Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (57 page)

And Mara reiterated her warning to Leia not to take the man lightly. “He’s the strangest
man I ever met,” she explained, and given her past exploits with notorious sorts like
Jabba the Hutt and Talon Karrde, that was quite a statement. “Even when I tried to
use the Force to gain a better perspective on him, I drew …” Mara paused, as if looking
for some way to properly express the feeling. “A blank,” she decided. “As if the Force
had nothing to do with him.”

Leia and Jaina looked at her curiously.

“No,” Mara corrected. “More like he had nothing to do with the Force.”

The perfect disconnected ideologue, Leia thought, and she expressed her feelings with
a single sarcastic word: “Wonderful.”

He stood on the platform surrounded by his fanatical Red Knights. Before him, ten
thousand Rhommamoolians crowded into every open space of the great public square of
Redhaven, once the primary trading spaceport of the planet. But those facilities had
been leveled in the early days of the uprising, with the Rhommamoolians declaring
their independence from Osarian. And more recently, since the coming of Nom Anor as
spearhead of the revolution, the place had been renamed the Square of Hopeful Redemption.

Here, the citizens came to declare freedom from Osarian.

Here, the followers came to renounce the New Republic.

Here, the believers came to renounce the Jedi.

And here, the fanatics came to discredit progress and technology, to cry out for a
simpler time, when the strength of a being’s legs, and not the weight of his purse,
determined how far he could travel, and the strength of his hands, and not the weight
of his purse, allowed him to harvest the gifts of nature.

Nom Anor loved it all, the adulation and the fanatical, bordering on suicidal, devotion.
He cared nothing for Rhommamool or its inhabitants, cared nothing for the foolish
cries for some ridiculous “simpler time.”

But how he loved the chaos his words and followers inflicted upon the order of the
galaxy. How he loved the brooding undercurrent of resentment toward the New Republic,
and the simmering anger aimed at the Jedi Knights, these supercreatures of the galaxy.

Wouldn’t his superiors be pleased?

Nom Anor flipped his shiny black cape back from his shoulder and held his fist upraised
into the air, drawing shrieks
of appreciation. In the center of the square, where once had stood the Portmaster’s
Pavilion, now was a huge pit, thirty meters in diameter and ten deep. Whistles and
whines emanated from that pit, along with cries for mercy and pitifully polite words
of protest—the voices of droids collected by the folk of Rhommamool and dropped into
the hole.

Great cheers erupted from all corners of the square as a pair of the Red Knights entered
from one avenue, dragging a 9PO protocol droid between them. They went to the edge
of the pit, took up the poor 9PO by the arms and the legs, and on a three-count, launched
him onto the pile of metal consisting of the astromech and mine-sniffer droids, the
Redhaven street-cleaner droids, and the personal butler droids of the wealthier Rhommamoolian
citizens.

When the hooting and cheering died down, Nom Anor opened his hands, revealing a single
small stone. Then he clenched his fist again, squeezing with tremendous power, crushing
the stone in his grasp so that dust and flecks of rock splinters slipped out the sides.

The signal to begin.

As one the crowd surged forward, lifting great chunks of stone, the debris from the
wreckage of the pavilion. They came to the edge of the pit one after another and hurled
their heavy missiles at the pile of droids.

The stoning went on for the rest of the afternoon, until the red glare of the sun
thinned to a brilliant crimson line along the horizon, until the dozens and dozens
of droids were no more than scrap metal and sparking wires.

And Nom Anor, silent and dignified, watched it all somberly, accepting this great
tribute his followers had paid to him, this public execution of the hated droids.

The Yuuzhan Vong have been defeated, but the galaxy has been slow to recover from
their depredations, with powerful worlds chafing at the economic burdens and military
restrictions put upon them by the nascent Galactic Alliance, once-powerful species
seeking to rise again, newly prosperous worlds testing their influence, and long-buried
secrets coming to light. The result of all this instability is civil war. Faced with
a Galactic Alliance that has fallen away from its values, Luke and the Jedi Order
must decide where their loyalties lie—and so, too, must the heroes of the Rebellion.

While hostilities spread across the Core Worlds, lurking in the shadows is a Sith
adept who wastes no time in taking advantage of the galactic chaos to wage a very
personal war against the Skywalkers and the Solos. Luke will face terrible loss, Han
and Leia will be tested as never before, and their daughter, Jaina, will learn just
what it means to fulfill her destiny as “the Sword of the Jedi.” And even as the Galactic
Alliance pulls the galaxy back from the brink of total disaster, the Skywalker–Solo
clan will never be the same again.

The mop-up is difficult. Luke Skywalker is exiled from Coruscant, and while he and
his son, Jedi Knight Ben Skywalker, set out on a quest to discover what caused such
darkness to befall the galaxy and their family, Han and Leia are left to raise their
granddaughter, Allana, and help shepherd the government back into some semblance of
order. But little do any of them know that a long-lost tribe of Sith is making its
way toward the Core, determined to fulfill their destiny of dominance over the galaxy … and
that both Sith and Jedi are about to run headlong into a terrifying creature of untold
Force
abilities and an insatiable appetite for power …

If you’re a reader new to the Legacy era, here are four great starting points:

Read on for excerpts from
Star Wars
novels set in the Legacy era.

CORUSCANT

“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 possiblity 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.

ADUMAR

The gleaming pearl-gray turbolift doors slid open sideways, and warm air bearing an
aroma that advertised death and destruction washed over Jacen Solo, his cousin Ben
Skywalker, and their guide.

Jacen took a deep breath and held it. The odors of this subterranean factory were
not the smells of corrupted flesh or gangrenous wounds—smells Jacen was familiar with—but
those of labor and industry. The great chamber before them had been a missile manufacturing
center for decades, and no amount of rigorous cleaning would ever be quite able to
eliminate the odors of sweat, machine lubricant, newly fabricated composite materials,
solid fuel propellants, and high explosives that filled the air.

Jacen expelled the breath and stepped out of the turbolift, then walked the handful
of steps up to the rail overlooking the chamber. He walked rapidly so that his Jedi
cloak would billow a little as he strode, so that his boot heels would ring on the
metal flooring of this observation catwalk, and so his apprentice and guide would
be left behind for a moment. This was a performance for his guide and all the other
representatives of the Dammant Killers company. Jacen knew he was carrying off his
role quite well; the company officials he’d been dealing with remained properly intimidated.
But he didn’t know whether to attribute his success to his bearing and manner, his
lean, brooding, and handsome looks, or his name—for on this world of Adumar, with
its history of fascination with pilots, the name of Jacen’s father, Han Solo, went
a very long way.

His guide, a slender, balding man named Testan ke Harran, moved up to the rail to
Jacen’s right. Contrasting with the dull grays and blues that were common on this
factory’s walls and its workers’ uniforms, Testan was a riot of color—his tunic, with
its nearly knee-length hem and its flowing sleeves, was the precise orange of X-wing
fighter pilot uniforms, though decorated with purple crisscross lines breaking it
down into a flickering expanse of small diamond shapes, and his trousers, belt, and
scarf were a gleaming gold.