Tempest: Star Wars (Legacy of the Force) (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force)

by Troy Denning

  “Sort of.” Kyp gave her a broad, trouble-loving smile. “This time, they want Luke to make Jacen a Jedi Master.”

  OUTSIDE THE CORELLIAN SYSTEM CARGO VESSEL

  BREATHE MY JETS

  Captain Uran Lavint was an heir to the tradition of Han Solo.

  That’s how she saw herself, at any rate, and she was indeed a smuggler. Nor was she a small-scale smuggler. Her cargo ship, Breathe My Jets, had hold space large enough to carry several Millennium Falcons. Nor did she always make solitary smuggling trips—some missions, like this one, were small fleet operations.

  Still, she was not rich, not even financially comfortable. Creditors—more successful smugglers, members of organized crime—now demanded their due whenever they could contact her, whenever they could catch up to her during Breathe My Jets’s brief stays in port. She’d been threatened, she’d taken a beating at a landfall on Tatooine, and rumor had it that one creditor had given up and hired a bounty hunter to eliminate her—to demonstrate the folly of not paying on time.

  She needed this mission to go well. If it did, she could pay everyone off, start over. If it didn’t, she might find herself in a position to describe explosive decompression in a firsthand account.

  Now she looked at the distant star Corell through the bridge’s forward viewport as she sat slumped in her captain’s chair. She sagged not out of defeat, but from habit and a deliberate attitude of indifference that gave her a reputation for being cool under fire. Though born to well-fed, well-tended middle-manager parents on Bespin, she now had skin like Tatooine leather and a craggy face that might have benefited from a drooping mustache.

  Grudgingly, she sat upright. Glancing at the undersized, youthful Hutt in the specially designed copilot’s couch beside her, she nodded. “All right, Blatta. Put me on.”

  Blatta flipped a switch on the control panel before him. A display there lit up and showed Captain Lavint’s face, a live holocam feed. He spoke in typically deep, gooey Hutt tones. “Broadcast in five, four, three …” He held up two fingers, silently signaling the continuation of the countdown, then one, then closed his fist to indicate they were broadcasting.

  Lavint stared into the holocam recorder. “Captain to fleet. In a minute I will broadcast the nav data for our final jump. That jump will bring us as close as the planet Corellia’s gravity well will allow, and then one of two things will happen—we’ll be jumped by Galactic Alliance forces, or we won’t.

  “If we’re not, congratulations—the armaments and bacta we’re carrying will earn us tidy profits. If we are, our instructions are clear: break and run, straight down into Corellia’s atmosphere. It’s every ship for herself. You see your best friend being assaulted, you wish him well and get down to ground. Don’t hang back and fight to free him.

  “Good luck.” She gave her viewers a brisk nod, and Blatta cut the transmission.

  “Nav data?” he asked.

  “Send it.”

  He did. The instant he did so, a one-minute chron timer appeared on both cockpit displays, counting down. It was just enough time for the fleet’s captains and navigators to load the data and test it, not enough time for them to waste and increase their jitters.

  More or less as a single body, the thirty-odd ships and vehicles of the fleet accelerated, pointing straight for the distant, unseen planet. Those who had defensive shields activated them. And at exactly the same moment, each cockpit crew saw the stars before them lengthen and begin the axial swirling that was the visual characteristic of hyperspace entry.

  This jump would take only a few seconds—

  It took less than that. They’d been in hyperspace half the time they should have been when the stars stopped spinning and snapped back into distant points of light. Corell was larger, closer, but not as close as the sun should be, and there was no comforting sight of the planet Corellia directly ahead of them. Instead, there was empty space decorated with the occasional fast-moving colored twinkle of light.

  Lavint swore, but her invective was drowned out by Blatta’s shout: “Enemy ships! Chevron formation. We’re toward the point, and the two flanks are falling in on our formation.”

  “Which one’s the Interdictor?” One of the enemy ships had to be some sort of Interdictor, a capital ship carrying gravity-well generators—devices that would project a gravity field of sufficient strength to yank ships right out of hyperspace.

  Blatta highlighted a point of light on his display, and it began blinking on Lavint’s display as well. It was just at the point of the chevron, directly ahead of Lavint’s ship.

  Lavint keyed her comm. “Captain Lavint to fleet. Maintain formation, match speed with me. Our only chance—”

  On the sensor display, the crisp line of her fleet was blurring as each member craft vectored in a different direction.

  “No, no, maintain formation!” She couldn’t keep the desperation out of her voice. The original orders to scatter only made sense if every craft was a short distance from the safe haven of Corellia—didn’t the idiots see that? “We’ve got to run this gauntlet at high speed—”

  “Belay that,” came a voice over the comm. It was female and a bit rough, a close match to Lavint’s own. “This is the real Captain Lavint. Follow your orders. Scatter.” This voice was calm, self-assured.

  Blatta nodded as if impressed. “Sounds just like you.”

  “Shut up.” Lavint put her cargo ship on a new course, vectoring downward relative to her current orientation.

  Blatta offered up a sigh. It sounded like a bantha passing gas. “At least they can’t know which vessel is carrying which cargo. Since we’re not the biggest ship in the fleet, they might not pay us special attention—”

  Breathe My Jets shuddered so hard that Lavint’s teeth clacked together and Blatta shook like a plate full of Corellian spice-jelly. The cockpit lights dimmed for a second.

  Frantically, Lavint wrenched the controls around in a new direction, but Breathe My Jets was not a small, nimble craft. In the agonizing seconds it took the cargo vessel to take a new bearing, she heard Blatta calmly describing their situation: “The ISD at the port tip of the chevron formation is firing on us. The first hit was against our engines. If it hits again—”

  Breathe My Jets shuddered a second time, hard enough that Lavint would have been thrown from her seat if the restraining straps hadn’t been buckled in place. The cockpit lights dimmed again, and the displays all showed static for a second.

  The lights did not come up this time, and the cargo ship stopped responding to Lavint’s handling. The displays cleared of static. Running on emergency power, they began scrolling a list of damage sustained by the ship.

  Blatta watched the data roll by. “Engines out.”

  “Thank you for that holonews update.”

  Blatta shrugged. “It’s been good working with you, Captain. I only wish—”

  “Wish what?”

  “That you weren’t half a year behind in what you owe me.” He switched his main display over to follow the progress of the battle now raging all around them.

  OUTSIDE THE CORELLIAN SYSTEM

  ANAKIN SOLO

  In the Command Salon of the Star Destroyer Anakin Solo, Jacen Solo stood staring through the forward viewports. He could see the last few twinkles and flashes of laserfire as this abortive space combat drew to a close.

  He chose not to follow the events more closely on the readily available computer displays. Instead he reached out through the Force, sampling the ships and vehicles he could see, looking for oddness, discrepancy, tragedy.

  He found none. The smugglers, outmaneuvered and outgunned, gave up almost to a ship. A few nimble craft got away, making the jump to lightspeed before the warships of Jacen’s task force could cripple them, but most did not; the majority of the smugglers floated, helpless, their engines destroyed by laserfire or their electronics systems rendered inert by ion cannons. Shuttles were now moving from ship to ship, picking up smuggling crews, dropping off the person
nel who would bring the captured craft back to GA facilities, directing tractor beams. In another hour or two this section of space would be empty of everything but a few debris clouds that had once been engine housings.

  “Our agent would like to speak with you,” said Ebbak. A dark-haired human woman with skin the color of desert sand, she was short and unremarkable of appearance but had been of considerable help to him since he had been assigned the Anakin Solo. A civilian employee aboard ship, assigned to data analysis, she had demonstrated a knack for knowing what sort of information Jacen would need and when, and for supplying it at useful times. He was considering whether she would be interested in trading her civilian’s post for a commission with Galactic Alliance Guard; he could benefit from someone with her skills if she proved as loyal as she was dutiful.

  She had not quite materialized beside him—he had felt her walk up—but her approach had been silent. Perhaps she would also prove adept at stealth work.

  The question annoyed Jacen; his mind was occupied by details of the capture of the smuggler fleet, and he needed to begin thinking about his upcoming meeting with the Corellian representative. “Why would I want to speak with her? And please don’t call her our agent. She betrayed her comrades for money. She is our temporary hireling. She is their traitor. She is nobody’s agent but her own.”

  Ebbak paused, then evidently decided not to address those last few comments. “She didn’t say what she wanted. But since she’s already proven that she had one piece of information useful to us—”

  “Yes, yes.” Jacen nodded. “Where is she?”

  “Your office.”

  Jacen followed her back through the bulkhead doors aft of the Command Salon. Once in the main corridor beyond, they moved through a port-side door into the office that served as Jacen’s retreat aboard the Anakin Solo.

  Waiting there were two people—a large man, dressed in the uniform of ship’s security, standing, and a woman, seated … though she rose as Jacen and Ebbak entered.

  Jacen looked into the weathered face of Captain Uran Lavint. “Yes?”

  Lavint paused, apparently put off by his distant, brusque manner. “I simply wanted to find out if you had any requests or, more to the point, assignments for me before I left.”

  Jacen repressed a sigh. “First, I’d never prolong a business relationship with someone who sells out her fellows. Second, you’re lying.”

  Lavint flushed, but her expression did not change. “All right. I mostly just wanted to meet you.”

  “Ah.” Jacen paused, and carefully considered his next words. “Lavint, you now have all the time in the galaxy available to you. In betraying thirty-odd fellow smugglers, you have earned enough credits to pay off all your debts and start over, whether as a smuggler or something legitimate. You can cruise, you can frolic, you can relax. I, on the other hand, don’t have time to spare. And you have now wasted some of it. I don’t appreciate that.” He turned to the security officer. “Take her down to Delta Hangar, put her on her ship, and get her off my ship.”

  Lavint cleared her throat. “Breathe My Jets is on Gamma Hangar. And the engines won’t be repaired for a couple of standard days at least.”

  “That’s right. I’m claiming Breathe My Jets for the current military crisis.” Jacen pulled his datapad from a pocket and consulted it. “Your ship is now the Duracrud.”

  “Duracrud?” Lavint practically spat the name. “That’s a stock why-vee six-six-six older than I am. It’s a brick with wings and a hull that leaks gases like a flatulent Hutt. It’s a fraction the size of Breathe My Jets.”

  “And exactly the sort of vessel needed by a smuggler starting a new career.”

  “Our agreement—”

  “Our agreement was that you would receive a sum of credits—Ebbak, you showed her the transfer proof and gave her the data to claim it from the Bespin account? Yes—and that you would be allowed to depart on your ship, minus her cargo. The agreement did not specify which was to be your ship.” He fixed Lavint with an impassive stare. “Now would you care to waste any more of my time?”

  The glare she turned on him was murderous. He understood why. He’d just taken her ship, her beloved business and home, and given her a hovel in its place. His father, Han Solo, would have felt the same way.

  But Uran Lavint was no Han Solo, and Jacen didn’t worry that she might someday return to cause him grief. Her record made it clear that she had no goals, no drives other than the acquisition of credits. She was nothing.

  Lavint turned away, her body language stiff, and marched to the door, her security man behind her. Then, as the doors slid open, she paused. Not turning back, her voice quiet, she asked, “What’s it like to have once been a hero?” Then she left, and the door hissed closed behind her.

  Jacen felt himself redden. He forced the anger away. It wouldn’t do to let an insect like Lavint bother him. But clearly, additional punishment was in order.

  He turned to Ebbak. “My father used to have endless trouble with the Millennium Falcon. The hyperdrive would fail all the time, and he’d tell the universe that it wasn’t his fault, and then he’d fix it and be about his business.” He nodded toward the closed door. “Delay her in transit to the hangar bays. Have Duracrud’s hyperdrive adjusted so that it will fail catastrophically after one jump.”

  “Yes, sir.” Ebbak considered. “Since she’s a smuggler, she’s not going to go anywhere with a single jump. Her first jump will always be to some point far away from planetary systems or traffic lanes. She’ll be stranded.”

  “That’s right. And she’ll become intimately acquainted with her hyperdrive.”

  “She might die.”

  “And if she doesn’t, she’ll be a better person for the experience. More polite, probably.”

  “Yes, sir.” Ebbak moved to the door. It slid open for her. “Sir, your meeting with Admiral Antilles is in one hour.”

  Jacen consulted his chrono. “So it is. Thank you.”

  “And, Colonel, if I can make a personal remark—”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You’re not looking well.”

  He gave her a humorless grin. “Crisis will do that to a man. I’ll be fine.”

  The door slid shut behind her.

  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 th
e 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.