Star Wars: Cloak of Deception

by James Luceno

  Anakin’s greater height required him to remain farther back, almost directly under the beetle’s pug tail. To Obi-Wan’s right ran Cody, with his teammates trailing behind and flanking him.

  Soldier beetles or no, discipline was breaking down fast.

  A harvester providing cover for one of the commandos veered from the column before it could be guided back into line. Instead of hurrying under another beetle, the commando stuck with the stray, and quickly found himself out in open ground.

  Obi-Wan felt a ripple in the Force an instant before the harvester’s right foreleg tripped a land mine.

  A potent explosion fountained from the rocky ground, blowing away half the creature’s foreleg. The commando threw himself to one side, rolling out from under a trio now of pounding legs, only to have to bob and weave as the harvester began to run in frantic circles, seemingly determined to trample the commando underfoot. A glancing blow from the beetle’s left rear leg tipped the commando off his feet. Confused, the harvester lowered its head and butted at the hard white object in its path, again and again, until there wasn’t a smooth area left in the commando’s armor.

  The harvester’s distress was having an impact on the rest of the beetles, as well.

  While most were pressed tightly together, others were suddenly scurrying away from the main column, sending the soldier beetles to high alert. Tripping two mines in succession, a second harvester was lifted off the ground by the ensuing explosions. With that, the column dissolved into disorder, with harvesters and soldiers running every which way, and commandos and Jedi alike doing their best to protect themselves.

  “Stay close to the ones who are still headed for the nest!” Anakin shouted.

  Obi-Wan was doing just that when he noticed that the trampled commando was back on his feet and staggering toward him, tapping the side of his helmet with the palm of his gloved hand, and obviously indifferent to where he placed his booted feet. Barreling straight for the maw of the mound, a harvester bore down on the commando, clamping its pincers around his waist, then lifting him high into the air. Summoning the last of his reserves, the commando twisted his body back and forth, but was unable to break free.

  All at once Anakin was out from under his protective harvester.

  Lightsaber tight in his gloved hand, he bounded across the denuded landscape toward the captive commando, the Force guiding him to safe landings among the mines. The harvesters might have taken him for a demented turfjumper were they not so fixed on safeguarding their loads and reaching the security of the nest.

  Anakin’s final leap dropped him directly in front of the harvester that had seized the commando. With one upward stroke of his lightsaber he rid the beetle of its pincers, freeing the commando, but also sending the soldier beetles into a frenzy. Obi-Wan could almost smell the pheromone release, and decipher the information being exchanged: The area is rife with predators!

  From the brood rose a shriek so high-pitched as to be barely audible, and a stampede was under way. Mines began to detonate to all sides, and out from billowing smoke above the orchard canopy swarmed more than a hundred STAPs.

  A Neimoidian version of the agile repulsorlift airhook used as an observation vehicle throughout the galaxy, each Single Trooper Aerial Platform was equipped with twin blasters that delivered more firepower than the stubby-barreled models carried by infantry droids.

  From maximum range the swarm rained energy bolts on everything in sight, dropping harvesters in their tracks and turning the rocky ground into a killing field. Explosions erupted in jagged lines as scores of mines were detonated. Supporting the commando trooper with his left arm, Anakin warded off blaster bolts on the run. The rest of Squad Seven supplied cover, blowing STAPs out of the sky with uninterrupted fire.

  Cody motioned everyone into a shallow irrigation trench just short of the mound. By the time Obi-Wan arrived, the troopers were deployed in a circle, and continuing to pour fire into the sky. Anakin slid into the trench a moment later, lowering the commando gently to the muddy slope. Squad Seven’s medical specialist crawled over, removing the commando’s ravaged utility belt and deeply dented helmet.

  Obi-Wan gazed at the face of the injured clone.

  A face he would never forget; now a face he couldn’t forget.

  All these years later, he could still recall his brief conversation with Jango Fett, on Kamino. He glanced at Cody and the rest. An army of one man … But the right man for the job.

  The clones’ rallying cry.

  The injured commando had already prompted his armor to inject him with painkillers, so he remained pliant while his chest plastron was removed and the black bodyglove undergarment knifed open. The harvester’s pincers had crushed the armor into the commando’s abdomen. His skin was intact, but the bruising was severe.

  With only half the original army of 1.2 million in fighting shape, the life of every clone was vital. Blood and replacement organs—what the regular troopers referred to as “spare parts”—were readily available—“easily requisitioned”—but with the war reaching a crescendo, battlefield casualties were on the rise and treated as high priority.

  “Not much I can do for him here,” the medspec told Anakin. “Maybe if we can get an FX-Seven airdropped—”

  “We don’t need a droid,” Anakin interrupted. Kneeling, he placed his hands on the injured commando’s abdomen and used a Jedi healing technique to keep the clone from going into deep shock.

  A sudden noise from above caught everyone’s attention.

  Scores of boulder-sized objects were spewing from openings in the lower ramparts of the fortress. Cody pressed a pair of macrobinoculars to his eyes and gazed upward.

  “That’s no ordinary avalanche,” he said, passing the glasses to Obi-Wan.

  Obi-Wan raised the glasses and waited for the lens to autofocus.

  Rolling toward the trench at better than eighty kilometers per hour were some of the most feared of the Separatists’ infantry arsenal.

  Droidekas.

  REBELLION

  (0–5 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

  This is the period of the classic Star Wars movie trilogy—A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi—in which a ragtag band of Rebels battles the Empire, and Luke Skywalker learns the ways of the Force and must avoid his father’s fate.

  During this time, the Empire controls nearly the entire settled galaxy. Out in the Rim worlds, Imperial stormtroopers suppress uprisings with brutal efficiency, many alien species have been enslaved, and entire star systems are brutally exploited by the Empire’s war machine. In the central systems, however, most citizens support the Empire, weighing misgivings about its harsh methods against the memories of the horror and chaos of the Clone Wars. Few dare to openly oppose Emperor Palpatine’s rule.

  But the Rebel Alliance is growing. Rebel cells strike in secret from hidden bases scattered among the stars, encouraging some of the braver Senators to speak out against the Empire. When the Rebels learn that the Empire is building the Death Star, a space station with enough firepower to destroy entire planets, Princess Leia Organa, who represents her homeworld, Alderaan, in the Senate and is secretly a high-ranking member of the Rebel Alliance, receives the plans for the battle station and flees in search of the exiled Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.

  Thus begin the events that lead her to meet the smuggler and soon-to-be hero Han Solo, to discover her long-lost brother, Luke Skywalker, and to help the Rebellion take down the Emperor and restore democracy to the galaxy: the events of the three films A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.

  If you’re a reader looking for places to jump in and explore the Rebellion-era novels, here are five great places to start:

  • Death Star, by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry: The story of the construction of the massive battle station, touching on the lives of the builders, planners, soldiers, and support staff who populate the monstrous vessel, as well as the masterminds behind the design and those
who intend to make use of it: the Emperor and Darth Vader.

  • The Mandalorian Armor, by K. W. Jeter: The famous bounty hunter Boba Fett stars in a twisty tale of betrayal within the galactic underworld, highlighted by a riveting confrontation between bounty hunters and a band of Hutts.

  • Shadows of the Empire, by Steve Perry: A tale of the shadowy parts of the Empire and an underworld criminal mastermind who is out to kill Luke Skywalker, while our other heroes try to figure out how to rescue Han Solo, who has been frozen in carbonite for delivery to Jabba the Hutt.

  • Tales of the Bounty Hunters, edited by Kevin J. Anderson: The bounty hunters summoned by Darth Vader to capture the Millennium Falcon tell their stories in this anthology of short tales, culminating with Daniel Keys Moran’s elegiac “The Last One Standing.”

  • Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, by Matthew Stover: A tale set shortly after the events of Return of the Jedi, in which Luke must defeat the flamboyant dark sider known as Lord Shadowspawn while the pilots of Rogue Squadron duel his servants amid tumbling asteroids.

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

  CHAPTER 1

  THE CORELLIAN QUEEN was a legend: the greatest luxury liner ever to ply the spaceways, an interstellar pleasure palace forever beyond the grasp of all but the galaxy’s super-elite—beings whose wealth transcended description. Rumor had it that for the price of a single cocktail in one of the Queen’s least-exclusive dining clubs, one might buy a starship; for the price of a meal, one could buy not only the starship, but the port in which it docked, and the factory that had built it. A being could not simply pay for a berth on the Corellian Queen; mere wealth would never suffice. To embark upon the ultimate journey into hedonistic excess, one first had to demonstrate that one’s breeding and manners were as exquisite as would be the pain of paying one’s bar bill. All of which made the Corellian Queen one of the most irresistible terrorist targets ever: who better to terrorize than the elite of the Elite, the Powers among the powerful, the greatest of the Great?

  And so when some presumably unscrupulous routing clerk in the vast midreaches of the Nebula Line corporation quietly offered for sale, to select parties from Kindlabethia to Nar Shaddaa, a hint as to the route of the Corellian Queen’s upcoming cruise, it attracted considerable interest.

  Two pertinent facts remained concealed, however, from the winning bidder. The first pertinent fact was that this presumably unscrupulous routing clerk was neither unscrupulous nor, in fact, a routing clerk, but was a skilled and resourceful agent of the intelligence service of the New Republic. The second pertinent fact was that the Corellian Queen was not cruising at all that season, having been replaced by a breakaway disposable shell built to conceal a substantial fraction of a starfighter wing, led by—as was customary in such operations—the crack pilots of Rogue Squadron.

  IT WAS APPROXIMATELY THE MOMENT THAT R4-G7 squalled a proximity alarm through his X-wing’s sensor panel and his HUD lit up with image codes for six TIE Defenders on his tail that Lieutenant Derek “Hobbie” Klivian, late of the Alliance to Restore Freedom to the Galaxy, currently of the New Republic, began to suspect that Commander Antilles’s brilliant ambush had never been brilliant at all, not even a little, and he said so. In no uncertain terms. Stripped of its blistering profanity, his comment was “Wedge? This plan was stupid. You hear me? Stupid, stupid, stu YOW—!”

  The yow was a product of multiple cannon hits that disintegrated his right dorsal cannon and most of the extended wing it had been attached to. This kicked his fighter into a tumble that he fought with both hands on the yoke and both feet kicking attitude jets and almost had under control until the pair of the Defenders closest on his tail blossomed into expanding spheres of flame and debris fragments. The twin shock fronts overtook him at exactly the wrong instant and sent him flipping end-over-end straight at another Defender formation streaking toward him head-on. Then tail-on, then head-on again, and so forth.

  His ship’s comlink crackled as Wedge Antilles’s fighter flashed past him close enough that he could see the grin on the commander’s face. “That’s ‘stupid plan, sir,’ Lieutenant.”

  “I suppose you think that’s funny.”

  “Well, if he doesn’t,” put in Hobbie’s wingman, “I sure do.”

  “When I want your opinion, Janson, I’ll dust your ship and scan for it in the wreckage.” The skewed whirl of stars around his cockpit gave his stomach a yank that threatened to make the slab of smoked terrafin loin he’d had for breakfast violently reemerge. Struggling grimly with the controls, he managed to angle his ship’s whirl just a hair, which let him twitch his ship’s nose toward the four pursuing marauders as he spun. Red fire lashed from his three surviving cannons, and the Defenders’ formation split open like an overripe snekfruit.

  Hobbie only dusted one with the cannons, but the pair of proximity-fused flechette torpedoes he had thoughtfully triggered at the same time flared in diverging arcs to intercept the enemy fighters; these torpedo arcs terminated in spectacular explosions that cracked the three remaining Defenders like rotten snuffle eggs.

  “Now, that was satisfying,” he said, still fighting his controls to stabilize the crippled X-wing. “Eyeball soufflé!”

  “Better watch it, Hobbie—keep that up, and somebody might start to think you can fly that thing.”

  “Are you in this fight, Janson? Or are you just gonna hang back and smirk while I do all the heavy lifting?”

  “Haven’t decided yet.” Wes Janson’s X-wing came out of nowhere, streaking in a tight bank across Hobbie’s subjective vertical. “Maybe I can lend a hand. Or, say, a couple torps.”

  Two brilliant blue stars leapt from Janson’s torpedo tubes and streaked for the oncoming TIEs.

  “Uh, Wes?” Hobbie said, flinching. “Those weren’t the flechette torps, were they?”

  “Sure. What else?”

  “Have you noticed that I’m currently having just a little trouble maneuvering?”

  “What do you mean?” Janson asked as though honestly puzzled. Then, after a second spent watching Hobbie’s ship tumbling helplessly directly toward his torpedoes’ targets, he said, “Oh. Uh … sorry?”

  The flechette torpedoes carried by Rogue Squadron had been designed and built specifically for this operation, and they had one primary purpose: to take out TIE Defenders.

  The TIE Defender was the Empire’s premier space-superiority fighter. It was faster and more maneuverable than the Incom T-65 (better known as the X-wing); faster even than the heavily modified and updated 65Bs of Rogue Squadron. The Defender was also more heavily armed, packing twin ion cannons to supplement its lasers, as well as dual-use launch tubes that could fire either proton torpedoes or concussion missiles. The shields generated by its twin Novaldex deflector generators were nearly as powerful as those found on capital ships. However, the Defenders were not equipped with particle shields, depending instead on their titanium-reinforced hull to absorb the impact of material objects.

  Each proton torpedo shell had been loaded with thousands of tiny jagged bits of durasteel, packed around a core of conventional explosive. On detonation, these tiny bits of durasteel became an expanding sphere of shrapnel; though traveling with respectable velocity of their own, they were most effective when set off in the path of oncoming Defenders, because impact energy, after all, is determined by relative velocity. At starfighter combat speeds, flying into a cloud of durasteel pellets could transform one’s ship from a starfighter into a very, very expensive cheese grater.

  The four medial fighters of the oncoming Defender formation hit the flechette cloud and just … shredded. The lateral wingers managed to bank off an instant before they would have been overtaken by two sequential detonations, as the explosion of one Defender’s power core triggered the other three’s cores an eyeblink later, so that the unfortunate Lieutenant Klivian was now tumbling directly toward a miniature plasma nebula that blazed with enough hard radiation to
cook him like a bantha steak on an obsidian fry-rock at double noon on Tatooine.

  “You’re not gonna make it, Hobbie,” Janson called. “Punch out.”

  “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Hobbie snarled under his breath, still struggling grimly with the X-wing’s controls. The fighter’s tumble began to slow. “I’ve got it, Wes!”

  “No, you don’t! Punch out, Hobbie—PUNCH OUT!”

  “I’ve got it—I’m gonna make it! I’m gonna—” He was interrupted by the final flip of his X-wing, which brought his nose into line with the sight of the leading edge of the spherical debris field expanding toward him at a respectable fraction of lightspeed, and Hobbie Klivian, acknowledged master of both profanity and obscenity, human and otherwise, not to mention casual vulgarities from a dozen species and hundreds of star systems, found that he had nothing to say except, “Aw, nuts.”

  He stood the X-wing on its tail, sublights blasting for a tangent, but he had learned long ago that of all the Rogues, he was the one who should know better than to trust his luck. He reached for the eject trigger.

  Just as his hand found the trigger, the ship jounced and clanged as if he had his head trapped inside a Wookiee dinner gong at nightmeal. The metaphorical Wookiee cook must have been hungry, too, because the clanging went on and on and kept getting louder, and the eject still, mysteriously, didn’t seem to be working at all. This mystery was solved, however, by the brief shriek of atmosphere through a ragged fist-sized hole in the X-wing’s canopy. This hole was ragged because, Hobbie discovered, the fragment that had made this opening had been slowed by punching through the X-wing’s titanium-alloy ventral armor. Not to mention the X-wing’s control panel, where it had not only ripped away the entire eject trigger assembly, but had vaporized Hobbie’s left hand.