Rave reviews for previous STAR WARS adventures
THE TRUCE AT BAKURA
by Kathy Tyers
“A fast-paced, rousing adventure novel, a worthy heir to George Lucas’s mighty epic.”
—The Knoxville News-Sentinel
SPECTER OF THE PAST
by Timothy Zahn
“Zahn returns splendidly to the ranks of Star Wars authors.…Absorbing reading. Label this one ‘Not just for Star Wars fans’—for sure!” —Booklist
THE JEDI ACADEMY TRILOGY
by Kevin J. Anderson
“Anderson has all but assumed the title of Chancellor of Star Wars University.” —Starlog
HEIR TO THE EMPIRE
by Timothy Zahn
“Moves with a speed-of-light pace that captures the spirit of the movie trilogy so well, you can almost hear John Williams’s soundtrack.”
—The Providence Sunday Journal
DARK FORCE RISING
by Timothy Zahn
“Zahn has perfectly captured the pace and flavor of the Star Wars movies. This is space opera at its best.”
—The Sunday Oklahoman
STAR WARS®: I, JEDI
A Bantam Spectra Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam Spectra hardcover edition published May 1998
Bantam Spectra mass market edition / June 1999
SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
© 1998 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM
All rights reserved. Used under authorization.
Cover art copyright © 1998 by Lucasfilm Ltd.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.
eISBN: 978-0-307-79642-4
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
v3.1
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my parents,
Jim and Janet K. Stackpole.
Without your support, help, and
encouragement, this and all my
other novels would just be something
I’d like to do someday.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank the following people for their help in this project:
Janna Silverstein and Ricia Mainhardt for getting the ball rolling, Tom Dupree for naming and championing this monster and Pat LoBrutto for shepherding it home.
Sue Rostoni, Lucy Autrey Wilson and Allan Kausch for trusting me to play with such a core part of the Star Wars universe.
Peet Janes of Dark Horse Comics for his continued championing of Leonia Tavira, which led to her appearance here.
Kevin J. Anderson for having provided the background for half this book and A. C. Crispin and Kristine Kathryn Rusch for working tidbits of story back and forth with me.
Very special thanks to Timothy Zahn who graciously vetted all the pages that featured his characters, offered suggestions that made parts of this novel better, and who worked tirelessly to meld his two new Star Wars novels with this book. Working with Tim on this made the project more fun than I could have imagined.
To the Star Ladies for being a receptive audience, Kali Hale for sharp insights, Tish Pahl for quick lightsaber research and to the other Yellow Dogs—I feel your pain.
To Jennifer Roberson who, as always, caught this tale in bits and pieces and especially to Liz Danforth, who made the manic month in which this book was written endurable for me. I can’t thank you enough for being there (when you’re not in Spain).
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Epilogue
About the Author
Also By This Author
Introduction to the Star Wars Expanded Universe
Excerpt from Jedi Search
Introduction to the Old Republic Era
Introduction to the Rise of the Empire Era
Introduction to the Rebellion Era
Introduction to the New Republic Era
Introduction to the New Jedi Order Era
Introduction to the Legacy Era
Star Wars Novels Timeline
ONE
None of us liked waiting in ambush, primarily because we couldn’t be wholly certain we weren’t the ones being set up for a hot-vape. The Invids—the pirate crews working with the ex–Imperial Star Destroyer Invidious—had so far eluded the best efforts of the New Republic to engage them. They seemed to know where we would be, when we would get there, and in what force, then planned their raids appropriately. As a result we spent a lot of time doing battle-damage assessments on their efforts, and they really pushed to give us plenty of BDA work.
Rogue Squadron had gone to ground to wait on several of the larger asteroids in the K’vath system. This location put us in close proximity to K’vath 5’s primary moon, Alakatha. We powered down our engines and had our sensors in passive mode only to avoid detection by the folks we wanted to trap. According to our mission briefing, New Republic Intelligence had gotten a tip they considered reliable that at least part of Leonia Tavira’s pirate fleet would be hitting a luxury liner coming out of the resort coast on Alakatha’s northern continent. Mirax and I had actually honeymooned there three years ago, before Thrawn turned the New Republic inside-out, so I had fond memories of the place and could well remember the wealth dripping in jewels and precious metals from the throats and hands of the New Republic’s elite.
I glanced at my X-wing’s chronometer. “The Glitterstar is still on schedule?”
Whistler, nestled behind my cockpit, hooted with just a hint of derision in his voice.
/> “Yes, I know I told you to let me know if there was a change and, no, I didn’t think it had slipped your circuits.” I forced my gloved hands open, then rotated my wrists to get rid of some of the tension. “I’m just anxious.”
He blatted a quick comment at me.
“Hey, just because patience is a virtue, that doesn’t make impatience a vice.” I sighed and turned the latter half of it into a piece of a Jedi breathing exercise Luke Skywalker had urged upon me when trying to recruit me as a Jedi. Breathing in through my nose to a count of four, I held the breath for a seven count, then exhaled in eight beats. With each breath I let more tension flow out of me. I sought the clarity of mind I’d need for the coming battle—if the Invids materialized—but it eluded me with the ease the Invids had shown in escaping the New Republic.
Things kept seeming to happen fast. Mirax and I married fast, and while I did not at all regret having done so, events conspired to make our married life extremely difficult. Grand Admiral Thrawn and his antics ruined our first anniversary, and rescuing Jan Dodonna and the others who had once been imprisoned with me on the Lusankya had called me away during the second. And then the reborn Emperor’s assault on Coruscant dropped a Star Destroyer on what had been our home. Neither of us were there at the time, which was standard operating procedure far too often.
In fact, the only benefit of being assigned to go after the Invids was that their leader, ex-Moff Leonia Tavira, seemed to have a taste for a life of leisure. When her Invidious vanished between raids, we usually had a week of down time before having to worry about another attack. Mirax and I put this free time to good use, rebuilding our home and our relationship, but with that came some consequences that I saw as incredibly disruptive—on the scale of Thrawn disruptive.
Mirax decided she wanted children.
I have nothing against kids—as long as they go home with their parents at the end of the day. Expressing this opinion in those terms to Mirax was not the smartest thing I had ever done and, in fact, proved to be one of the more painful ones. The hurt and pain in her eyes haunted me for a long time. Deep down, I knew there would be no dissuading her, and I wasn’t even sure, in the end, I wanted to.
I did try, however, and employed most of the standard arguments to do so. The “this is an unsettled time in the galaxy” ploy lost out to the fact that our parents had faced a similar choice and we’d turned out pretty well. The “uncertainty of my job” argument wilted beneath the logic of my life insurance and then withered away when Mirax gave me a glimpse at the accounts files—the real ones—for her import/export business. She pointed out that she could easily support the three or four of us and I’d not have to work a single second, outside of caring for the children. And, she noted, that carrying a child for nine full months meant she would already have 3.11 years of forty-hour weeks of child-care logged and that I would owe her.
Over and above all that, she said I’d make a great father. She noted that my father had done a great job with me. Having learned from him the skills of being a father, she just knew I’d be wonderful with kids. In using that argument, she turned the love and respect I had for my father around on me. She made it seem as if I was dishonoring his memory by not bringing children into the world. It was a most persuasive argument, as she knew it would be, and hammered me pretty hard.
In retrospect, I should have given up at the start and saved the two of us a great deal of grief. She makes her living—a very good living, it turns out—convincing all sorts of folks that junk no one else wants is absolutely vital to them. While she engaged me in logical discussions—focusing my defenses on that avenue of attack—she slipped past my guard on a purely emotional level. Little comments about what kind of child our genetic lottery would produce got me investing brainsweat in solving that puzzle. That went straight to the detective training in me—the training that wouldn’t let me drop a case until I had an answer.
Which, in this case, meant a child.
She also managed to flick on the HoloNet monitors when some event featuring news about Leia Organa Solo’s three-year-old twins was being shown. The children were frighteningly cute and their very existence had been blamed for a baby-binge in the New Republic. I knew Mirax was not so shallow as to be wanting a child out of envy or to be trendy, but she did note that she was Leia’s age, and that it was a good time to have a child or two.
And that cuteness factor really can get under your skin. The New Republic media avoided showing the twins drooling and dripping the way children do, and they really maximized the appealing things about the toddlers. It got so that when I did remember dreams, they were of me cradling a sleeping child in my arms. Oddly enough, I stopped thinking of those dreams as nightmares pretty quickly and did my best to preserve them in my mind.
Realizing I was lost, I began to bargain for time. Mirax flat refused to accept fixed time dates, mainly because I was thinking in years, so I made things conditional. I told her once the Invids were taken care of, we’d make a final decision. She accepted my decision a bit better than I expected, which started preying on me, and making me feel guilty. I would have thought that was a tactic she’d decided to use, but she thought guilt was a hammer and she’s definitely a vibroblade fan.
I exhaled slowly again. “Whistler, remind me when we get home, Mirax and I need to make a decision on this baby thing, now, not later. Tavira’s not going to dictate my life.”
Whistler’s happy high staccato sailed down into a low warning tone.
I glanced at my primary monitor. The Glitterstar had lifted from Alakatha and another ship had appeared insystem. Whistler identified it as a modified bulk cruiser known as the Booty Full. Unlike the liner’s sleek design, the cruiser was studded with warty protrusions that quickly detached themselves and began to run in on the liner.
I keyed my comm. “Rogue Lead, three flight has contact. One cruiser and eighteen uglies heading in on the Glitterstar.”
Tycho’s voice came back cool and calm. “I copy, Nine. Engage the fighters with two flight. One has the cruiser.”
I flicked over to three flight’s tactical channel. “Light them up, Rogues, we have the fighters.”
I started the engines, then shunted power to the repulsorlift coils. The X-wing rose like a ghost from a grave and came about to point its nose toward the liner. As Ooryl’s X-wing pulled up on my left and my other two pilots, Vurrulf and Ghufran, arrived on the right, I punched the throttle full forward and launched myself into the fight.
A smile blossomed on my face. Any sapient creature making a claim to sanity would find hurtling along in a fragile craft of metal and ferro-ceramics to be stupid or suicidal. Pushing that same craft into battle merely compounded the situation, and I knew it. By the same token, very few experiences in life can compare to flying in combat—or engaging any enemy in a fight—because doing that is the one point where civilization demands us to harness our animal nature and employ it against a most dangerous prey. Without being physically and mentally and even mechanically at my best, I would die and my friends might even die with me.
But I had no intention of letting that happen.
With a flick of my thumb I switched from lasers over to proton torpedoes and allowed for single fire. I selected an initial target and eased the crosshairs on my heads-up display onto its outline. Whistler beeped steadily as he worked for a target lock, then the box surrounding the fighter went red and his tone became a constant.
I hit the trigger and launched my first proton torpedo. It streaked away hot and pinkish-white, trailed by others lancing out from my flight. While employing proton torpedoes against fighters is seen as overkill by some pilots, within Rogue Squadron using such a tactic was always seen as an expedient way of lowering the odds against us—odds that were usually longer than a Hutt and decidedly more ugly.
The Invids used a form of custom-designed fighter called a Tri-fighter. It started with the ball cockpit and ion engine assembly of Seinar System’s basic TIE fighter—a comm
odity which, after hydrogen and stupidity, was the most plentiful in the galaxy—and married it to a trio of angular blades set 120 degrees apart. The bottom two served as landing gear, while the third came up over the top of the cockpit. The fighter still had the TIE’s twin lasers mounted beneath the cockpit, while the third tine sprouted an ion cannon. The ships also had some basic shields, which explained why they were more successful than your basic eyeball, and side viewports cut into the hull gave the pilot more visibility. Because the trio of tines looked as if they were grasping at the cockpit, we’d nicknamed the design “clutch.”
The shields and extra visibility didn’t help the clutch I’d targeted. The proton torpedo jammed itself right up the left engine’s exhaust port and actually punched out through the cockpit before detonating. The fighter flew into the roiling, golden ball of fire and just vanished. Three more clutches exploded nearby, then another three exploded off to starboard, where two flight was coming in.
“Pick targets carefully, three flight. Ooryl, we’re on the pair to port.”
“Ten copies, Nine.”
I kicked my X-wing up on the port stabilizer foils and hauled back on the stick. Chopping power to the engine, I tightened the circle, then rolled out to the right as the pirates started a long serpentine turn. I switched over from missiles to dual lasers and immediately got a yellow box around the lead fighter. I goosed the throttle back to full to close range and keyed my comm. “I’m on the leader.”
Ooryl gave me a double-click on his comm to let me know he’d gotten the message. Nudging the stick just a bit right, the targeting box went green and I hit the firing button. Two red bolts hit the target. The first fried the shields. The clutch trailed sparks from the shield generator like a comet trailing ice. The second bolt pierced the cockpit and though it hit kind of high, it hit hard, too. Sparks shot from the hole and the clutch began a slow spiral down toward Alakatha.
Ooryl rolled to port as the other clutch broke. I brought my X-wing around in behind him as he lined his shot up. The Gand’s first two shots blasted past the shields and burned furrows in the ship’s hull. The next two drilled the engines, jetting the disintegrating ship forward on a golden gout of flame. The flame abruptly died, leaving the Tri-fighter to tumble through space out toward the asteroid belt.
Star Wars: I, Jedi Page 1
