inspector. You were a military governor and director of planetary intelligence for the CIS during the Clone Wars.”
Geptun’s too-tight collar suddenly seemed to tighten further. “Briefly. At the beginning of the—”
“Then you were a Republic spy.”
“Well—”
“And after that, you made your living tracking targets for bounty hunters.”
“Not specifically for—”
“And now you’re a JS investigator. Through all this, there’s a running theme. You have a talent.”
Geptun said carefully, “Do I?”
“You seem to be pretty good at finding the truth.”
Geptun relaxed. “Oh, well, thank you for—”
“And at making money off it.”
“Erm.” He cleared his throat, but found he had nothing to say.
Skywalker pushed himself to his feet. His face was drawn, and far more deeply lined than Geptun had expected from a lad of twenty-four. He looked like he hadn’t been sleeping for some few days now. His movements were slightly unsteady, and the shadows under his eyes were shading toward purple—
but they were nothing compared to the shadows within his eyes. “That’s what I know about you. What do you know about me?”
Geptun blinked. “General?”
“Come on, Inspector.” Skywalker sounded even more tired than he looked. “Everybody knows stuff about me. What do you know?”
“Oh, well, you know, the usual—Tatooine, Yavin, Endor, Bakura, Death Star One and Two—” Geptun realized he was babbling and shut up.
Skywalker nodded. “The usual. The stories. The press releases. The problem is that those stories and press releases aren’t really about me at all. They’re about the guy everybody wants me to be, understand?”
Geptun eyed him warily; he sensed that he’d been maneuvered onto dangerous ground. “I’m afraid,” he said slowly, “that I don’t understand.”
Skywalker nodded with a slow, tired sigh. “That’s because you don’t know that less than a month ago, I murdered about fifty thousand innocent beings.”
Geptun goggled at him, then blinked and cleared his throat again as he figured out what the young Jedi was talking about. “You mean Mindor?”
Skywalker’s eyes drifted shut; he winced as though he were looking at something painful on the inside of his eyelids. “Yeah. Mindor. I say about fifty thousand because I don’t know the real number. Nobody does. The records were destroyed along with the system.”
“From what I’ve heard, your victory at the Battle of Mindor would hardly constitute murder—”
“From what you’ve heard. More stories.”
“Well, I had heard—I, ah …” Geptun coughed delicately. “What is it, exactly, that you want me to do?”
“You’re an investigator. I want you to investigate.”
“Investigate what?”