A Forest Apart: Star Wars (Short Story) Read online

  Han repeated his no-bid one click and tried to pretend nothing was going on. “Well, at least the name explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  Han started to say the kid’s identity explained why she seemed incapable of taking her eyes off the holocube for more than five minutes at a time, but he saw Leia narrow her eyes and decided another answer would be safer.

  “How a nine-year-old human won the Boonta Eve Classic,” Han said. “He had the Force.”

  Mawbo finally got the crowd quieted and wasted no time opening the auction. “Who will start the bidding?” She looked first to the Imperial commander in the front row. “How about you, sir? Young Anakin went on to make quite a career for himself.”

  Han was not surprised when the commander waved her off with a curt gesture. The officer was old enough to have served in the Imperial Navy during the height of Darth Vader’s power, and the only people with more reason than the Rebels to fear Vader were the officers who served under him. Mawbo wasted no time looking for another bidder.

  “One hundred credits!”

  The bidder was hidden from Han’s view by the crowd, but the reedy voice was all too familiar. Sligh was opening at a third the maximum Han had authorized, trying to scare off undecided buyers before they grew excited and drove up the price.

  Mawbo’s gaze dropped to belt high in the front row. “A hundred credits from the Squib in front.”

  “From a Squib?” Leia hissed. “Our Squibs are bidding on a ’cube of Darth Vader?”

  Han shrugged, then single-clicked Sligh again.

  “Do I hear—”

  “A hundred twenty.” The bid came from a straw-haired local woman in a tattered sand cloak.

  “A hundred fifty,” Sligh offered, still trying to scare off the others.

  “What’s he doing?” Leia sounded more alarmed than puzzled. “Do they know that’s not what we want?”

  “They know. Don’t worry.”

  A Kurtzen in patched leathers bid 175, and Sligh countered with 180. Han single-clicked again.

  Grees pushed through the mirrfield and thrust out a smooth-palmed hand. “Give me your comlink.”

  “What for?” Han said. “I’m just trying to make sure Sligh knows we’re not interested in the holocube.”

  “Should have thought of that before the auction.” Grees wagged his fingers for the comlink. “Pass it over. You’re breaking Sligh’s concentration.”

  “Thought of what before the auction?” Leia narrowed her eyes. “What’s he talking about, Ha—er, Jaxal?”

  There was no use denying it. Leia knew Han too well to be fooled, and he would only make matters worse by trying to play innocent. He pulled the comlink from his pocket and passed it over. “Call him off. We don’t want the ’cube.”

  “Too late.” Grees closed the channel and handed it back. “A deal is a deal.”

  Leia’s jaw dropped. “Deal? You’re trying to buy a holograph of my . . . of Darth Vader?”

  “Anakin Skywalker,” Han corrected. “And I didn’t know who he was. I just thought you liked the picture. You could barely take your eyes off it.”

  Grees left the booth and disappeared back into the crowd. The bidding was already at 230, and now Sligh was trying to slow it down, taking it up in 2- and 3-credit intervals. The blond woman and the Kurtzen weren’t cooperating.

  “You thought I’d like a holocube.” Leia studied him with a durasteel gaze, the counterfeit lekku thrashing on her back like snakes. “Of my father?”

  Han spread his hands. “How could I know?”

  By then, the bidding was at 260. Sligh jumped it straight to three hundred credits and finally succeeded in scaring the other bidders. Mawbo tried to coax a higher offer by sweet-talking the Kurtzen and taunting the woman, then finally gave up and pointed into the crowd where Sligh was presumably standing.

  “Three hundred credits to the Squib,” she said. “Going once, twice—”

  “Three hundred ten,” the woman said.

  “Three hundred eleven!” Sligh shot back.

  “Hey! That’s over the limit!”

  Han opened the channel again and single-clicked the Squib, only to have him bid 320 a second later. He stepped out through the mirrfield, but Grees and Elama were nowhere to be seen. Asking Leia to wait for him, he pushed his way down the narrow aisle between the wall booths and the crowded main floor. Of course, Leia didn’t wait. She was right behind him when he reached the front of the room, where the large VIP booths—the ones with the hidden doors that opened into the vicechambers in the rear of the theater—sat on elevated platforms mere meters from the stage.

  “I thought I asked you to wait.”

  “You asked,” Leia said. “What’s going on?”

  “I told him three hundred.” The bidding was now at 420. “He’s breaking the deal.”

  “And we’re trusting them with Twilight?”

  The hiss of a repulsor chair sounded from the adjacent booth, and Han looked over to see a pudgy human hand slipping through the mirrfield to beckon a service droid. On the smallest finger sparkled a big Corusca gem, set in a boxy ring too garish to be overlooked . . . or easily forgotten. Han started to ask Leia if she saw the hand, but she was already pulling him along behind the front row of bidders.

  “Forget what’s in the booth,” she said. “The important thing is to rein in Sligh. If we end up with that holocube, I’ll crack it over your head.”

  “But you saw the ring, right?” Han asked.

  Leia pulled him close and lowered her voice. “There are a lot of ostentatious rings in the galaxy, my dear.”

  What Leia left unsaid was that one of those rings—the ring that Han had seen—belonged to Threkin Horm, the immensely corpulent president of the powerful Alderaanian Council. Seeing tremendous advantage—perhaps even a new homeworld for his people—in a union of the royal houses of Alderaan and Hapes, Horm had been the loudest of those urging Leia to wed Prince Isolder. That put him high on Han’s list of bad guys.

  They slipped behind the Imperials, drawing a wary glare and two well-placed elbows from the watch commander’s bodyguards, and found Sligh standing alone in the buffer zone the other bidders had left around the Imperials. The bid was at 510, and Han had to pull the Squib out of the front row to keep him from making it 520.

  “Put me down!” Sligh bared his teeth as though to bite, but did not dip his head toward Han’s arm. “I’ll have it in two bids!”

  “Yeah? On whose credits?” Han asked. “The limit was three hundred.”

  “Three hundred?” Sligh asked, sneaking glances at the adjacent bidders. “What are you, broke?”

  Han looked up to find the Imperial commander and several other inactive bidders looking in his direction. Too disciplined to smirk, the officer could not quite keep a patronizing light from his eyes.

  “It’s not too late to cancel the other deal, if that’s what you think.”

  “Cancel?” Sligh’s attitude changed from arrogant to alarmed. “You can’t cancel. That’s a separate deal.”

  “Try me.”

  Han dropped Sligh and led Leia back to the booth, all too aware of the eyes turned their way.

  As they resumed their seats, Leia said, “I thought we hired the Squibs to avoid drawing attention.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t tell them that,” he said. “They were setting up an angle.”

  “What kind of angle?”

  Han shrugged. “With Squibs, who can tell?”

  A Del Rey® Book

  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

  Copyright © 2003 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™.

  All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Del Rey is a registered trademark an
d the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  www.starwars.com

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  eISBN: 978-0-345-46231-2

  v3.0

  About the Author

  TROY DENNING is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Abyss; Star Wars: Tatooine Ghost; Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Star by Star; the Star Wars: Dark Nest trilogy: The Joiner King, The Unseen Queen, and The Swarm War; and Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Tempest, Inferno, and Invincible—as well as Pages of Pain, Beyond the High Road, The Summoning, and many other novels. A former game designer and editor, he lives in western Wisconsin with his wife, Andria.

  By Troy Denning

  Waterdeep

  Dragonwall

  The Parched Sea

  The Verdant Passage

  The Crimson Legion

  The Amber Enchantress

  The Obsidian Oracle

  The Cerulean Storm

  The Ogre’s Pact

  The Giant Among Us

  The Titan of Twilight

  The Veiled Dragon

  Pages of Pain

  Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad

  The Oath of Stonekeep

  Faces of Deception

  Beyond the High Road

  Death of the Dragon (with Ed Greenwood)

  The Summoning

  The Siege

  The Sorcerer

  Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Star by Star

  Star Wars: Tatooine Ghost

  Star Wars: Dark Nest I: The Joiner King

  Star Wars: Dark Nest II: The Unseen Queen

  Star Wars: Dark Nest III: The Swarm War

  Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Tempest

  Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Inferno

  Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Invincible

  Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Abyss

  Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Vortex

  STAR WARS—The Expanded Universe

  You saw the movies. You watched the cartoon series, or maybe played some of the video games. But did you know …

  In The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Leia Organa said to Han Solo, “I love you.” Han said, “I know.” But did you know that they actually got married? And had three Jedi children: the twins, Jacen and Jaina, and a younger son, Anakin?

  Luke Skywalker was trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. But did you know that, years later, he went on to revive the Jedi Order and its commitment to defending the galaxy from evil and injustice?

  Obi-Wan said to Luke, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” Did you know that over those millennia, legendary Jedi and infamous Sith Lords were adding their names to the annals of Republic history?

  Yoda explained that the dreaded Sith tend to come in twos: “Always two, there are. No more, no less. A Master, and an apprentice.” But did you know that the Sith didn’t always exist in pairs? That at one time in the ancient Republic there were as many Sith as Jedi, until a Sith Lord named Darth Bane was the lone survivor of a great Sith war and created the “Rule of Two”?

  All this and much, much more is brought to life in the many novels and comics of the Star Wars expanded universe. You’ve seen the movies and watched the cartoon. Now venture out into the wider worlds of Star Wars!

  Turn the page or jump to the timeline of Star Wars novels to learn more.

  chapter one

  CORUSCANT

  “He doesn’t exist.” With those words, spoken without any conscious thought or effort on his part, Luke Skywalker sat upright in bed and looked around at the dimly illuminated chamber.

  There wasn’t much to see. Members of the Jedi order, even Masters such as Luke, didn’t accumulate much personal property. Within view were chairs situated in front of unlit computer screens; a wall rack holding plasteel staves and other practice weapons; a table littered with personal effects such as datapads, notes scrawled on scraps of flimsi, datachips holding reports from various Jedi Masters, and a crude and not at all accurate sandglass statuette in Luke’s image sent to him by a child from Tatooine. Inset into the stone-veneer walls were drawers holding his and Mara’s limited selection of clothes. Their lightsabers were behind Luke, resting on a shelf on the headboard of their bed.

  His wife, Mara Jade Skywalker, had more personal items and equipment, of course. Disguises, weapons, communications gear, falsified documents. A former spy, she had never given up the trappings of that trade, but those items weren’t here. Luke wasn’t sure where she kept them. She didn’t bother him with such details.

  Beside him, she stirred, and he glanced down at her. Her red hair, kept a medium length this season, was an unruly mess, but there was no sleepiness in her eyes when they opened. In brighter light, he knew, those eyes were an amazing green. “Who doesn’t exist?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. An enemy.”

  “You dreamed about him?”

  He nodded. “I’ve had the dream a couple of times before. It’s not just a dream. It’s coming to me through currents in the Force. He’s all wrapped up in shadows—a dark hooded cloak, but more than that, shadows of light and …” Luke shook his head, struggling for the correct word. “And ignorance. And denial. And he brings great pain to the galaxy … and to me.”

  “Well, if he brings pain to the galaxy, you’re obviously going to feel it.”

  “No, to me personally, in addition to his other evil.” Luke sighed and lay down again. “It’s too vague. And when I’m awake, when I try to peer into the future to find him, I can’t.”

  “Because he doesn’t exist.”

  “That’s what the dream tells me.” Luke hissed in aggravation.

  “Could it be Raynar?”

  Luke considered. Raynar Thul, former Jedi Knight, presumed dead during the Yuuzhan Vong war, had been discovered a few years earlier—horribly burned during the war, mentally transformed in the years since through his involvement with the insectoid Killik race. That transformation had been a malevolent one, and the Jedi order had had to deal with him. Now he languished in a well-protected cell deep within the Jedi Temple, undergoing treatment for his mental and physical afflictions.

  Treatment. Treatment meant change; perhaps, in changing, Raynar was becoming something new, and Luke’s presentment pointed toward the being Raynar would someday become.

  Luke shook his head and pushed the possibility away. “In this vision, I don’t sense Raynar’s alienness. Mentally, emotionally, whoever it is remains human, or near human. There’s even the possiblity that it’s my father.” “Darth Vader.”

  “No. Before he was Darth Vader. Or just when he was becoming Vader.” Luke’s gaze lost focus as he tried to recapture the dream. “What little of his face I can see reminds me of the features of Anakin Skywalker as a Jedi. But his eyes … as I watch, they turn a molten gold or orange, transforming from Force-use and anger …”

  “I have an idea.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Let’s wait until he shows up, then crush him.”

  Luke smiled. “All right.” He closed his eyes and his breathing slowed, an effort to return to sleep.

  Within a minute the rhythm of his breathing became that of natural sleep.

  But Mara lay awake, her attention on the ceiling—beyond it, through dozens of floor levels of the Jedi enclave to the skies of Coruscant above—and searched for any hint, any flicker of what it was that was causing her husband worry.

  She found no sign of it. And she, too, slept.

  ADUMAR

  The gleaming pearl-gray turbolift doors slid open sideways, and warm air bearing an aroma that advertised death and destruction washed over Jacen Solo, his cousin Ben Skywalker, and their guide.

  Jacen took a deep breath and held it. The odors of this subterranean factory were not the smells of corrupted flesh or gangrenous wounds—smel
ls Jacen was familiar with—but those of labor and industry. The great chamber before them had been a missile manufacturing center for decades, and no amount of rigorous cleaning would ever be quite able to eliminate the odors of sweat, machine lubricant, newly fabricated composite materials, solid fuel propellants, and high explosives that filled the air.

  Jacen expelled the breath and stepped out of the turbolift, then walked the handful of steps up to the rail overlooking the chamber. He walked rapidly so that his Jedi cloak would billow a little as he strode, so that his boot heels would ring on the metal flooring of this observation catwalk, and so his apprentice and guide would be left behind for a moment. This was a performance for his guide and all the other representatives of the Dammant Killers company. Jacen knew he was carrying off his role quite well; the company officials he’d been dealing with remained properly intimidated. But he didn’t know whether to attribute his success to his bearing and manner, his lean, brooding, and handsome looks, or his name—for on this world of Adumar, with its history of fascination with pilots, the name of Jacen’s father, Han Solo, went a very long way.

  His guide, a slender, balding man named Testan ke Harran, moved up to the rail to Jacen’s right. Contrasting with the dull grays and blues that were common on this factory’s walls and its workers’ uniforms, Testan was a riot of color—his tunic, with its nearly knee-length hem and its flowing sleeves, was the precise orange of X-wing fighter pilot uniforms, though decorated with purple crisscross lines breaking it down into a flickering expanse of small diamond shapes, and his trousers, belt, and scarf were a gleaming gold.

  Testan stroked his lustrous black beard, the gesture a failed attempt to conceal the man’s nervousness. Jacen felt, rather than saw, Ben move up on the other side of Testan.

  “You can see,” Testan said, “ar workars enjoy very fan conditions.”

  Ben cleared his throat. “He says their workers enjoy very fine conditions.”