Apocalypse Read online

  Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Apocalypse is a work of fiction.

  Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2012 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or ™ where indicated.

  All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.

  Excerpts from Star Wars®: X-Wing: Mercy Kill and Star Wars®: Scourge copyright © 2012 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.

  This book contains excerpts from Star Wars®: X-Wing: Mercy Kill by Aaron Allston and Star Wars®: Scourge by Jeff Grubb.

  These excerpts have been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming editions.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-51960-3

  www.starwars.com

  www.fateofthejedi.com

  www.delreybooks.com

  facebook.com/starwarsbooks

  Jacket design and illustration: Ian Keltie

  v3.1_r5

  To Sue Rostoni

  It’s been a joy and a privilege working with you in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Have a blast on your next adventure!

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Dramatis Personae

  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

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Excerpt from Star Wars: Scourge

  Introduction to the Star Wars Expanded Universe

  Excerpt from Star Wars: X-Wing: Mercy Kill

  Introduction to the Old Republic Era

  Excerpt from Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan

  Introduction to the Rise of the Empire Era

  Excerpt from Star Wars: Outbound Flight

  Introduction to the Rebellion Era

  Excerpt from Star Wars: Allegiance

  Introduction to the New Republic Era

  Excerpt from Star Wars: Heir to the Empire

  Introduction to the New Jedi Order Era

  Excerpt from Star Wars: New Jedi Order: Vector Prime

  Introduction to the Legacy Era

  Excerpt from Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Betrayal

  Excerpt from Star Wars: Millennium Falcon

  Star Wars Legends Novels Timeline

  Acknowledgments

  Many people contributed to this book in ways large and small. I would like to thank them all, especially the following: Andria Hayday, for her invaluable suggestions and creative support; James Luceno, Leland Chee, Pablo Hidalgo, Keith Clayton, Erich Schoeneweiss, Scott Shannon, Frank Parisi, and Carol Roeder for their fine contributions during our brainstorming sessions; Shelly Shapiro and Sue Rostoni, for everything, from their remarkable patience to their insightful markups to their great ideas; Jennifer Heddle, for her contributions to Apocalypse and her graceful arrival in the final stages of a long and exciting series; Jason Fry, for our email brainstorming regarding the “Celestial overlap” in our two projects—I really wish that chapter had made it into the Essential Guide to Warfare!; my fellow Fate of the Jedi writers, Aaron Allston and Christie Golden, for being such a blast to work with; Laura Jorstad, for her usual attention to fine detail; all of the people at Lucasfilm and Del Rey who make writing Star Wars so much fun; and, finally, to George Lucas for sharing the galaxy far, far away with us all.

  Dramatis Personae

  Abeloth; female entity

  Allana Solo; child (female human)

  Ben Skywalker; Jedi Knight (human male)

  C-3PO; protocol droid

  Corran Horn; Jedi Master (human male)

  Han Solo; captain, Millennium Falcon (human male)

  Jagged Fel; Head of State, Galactic Empire (human male)

  Jaina Solo; Jedi Knight (human female)

  Leia Organa Solo; Jedi Knight (human female)

  Luke Skywalker; Jedi Grand Master (human male)

  R2-D2; astromech droid

  Raynar Thul; Jedi Knight (human male)

  Saba Sebatyne; Jedi Master (Barabel female)

  Tahiri Veila; former Jedi Knight (human female)

  Vestara Khai; former Sith apprentice (human female)

  Wynn Dorvan; acting Chief of State, Galactic Alliance (human male)

  A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.…

  THE STARLINER SWUNG INTO ORBIT AROUND THE PLANET CORUSCANT, and beyond the observation bubble appeared the glittering expanse of a billion golden lights. Through a thousand centuries of strife, those lights had continued to shine. Nothing had dimmed their brilliance—not the Rakatan enslavement, not the tyranny of the Empire, not the chaos of civil war. And they continued to shine now, in this new age of creeping shadow, when enemy impostors ruled the Galactic Alliance and Sith Lords slept in the Jedi Temple itself. But all those gleaming lights made Jaina Solo wonder whether Coruscant’s trillion residents actually cared who won the coming war—whether it mattered that they were living under Sith rule, so long as those billion lights continued to shine.

  The answer came to her almost instantly, in the form of a dark tinge in the Force that could only mean Sith. Jaina shifted her gaze to the interior of the starliner, where a teeming mass of passengers hung floating in their transit harnesses, tethered to the walls of the EconoClass hold. Floating down the central access aisle was a Coruscanti Immigration inspector, his zero-g motility pack emitting small hisses as he twirled in slow-motion cartwheels, demanding identichips and ten-credit “expediting fees.” Behind him followed a pair of Bothan escorts, their snouts wrinkling in disdain each time their superior solicited another bribe.

  Jaina would have liked to believe the inspector was merely a greedy Sith Saber trying to line his pockets, but she knew better. Vestara Khai, newly defected from the Lost Tribe of Sith, had warned the assault teams to take nothing for granted. In her briefings, Vestara had emphasized that the Sith were not stupid. After insinuating themselves in the Galactic Alliance Senate, they would have moved quickly to take control of the Coruscanti Immigration Service and other key bureaucracies. They would expect the Jedi to be coming, and they would be on the lookout for infiltrators—and petty extortion was an ideal cover for someone trying to identify enemy agents.

  The inspector stopped near a pair of human siblings in their late twenties. Both were slender and good-looking, with wary eyes and small expr
essive mouths. The sister’s hair was reddish brown, the brother’s merely brown. Their fierce loyalty to each other showed in the way they remained shoulder-to-shoulder when they turned to face the immigration team.

  The inspector oriented himself to the same attitude as the siblings—head-down relative to Jaina—and studied the pair without speaking or reaching for their travel documents. The unexpected change of routine sent a cold ripple through Jaina, but she quickly let out a calming breath and forced herself to relax. Allowing her alarm to permeate the Force would only confirm to the inspector that he had found something worth investigating.

  The siblings, Jedi Knights Valin and Jysella Horn, continued to hold their documents, doing a good job of looking like ordinary passengers who were a little bit nervous. The inspector narrowed his eyes and waited, giving them a chance to betray themselves by doing something foolish. Jaina would probably never learn exactly what had caught the Sith’s attention, but she did know that it pointed to the one weakness of the Jedi Masters’ attack plan. These Sith were both careful and capable, and they outnumbered the Jedi ten to one.

  Finally, the inspector said, “Documents.”

  Valin and Jysella extended their hands, each holding a small packet containing a fare receipt, a forged identichip, and the expediting fee. The inspector took Jysella’s packet, then slid her chip into a handheld reader and compared it with the point of origin listed on the fare receipt.

  “You were born on Kalla Seven?” the inspector asked.

  “That’s right,” Jysella lied. “My brother and I both.”

  The inspector glanced at Valin, then asked him, “Is this a family trip?”

  Valin shook his head. “No, my sister and I are traveling alone.”

  “Is that so?” The questions were the mundane sort that customs officers all over the galaxy used to probe for story discrepancies. But the real test would be taking place on another level, Jaina knew, with the inspector searching their Force auras for the sour hint of a lie. “Then you’ve come to visit family?”

  “No,” Jysella replied confidently. Like every Jedi on the assault force, she had spent weeks perfecting her ability to lie without betraying herself in the Force. “We’re tourists.”

  “I see.” The inspector glanced at her fare receipt again, then spoke to Valin in a casual voice. “Four thousand credits is a lot of money to visit a few monuments and museums. You should have used the HoloNet instead.”

  “And spend our lives stuck in lower management?” Valin retorted. “I think not.”

  “If you haven’t been to Coruscant,” Jysella added, “you go nowhere at UHI.”

  “UHI?” the inspector asked.

  “Unlimited Horizons Incorporated,” she explained, managing to sound just astonished enough to imply that she thought everyone knew what the acronym stood for. “You know—the UHI that controls most of the pallodenite reserves in the Corporate Sector?”

  “Ah … that UHI.” The inspector had clearly been put off balance by the tactic—just as Vestara had predicted. The Lost Tribe’s greatest weakness lay in their inexperience with the greater galaxy. Vestara had said that the quickest way to put a Lost Tribe impostor on the defensive would be to play on that ignorance. “There are so many.”

  When the inspector pocketed the bribe and returned Jysella’s documents, Jaina finally began to breathe easier. She turned her gaze back to the observation bubble and saw that the Plain Lady was crossing the terminator line into Coruscant’s daylight side. It would not be long now, she knew, before she was on the surface, fighting to save her homeworld … again.

  Bazel Warv was “Jade Masher,” a celebrated Ramoan float wrestler. Seff Hellin was his human manager, and Vaala Razelle was Seff’s Arcona assistant. The three had just arrived from a series of grudge matches in the Bothan system, and they were passing through the Galactic Center Spaceport on their way to a championship match at the Iblis Globe. All Bazel had to do was remember all that—and believe it. Belief was the key to defeating a Force-user’s ability to detect lies. As long as Bazel truly felt like Jade Masher—the newest, greatest rising star in the Pan-Galactic Float Wrestling Syndicate—he would have no trouble fooling Coruscant’s new immigration inspectors. His friend Yaqeel Saav’etu had assured him of that.

  Bazel glanced across the sea of heads that were in Arrival Lobby 757 and found Yaqeel three lines over. She was already at her inspection station, standing alongside another Bothan Jedi, Yantahar Bwua’tu. Wearing the ash-gray tabards of businessbeings, the two Jedi Knights were at the front of a long line of passengers waiting to be formally admitted onto a planet that had once greeted visitors with open arms. So far, the Coruscanti populace seemed willing to believe that these new precautions were due to an influx of spice lords, and Bazel was glad. There was no need for the citizens of Coruscant to get hurt—not when the Jedi were coming to save them.

  But first the Jedi had to get past the inspection stations, and that part of the plan wasn’t going well for Yaqeel and Yantahar. Their Duros immigration inspector had been joined by his captain, a narrow-eyed blonde whom Bazel judged to be fairly beautiful for a human. She was firing questions at the Bothans faster than they could answer. Meanwhile, a squad of body-armored Galactic Alliance Security guards were standing ready at a nearby security post. Clearly, something was wrong.

  Bazel cocked an ear in Yaqeel’s direction, consciously tuning out the general din of the lobby and opening himself to the Force. A cool haze of fear permeated the line a few meters behind him, but he had been sensing that off and on since debarking the starliner. There did not seem to be anything menacing in the aura, so he ignored it and focused on the conversation between his friends and the blond immigration captain. His thick hide began to prickle with the bitter margin of a dark side Force aura. Suddenly he understood why his Bothan friends were having trouble.

  Sith.

  Ignoring the growing press of the crowd behind him, Bazel extended his Force awareness toward the security post. To his relief, he felt only the weak auras of non-Force-sensitive guards. The immigration captain was the only Sith in the area—probably just a Saber, assigned to keep watch on the arrival lobby.

  “… all the way to Coruscant to place an order you could have filled anywhere in the galaxy?” the impostor-captain was asking. “United Hydrologic Institute is hardly the only Tibanna gas supplier in the Mid Rim.”

  “But it is the only one with access to Hutt space,” Yantahar replied in his gravelly Bothan voice. “And since Nar Kagga will be the closest inhabited system to our operation, naturally we want to be certain of our supply chain.”

  “And your operation will be … what, exactly?” the blond impostor asked.

  “A trade secret, I’m afraid.” Yaqeel glanced around the inspection station, then added, “There are spies everywhere, Captain. I’m sure you understand.”

  The Sith’s reply grew inaudible when Bazel’s human “manager” grabbed the huge Ramoan’s wrist and asked, “Masher, you awake up there?” Seff Hellin started forward, trying to pull Bazel into the gap that had opened in the line ahead of them. “We’re holding things up.”

  Bazel paid no attention, for over at the station where his friends were being questioned, the impostor-captain was looking over Yaqeel’s shoulder toward the security post. When the Sith gave a slight nod, the guards drew their stubby Merr-Sonn Urban blaster rifles and started toward the inspection station.

  Vaala grabbed Bazel by the other wrist. “Mighty Masher, sir.” The Arcona’s voice was soft and bubbly. “We really should keep moving.”

  Bazel shook his head, then stepped through the cordon-beams that marked the edge of the queuing area. With matching sighs, Seff and Vaala stepped out of line behind him, each pulling a pair of expensive Levalug travel cases that were large enough for Vaala to sleep inside.

  “Masher!” Seff growled, putting just enough frustration into his voice to sound like a weary manager at the end of his wits. “There’s no time for your te
mper right now. We have only two hours before the weigh-in.”

  They wouldn’t be making the weigh-in, Bazel rumbled in his native Ramoan. He could speak Basic when necessary, but his large mouth had trouble shaping the common language’s delicate vowels and subtle consonants, and he needed to make himself clearly understood. Yaqeel was in trouble, he explained, and he was not going to leave until she was safe.

  Seff groaned and carefully avoided looking toward Yaqeel and Yantahar. “Drawing attention to ourselves won’t help anyone, Masher,” he said. “Our friends can take care of their own problems.”

  As Seff spoke, the GAS guards shouldered their blaster rifles and fanned out behind Yaqeel and Yantahar. The two Bothans reluctantly opened their tabards, and the Sith impostor-captain stepped forward to frisk them. Bazel knew the woman wouldn’t find a lightsaber or anything else to identify his two friends as Jedi Knights. The assault team’s equipment had been shipped ahead, and it would be returned to them later, by an operative from the Club Bwua’tu resistance society. But Bazel also knew the impostor wouldn’t be searching his friends at all if she hadn’t sensed that something was amiss. He had to find a way to distract her before she confirmed her suspicions … a way that wouldn’t seem like it was a distraction.

  Vaala clamped a three-fingered hand around one of Bazel’s stubby fingers and quietly bent it back against the joint. “Mighty Masher, sir, we need to focus on our match.” She tried to lead him through the cordon-beams back into the processing line. “The, uh, championship is still on, even if a couple of competitors can’t make it to the arena.”

  Balling his hand into a fist to stop Vaala from hurting his finger, Bazel remained where he was. If a pair of clever Bothans couldn’t make it past the immigration inspectors, he replied quietly, there was no reason to think he could. Besides, they didn’t know how many of their peers had already been captured, and if the Sith caught even two teams of infiltrators trying to sneak onto the planet, the Jedi would find themselves attacking without the advantage of surprise, and the battle would grow very big very fast. A lot of innocent civilians would get caught in the crossfire, maybe a million of them, and Bazel wasn’t going to allow that. He was going to find another way.