The Essential Novels

by James Luceno

  “Madam Director, didn’t you say the Rogues would be coming here, to Imperial Center?”

  “Indeed, I believe I did.” Her smile grew. “And I believe my prediction will be proven true.”

  “Then Horn will come here.”

  “And will be looking for you.” Isard licked her lips. “More distraction from his main mission for Lieutenant Horn, and more motivation for you to succeed in Rogue Squadron’s destruction.”

  In this case I’m not sure those ends justify the means at all. “I see, Madam Director.”

  “I’m sure you do, Agent Loor. Spare me future reports about General Derricote’s tantrums. I want results, and I want them to be successful results.”

  “As you will it, Madam Director,” he found himself saying in the darkness resulting from her termination of the communication.

  He rocked back and sat on the floor. For a half a second he longed for a return to the days when he and Horn were adversaries at CorSec. They had hated each other, especially after the Bossk incident, but the tension had not yet become lethal. Then he realized he harbored no real fear of Corran Horn’s retribution. His success would mean release from her clutches. If he knew that, of course, Horn would find a way to clone me, so he could have the pleasure of killing me and forcing me to work for Ysanne Isard forever!

  “Yes, he could be that cruel, but he would hold himself back. Therein is his weakness.” Kirtan Loor grabbed the edge of his desk and pulled himself upright. “Here on Imperial Center, in Isard’s domain, I have neither the compunction nor need to restrain myself. Do come to Coruscant, Corran. Bring your friends and your hidden enemy with you. Imperial City is undoubtedly the last place you ever thought you’d visit, and I will do all I can to make certain it is the last place you visit.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Michael A. Stackpole is an award-winning author, editor, game and computer game designer. As always, he spends his spare time playing indoor soccer and now has a new hobby, podcasting. Mike will publish A New World, the sequel to Cartomancy, this July, and is currently at work on ideas for a half-dozen other novels.

  To learn more about Mike’s podcasting, please visit www.tsfpn.com (the website of The SciFi Podcast Network).

  BOOKS BY MICHAEL A. STACKPOLE

  THE WARRIOR TRILOGY

  Warrior: En Garde

  Warrior: Riposte

  Warrior: Coupé

  THE BLOOD OF KERENSKY

  TRILOGY

  Lethal Heritage

  Blood Legacy

  Lost Destiny

  Natural Selection

  Assumption of Risk

  Bred for War

  Malicious Intent

  Grave Covenant

  Prince of Havoc

  Ghost War

  THE FIDDLEBACK TRILOGY

  A Gathering Evil

  Evil Ascendant

  Evil Triumphant

  Eyes of Silver*

  Dementia

  Wolf and Raven

  Once a Hero*

  Talion: Revenant*

  STAR WARS® X-WING SERIES

  Rogue Squadron*

  Wedge’s Gamble*

  The Krytos Trap*

  The Bacta War*

  Isard’s Revenge*

  Star Wars®: I, Jedi*

  Star Wars®: Dark Tide

  Star Wars®: Onslaught

  Star Wars®: Ruin

  THE DRAGONCROWN

  WAR CYCLE

  The Dark Glory War*

  Fortress Draconis*

  When Dragons Rage*

  The Grand Crusade*

  THE AGE OF DISCOVERY

  A Secret Atlas*

  Cartomancy*

  *published by Bantam Books

  Star Wars: Heir to the Empire is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2011 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 Bantam Spectra, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., 1991.

  Mass market edition 1992

  eISBN: 978-0-345-53000-4

  www.starwars.com

  www.delreybooks.com

  v.3.1

  v3.1_r1

  To all the fans of the Star Wars Expanded Universe:

  Thanks for letting me be a part of your lives these past two decades. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have.

  Contents

  Master - Table of Contents

  Heir to the Empire

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Introduction

  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

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Afterword

  Crisis of Faith: An Original Star Wars Novella

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Author Annotations

  F O R E W O R D

  At a time when Star Wars is so firmly entrenched in our culture and so seemingly ubiquitous, it’s hard to imagine a moment when it had all but disappeared from sight.

  But that was exactly the time we faced back in the late eighties.

  Star Wars had a phenomenal run during the release of the original trilogy. The films broke all box-office records. The toys sold like hot-cakes. Younger incarnations of us boogied to Star Wars disco music. And then it all stopped. George stopped making the films. The boys who bought the toys moved on to sports and girls, and the disco ducks hunkered down to begin their careers. The world moved on.

  By 1986, acting on the sage advice of our sole shareholder and resident Yoda, Lucas Licensing decided it was time to give Star Wars a rest. A few years later, with no new films on the horizon, we timidly started to think about what products might now be of interest to Star Wars fans. The first thing we realized was that our fan base had grown a bit older. The kids who bought the toys were now in college. Fans who had been teens or adults when the films first came out were probably starting careers or families. Where could we take Star Wars that would be relevant to their lives?

  It was clear to us that simply revisiting the past would be of marginal interest. It was too early for a nostalgia play and, frankly, not very stimulating. We needed to give fans something new, something that appealed to a more mature sensibility. And, we reasoned, because Star Wars is all about story, the natural ground to explore was books—books that could expand the story, starting with the characters and situations so vividly established in the films and taking them to places never before imagined.

  I was the head of Licensing, and back then I had a tiny staff. My finance director, Lucy Autrey Wilson, had been one of the company’s first employees. Back in 1974, Lucy actually worked in George’s house and helped type the scripts for Star Wars: A New Hope. She was a good finance person, but she was a restl
ess soul and had a passion for publishing. She had implored me for years to give her the chance to make new publishing deals for Star Wars. And for years I had responded to her not unlike the way that Han responds to Luke when he says, “And who’s gonna fly it, kid? You?”

  Fortunately for Lucy—and for all of us—by 1989 there was a convergence in the Force. I was persuaded that it was time to restart our adult fiction publishing program and seriously explore new stories in the Star Wars universe. And I was willing to give Lucy the chance to find a publisher who shared our vision. But before we could do that, there was one last hurdle. If we were to play in this particular sandbox, we needed to consult the owner of the sandbox. So I went to George Lucas and humbly requested permission to expand his universe. He was appropriately skeptical (I seem to recall a response along the lines of, “No one is going to buy this”) but supportive enough to give me the opportunity to fail. We established some very basic guidelines: The stories would have to take place after Return of the Jedi; events prior to A New Hope were off limits because if George were ever to make more Star Wars films, that was where he would go; and no major characters could be killed. Other than that, George made it clear that he would be hands-off. It seemed so simple and straightforward. I don’t think George or I had any idea what we were getting ourselves into.

  Lucy went out and pitched the concept of a new series of Star Wars spin-off books. She approached a number of publishers who felt that Star Wars was a dead issue and passed on the opportunity. But to our great relief, one publisher—Bantam Books—understood the vision: new Star Wars stories written by great writers could really mobilize the fans. Lucy made the deal and Bantam brought us a great writer—Tim Zahn. And Tim delivered.

  I’ll never forget the day that Lucy came into my office in 1991 to tell me the news that Tim’s Heir to the Empire had premiered at number one on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list. It was an emotional moment. In a single stroke we knew that our instinct had been right. And even better, we knew that the flame of passion among our fans hadn’t died after all. It needed only the right spark at the right time for it to burn anew—and more strongly than ever!

  —HOWARD ROFFMAN

  President, Lucas Licensing

  I N T R O D U C T I O N

  A long time ago in a galaxy far,

  far away.…

  Well, actually, it was Illinois.

  But it was a long time ago.

  It was Monday, November 6, 1989, to be exact, at about four o’clock in the afternoon. I was sitting in my home office in Champaign, Illinois, working on a novel I’d just sold to Bantam Books called Angelmass, when I got an unexpected call from my agent, Russell Galen. After the usual pleasantries, he dropped what would be, for me, the understatement of the decade:

  “Tim, we have a very interesting offer here.”

  As I stood there staring out a window in growing amazement, he went on to relate how, a year earlier, the head of Bantam Spectra, Lou Aronica, had written to Lucasfilm with an idea about restarting the Star Wars saga. Lou’s plan was to create a three-book saga that would pick up the story after Return of the Jedi, an era in which no author had ever been permitted to write.

  As fate (or the Force) would have it, that letter had arrived just as Howard Roffman and the team at Lucasfilm had decided to restart their adult publishing program.

  That would have been awesome enough. What raised it to flabbergastable level was that Bantam and Lucasfilm were offering me the books.

  I’d been a Star Wars fan as long as anyone else on the planet. (Well, okay, maybe not everyone else. I didn’t make it to the theater until the second night.) Back in the early 1980s, when I was trying to forge a career for myself in the field, the Star Wars movie soundtracks were among my favorite records to listen to as I wrote. So much so that I distinctly remember thinking at the time that if George Lucas could come out of essentially nowhere to make a success of himself, maybe I could, too.

  And now I was being invited to play in the universe he had created.

  Anyway, Russ and I discussed it for forty minutes or so, and I told him I would think about it overnight and give him my answer in the morning. We said good-bye, and then I hung up the phone … and spent the next couple of hours panicking.

  At issue was the fact that this offer was very much a two-edged sword. I had the chance to jump-start my career in a way I could never have anticipated or even hoped. I also had the chance to fail spectacularly in front of a potential audience of millions.

  Because I was going to have to write Star Wars. Not something science-fictiony or space-operatic with the name Star Wars on it. I was going to have to write Star Wars. I would have to somehow capture the scope and feel of the universe; the faces and voices of the main characters; the ebb and flow and rhythm of the movies. The readers had to hear Mark Hamill’s and Carrie Fisher’s and Harrison Ford’s voices inside my quotation marks. The people flipping through those pages needed to be able to hear John Williams’s music in the backs of their minds.

  If I couldn’t do that, or at least get close, it wouldn’t be Star Wars. It would be An Adventure of Two Guys Named Han and Luke. And that would be a waste of everyone’s time.

  There was more. Not only did I have to get the feel of the universe right, I also had to come up with a story—a three-book-long story, in fact—that wasn’t simply a rehash of what George had already done. I would have to age the movie characters believably, and create new characters that would fit seamlessly into the mix.

  By the next morning I still didn’t know if I could pull all that off. But I did know that I very much wanted to try. So I told Russ I was on board and got to work.

  The first part was easy enough. By Thanksgiving, a little over two weeks later, I had a forty-page preliminary outline for the trilogy, and had had some conversations with Betsy Mitchell, my editor on the project.

  We then hit an unexpected snag (unexpected to me, anyway): the Bantam and Lucasfilm lawyers were still hammering out their contract. Until they had a contract, I couldn’t get a contract with Bantam to write the books, and until I had my contract, Lucasfilm wouldn’t look at my outline (for legal reasons that I certainly understood). And until they approved my outline, it was pointless for me to start writing.

  Between the lawyers and the back-and-forth LFL approval process it was a solid six months before I was finally able to get to work. (As it is, I jumped the gun by about a week, figuring that whatever final changes LFL might want probably wouldn’t affect the first two or three chapters that much.) Along the way there were problems to be ironed out, disagreements to be discussed, compromises to be made, and occasionally capitulation (on my part) to be graciously made.

  I groused some about the latter. We authors usually grouse when we don’t get our way. But as I look back, I can honestly say that the book is much better because of the suggestions and changes that I sometimes only grudgingly accepted.

  I mailed the book to Betsy on November 2, 1990 (yes, we still mailed paper manuscripts back then), a bit less than six months after I’d started and almost exactly a year after I was offered the project. For me, at that time, six months was phenomenally fast, though in the past twenty years I’ve gotten considerably faster. (For instance, my most recent Star Wars book, Choices of One, took only three months to write.) As with the outline, the finished manuscript went through an approval/change process with Bantam and Lucasfilm, and after a lot of (mostly minor) changes it was finally declared finished. Cover art was commissioned, other editorial stuff was done, the promotional and ad campaigns were arranged, and all was ready to go.

  Except for one question, the question that had been hanging over the project since the very beginning.

  Namely, would anyone actually buy the book?

  Lou had been convinced from the start that the audience was out there. But even he was taking it mostly on faith. After all, Return of the Jedi was eight years in the past and the Star Wars fans were quiet.

&nb
sp; There were hints, of course. A couple of months before Heir came out I went to talk to a class of fourth-graders, and took a copy of the cover to show them. These kids, who’d barely been alive when the last Star Wars movie came out, gazed excitedly at the cover art, pointing out Han and Luke and Chewie to one another. Through the magic of VCR tape, they were fully up to speed with everything Star Wars.

  But hints are only hints. So Bantam and Lucasfilm hedged their bets. They set the price of the book at fifteen dollars, considerably below market standard for hardcovers. The sales staff worked hard to drum up enthusiasm among booksellers, with mixed results. They bought print ads and put out an actual radio ad. (I’d never before had a radio ad for one of my books. Nor, I think, have I had once since.)

  After that, there was nothing to do but sit back and cross our fingers.

  May 1991.

  It’s been said by some that the Thrawn Trilogy restarted Star Wars. That sounds very impressive, but it’s not really true. A more accurate statement would be that I was the first person since Jedi who was permitted to stick a fork into the piecrust to see if there was still any steam underneath.

  There was steam. Man, was there steam.

  The first run of seventy thousand copies was gone within two weeks, and Bantam was scrambling to get more printed. (Semi-useless fact: the printer ran out of blue cover stock after the third printing, so the fourth printing was on a tan cover stock. Even today, if I see one of those come across my autographing table I’ll do a whole Force “I know what printing this is” routine.) I was told by some bookstore clerks that they were selling Heir right out of the box, that they would be putting the books on the rack and someone would catch sight of Star Wars on the cover, grab one, and head to checkout.

  The book made it to number one on the New York Times list, the authors’ Holy Grail. (It actually beat out John Grisham’s The Firm. He later sent me a copy of his book with an autograph and a very nice, very tongue-in-cheek request for me to get out of his way.)