Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (45 page)

“They’re as dead for you as they are for me!”

“We’ll see about that!” Devore reached for the armrest, only to be blocked by Korsin’s
beefy wrist. The commander’s teeth clenched.
Don’t do this. Not now
.

A baby screamed. Korsin looked quizzically at Devore for a moment before turning to
see Seelah in the doorway, clutching a small crimson-wrapped bundle. The child wailed.

Darker-skinned than either of them, Seelah was an operative on Devore’s mining team.
Korsin knew her simply as Devore’s female—that was the nicest way to put it. He didn’t
know which role came first. Now the slender figure looked haggard as she slumped against
the doorway. Her child, bound tightly in the manner of their people, had worked a
tiny arm free and was clawing at her scattered auburn hair. She seemed not to notice.

Surprise—was it annoyance?—crossed Devore’s face. “I sent you to the lifepods!”

Korsin flinched. The lifepods were a nonstarter—literally. They’d known that back
in space when the first one snagged on its stubborn docking claw and exploded right
in the ship’s hull. He didn’t know what had happened to the rest, but the ship had
taken such damage to its spine that he figured the whole array was a probable loss.

“We were … in the cargo hold,” she said, gasping as Devore reached her and grasped
her arms. “Near our quarters.” Devore’s eyes darted past her, down the hallway.

“Devore, you can’t
go
to the lifepods—”

“Shut up, Yaru!”

“Stop it,” she said. “There’s land.” When Devore stared at her blankly, she exhaled
and looked urgently toward the captain.
“Land!”

Korsin made the connection. “The cargo hold!” The
crystals were in a hold safely forward from the damage—in a place with viewports angled
to see below. There was something under all that blue, after all. Something that gave
them a chance.

“The port thruster will light,” she implored.

“No, it won’t,” Korsin said. Not from any command on the bridge, anyway. “We’re going
to have to do this by hand—so to speak.” He stepped past the ailing Marcom to the
starboard viewport, which looked back upon the main bulge of the ship trailing aft.
There were four large torpedo tube covers on either side of the ship, spherical lids
that swiveled above or below the horizontal plane depending on where they were situated.
They never opened those covers in atmospheres, for fear of the drag they would cause.
That design flaw might save them. “Gloyd, will they work?”

“They’ll cycle—once. But without power, we’re gonna have to set off the firing pins
to open them.”

Devore gawked. “We’re not going out there!” They were still at terminal velocity.
But Korsin was moving, too, bustling past his brother to the port viewport. “Everyone,
to either side!”

Seelah and another crewman stepped to the right pane. Devore, glaring, reluctantly
joined her. Alone on the left, Yaru Korsin placed his hand on the coldly sweating
portal. Outside, meters away, he found one of the massive circular covers—and the
small box mounted to its side, no larger than a comlink. It was smaller than he remembered
from inspection.
Where’s the mechanism? There
. He reached out through the Force.
Careful …

“Top torpedo door, both sides.
Now!
”

With a determined mental act, Korsin triggered the firing pin. A large bolt released
explosively, shooting ahead—and the mammoth tube cover moved in response, rotating
on its single hinge. The ship, already
quaking, groaned loudly as the door reached its final position, perched atop the plane
of the
Omen
like a makeshift aileron. Korsin looked expectantly behind him, where Seelah’s expression
assured him of a similar success on her side. Like many of the Sith believers aboard,
she had been trained in the use of the Force—but Korsin had never considered using
it to make in-flight corrections before. For a moment, he wondered if it had worked …

Thoom!
With a wrenching jolt that leveled the bridge crew,
Omen
tipped downward. It didn’t slow the ship as much as Korsin had expected, but that
wasn’t the point. At least they could see where they were going now, what was below.
If these blasted clouds would clear …

At once, he saw it. Land, indeed—but more water. Much more. Jagged, rugged peaks rose
from a greenish surf, almost a skeleton of rock lit by the alien planet’s setting
sun, barely visible on the horizon. They were rocketing quickly into night. There
wouldn’t be much time to make a decision …

… but Korsin already knew there was no choice to be made. While more of the crew might
survive a water landing, they wouldn’t last long when their superiors learned their
precious cargo was at the bottom of an alien ocean.
Better they pick the crystals out from among our burned corpses
. Frowning, he ordered the Force-users on the starboard side to activate their lower
torpedo doors.

Again, a violent lurch, and
Omen
banked left, angling toward an angry line of mountains. Rearward, a lifepod shot
away from the ship—and slammed straight into the ridge. The searing plume was gone
from the bridge’s field of view in less than a second. Gloyd’s torpedo crew would
be envious, Korsin thought, shaking his head and blowing out a big breath. Still people
alive back there.
They’re still trying
.

Omen
cleared a snow-covered peak by less than a hundred meters. Dark water opened up below.
Another course correction—and
Omen
was quickly running out of torpedo tubes. Another lifepod launched, arcing down and
away. Only when the small craft neared the surf did its pilot—if it had one—get the
engine going. The rockets shot the pod straight down into the ocean at full speed.

Squinting through sweat, Korsin looked back at his crew. “Depth charge! Fine time
for a mixed warfare drill!” Even Gloyd didn’t laugh at that one. But it wasn’t propriety,
the captain saw as he turned. It was what was ahead. More sharp mountains rising from
the waters—including a mountain meant for them. Korsin reeled back to his chair. “Stations!”

Seelah wandered in a panic, nearly losing the wailing Jariad as she staggered. She
had no station, no defensive position. She began to cross to Devore, frozen at his
terminal. There was no time. A hand reached for her. Yaru yanked her close, pushing
her down behind the command chair into a protective crouch.

The act cost him.

Omen
slammed into a granite ridge at an angle, losing the fight—and still more of itself.
The impact threw Captain Korsin forward against the bulkhead, nearly impaling him
on the remaining shards of the smashed viewport. Gloyd and Marcom strained to move
toward him, but
Omen
was still on the move, clipping another rocky rise and spiraling downward. Something
exploded, strewing flaming wreckage in the ship’s grinding wake.

Agonizingly,
Omen
spun forward again, the torpedo doors that had been their makeshift airbrakes snapping
like driftwood as it slid. Down a gravelly incline it skidded, showering stones in
all directions. Korsin, his forehead bleeding, looked up and out to see—

—nothing.
Omen
continued to slide toward an abyss. It had run out of mountain.

Stop.
Stop!

“Stop!”

Silence. Korsin coughed and opened his eyes.

They were still alive.

“No,” Seelah said, kneeling and clinging to Jariad. “We’re already dead.”

Thanks to you
, she did not say—but Korsin felt the words streaming at him through the Force. He
didn’t need the help. Her eyes said plenty.

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:

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

LORD SCOURGE RAISED
the hood of his cloak as he stepped off the shuttle, a shield against the wind and
pelting rain. Storms were common here on Dromund Kaas; dark clouds perpetually blocked
out the sun, rendering terms like
day
and
night
meaningless. The only natural illumination came from the frequent bursts of lightning
arcing across the sky, but the glow from the spaceport and nearby Kaas City provided
more than enough light to see where he was going.

The powerful electrical storms were a physical manifestation of the dark side power
that engulfed the entire planet—a power that had brought the Sith back here a millennium
before, when their very survival had been in doubt.