READY TO BEGIN ENTRY, Han read. SIGNAL WHEN YOU ARE READY. “They say they are ready.” He turned to Salculd. “Are we prepared?”
“Yes,” said Salculd.
“Very well,” Han said. “Honored Dracmus,” he said in Basic, so that Salculd could not understand. “You will now do what I say. Stop pacing, take your seat, and instruct Salculd to accept orders from me. I would then ask you most kindly to shut up until we are on the ground. I want you to give no orders and say nothing. I just want you to sit quietly. Or else I tell the Jade’s Fire that escorting us is a suicide run. I will instruct them to leave us here.” It was all bluff, of course, but Dracmus was panicky enough that she wasn’t likely to think it through.
“But—” she protested.
“But nothing. I know blink code and you don’t. I can talk to the Fire and you can’t. You nearly got us killed ordering this ship around before, and I’m not going to put up with that again.”
“I must protest! This is robbery of the worst kind!”
Han grinned. “Actually, it’s more like piracy. Or you could call it a pretty mild form of hijacking. And I might add that if you don’t know robbery from piracy, you have no business running a ship.”
Dracmus glared at Han, about to protest—but then she shook her head. “So be it. I must accede. Even to my eye, my ship orders were none too good, and I wish to live some more.” She shifted to Selonian. “Pilot Salculd! You will obey the orders of Honored Han Solo as you would my own, and do so until such time as we reach the ground.”
Salculd sat up in her seat and looked from one to the other before grinning even more widely than before. “Yes, Honored Dracmus!” she said. “I obey with pleasure!”
“See that you don’t find too much pleasure in obeying, Salculd,” Dracmus growled. “Honored Solo, if you would proceed.”
“Take your seat,” Han said to Dracmus in Selonian. “We all must strap in and prepare for acceleration. Salculd, you will fly a standard approach to the intended field of landing, starting on my command. Is that understood?”
“Yes, indeed,” Salculd said. “Absolutely.”
Han picked up the handlight placed next to his seat for the purpose, and signaled back to the Fire.
BEADY TO COMMENCE EMNTRY MANEUVERZ, he signaled, managing to spot every mistake just after he made it. “Someday I gotta take the time to brush up on this stuff,” he muttered to himself.
WE ARE JUST ABOUT BEADY OURSELVES, Leia signaled back. TAKING POSITION TO YOUR STERN. WILL FOLLOW YOU IN.
“Ha, ha, ha,” Han said. “Glad I married such a humorist.” He shifted back to Selonian. “Very well, Salculd, take us in. With much care.”
As he watched, the Jade’s Fire came about on her long axis, putting her stern toward the coneship. Salculd edged the throttle upward, transferring minimum power to the engines. As the coneship began to accelerate toward the planet, the Fire drifted back, falling astern off the port side. As the faster, more maneuverable ship, and the one that was easier to control, it made sense for the Fire to go in second, where she could keep watch on the coneship. But even the spares on board the Fire had not been enough to patch up the coneship’s stern detector grid. The coneship was, and would continue to be, all but completely blind astern. All she had was one wide-angle holocam set in the base of the cone, between two of the sublight engines. It would be useful during the final approach and landing, but even with the main engines off, its resolution was so poor that the Jade’s Fire would be lost to view if she drifted only a few kilometers away. Once the engines came on, the stern holocam view could only get worse.
In other words, Han might—or might not—be able to see the Fire’s blink code signals if she signaled again. In theory, he could use the coneship’s running lights to send blink code of his own, but he would not be able to see the lights himself, rendering it just that much harder to send accurate code. Han was hoping the question of signaling wouldn’t come up.
The poor visibility to the stern made for another good reason to have the Fire go in second. Better to have a ship you trusted at your back.
At least a ship you more or less trusted. Han had managed to put to rest most—but not all—of his reservations regarding Mara. He could think of no reason, no motive, for her acting against Han and Leia and the Republic, and there was no hard evidence that she had done so. But she had never explained her actions to his satisfaction, either. She had been in the right places at the right times—and the wrong places at the wrong times—a bit too often in recent days.
On the other hand, if she had wanted to do real damage, Mara was too much of a pro to let things be bungled. And the opposition had certainly done some bungling, thank the stars. Not everything had gone their way. Say whatever else you might about the woman, but Mara was competent.
And that was a compelling argument. No, Han told himself as the Jade’s Fire was lost completely to forward view. Leave it be. They really had no choice but to trust Jade. He watched as the Fire came into somewhat fuzzy view on the stern viewscreen. It was time to forget everything else and remember that the main thing was to get this crate down onto the surface. “Now, Salculd, it is your task,” he said. “Do well.”
“I will,” Salculd said. “Don’t worry about that.” The ship chose that moment to lurch to one side, and Salculd grabbed frantically at the controls. “Sorry, sorry,” Salculd said. “Stabilizer overcompensating. All right now.”
“I can’t tell you what a comfort that is,” Han said. For a moment he considered the idea of shoving Salculd out of the pilot’s station and taking over, but he knew better than that. The controls were set up for a Selonian, and the coneship had so many idiosyncrasies it made the Millennium Falcon look like a standard production ship. It might be an alarming thought, but unless things got really hairy, it was probably safest to trust Salculd.
Salculd edged the throttle up just a trifle more and the coneship moved just a bit faster in toward the planet. At least the coneship was not such a relic that it relied on ballistic reentry, using friction with the atmosphere to slow itself down. It could make a nice, civilized powered reentry. At least Han hoped so. Most spacecraft were designed to survive at least one ballistic reentry, but not this thing.
The planet moved closer. In another few minutes Salculd would have to turn the ship over and point its engines forward to slow the craft. That was the part that worried Han. Once they were decelerating, they would be at their most vulnerable. The coneship’s fragility was far from the only source of danger. Someone on Selonia had sent a whole fleet of Light Attack Fighters up to meet the Bakuran ships.
The Bakurans had done a fair amount of damage to the LAFs, but Han had to assume that whoever commanded them would have the sense to hold some of them in reserve. And as Dracmus assured him that the Hunchuzuc had no such ships, it only made sense to assume that whoever it was who did have Light Attack Fighters might take a dim view of the coneship’s arrival. Things could get sticky. Han had worked on the assumption that there would be trouble, and done his best to plan accordingly.
The Jade’s Fire could provide a certain amount of covering fire, if push came to shove, but the other ship would be an uncertain protection at best. The coneship was completely unarmed, and had no shields at all. It didn’t even have enough reserve power to hook up any weaponry—a moot point in any event, as there was no practical way to dismount any of the Jade’s weapons or attach them to the coneship. Han had looked into it. Short of standing in the airlock and taking potshots at any attackers with his hand-blaster, there was not much he could do.
But Han was used to working with nothing. Even a ship as decrepit as this one could play a few tricks if need be. He had found a way to rig up a defense that might provide some measure of protection if things got hot.
Of course, sometimes, when you worked with nothing, nothing was exactly what you got. And sometimes, if you got into a fight with people who had better hardware, those other people won. Not a happy line of thought
when you were on board a flying practice target headed into a war zone.
And his thoughts didn’t get any happier a few minutes later when Leia sent that attack warning.
THE OLD REPUBLIC
(5,000–33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)
Long—long—ago in a galaxy far, far away … some twenty-five thousand years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: A New Hope … a large number of star systems and species in the center of the galaxy came together to form the Galactic Republic, governed by a Chancellor and a Senate from the capital city-world of Coruscant. As the Republic expanded via the hyperspace lanes, it absorbed new member worlds from newly discovered star systems; it also expanded its military to deal with the hostile civilizations, slavers, pirates, and gangster-species such as the slug-like Hutts that were encountered in the outward exploration. But the most vital defenders of the Republic were the Jedi Knights. Originally a reclusive order dedicated to studying the mysteries of the life energy known as the Force, the Jedi became the Republic’s guardians, charged by the Senate with keeping the peace—with wise words if possible; with lightsabers if not.
But the Jedi weren’t the only Force-users in the galaxy. An ancient civil war had pitted those Jedi who used the Force selflessly against those who allowed themselves to be ruled by their ambitions—which the Jedi warned led to the dark side of the Force. Defeated in that long-ago war, the dark siders fled beyond the galactic frontier, where they built a civilization of their own: the Sith Empire.
The first great conflict between the Republic and the Sith Empire occurred when two hyperspace explorers stumbled on the Sith worlds, giving the Sith Lord Naga Sadow and his dark side warriors a direct invasion route into the Republic’s central worlds. This war resulted in the first destruction of the Sith Empire—but it was hardly the last. For the next four thousand years, skirmishes between the Republic and Sith grew into wars, with the scales always tilting toward one or the other, and peace never lasting. The galaxy was a place of almost constant strife: Sith armies against Republic armies; Force-using Sith Lords against Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights; and the dreaded nomadic mercenaries called Mandalorians bringing muscle and firepower wherever they stood to gain.
Then, a thousand years before A New Hope and the Battle of Yavin, the Jedi defeated the Sith at the Battle of Ruusan, decimating the so-called Brotherhood of Darkness that was the heart of the Sith Empire—and most of its power.
One Sith Lord survived—Darth Bane—and his vision for the Sith differed from that of his predecessors. He instituted a new doctrine: No longer would the followers of the dark side build empires or amass great armies of Force-users. There would be only two Sith at a time: a Master and an apprentice. From that time on, the Sith remained in hiding, biding their time and plotting their revenge, while the rest of the galaxy enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace, so long and strong that the Republic eventually dismantled its standing armies.
But while the Republic seemed strong, its institutions had begun to rot. Greedy corporations sought profits above all else and a corrupt Senate did nothing to stop them, until the corporations reduced many planets to raw materials for factories and entire species became subjects for exploitation. Individual Jedi continued to defend the Republic’s citizens and obey the will of the Force, but the Jedi Order to which they answered grew increasingly out of touch. And a new Sith mastermind, Darth Sidious, at last saw a way to restore Sith domination over the galaxy and its inhabitants, and quietly worked to set in motion the revenge of the Sith …
If you’re a reader new to the Old Republic era, here are three great starting points:
• The Old Republic: Deceived, by Paul S. Kemp: Kemp tells the tale of the Republic’s betrayal by the Sith Empire, and features Darth Malgus, an intriguing, complicated villain.
• Knight Errant, by John Jackson Miller: Alone in Sith territory, the headstrong Jedi Kerra Holt seeks to thwart the designs of an eccentric clan of fearsome, powerful, and bizarre Sith Lords.
• Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, by Drew Karpyshyn: A portrait of one of the most famous Sith Lords, from his horrifying childhood to an adulthood spent in the implacable pursuit of vengeance.
Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars novel set in the Old Republic era.
1
Dessel was lost in the suffering of his job, barely even aware of his surroundings. His arms ached from the endless pounding of the hydraulic jack. Small bits of rock skipped off the cavern wall as he bored through, ricocheting off his protective goggles and stinging his exposed face and hands. Clouds of atomized dust filled the air, obscuring his vision, and the screeching whine of the jack filled the cavern, drowning out all other sounds as it burrowed centimeter by agonizing centimeter into the thick vein of cortosis woven into the rock before him.
Impervious to both heat and energy, cortosis was prized in the construction of armor and shielding by both commercial and military interests, especially with the galaxy at war. Highly resistant to blaster bolts, cortosis alloys supposedly could withstand even the blade of a lightsaber. Unfortunately, the very properties that made it so valuable also made it extremely difficult to mine. Plasma torches were virtually useless; it would take days to burn away even a small section of cortosis-laced rock. The only effective way to mine it was through the brute force of hydraulic jacks pounding relentlessly away at a vein, chipping the cortosis free bit by bit.
Cortosis was one of the hardest materials in the galaxy. The force of the pounding quickly wore down the head of a jack, blunting it until it became almost useless. The dust clogged the hydraulic pistons, making them jam. Mining cortosis was hard on the equipment … and even harder on the miners.
Des had been hammering away for nearly six standard hours. The jack weighed more than thirty kilos, and the strain of keeping it raised and pressed against the rock face was taking its toll. His arms were trembling from the exertion. His lungs were gasping for air and choking on the clouds of fine mineral dust thrown up from the jack’s head. Even his teeth hurt: the rattling vibration felt as if it were shaking them loose from his gums.
But the miners on Apatros were paid based on how much cortosis they brought back. If he quit now, another miner would jump in and start working the vein, taking a share of the profits. Des didn’t like to share.
The whine of the jack’s motor took on a higher pitch, becoming a keening wail Des was all too familiar with. At twenty thousand rpm, the motor sucked in dust like a thirsty bantha sucking up water after a long desert crossing. The only way to combat it was by regular cleaning and servicing, and the Outer Rim Oreworks Company preferred to buy cheap equipment and replace it, rather than sinking credits into maintenance. Des knew exactly what was going to happen next—and a second later, it did. The motor blew.
The hydraulics seized with a horrible crunch, and a cloud of black smoke spit out the rear of the jack. Cursing ORO and its corporate policies, Des released his cramped finger from the trigger and tossed the spent piece of equipment to the floor.
“Move aside, kid,” a voice said.
Gerd, one of the other miners, stepped up and tried to shoulder Des out of the way so he could work the vein with his own jack. Gerd had been working the mines for nearly twenty standard years, and it had turned his body into a mass of hard, knotted muscle. But Des had been working the mines for ten years himself, ever since he was a teenager, and he was just as solid as the older man—and a little bigger. He didn’t budge.
“I’m not done here,” he said. “Jack died, that’s all. Hand me yours and I’ll keep at it for a while.”
“You know the rules, kid. You stop working and someone else is allowed to move in.”
Technically, Gerd was right. But nobody ever jumped another miner’s claim over an equipment malfunction. Not unless he was trying to pick a fight.
Des took a quick look around. The chamber was empty except for the two of them, standing less than half a meter apar
t. Not a surprise; Des usually chose caverns far off the main tunnel network. It had to be more than mere coincidence that Gerd was here.
Des had known Gerd for as long as he could remember. The middle-aged man had been friends with Hurst, Des’s father. Back when Des first started working the mines at thirteen, he had taken a lot of abuse from the bigger miners. His father had been the worst tormentor, but Gerd had been one of the main instigators, dishing out more than his fair share of teasing, insults, and the occasional cuff on the ear.
Their harassments had ended shortly after Des’s father died of a massive heart attack. It wasn’t because the miners felt sorry for the orphaned young man, though. By the time Hurst died, the tall, skinny teenager they loved to bully had become a mountain of muscle with heavy hands and a fierce temper. Mining was a tough job; it was the closest thing to hard labor outside a Republic prison colony. Whoever worked the mines on Apatros got big—and Des just happened to become the biggest of them all. Half a dozen black eyes, countless bloody noses, and one broken jaw in the space of a month was all it took for Hurst’s old friends to decide they’d be happier if they left Des alone.
Yet it was almost as if they blamed him for Hurst’s death, and every few months one of them tried again. Gerd had always been smart enough to keep his distance—until now.
“I don’t see any of your friends here with you, old man,” Des said. “So back off my claim, and nobody gets hurt.”
Gerd spat on the ground at Des’s feet. “You don’t even know what day it is, do you, boy? Kriffing disgrace is what you are!”
They were standing close enough to each other that Des could smell the sour Corellian whiskey on Gerd’s breath. The man was drunk. Drunk enough to come looking for a fight, but still sober enough to hold his own.
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