Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (49 page)

“Oh, you worry too much,” Qennto chided. “It won’t take more than a day or two to
fix the hyperdrive. If we push it a little, we shouldn’t be more than a week overdue.”

Car’das suppressed a grimace. Pushing the hyperdrive, if he recalled correctly, was
what had wrecked the thing to begin with.

There was a twitter from the comm. “We’re being hailed,” he reported, frowning as
he keyed it on. He threw a look at the visual displays, searching for their unknown
caller—

And felt his whole body go rigid. “Qennto!” he snapped. “It’s—”

He was cut off by a deep rumbling chuckle from the comm. “So, Dubrak Qennto,” an all-too-familiar
voice rumbled in Huttese. “You think to escape me so easily?”

“You call that
easy
?” Qennto muttered as he keyed his transmitter. “Oh, hi, Progga,” he said. “Look,
like I told you before, I can’t let you have these furs. I’ve already contracted with
Drixo—”

“Ignore the furs,” Progga cut in. “Show me your hidden treasure hoard.”

Qennto frowned at Maris. “My
what
?”

“Do not play the fool,” Progga warned, his voice going an octave deeper. “I know your
sort. You do not simply run
from
something, but run rather
to
something else. This is the lone star system along this vector; and behold, you are
here. What could you have run to but a secret base and treasure hoard?”

Qennto muted the transmitter. “Car’das, where is he?”

“A hundred kilometers off the starboard bow,” Car’das told him, his hands shaking
as he ran a full scan on the distant Hutt ship. “And he’s coming up fast.”

“Maris?”

“Whatever you did to shut down the hyperdrive, you did a great job,” she said tightly.
“It’s completely locked.
We’ve still got the backup, but if we try to run and he tracks us again—”

“And he will,” Qennto growled. Taking a deep breath, he switched the transmitter back
on. “It wasn’t like that, Progga,” he said soothingly. “We were just trying to—”

“Enough!” the Hutt bellowed. “Lead me to this base. Now.”

“There isn’t any base,” Qennto insisted. “This is the Unknown Regions. Why would I
set up a base out
here
?”

A light flashed on Car’das’s proximity sensor. “Incoming!” he snapped, his eyes darting
back and forth among the displays as he searched for the source of the attack.

“Where?” Qennto snapped back.

Car’das had it now, coming from directly beneath the
Bargain Hunter:
a long, dark missile arrowing straight toward them. “There,” he said, pointing a
finger straight down as he stared at the display.

It was only then that his brain caught up with the fact that this wasn’t the vector
a missile would take from the approaching Hutt ship. He was opening his mouth to point
that out when the missile burst open, its nose ejecting a wad of some kind of material.
The wad began to expand as it cleared the shards of its container, opening like a
fast-blooming flower into a filmy wall stretching over a kilometer across.

“Power off!” Qennto snapped, lunging across his board to the row of master power switches.
“Hurry!”

“What is it?” Car’das asked, grabbing for his board’s own set of cutoffs.

“A Connor net, or something like it,” Qennto gritted out.

“What,
that
size?” Car’das asked in disbelief.

“Just
do
it,” Qennto snarled. Status lights were winking red and going out now as the three
of them raced against the incoming net.

The net won. Car’das had made it through barely two-thirds
of his switches when the rippling edges came into sight around the sides of the hull.
They folded themselves inward, curling around toward the bridge—

“Close your eyes,” Maris warned.

Car’das squeezed his eyes shut. Even through the lids he saw a hint of the brilliant
flash as the net dumped its high-voltage current into and through the ship, sending
a brief coronal tingling across his skin.

And when he carefully opened his eyes again, every light that had still been glowing
across the bridge had gone dark.

The
Bargain Hunter
was dead.

Through the canopy came a flicker of light from the direction of the Hutt ship. “Looks
like they got Progga, too,” he said, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the sudden
silence.

“I doubt it,” Qennto rumbled. “His ship’s big enough to have cap drains and other
stuff to protect him from tricks like this.”

“Ten to one he’ll fight, too,” Maris murmured, her voice tight.

“Oh, he’ll fight, all right,” Qennto said heavily. “He’s way too stupid to realize
that anyone who can make a Connor net that big will have plenty of other tricks up
his sleeve.”

A multiple blaze of green blasterfire erupted from the direction of the Hutt ship.
It was answered by brilliant blue flashes vectoring in from three different directions,
fired from ships too small or too dark to see at the
Bargain Hunter
’s range. “You think whoever this is might get so busy with Progga that they’ll forget
about us?” Maris asked hopefully.

“I don’t think so,” Car’das said, gesturing out the canopy at the small gray spacecraft
that had taken up position with its nose pointed at the freighter’s portside flank.
It was about the size of a shuttle or heavy fighter,
built in a curved, flowing design of a sort he’d never seen before. “They’ve left
us a guard.”

“Figures,” Qennto said, glancing once at the alien ship and then turning back to the
green and blue flashes. “Fifty says Progga lasts at least fifteen minutes and takes
one of his attackers with him.”

Neither of the others took him up on the bet. Car’das watched the fight, wishing he
had his sensors back. He’d read a little about space battle tactics in school, but
the attackers’ methodology didn’t seem to fit with anything he could remember. He
was still trying to figure it out when, with a final salvo of blue light, it was over.

“Six minutes,” Qennto said, his voice grim. “Whoever these guys are, they’re good.”

“You don’t recognize them, either?” Maris asked, looking out at their silent guard.

“I don’t even recognize the design,” he grunted, popping his restraints and standing
up. “Let’s go check on the damage, see if we can at least get her ready for company.
Car’das, you stay here and mind the store.”

“Me?” Car’das asked, feeling his stomach tighten. “But what if they—you know—signal
us?”

“What do you think?” Qennto grunted as he and Maris headed aft. “You answer them.”

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:

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

T
HE
I
MPERIAL
S
TAR
D
ESTROYER
R
EPRISAL
SLIPPED SILENTLY
through the blackness of space, preparing itself for action against the Rebel forces
threatening to tear the galaxy apart.

Standing on the command walkway, his hands clasped behind him, Captain Kendal Ozzel
gazed out at the planet Teardrop directly ahead, a mixture of anticipation and dark
brooding swirling through him. As far as he was concerned the entire planet was a
snake pit, crawling with smugglers, third-rate pirate gangs, and other dregs of society.
If
he’d
been in command of the Death Star instead of that idiot Tarkin, he mused,
he
would have picked someplace like Teardrop instead of Alderaan for the weapon’s first
serious field test.

But he hadn’t been in charge; and now both Tarkin and the Death Star were gone, blown
to shrapnel off Yavin 4. In a single, awful moment the Rebel Alliance had morphed
from a minor nuisance to a bitter enemy.

And Imperial Center had responded. Less than three days ago the word had come down
to show no mercy to either the Rebels or their sympathizers.

Not that Ozzel would have shown any mercy at any rate. Eliminating Rebels, and Rebel
sympathizers, had become the best and fastest way to success in the Imperial
fleet. Perhaps all the way to an admiral’s rank bars. “Status?” he called behind him.

“Forty-seven standard minutes to orbit, sir,” the navigation officer called from the
crew pits.

Ozzel nodded. “Keep a sharp watch,” he ordered. “No one gets off that planet.”

He glowered at the faintly lit disk ahead of them. “No one,” he added softly.

“Luke?” Han Solo called from the
Millennium Falcon
’s cockpit. “Come on, kid—move it. We’re on a tight schedule here.”

“They’re in!” Luke Skywalker’s voice came back. “Ramp’s sealed.”

Han already knew that from his control board readouts, of course. If the kid stuck
around, he’d have to learn not to clutter the ship’s atmosphere with unnecessary chatter.
“Okay, Chewie, hit it,” he said.

Beside him Chewbacca gave a rolling trill of acknowledgment, and the
Falcon
lifted smoothly off the hard-packed Teardrop ground.

Apparently not smoothly enough. From behind, Han heard a couple of muffled and rather
indignant exclamations. “Hey!” someone shouted.

Han rolled his eyes as he fed power to the sublight engines. “This is
absolutely
the last time we take on passengers,” he told his partner firmly.

Chewbacca’s reply was squarely to the point and a shade on the disrespectful side.

“No, I mean it,” Han insisted. “From now on, if they don’t pay, they don’t fly.”

From behind him came footsteps, and he glanced back as Luke dropped into the seat
behind Chewbacca. “They’re all settled,” he announced.