“I know that, too, and if and when that happens, we’ll show them what Mandos can really do. It’ll be a nice surprise for them. They’ll hardly recognize us.”
The we slipped out. For a moment Fett wondered about all the times he used I and the very few occasions when he said we, and accepted that he now felt a communal sense of responsibility for Mandalore and whoever passed for Mandalorian.
“Can I ask you to consider something, Fett?”
“It’s free, but make it quick.”
“Your father did something once that you might be able to do for us today.”
Spare me the amateur psy ops. “What?”
“He recruited a group of training sergeants for the Old Republic’s commando forces—the Cuy’val Dar. Maybe we could use some of your experienced commandos to train planetary militias to fight the Yuuzhan Vong.”
Fett recalled the Cuy’val Dar, all right: he’d grown up surrounded by them on Kamino. “The multiplier effect.” He paused a beat. It was a good idea, but he didn’t want to look too enthusiastic. “I’ll see who’s interested.”
Kubariet reached inside his suit and took out a datachip. “Use this to configure secure links from your comlink system to mine. I’m your portal, so to speak. Nobody knows this comes from you.”
“Let’s swap. I’ve got a bag of Vong spare parts in the conservator if you need them.”
“I’ve take whatever you’ve got.” Kubariet seemed on the brink of grabbing Fett’s hand, or slapping his shoulder, or some other display of comradeship that made Fett recoil. Kubariet wasn’t giving up on redemption, though, spymaster or not. “Fett, don’t you care that people despise you all as traitors? Can you really swallow it when the New Republic tries to kill you when you’re risking your necks for us?”
Fett tried to recall what it felt like to be a hero but nothing came to mind. He couldn’t speak for his troops or the clans in general, but no, he lost no sleep over it. He had his own code of honor: and abiding by it meant he could live not only with himself, but also with his father’s still-present scrutiny.
“We’ll survive,” he said.
“If you think of something I can do to make your lives easier, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”
Fett couldn’t think of anything that the New Republic could give Mandalore other than a wide berth when the war was over. He turned to walk back to Slave I and retrieve the samples. The irony of the Jedi’s offer wasn’t lost on him, but now was the time to keep a lifetime’s hatred on a leash and do the pragmatic, practical thing—to behave as Jango Fett would have.
Get the job done. Don’t give in to emotion.
Fett could no longer think of a single thing that another person could possibly give him.
Maybe that was the point. He turned on one heel.
“Jedi, there’s one thing you can do.”
“Okay. Name it.”
“Make sure everyone knows that a Mandalorian called Briika Jeban died to save a citizen of the New Republic.”
“Of course. Who was she? Can you tell me any more? Who did she save?”
Fett tilted his head slightly to one side, then resumed his walk to his ship.
“You, Jedi,” he said. “You.”
Keep reading for an excerpt from
STAR WARS:
LEGACY OF THE FORCE:
BETRAYAL
And an exclusive excerpt from
STAR WARS:
LEGACY OF THE FORCE:
BLOODLINES
Plus: Interviews with authors
Aaron Allston and Karen Traviss!
from
STAR WARS:
LEGACY OF THE FORCE:
BETRAYAL
by Aaron Allston
Available now from Del Rey Books
“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 possibility 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.
from
STAR WARS:
LEGACY OF THE FORCE:
BLOODLINES
by Karen Travi
ss
Coming August 29, 2006
from Del Rey Books
Atzerri system, ten standard years after the Yuuzhan Vong war: Slave I in pursuit of prisoner H’buk. Boba Fett’s private record.
“Whatever he’s paying you, Fett, I’ll double it,” says the voice on the comlink.
They say that a lot. They just don’t understand the nature of a contract. This time it’s an Atzerri glitterstim dealer called H’buk who’s overstepped the mark with the Traders’ Coalition to the tune of four hundred thousand credits. The coalition feels it’s worth paying me five hundred thousand credits to teach him—and everyone else—a lesson about honoring debts.
I agree with the Traders’ Coalition wholeheartedly.
“A contract’s a contract,” I tell him. Slave I is close enough on his trail for me to get a visual on him: I swear he’s flying an old Z-95 Headhunter. No hyperdrive, or he’d have jumped for it by now. And no wonder he’s surprised. An old, old Firespray like Slave I shouldn’t be able to catch him on sublight drive alone.
But I’ve fitted a few more…extras recently. The only completely original part of Slave I now is the seat I’m in.
“My laser cannon’s armed,” says H’buk, breathless.
“Good for you.” Why they always want a conversation, I’ll never know. Look, shoot or shut up; I know you’ll have to come about to target me with that cannon, and in that second or two I’ll take out your drives anyway. “The galaxy’s a dangerous place.”
The Headhunter executes a neat turn to port with its aft maneuvering jets and the Slave’s laser locks on to the Headhunter’s drive signature, matching its turns and loops with no need for guidance from me. His engine flares in a ball of white light. The fighter begins an uncontrolled roll and I have to gun it to get the tractor beam locked and haul H’buk in.
The grapple arms make a satisfying chunk-unkkkk against the Headhunter’s airframe as I secure the fighter against the casing above Slave’s torpedo launcher. The sound of that reverberating through your hull, I’m told, is just like a cell door closing behind you: the point at which prisoners lose all hope.
Funny; that would only make me fight harder.
H’buk is making the noises of panic and pleading that I hardly notice these days. Some prisoners are defiant, but most give in to fear. He makes me offers all the way back to Atzerri, promising anything to survive.
“I can pay you millions.”
The contract is to deliver him alive. It’s very specific.
“And my stock holdings in Kuat Drive Yards.”
I think it’s the silent routine that gets to them in the end.
“Fett, I have a beautiful daughter…”
He shouldn’t have said that. Now I’m angry, and I don’t often get angry. “Never use your kids, scumbag. Never.”
My father put me first. Any father should. Not that I ever felt pity—or anything—for H’buk, but I’m satisfied now that he deserves everything that the Traders’ Coalition is going to do to him. If I were the sympathetic kind, I’d kill him. I’m not. And the contract says alive.
“Want to negotiate a landing fee?” asks Atzerri Air Traffic Control.
“Want to negotiate an ion cannon?”
“Oh…apologies, Master Fett, sir…”
They always see my point.
Landing on Atzerri is a little tricky when you’re hauling a crippled fighter on your upperworks. I set Slave I down on the landing strip, lowering gently on the thrusters, feeling the aft section vibrating under the load. And I have an audience.
The coalition wants to show they can afford to hire the best to hunt down anyone who crosses them. I oblige. A bit of theater, a little public relations: like Mandalorian armor, it makes the point without a shot needing to be fired. I walk along Slave I’s casing to clamber up onto the Headhunter’s fuselage and crack open its canopy seal with the laser housed in my wrist gauntlet. So I hit H’buk harder than I need to, and haul him out of the cockpit to rappel down ten meters to the ground on the lanyard with him.
It hurts deep in my stomach. I don’t let anyone see that.
Then I deposit the prisoner on the landing strip in front of the men he owes four hundred thousand credits. It makes the point. I like making points. Presentation is half the battle.
“Want to keep the starfighter, too?” asks my customer.
“Not my taste.” The spaceport utility loader comes to remove it from Slave I. I hold out my palm: I want the rest of my fee.
He hands me the outstanding 250,000 creds on a verified chip. “Why do you still do this, Fett?”
“Because people still ask me.”
It’s a good question. I ponder it while I sit back in the cockpit and catch up with the financial headlines on the HoloNet news as Slave I heads for Kamino on autopilot. My doctor is meeting me there. He doesn’t like the long journey but I don’t pay him to be happy.
Now I find I’m thinking of a daughter—Ailyn—who I haven’t seen in fifty years, wondering if she’s still alive.
You see, I’m ill. I think I’m dying.
If I am, then there are things I’ve got to do. One of them is to find out what happened to Ailyn. Another is to decide who’s going to be Mandalore when I’m gone.
And the third, of course, is to cheat death.
I’ve had a lot of practice at that.
Interview with
Aaron Allston, author of
STAR WARS:
LEGACY OF THE FORCE:
BETRAYAL
Question: Where does your new novel, Betrayal, fall in the Star Wars timeline?
Aaron Allston: It takes place several years after the NJO series. Ben Skywalker, born during the events of the NJO, is thirteen at the start of the Legacy of the Force series. Chronologically, the last novel storyline before Legacy of the Force is Troy Denning’s Dark Nest trilogy, and Troy does some foreshadowing of Legacy events in his books.
Q: Can you set things up for us a bit?
AA: Sure. Years after the defeat of the Yuuzhan Vong, the galaxy is still recovering from the beating it sustained during those dark times. Now war may erupt again—this time between once-allied planets, as Corellia defiantly plays a game of brinksmanship with the Galactic Alliance.
The galaxy’s greatest heroes—Luke, Leia, Han, Jaina, Jacen, and many others—will find themselves reluctantly standing on opposite sides of the conflict…and a danger from Luke’s past will force Jacen Solo to make a difficult choice if he’s to save the lives of those he loves.
Q: Is this the beginning of a major new story arc, something along the lines of the New Jedi Order, in which many different writers will contribute, or is it a smaller arc to be written entirely by you?
AA: It’s sort of halfway between the two extremes. It’s a major story arc, as consequential to the Star Wars universe as the NJO was, but it’s a nine-book series being written by three writers: me, Karen Traviss, and Troy Denning. We’re in constant rotation, so I’m doing the first one, Karen the second, Troy the third, me again for the fourth, and so on.
One of the reasons the Legacy of the Force series has been interesting is because we learned so much nuts-and-bolts stuff with the New Jedi Order—about coordination of writers, handing off characters and subplots, that sort of thing. It’s fun to be able to put into practice what we learned.
Q: Jacen Solo is very much at the heart of this novel. Without giving any spoilers, can you talk a bit about how you see his character, and how he has been shaped, as a man and a Jedi, by the events of his past?
AA: That “without giving any spoilers” restriction makes this one a little tricky to answer. In becoming a Jedi, Jacen has followed a path unlike anything any other Jedi has traveled. He’s been exposed to more varieties of Force-related teaching than perhaps any other Force-user. This may be his greatest strength—but also his greatest weakness. He can do things no one else can, but he has also become accustomed to thinking so much for himself that he’s very, very quick to
dismiss and disregard traditions. It’s as though he has so many predecessors that he’s quick to ignore the lessons learned by many of them. This combination of virtues and vices makes him very interesting to write.
Q: How do you see the relationship between Jacen and Luke? There seems to be some rivalry and resentment there, at least on Jacen’s part.
AA: Jacen loves his uncle. But at this point I think he loves him more than he respects him. Yes, there’s some resentment there. I don’t think of it as rivalry—Jacen doesn’t want Luke’s job, doesn’t want Luke’s specific role in history. He just wishes that Luke would see and understand what Jacen does and make decisions with a greater appreciation of Jacen’s outlook.
Q: Ben Skywalker also plays an important role in the book, one that I assume will grow as the series evolves.
AA: Definitely. Ben is a teenager, with a teenager’s normal curiosity, desire to make his way in the world, hormonal tides, resentments, paranoia, extraordinary potential, angst and drama…and he’s heir to one of the strongest, well, legacies of the Force in the galaxy far, far away. This is sort of like giving a teenager his own dynamite shack. Just how responsibly is he going to use it?
Q: An essential part of the novel’s plot has to do with the ability of Jedi to use the Force to glimpse potential futures. What are the limitations of this power? It seems strange for Jedi, who are trained to be so attuned to the present moment, to seek foreknowledge of a more-or-less predetermined future.
AA: There are great limitations on it, if only because the future is not fixed until it’s the present. Assuming you can see “the future” reliably and with crystal clarity—and no one in the Star Wars universe is that good, so far as I know—there’s the fact that the future is always in motion. Everything you do can change it. So peering into all the observable futures might give a Jedi some indication of patterns, of trends, but basing any decision on one of those futures is a very risky choice. It’s Charlie Brown assuming, yet one more time, that Lucy is going to hold the football steady for him to kick. Only this time lives are at stake.