Crucible: Star Wars Read online

  Another speck gleamed blue. Forgotten at Luke’s shoulder, Artoo whistled softly. If Endor was a good bit out from the Core worlds, Bakura was still farther. “That’s virtually the edge of the Rim worlds,” Luke observed. “Even traveling in hyperspace, it would take days to get there. The Empire can’t help them.” It was strange to think of anyone turning to the Empire for help. Evidently the Rebels’ decisive victory at Endor doomed the Bakurans to an unknown fate, because the nearest Imperial battle group couldn’t help. Alliance forces had scattered it.

  From a speaker at his left, Leia’s voice projected clearly. “How large is the Imperial force at the system?”

  Leia was down on Endor’s surface, in the Ewok village. Luke hadn’t known she was listening in, but he should’ve assumed it. He reached out through the Force and brushed his sister’s warm presence, sensing justifiable tension. Leia was allegedly resting with Han Solo, recovering from that blaster burn on her upper arm, and helping the furry little Ewoks bury their dead—not watching for new trouble. Luke pursed his lips. He’d loved Leia all along, wishing …

  Well, that was behind him. The intelligence droid answered her over a subspace radio comlink relay, “Bakura is defended by an Imperial garrison. The sender of this message has added subtext reminding Emperor Palpatine that what forces they have are antiquated, due to the system’s remoteness.”

  “Evidently the Empire didn’t anticipate any competition for Bakura.” Leia’s voice sounded disdainful. “But now there’s no Imperial Fleet to help there. It will take the Imperials weeks to reassemble, and by then this Bakura could fall to the invasion force—or it could be part of the Alliance,” she added in a brighter tone. “If the Imperials can’t help the Bakurans, we must.”

  Admiral Ackbar’s image planted finny hands in the vicinity of its lower torso. “What do you mean, Your Highness?”

  Leia leaned against the wattle-and-daub wall of an Ewok tree house and rolled her eyes toward the dome of its high, thatched roof. Han sprawled casually beside her seat, leaning on an elbow and twirling a twig between his fingers.

  She raised a handheld comlink. “If we sent aid to Bakura,” she answered Admiral Ackbar, “it’s possible that Bakura would leave the Empire out of gratitude. We could help free its people.”

  “And get that repulsorlift technology,” Han mumbled to the twig.

  Leia had only paused. “That chance is worth investing a small task force. And you’ll need a high-ranking negotiator.”

  Han lay back, crossed his arms behind his head, and murmured, “You step off onto an Imperial world, and you’re an entry in somebody’s credit register. You’ve got a price on your head.”

  She frowned.

  “Can we afford to send troops, given the shape we’re in?” Ackbar’s voice wheezed out of the comlink. “We’ve lost twenty percent of our forces, battling only part of the Emperor’s fleet. Any Imperial battle group could do a better job at Bakura.”

  “But then the Empire would remain in control there. We need Bakura just like we need Endor. Every world we can draw into the Alliance.”

  Surprising her, Han closed his hand on the comlink and pulled it toward him. “Admiral,” he said, “I doubt we can afford not to go. An invasion force that big is trouble for this whole end of the galaxy. And she’s right—it’s us that ought to go. You’d just better send a ship that can make a fast getaway, in case the Imperials get ideas.”

  “What about the price on your head, laser brains?” Leia whispered.

  Han covered the squelch. “You’re not going without me, Highness-ness.”

  Luke studied Mon Mothma’s expression and her sense in the Force. “It would have to be a small group,” she said quietly, “but one ship is not enough. Admiral Ackbar, you may select a few fighters to support General Solo and Princess Leia.”

  Luke spread a hand. “What are the aliens doing? Why are they taking so many prisoners?”

  “The message doesn’t say,” Madine pointed out.

  “Then you’d better send someone who can find out. It could be important.”

  “Not you, Commander, and it doesn’t look like we can wait until you’ve recovered.” Madine rapped a white handrail. “This team should leave within a standard day.”

  Luke didn’t want to be left behind … even though he had all faith that Han and Leia could take care of each other.

  On the other hand, before he could pitch in, he must heal himself, and General Madine had suddenly become twins. His optic nerves were telling him to get horizontal soon, or risk a doubly humiliating faint in the war room. He eyed the handrail over the double row of white benches, wondering if the repulsor chair would lift over it. He ached to push the thing’s envelope.

  Artoo chattered, sounding motherly.

  Luke fingered the float chair’s controls and said, “I’ll head back to my cabin. Keep me posted.”

  General Madine crossed his arms over the front of his khaki uniform.

  “I doubt we’ll be sending you to Bakura.” Mon Mothma’s robes rustled as she squared her shoulders. “Consider your importance to the Alliance.”

  “She’s right, Commander,” wheezed the small ruddy image of Admiral Ackbar.

  “I’m not helping anyone if I’m just lying down.” But he had to shake his reckless reputation, if he wanted the respect of the Rebel Fleet. Yoda had commissioned him to pass on what he had learned. To Luke’s mind, that meant rebuilding the Jedi Order … as soon as he got the chance. Anyone else could pilot a fightership. No one else could recruit and train new Jedi.

  Frowning, he steered to the lift platform, rotated his chair, and answered Mon Mothma and Admiral Ackbar as he rose. “I can at least help you put together the strike force.”

  Introduction to the NEW REPUBLIC Era

  (5–25 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

  The destruction of the second Death Star and the death of Emperor Palpatine—the climactic conclusion of Return of the Jedi—has shaken the Empire to its core. While the remnant of the loyal Imperials settles in for a long, drawn-out last stand, the victorious Rebel Alliance and its supporters found a galactic governing authority they name the New Republic. Troops and warships are donated to the cause, as New Republic military leaders forge plans to seize Imperial fortress worlds, invade the Core Worlds, and retake Coruscant itself. Eventually, the Imperial Remnant is pushed back to a small part of the Outer Rim, and the New Republic is finally able to focus on restoring just and democratic government to the galaxy.

  At last the heroes of the Rebellion are free to pursue their own lives. Han and Leia marry … but before the birth of their twins, Jacen and Jaina, the galaxy is once again torn asunder by war, as the Imperial forces—under the control of military mastermind Grand Admiral Thrawn—step up their campaign of raids against the New Republic. Even after Thrawn is defeated, the Imperial forces forge on, harrying the New Republic and Luke’s nascent Jedi academy—the start of Luke’s dream to rebuild the Jedi Order from the ground up. Plagues, insurrections, and rogue warlords add to the chaos and push the New Republic back a step for every two steps it takes forward in its quest for peace and prosperity for all. Meanwhile, Leia becomes Chief of State of the New Republic, and the Solos’ third child, a boy they name Anakin, after his grandfather, is born; Luke has met Mara Jade, a secret dark side apprentice to the Emperor whom he helps bring into the light, and the two subsequently fall in love and marry.

  Finally, after a series of further setbacks and plots against the young galactic government and Luke’s Jedi, a peace treaty formally ends the long conflict between the New Republic and the remnants of the Empire. The events of these years are the answer to the question … “What happened after the movies?”

  If you’re a reader looking to dive into the New Republic era, here are three great starting points:

  • X-Wing: Rogue Squadron, by Michael A. Stackpole: A taste of life at the edge, Rogue Squadron and the subsequent X-Wing novels bring to life Wedge Antilles and his
brave, sometimes rambunctious fellow pilots in fast-paced adventures that switch smoothly and easily between entertaining repartee and tense battlefield action.

  • Heir to the Empire, by Timothy Zahn: The book that reintroduced a generation of fans to Star Wars is full of the elements that made the movies great—space battles, intriguing villains, and derring-do.

  • Before the Storm, by Michael P. Kube-McDowell: With a harder sci-fi edge to Star Wars, this novel features the classic heroes Han, Luke, and Leia, and explores everything from military forensics to the nature of the Force.

  Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars novel set in the New Republic era.

  ONE

  Instead of bed, where she usually awoke from her dreams, Leia found herself slumped forward in her crash webbing, ears hissing with static and eyes aching from the glare of two G-class suns. Han and Chewbacca were still busy at their stations, Han plotting approach vectors and Chewbacca setting sensor filters. The planet Tatooine was just drifting into view, its yellow sodium-rich sands glowing so brightly it resembled a small sibling star in orbit around the big twins.

  A metallic hand tapped Leia’s shoulder. She turned to see C-3PO’s photoreceptors shining at her from the adjacent passenger seat.

  “Pardon me for asking, Princess Leia, but are you well?”

  “Don’t I look well?”

  “Oh dear,” C-3PO replied, a diplomatic subroutine activating in response to her tone of voice. “Why yes, you do look as splendid as ever, but it seemed for a moment as though you might have overloaded your primary circuits.”

  “My circuits are fine.”

  “I’ll need to confirm that later.” Han twisted around and glanced over his seat with the same crooked smile that had alternately charmed and worried Leia since their first meeting on the Death Star. “Princess.”

  “Oh, really?” Leia straightened herself in her chair without fully realizing she was doing it. With his tough-guy good looks and eyes sparkling with trouble, Han still made her sit up and take notice. “And you think you can read my schematics?”

  “Sweetheart, I know your schematics by heart.” Han’s smile faded, and his expression grew concerned. “Threepio’s right. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Something like that. A bad dream.”

  Han looked doubtful. “I’ve sat in that chair. That chair isn’t comfortable enough for dreams—good or bad.”

  “It’s been a long trip,” Leia said, perhaps a little too quickly. “I must have nodded off.”

  Han regarded her a moment longer, then shrugged. “Well, see if you can stay awake.” He looked forward again, to where the twin suns were slowly being eclipsed by Tatooine’s steadily swelling disk. “Until the sensors come up, we need to keep an eye out for other traffic.”

  Leia gazed out the canopy and began to search for the rapidly swelling silhouette of blocked starlight that would mean an approaching vessel. Her thoughts remained focused on the strange dream. It had a similar feel to the Force-vision she had experienced nearly five years earlier at Bakura, when her father had sent an apparition begging for the forgiveness she would never—could never—grant. But that had been his doing, not hers.

  Han’s hand rose into view between the pilot and copilot’s seats, pointing toward a blocky silhouette floating some distance to one side of Tatooine’s yellow disk. The twin suns were now completely hidden behind the planet, and Leia could see that the tiny silhouette was growing larger as they approached. It seemed to be staying in the same place relative to Tatooine, deliberately hanging in the shadow of the planet.

  “That’s too square to be a moon,” Han said.

  “And it’s no asteroid, not hanging in one place like that,” Leia added. “But at least it doesn’t seem to be coming our way.”

  “Yet,” Han replied. “How about those filters, Chewie?”

  An impatient rumble suggested that the Wookiee was still struggling with the filters. Anyone else might have been frightened, but Leia found the groan reassuring, a touch of the familiar in a time of shifting alliances and random annihilation. When she had married Han six months ago, she had known Chewbacca would be an honorary member of their family, and that was fine with her. Over the years she had come to think of the Wookiee as something of a furry big brother, always loyal to Han and protective of her, and now she could not hear him growl without feeling that she lived in a safer place, that with Chewbacca and Luke and Han—when he was in the mood—and millions of others like them, the New Republic would beat back the Empire’s latest onslaught and one day bring peace to the galaxy.

  That, and she liked how Wookiee fur always smelled of trillium soap.

  The comm hiss finally fell silent as Chewbacca found the right combination of filters. He brought the sensors up, fiddled a moment longer, then let out a startled ruumph.

  “The mass calibration is off,” Han said. “That reads like a Star Destroyer.”

  Chewbacca oowralled indignantly, then sent the data readout to the auxiliary display beside Leia’s seat and glanced back for her affirmation. She had to look only a second to see that he was correct.

  “Sixteen hundred meters, six comm bands in use, and a TIE squadron circling on station,” Leia said, feeling a little sick and worried. When the Millennium Falcon came across a Star Destroyer these days, it was usually because one was stalking the other. “I don’t know, Han. The mass calibration looks fine to me.”

  As she spoke, the Falcon’s computer found a profile match in its military data banks and displayed the schematic of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer. Below the image appeared the vessel’s name.

  “The Chimaera,” Han read. “Isn’t she still in service to the Empire?”

  “As of two months ago, she was one of their most efficient Destroyers.” Leia did not need to look up the information. The death of Warlord Zsinj eight months earlier had emboldened the Imperial fleet, and the Provisional Council had been mired in war minutiae ever since. “Admiral Ackbar has been wondering what became of her.”

  “Deserters?” Han caught her eye in the canopy reflection. “Another captain wanting to set himself up as a warlord?”

  “Please, no! The situation out here is already too confused.” With the New Republic battling the Imperials over the scraps of Zsinj’s empire and the surviving warlords exploiting the war to enlarge their own territories, confused was an understatement. Several times, the New Republic Navy had moved against one enemy to find itself engaging another, and sometimes two or three at once. “And the Chimaera’s commander isn’t the type. By all accounts, Gilad Pellaeon is both loyal and competent.”

  “Then what’s he doing at Tatooine?” Han asked. “There isn’t a conflict zone within fifty systems of here.”

  Chewbacca groaned the opinion that it was someone else’s job to analyze Imperial objectives, then began to plot hyperspace coordinates. Leia braced herself, more concerned with Han’s reaction than Chewbacca’s when she explained why they still had to risk a run planetside.

  She was spared the necessity when Han scowled at the Wookiee’s flying fingers.

  “Chewie! I can handle this, no problem.” Han looked vaguely insulted. “It’s only one little Star Destroyer.”

  Chewbacca grunted doubtfully, then added a yawl about the folly of tempting fate for a piece of art.

  “Killik Twilight means a lot to Leia,” Han said. “It hung in the palace on Alderaan.”

  Chewbacca growled a long question that suggested they might be flying into a trap; the painting might not even be real.

  “You can’t forge moss-paintings,” Leia answered. “Not anymore. They require strains that don’t spread or reproduce, the cultivation of which was a closely guarded secret even in Aldera. That secret died with the rest of Alderaan.”

  “You see?” Han asked. “Besides, if the Imperials were trying to lure Leia to Tatooine, they wouldn’t leave their Star Destroyer out in the open like that.”

  Han pointed at the tiny silho
uette of the Chimaera, which had started an edgeward drift across the canopy as the Falcon eased past it toward the planet. Chewbacca stubbornly shook his head, reminding them of the syren plant on his native Kashyyyk, which drew victims to certain death with a scent so alluring it could not be resisted.

  “Not a certain death,” Han corrected. “Or there wouldn’t be so many Wookiees in the galaxy.”

  Never one whose purpose could be deflected by humor, Chewbacca reiterated the questions that had been troubling them all since learning of the auction. Why was such a valuable painting being sold in a seedy spaceport like Mos Espa? Where had it been all these years? Why was it surfacing now?

  The answers were a mystery—as much a mystery as the Star Destroyer’s appearance here. At the time of Alderaan’s destruction, Killik Twilight had been returning home from a museum loan on Coruscant. It had dropped out of sight, and Leia had believed the painting destroyed with her home—at least until Lando Calrissian reported that it would soon be offered at auction on Tatooine.

  Chewbacca continued to press his case, maintaining that the Chimaera’s presence was no coincidence. With an Imperial Star Destroyer hanging off Tatooine, there would almost certainly be Imperials at the auction. The argument was all too sensible, and—though Chewbacca clearly did not realize this—one that made it all the more imperative that Leia attend the sale herself. She leaned forward and grasped the Wookiee’s shoulder, and his tirade rumbled to an end.

  “Chewie, everything you say makes sense. The Star Destroyer worries me, too. If this were just any piece of Alderaanian art, I wouldn’t ask you to take the risk. But for Killik Twilight, I must.”

  Chewbacca studied her in the canopy reflection. He was a ferociously brave Wookiee—one who would never deny a friend’s request for aid once he knew a matter to be important. Leia only hoped she could win his help without having to explain herself now. Han was still stinging from that whole Hapan incident eight months ago, and being asked to risk his beloved Falcon on behalf of the Provisional Council would not sit well with him at the moment. Maybe not ever.