As the first fighter swung around for a third pass, Han swiveled his gun turret as far as it would go and stared at the targeting screen again. This time he would forget about finesse and perfect accuracy. He just wanted to blast the sucker. His lasers were fully charged, and he could afford to waste a few shots, as long as this wasn’t going to be a prolonged battle.
As soon as the targeting cross touched the image of the fighter, Han squeezed his firing buttons at full power, strafing his deadly laser across the path of the incoming ship. The Imperial fighter swooped in but could not change its course quickly enough, plowing through the shower of laser bolts.
The ship erupted into a flame-flower of exploding fuel tanks and expanding atmosphere. Han and Chewbacca shouted their triumph in unison. Even euphoric, Han didn’t sit around patting himself on the back.
“Let’s go after the other one, Chewie.” The second TIE fighter swerved outward in a long trajectory, then headed back toward Kessel. “Hurry, before those reinforcements can get here.”
He wondered if perhaps he and Chewbacca shouldn’t turn and flee immediately. But part of him refused to let anybody take pot-shots at the Millennium Falcon and just walk away from it.
Chewbacca increased speed, closing the gap between the Falcon and the TIE fighter. “Just get me one good shot, Chewie. One good shot.”
He was in an unmarked modified light freighter—why would the TIE fighters come out shooting at them in the first place? Was it the New Republic ID beacon? What was going on at Kessel? Leia sat around thinking about details like that, analyzing the possibilities, and coming up with scenarios. With her tremendous load of diplomatic duties, she was becoming more and more of a thinker each day, trying to solve things by committee and negotiation. But a political solution wouldn’t work if an Imperial TIE fighter came in shooting at you.
Another ship soared up from behind as they chased the TIE fighter toward Kessel. Han shot off a few bursts from his laser, but they all missed; then he turned his attention to the ship tailing them. The Falcon had no operational shields back there.
Chewbacca called out again from below; then Han got his second surprise for the day. “I see it, I see it!”
An X-wing fighter approached from the rear, slowly gaining on the Falcon as they neared Kessel. Han took another potshot at the TIE fighter. Even from this distance the X-wing fighter seemed old and battered, as if it had been repaired many times.
“Chewie, contact the X-wing and tell him we’d appreciate whatever help he can give us.” Han pressed his back against the firing chair and focused his attention on his target.
The fleeing TIE fighter soared into the wispy tail of atmosphere behind the planet. Han could see a bright pathway as the speed of the ship ionized the gas.
Then the X-wing fired on the Falcon from behind. The lasers scored a direct hit, incinerating the protruding sensor dish mounted on the top of the ship.
Han and Chewie shouted at each other, scrambling to figure what to do. Chewbacca took the Falcon into a tight dive closer to the atmosphere of Kessel.
“Turn us around! Turn us around!” They had to get their unprotected aft section out of the X-wing’s line of fire.
The X-wing shot again, burning metal on the hull of the Falcon. All the lights went out inside the ship. From the lurch of the cabin Han knew the hit had been a bad one. He could already smell something burning below decks. Emergency lights clicked on.
“We’ve got to get out of here!”
Chewbacca barked the Wookiee equivalent of “no kidding.”
They ducked into the atmospheric tail, buffeted by the suddenly dense gas particles pelting the ship. Around them streamers of heated gas glowed orange and blue. The X-wing came in from behind, still firing.
Han’s mind raced. They could skim around Kessel in a tight orbit, then slingshot back out of the system. With the black hole cluster so close at hand, no one would risk jumping into hyperspace without intensive prior calculations, and neither he nor Chewie could spare the time to do them.
With the Falcon’s sensor dish slagged, Han couldn’t even send out a distress call or try to sweet-talk the traitorous commander of the X-wing. He couldn’t even surrender! Talk about being stuck. “Chewie, if you have any suggestions—”
He stopped talking as his mouth dropped open. As they swept around Kessel, Han detected wave after wave of fighter ships launching from the garrison moon, raising a defensive curtain the Millennium Falcon would never be able to cross.
He saw hundreds of ships of every size and make imaginable, salvaged warships and stolen pleasure cruisers. Reaching the safety of numbers, the second TIE fighter did another tight loop to join the rest of the group. And they all came in shooting with a blur of turbolaser bolts that looked like a fireworks display. Despite the motley appearance of the Kessel fleet, Han’s sensors showed that their weapons worked just fine.
The attacking X-wing scored a direct hit. The cabin shook.
The Falcon took a turn upward as Chewbacca tried to flee the oncoming wave of ships. Han sent a barrage of laser fire into the cluster and was gratified to see the engine pod of a small Z-95 Headhunter fighter burst into flames. The snub fighter dropped out of the attacking fleet and wobbled toward Kessel’s atmosphere. Han hoped it would crash.
Seeing that it would serve no purpose to keep firing against overwhelming odds, Han dropped back down the access shaft of the gun turret to the cockpit to see what he could do to assist Chewbacca.
Then the fleet of ships began pummeling them. The X-wing fired again, scoring a second direct hit. A firestorm of laser blasts struck their forward deflector shields. Chewie slewed the Falcon from side to side in a futile evasive maneuver.
Han settled himself into the other pilot’s chair just in time to see the indicator lights for the forward shields wink out. They were now unprotected from the front and from behind.
Another hit rocked them, and Han’s chest smacked against the control panel. “There goes the main drive unit. We’re space-meat in the next barrage. Take us down, Chewie. Get us into the atmosphere. It’s the only thing we can do.”
Chewbacca started to express his disbelief, but Han grabbed the controls and sent them lurching down toward Kessel. “It’s gonna be a bumpy ride. Hold on to your fur.”
The swarm of attacking ships whirled in space as the Falcon plowed into the white atmosphere of Kessel. Han grabbed his seat as the ship struck the clouds. He suddenly felt the buffeting winds caused by gouts of air escaping into space. From his control panels and the stench leaking from the back compartments, Han knew that his maneuvering capabilities would be minimal. By the groaning sounds from his copilot, he knew the Wookiee had realized the same thing.
“Think of it this way, Chewie. If we land this thing in one piece, our skill as pilots will be legendary from one end of the galaxy to the other!” Han said with a humor he did not feel. I knew I shouldn’t have come back to Kessel.
The Falcon was going down. Both Han and Chewbacca fought to keep a steady downward course that would not burn them up in the insubstantial atmosphere.
Kessel’s main defensive fleet swept into orbit and prepared for an orderly descent. One sleek, insectile ship, which Han recognized as a black-market-built Hornet Interceptor, peeled off, streaking downward in the Falcon’s backdraft.
Chewbacca saw it first. The ship, aerodynamically perfect, slid through the atmosphere like a vibroblade, ignoring the heat generated on its hull. The ship fired surgical strikes of turbolasers at the Falcon’s maneuvering jets, disabling them further.
“We’re already crashing!” Han bellowed. “What more do they want?” But he knew: they wanted the Falcon to be destroyed on impact, all occupants erased. Han suspected he didn’t need any help from the Hornet Interceptor.
As they plunged downward, the Falcon approached one of the giant atmosphere factories, a huge smokestack mounted on the surface of Kessel, where immense engines catalyzed the rock and cooked out gases into a cyclo
ne of breathable air.
The Hornet Interceptor fired again. The Falcon lurched from a near miss. Chewbacca’s face was grim. His fangs showed as he concentrated on keeping them alive.
“Chewie, pull as close to the plume as you can. I’ve got an idea.” Chewbacca yowled, but Han cut him off. “Just do it, buddy!”
When the Hornet tried to outflank them, Han swept the ship aside as the towering plume of atmosphere boiled into the sky. The Hornet Interceptor tried to second-guess his move, but Han lurched sideways again, driving the Hornet into the roaring upward flow of wind.
An aileron strut in the delicate insectile wing snapped off, and the Hornet spun into the cyclone. Other parts of its hull broke apart as the ship tried to escape but lurched deeper into the danger zone. Han gave a cry of triumph as the ship exploded into flames that were pulled to tatters by the atmosphere factory’s vortex.
Then the surface of Kessel rushed up at them like a gigantic hammer.
Han fought with the controls. “At least we’ll have a soft landing with the new repulsorlifts we installed,” he said.
He grabbed at the panel, priming the controls. Chewbacca barked at him to hurry. Han activated the repulsorlifts as he simultaneously heaved a sigh of relief.
Nothing.
“What?” He slammed his fingers on the switch again and again, but the repulsorlifts refused to operate. “I just had those fixed!”
Han yelled above the noise of screaming wind as he fought to bring the Falcon under some semblance of control. “Okay, Chewie, I am definitely open for suggestions!”
But Chewbacca had no time to answer before the ship crashed into the rugged surface of Kessel.
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 Karpyshyn: 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.
CHAPTER ONE
In Sith space, everyone is a slave. It was a funny thing about a bunch whose credo included a line about their “chains being broken,” Narsk thought. They were always careful to leave plenty of chains intact for everyone else.
Still, some people were more enslaved than others. It paid to be special, to be good at something. Life was less unpleasant then. And for the really special? One had one’s choice of masters—not that the options were that appealing.
Narsk Ka’hane’s own specialty had brought him to Darkknell, seat of power for Daiman, self-declared Sith Lord and would-be godling. Narsk had first used a stealth bodysuit to harvest rimebats from caverns on Verdanth, and what he was doing now wasn’t much different. True, the Bothan couldn’t imagine anyone back home clinging upside down to a rope in a high-security tower’s ventilation system—but then, not everyone could be special.
What was different now was the stealth suit. The Sith warring in the region hadn’t focused much on advancing stealth technology over the last few decades; they were only after bigger explosions. That was fine with Narsk. The bodysuit he wore was the top of a Republic line never seen in the Grumani sector. He didn’t know how his supplier had acquired a Cyricept Personal Concealment System, Mark VI—or even whether the previous five versions were any good. Narsk just knew he’d never gotten so far on an assignment so easily.
Almost a shame, given all the preparation he’d put in. He’d arrived in Xakrea, Darkknell’s administrative capital, weeks earlier to establish his cover identity. Locating the target was simple enough; the lopsided pyramid known colloquially as the Black Fang was visible from most of town. He’d carefully studied traffic patterns around the obsidian edifice and noted the shift changes of the sentries guarding the few openings. Within a month, he’d located every route into and out of the colossal house of secrets.
And then he had walked right in.
The Mark VI could do for tradecraft what hyperdrive did for space travel, Narsk thought. Electronic baffles worked into the suit’s skin at a molecular level warped and bent electromagnetic waves around the wearer. Sound, light, comms—the Mark VI dodged
them all. And Cyricept had thought of everything. A breath filter matched exhalations to room temperature and humidity. Special goggles permitted Narsk to see out, despite the fact that no light was reaching his eyes. They’d even supplied a similarly cloaked pouch for carry-along items. If Narsk wasn’t exactly invisible, he took an attentive eye to spot, especially in the dark.
But attentiveness, Narsk had found, was not a gift that “Lord Daiman, creator of all,” had seen fit to bestow on his sentries. As elsewhere, the peculiar Lord’s adepts had rounded up menacing-looking characters and proceeded to overdress them. There wasn’t a bruiser so tough he couldn’t be made to look silly when strapped into gilded armor and wrapped in a burgundy skirt. One poor Gamorrean—his squat, lumbering green body particularly at odds with his finery—across town had looked ready to cry.
So while Narsk had brought his needler and extra rounds on every trip to the research center, he’d never needed them. The Mark VI had gotten him to the door, but the sentries had actually opened it for him, allowing him inside when they entered themselves. “When your job’s to make sure nothing ever happens,” he’d once heard, “you begin to see nothing happening even when something’s going on.” By now, his thirteenth and final trip inside, Narsk believed it. Many of the secrets of the Black Fang—officially, the Daimanate Dynamic Testing Facility (Darkknell)—rested comfortably in the memory of the datapad in his pouch.
Lord Odion would be pleased.
That wasn’t always a good thing, Narsk knew: Daiman’s older brother got most of his thrills from death and destruction. The whole sorry war smacked of a psychological study. Daiman was the spoiled kid who thought he was the only person in the universe who mattered; Odion was the jealous sibling, reacting to his loss of uniqueness by trashing the playpen. If Daiman thought he created everything, Odion believed it was his destiny to destroy everything. Half of Odion’s adepts were part of a death cult, flitting around his evil light hoping to cash out in his service. Ralltiiri glowmites were less suicidal.