Inferno Read online

  Star Wars®: Legacy of the Force: Inferno is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A Del Rey Books Mass Market Original

  Copyright © 2007 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or ™ where indicated.

  All Rights Reserved. Used under authorization.

  Round-Robin Interview © 2007 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or ™ where indicated.

  Excerpt from Star Wars®: Legacy of the Force: Fury copyright © 2007 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or ™ where indicated. All Rights Reserved. Used under authorization.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, 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 an excerpt from Star Wars®: Legacy of the Force: Fury by Aaron Allston. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the published book.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-51053-2

  www.starwars.com

  www.legacyoftheforce.com

  www.delreybooks.com

  v3.1_r6

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dramatis Personae

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Round-Robin Interview

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Introduction to the Star Wars Expanded Universe

  Excerpt from Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Fury

  Introduction to the Old Republic Era

  Excerpt from Star Wars: Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

  Introduction to the Rise of the Empire Era

  Excerpt from Star Wars: Republic Commando: Hard Contact

  Introduction to the Rebellion Era

  Excerpt from Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor

  Introduction to the New Republic Era

  Excerpt from Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Squadron

  Introduction to the New Jedi Order Era

  Excerpt from Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime

  Introduction to the Legacy Era

  Excerpt from Star Wars: Dark Nest I: The Joiner King

  Excerpt from Star Wars: Crosscurrent

  Star Wars Legends Novels Timeline

  dramatis personae

  Alema Rar; Jedi Knight (female Twi’lek)

  Ben Skywalker; Junior GAG member (male human)

  Han Solo; captain, Millennium Falcon (male human)

  Jacen Solo; Sith Lord (male human)

  Jae Juun; intelligence operative (male Sullustan)

  Jagged Fel; bounty hunter (male human)

  Jaina Solo; Jedi Knight (female human)

  Leia Organa Solo; Jedi Knight (female human)

  Luke Skywalker; Jedi Grand Master (male human)

  Saba Sebatyne; Jedi Grand Master (femal Barabel)

  Salle Serpa; GAG major (male human)

  Tahiri Veila; Jedi Knight (female human)

  Tarfang; master spy (male Ewok)

  Tenel Ka; Hapan Queen Mother (female human)

  Zekk; Jedi Knight (male human)

  prologue

  The scream and roar of combat began to reverberate through the empty grashal, and wisps of battle smoke materialized in the green beams of their helmet lamps. Jacen—now Darth Caedus, he reminded himself—continued to pull into the past, one glove clamped around the arm of Tahiri’s pressure suit, the other anchored to the rim of a blaster-pitted gestation bin. The brown stains on the bin’s exterior grew wet and red, and crouching forms started to manifest in the surrounding darkness.

  As he drew more heavily on the Force, the sallow light of glow-lichen began to shine down through the thickening smoke, revealing the cloning lab in which Jacen’s brother, Anakin, had died. Where there had been only barren vacuum a few moments before, now a pulsing jungle of white nutrient vines corkscrewed up from the gestation bins that lined the grashal floor. Streaks of color and darkness were flashing past in both directions, the air swirling with razor bugs and the floor shaking with grenade detonations.

  “I hope I’m ready for this,” Tahiri said. Over the suit comm, her voice sounded brittle and uncertain. “Maybe my first flow-walk shouldn’t have been into the middle of a battle.”

  Jacen knew it was not the battle that made Tahiri nervous, but he saw no advantage in forcing her to admit it. “We’ll be fine,” he said. “We’re ghosts here. Even if a Yuuzhan Vong sees us, he can’t do us harm.”

  “It’s us doing harm that worries me,” Tahiri replied. “What if we change something we shouldn’t—something that alters the present?”

  “That’s unlikely.” Actually, Jacen should have said impossible. Any change they made in the past would be corrected by the Force, and the flow would return to its present course. But he did not explain that to Tahiri. He needed her to believe they were taking a small but terrible chance, risking temporal catastrophe to deal with her unresolved grief. “I won’t let you do anything wrong. Just relax.”

  “Unlikely isn’t very relaxing,” Tahiri replied. “Not when you’re talking about the fate of the galaxy.”

  “Trust me,” Jacen said. “I’ve been flow-walking for years, and the galaxy hasn’t come to an end yet.”

  “Not that we know of.”

  Tahiri turned toward the back of the grashal, where Anakin and the rest of the strike team were fighting through a breach in the wall. Their brown jumpsuits were blood-crusted and tattered, and their faces were haggard with fear and exhaustion—yet also tight with determination and resolve. This had been the objective of their mission, the cloning lab where the Yuuzhan Vong created the voxyn that had killed so many Jedi, and they would not leave until it was destroyed.

  The Force began to hum with Tahiri’s anger and sadness, and her hand drifted toward her lightsaber. Jacen could sense how she ached to do more than give Anakin the final kiss she had denied him at the time—how she longed to ignite her weapon and somehow prevent his approaching death.

  A trio of thermal grenades detonated overhead, filling the dome with orange brilliance and spraying hot shrapnel in all directions. Nutrient vines fell in ropes of fire, and Yuuzhan Vong dropped to the floor in writhing heaps. Tahiri cringed and turned to dive for cover, but Jacen jerked her back. Shrapnel flew past without striking the pair, and flames licked at their pressure suits without melting anything.

  “I told you we can’t be harmed here,” Jacen said.

  “You also told me it was a coincidence we crossed paths on Anakin’s anniversary day,” Tahiri replied. “That doesn’t mean I believe you.”

  Jacen frowned behind his visor. “You think I arranged to bump into you?”

  “Come on, Jacen,” Tahiri said. “I’m a smart girl.”

  Jacen hesitated, wondering how much she knew about what he had done a week earlier, whether she had linked their trip here to his aunt’s murder on Kavan. It was foolish to think he could kill the wife of Luke Skywalker and avoid discovery indefinitely, y
et he had to. Jacen had foreseen that the Confederation’s boldness would soon put victory within the Alliance’s grasp—but only if the Jedi did not interfere with his plans.

  After a moment, Jacen said, “Okay, let’s say I did arrange it. Why did you come?”

  “Because I was tempted,” Tahiri answered. “And I want to find out what you need from me.”

  “I don’t need anything,” Jacen lied. “I just thought this might help you move on.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “It’s for Anakin, too,” Jacen said. “I think my brother deserves this much … don’t you?”

  A guilty ripple rolled through the Force. “Not fair!” Tahiri protested. “And I still don’t believe you.”

  Jacen raised the shoulders of his pressure suit in an awkward shrug. “Does that mean you don’t want to go through with this?”

  Tahiri sighed. “You know better than that.”

  “Then you have to trust my instructions,” Jacen said. “You can’t react to the past. The more you become a part of it, the more likely you are to be seen—and the more power it has to harm you.”

  “Okay, I understand.” Over the suit comm, it was difficult to tell whether Tahiri’s tone was resentful or embarrassed. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Good.”

  Jacen turned back to the battle, where the momentary silence that had followed the grenade explosions had been shattered by screaming blaster bolts and droning razor bugs. In the back of the grashal, Anakin was just rising to his feet as the strike team took advantage of the enemy’s disarray to overrun the cloning lab. When Jacen saw his own figure dodging through the battle, he remembered how sad he had been for his wounded brother, how wrong it had seemed for the war to take such a noble young life. It was like watching himself in a home holo, wondering how he could ever have been so naïve. Perhaps, once he united the galaxy, such idealism would no longer seem quite so foolish.

  The boom of a longblaster sounded outside the grashal, then a trio of Jedi came rushing inside. The young Tahiri—then just fifteen—was in the lead. Her blond hair billowed behind her; the scars suffered during her imprisonment among the Yuuzhan Vong were still red on her forehead. She and the others had barely cleared the breach before a ball of yellow-orange fire followed them inside and exploded.

  The shock wave hurled the Jedi in three different directions, but they quickly used the Force to bring their trajectories under control and come down safely. Young Tahiri tucked herself into a front roll and disappeared behind a gestation bin, then emerged from the other end returning to her feet. Anakin was already rushing to her side, his free hand cupped over his abdomen, his jaw clenched against the pain of his wound.

  The voice of the older Tahiri came over the suit comm. “We need to move closer.”

  “Fine, but stay in contact with me or the current will carry you off.” Still holding Tahiri’s arm, Jacen started toward his brother and the young Tahiri. “And whatever you do, don’t open your pressure suit. Our presences are still anchored in our own time, so you’ll decompress.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” Tahiri replied drily. “But I had kind of guessed.”

  Anakin and young Tahiri were now crouching together behind a gestation bin. Had his brother survived this battle, the pair would almost certainly have become lovers and then married. He sometimes wondered how that might have changed things, whether that extra bit of happiness and stability could somehow have kept the galaxy from spinning so wildly out of control.

  As Jacen led the way around behind the pair, young Tahiri suddenly raised her arm and pointed across the aisle, toward a scorched bin overflowing with Yuuzhan Vong corpses. Next to the bin, the strike team’s meter-high healer, Tekli, stood over the scaly bulk of Tesar Sebatyne. She was sprinkling stinksalts on the Barabel’s forked tongue, trying to rouse him from his unconsciousness … and failing miserably.

  Jacen continued to lead the way closer, moving very slowly and carefully. Flow-walkers tended to cause blurs around themselves both visually and in the Force, and the slower they moved, the less noticeable the effect would be.

  As they approached, Anakin pointed toward Tekli and the wounded Barabel.

  “Take him … and go,” he said to young Tahiri. “You may need to cut a way out.”

  “You?” she responded. “I’m not going—”

  “Do it!” Anakin snapped.

  Her face fell, and even the older Tahiri began to radiate surprise and dismay into the Force.

  Anakin’s tone softened almost as soon as he had spoken. “You need … to help Tekli. I’ll be along.”

  Even through a pressure suit’s auditory sensors, Anakin’s voice sounded weak and anguished, and it was clear that he had known even then he was about to die. A growing tightness began to form in Jacen’s throat, and he was surprised at the effort of will required to make it go away. Jacen had loved his brother—and apparently still did—but he could not let his emotions draw him into the past. As he had warned Tahiri, any reaction at all would make them easier to see, and if the other strike team survivors suddenly started to recall a pair of blurry, pressure-suited apparitions at the battle, someone might realize he had flow-walked here with Tahiri—and that would make her useless to him.

  By the time Jacen had quelled his emotions, Anakin had stood again. He was gently pushing young Tahiri across the aisle toward Tekli, who was kneeling astride Tesar’s scaly bulk and trying to slap him awake. The Force grew heavy with older Tahiri’s sorrow, but Jacen said nothing to her about the dangers of reacting to the past. He had known all along that she would not be able to control her emotions at this moment—he was counting on it—and he would just have to hope Tekli and the other survivors were too busy with the battle to notice any flow-walking apparitions.

  “Tesar is not responding,” Tekli said, looking across the aisle. “I cannot move him and work on him both.”

  Young Tahiri lowered her brow in doubt, clearly suspecting the Chadra-Fan of trying to draw her away from Anakin, but she could hardly refuse to help. Blinking back a tear, she stretched up to kiss Anakin—then caught herself and shook her head.

  This was the moment when young Tahiri had pulled back, telling Anakin that if he wanted a kiss, he would have to come back for it. The Force seemed ready to break with the anguish of older Tahiri, who quickly stepped forward and pushed her younger self into Anakin’s arms.

  Young Tahiri’s mouth fell open, but before she could cry out, Anakin leaned down and silenced her with a kiss. The surprise drained instantly from her posture, and they remained together, body pressed to body, for what seemed an eternity—even to Jacen, who often saw eternity in his visions.

  Knowing by the sullen weight of the Force—and by his own breaking heart—that they were being drawn ever more deeply into the past, Jacen pulled the older Tahiri back to his side. If they were still there when the kiss ended, Tekli would certainly see them. In thirteen years or so—when Jacen and Tahiri returned to their own time—the Chadra-Fan would begin to recall seeing them here in their pressure suits. Once she reported her memory flashes to the Council, the Masters would realize that Jacen had flow-walked Tahiri back to the battle and begin to ask themselves why, and his plan would be ruined.

  Jacen began to back them away, slowly releasing his hold on the past. The scream and roar of battle started to quiet, and the sallow light of the grashal’s glow-lichens began to dim. Before long, all he could see were two forms locked in eternal embrace, their presences shining across time to illuminate the cold darkness. And then even that light faded.

  A single heartbroken warble sounded over the suit comm, and Tahiri clasped the arm of Jacen’s pressure suit.

  “Did we have to leave?” she asked. “I wanted to see him after, to see if the kiss made his death any … any easier.”

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t let us be seen.” Jacen no longer felt like Jacen inside. He was using his brother’s death to manipulate Tahiri—to corrupt her�
��and it made him feel brutal and dirty. But what choice did he have? The Jedi were hunting Mara’s killer with all their resources, and he needed a way to track their progress, to keep them under control while he saved the Alliance. “You were getting caught up in the past. We both were.”

  The strength left Tahiri’s grasp, but she continued to hold his arm. “I know. It was just so …” She stopped and turned her faceplate toward Jacen, leaving him to stare at the anonymous reflection of his own helmet. “I thought the kiss would be enough. But it isn’t, Jacen. I need—”

  “Tahiri, no.” It wasn’t Jacen speaking now, but his new self, the one he had created when he killed Mara. “Your emotions—my emotions—make it too risky. We can’t go back.”

  “I know, Jacen.” Tahiri turned her back on him and started for the exit. “I just wish we didn’t have to leave it that way. I wish I could be sure he died knowing how much I loved him.”

  Darth Caedus smiled sadly inside his helmet.

  “I’m sure he knew.” Caedus started after her. This was what it meant to be Sith: to use friends without hesitation, to sacrifice family for destiny, to live with a stained soul. “I mean, you did tell him, didn’t you?”

  one

  Tenel Ka sensed the hole in the Force the instant she entered the bedchamber. It was lurking in the black depths of the corner farthest from the entrance, a void so subtle she recognized it only by the surrounding stillness. She moved quickly through the doorway, her spine tingling with a ripple of danger sense so delicate it made her blood race.

  Before her lady-in-waiting could enter the room behind her, she looked back over her shoulder and called, “That will be all, Lady Aros. Ask DeDeToo to lock down the nursery.”

  “Lock it down, Majesty?” Aros stopped at the threshold, a slender silhouette still holding the evening gown Tenel Ka had just removed. “Is there something I need to—”

  “Just a precaution,” Tenel Ka interrupted. Her robe was still hanging inside her refresher suite, so she was standing in her underclothes. “I know our embassy should be secure, but this is Coruscant.”

  “Of course …” Aros dipped her chin. “The terrorists. This rach warren of a planet is absolutely teeming with them.”