Theory had it that Selonians had evolved from some sort of predatory swimming mammal that lived in riverside burrows, a species that moved from riverside burrowing to sophisticated tunneling far from water. They had sleek, short fur, usually brown or black, and long pointed faces full of sharp teeth. They had bristly whiskers and equally bristly tempers if you didn’t know how to handle them right. They lived in underground dens for the most part, and their social structure was unusual, to say the least.
But, interesting though it was, Han was not worried about how the Selonian society was controlled by sterile females just at the moment. He was more interested in this particular sterile female’s very, very sharp teeth.
The big, lithe, graceful creature walked into the room calmly, casually, with such self-assurance she might have been the master of the place rather than a prisoner. Two more guards followed her into the chamber, but she paid no more mind to them than she had to the first pair.
There was one other thing that Han could not help but notice—the Selonian had her hands free. That could only mean that the Selonian had given her parole, promised not to disobey or attempt to escape. It would otherwise be absolute madness to let her go free. But if she had given her parole, then the guards were not only superfluous, they were a deadly insult. It was definitely not advisable to question a Selonian’s honor. Arrogance or ignorance might explain such a lapse, but nothing could forgive it.
“Get down there, you,” said one of the guards, pointing to the lower level of the chamber, where Han waited. They had shoved Han over the edge with his hands tied behind his back. The Selonian they allowed to use a small set of stairs set in the left rear corner of the chamber. She walked down the stairs with a calm grace, and came to stand in the center of the chamber. She turned toward Han and looked at him, her expression utterly neutral.
“Say hello to Dracmus,” Thrackan said. “Quite an impressive specimen, don’t you think? She was trying to do us a little damage in Coronet when we picked her up.”
Han said nothing. Taunting Thrackan was one thing. He could know just how far to push things, know what the consequences might be. Not with a Selonian. Not with the way things were shaping up here.
Thrackan laughed. “Not taking any chances, I see. Dracmus, say hello to the family pirate and traitor, my dear cousin Han Solo.”
“Bellorna-fa ecto mandaba-sa, despecto Han Solo!” said Dracmus. “Pada ectal ferbraz bellorna-cra.” Her voice dripped with contempt, but the words did not match the tone. “Speak you this language of mine, Honorable Han Solo? None of these fools do.”
Han thought fast. He had no way of knowing what Dracmus intended. All he knew was that she was the enemy of his enemy—if even that much was true. She could be some hired stooge of Thrackan’s, playing a part in some convoluted plan of his. Could this be a trap? But what point to a trap when he was already a prisoner? And suppose Dracmus was wrong, and one of the Leaguers did speak Selonian?
But the universe never had given Han many sure answers, and it wasn’t likely to start anytime soon. “Belorna-sa mandaba-fa kurso-kurso,” Han snarled back, trying to make his voice as abusive sounding as Dracmus’s had been. “Speak me it well enough.” Han backed to the corner and risked a glance at Thrackan. His cousin was grinning from ear to ear. Clearly he had no doubt the two of them were trading insults.
“Kurso! Sa kogna fos zul embaga. Persa chana-sa prognas els abta for dejed kurso,” Dracmus growled the words, and snapped her jaws at him. “Good! I think they will force us to fight. Allow me to win quickly and you will avoid being well injured.”
Han had been afraid of that. It would be just like Thrackan to force two prisoners to fight, especially in a combat as unequal as this one would be.
“I see there is great love between you,” Thrackan said. “I think our Selonian friend has many pent-up feelings for her hosts. She cannot vent them on us, as she has given her parole, and must not break her oath. I must say that it is convenient to have an enemy of such strong principles. I think I shall reward her honorable behavior and let her take it all out on you.”
Han tugged at his bonds, but they held firm. “Nice fair fight, Thrackan,” he said. “A Selonian against a human with his hands tied behind his back.”
Thrackan laughed. “I’m interested in entertainment, Han, not fairness.” He indicated the four guards, who, by this time, had positioned themselves in the four corners of the chamber’s upper level. “Shoot,” he ordered. All four of them aimed their blasters at the center of the chamber’s floor and fired simultaneously.
The floor exploded in a gout of flame. Han flinched back from the blast, and felt stinging pains on his face and hands as he was peppered with micro-fragments of pulverized stresscrete.
Han staggered back, half-blinded and half-deafened. “If you do not acquit yourself well, my troopers will fire again. At both of you. I would suggest you make the fight convincing.”
Han shook his head and blinked, trying to get over the effect of the blaster shots at close range. “How am I supposed to fight convincingly with my hands behind my back?” he asked.
Thrackan laughed again. “You can’t expect me to give you all the answers,” he said. “Show a little initiative.”
Han’s vision had cleared enough now for him to see Dracmus, and it was plain that the Selonian was more than prepared to give a good fight. She had her mouth open, putting her needle-sharp teeth on clear display.
The only thing Han had going for him was surprise, and he decided to use it. He shouted at the top of his lungs and charged straight for Dracmus, his head down. He got under her guard, if just barely, and managed to give her a good solid head butt to the gut. He hit her hard enough to knock down a human, but she managed to use her tail to steady herself against the floor and stay upright. She took a swipe at his head with her left hand-paw. She didn’t connect fully, but it was enough to send him sprawling.
He slammed his left shoulder into the side of the raised platform and almost fell. He recovered and spun to his right just in time to dodge another open-handed slap at his head.
And in that split second Han knew he could trust her, at least part of the way. He saw her claws retract in the split second before her hand-paw whipped past his face, and she had missed by less than the length of those claws.
No claws. She could have raked them across his face twice by now. She was playing fair, or would be until it came down to killing Han or Thrackan’s goons killing them both. He would have to lose fast, and convincingly. That ought to be easy. He could do it with both hands tied behind his back. At least he’d better be able to do so. He pulled at the bindings on his wrists, but it was clear that they weren’t going to give.
Han dodged another swing from the left, but ran straight into the sucker punch to his chest. The blow knocked him clean off his feet. He landed on the hard stresscrete floor, taking most of the fall across the top of his back, even though he managed to crush his hands and bounce the back of his head off the stresscrete.
Dracmus was lunging for him before he could even begin to recover, and it was either Han’s dumb luck or Dracmus’s superb reflexes that sent her diving left as he rolled right.
Han managed to roll to his feet one more time—and almost collapsed again. His ankle had somehow gotten twisted in that last fall. Just what he needed. A bad sprain. He swore under his breath and hobbled to the far side of the chamber as fast as he could. His right eye was beginning to swell, and he was pretty sure his nose was bleeding. If this was going easy on him, he’d hate to deal with Dracmus in a bad mood. But he was going to have to trust her. Either she was going to change her mind and kill him, or she wasn’t.
She swung around and came toward him in the stalking, wide-stepping gait of a wrestler, her arms spread wide, her tail slashing back and forth. The men on either side of the chamber were hooting and cheering and cursing. The air was getting thick, and the lights in the room seemed to have dimmed. Han shook his head again to try to clear i
t, and instantly regretted it as his dizziness got worse. He was not going to last much longer.
Finish it. He would have to finish it quick, and go down fighting, satisfy Thrackan that he had gotten a good show. Han knew that Thrackan, at least the Thrackan of old, would only be satisfied if Han were knocked out by a blow from Dracmus. He’d feel cheated if Han simply passed out, collapsed in a heap, but that was going to happen if Han stayed in this thing much longer. And Han did not want Thrackan to be dissatisfied. Not when he had a blaster handy to vent his frustrations and Han available as a convenient target. Han thought that Thrackan wanted him alive, but he wasn’t sure enough to bet his life on it. Besides, a well-aimed blaster bolt could maim him and still leave him perfectly alive.
Keep fighting. Han staggered to the right, circling around. Dracmus came no closer, but circled as well, watching for her chance. Han yanked once more at his wrist restraints, out of frustration as much as anything else, and was astonished to feel them snap.
Either the restraints’ locks had been damaged in the fall or, more likely, Thrackan had put him in gimmicked restraints to start with, something that could released by remote control at whatever moment seemed most amusing to the operator. It didn’t matter. He had his hands. He spread his arms wide in a wrestler’s stance and moved in on Dracmus.
Dracmus was at least as surprised as Han to realize her opponent suddenly had his hands free. She backpedaled a bit, putting a bit more distance between Han and herself. She snarled, a sound full of anger and frustration, and Han felt sure she meant it. She wasn’t acting. She might or might not want to kill Han, but she had every intention of beating him.
Well, he was going to make her work for it. The advantages were all still with Dracmus, but maybe, now, he had a fighting chance. He feinted to the left, once, twice, and then to the right before diving straight in, grasping his hands together in a pile-driver punch to the gut, to knock the wind out of her. He remembered at the last possible moment to strike higher on her abdomen than he would on a human. He caught the right spot, but just barely. She staggered backward, and Han scrambled to regain his own balance and follow up. She had sagged down enough that Han could try for a punch in the snout, a delicate spot on the Selonian anatomy. He swung and connected cleanly—and then instantly wondered if doing so was such a good idea.
From the expression on Dracmus’s face, it clearly hurt a lot—but it also got her good and mad. Those sharp jaws swung around and snapped down on thin air a centimeter from Han’s arm, and even before he had stopped dodging, an iron-hard fist hit him square in the chest. If it had hit him in the stomach, he would have doubled over in pain, but Dracmus had placed her blow too high. As it was, Han was thrown onto the floor. He recovered and winced with pain as he got back to his feet. It seemed likely that either the blow or the landing had bruised or cracked a rib.
Dracmus’s tail was lashing back and forth, and she had her fangs bared—but she did not dive in to get her teeth around his throat, or rake her claws across his eyes. She was still restraining herself, at least somewhat. Han realized that he had to throw this fight immediately, before she lost all control of her anger and moved in for the kill. “Use your tail!” he bellowed to her in Selonian. “Batter me with that!”
The mad, angry light in her eye seemed to dim for a moment, and she looked at him, as if she were surprised to see him there. Good. Maybe that meant the words were reaching her—though Han could not be altogether sure. She swung toward him and snapped her jaws at him again, and Han dodged back to his left. Even though he had urged her to make the move, he didn’t even realize she was still swinging around, pivoting on one foot to bring her tail around. She had it raised high, and caught Han neatly in the head with it.
Han staggered one last time, and lurched backward, slumping over until he was facing his cousin on his throne. Han’s vision was going, going black, but he could see Thrackan grinning at him, laughing, that face that was so similar to his own contorted by a cruel, sadistic leer.
Han was almost glad when the darkness closed over him.
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 Ka
rpyshyn: 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.
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