The Bacta War (49 page)

Before long more than two hundred warships, large and small, were bearing down on Bessimir and its twin moons. But the terrible, restless power of the armada could be heard and felt only by the ships’ crews. The silence of the approach was broken only on the fleet comm channels, which had crackled to life in the first moments with encoded bursts of noise and cryptic ship-to-ship chatter.

At the center of the formation of great vessels was the flagship of the Fifth Battle Group, the fleet carrier
Intrepid
. She was so new from the yards at Hakassi that her corridors still reeked of sealing compound and cleaning solvent. Her huge realspace thruster engines still sang with the high-pitched squeal that the engine crews called “the baby’s cry.”

It would take more than a year for the mingled scents of the crew to displace the chemical smells from the first impressions of visitors. But after a hundred more hours under way, her engines’ vibrations would drop two octaves, to the reassuring thrum of a seasoned thruster bank.

On
Intrepid
’s bridge, a tall Dornean in general’s uniform paced along an arc of command stations equipped with large monitors. His eye-folds were swollen and fanned by an unconscious Dornean defensive reflex, and his leathery face was flushed purple by concern. Before the deployment was even a minute old, Etahn A’baht’s first command had been bloodied.

The fleet tender
Ahazi
had overshot its jump, coming out of hyperspace too close to Bessimir and too late for its crew to recover from the error. Etahn A’baht watched the bright flare of light in the upper atmosphere from
Intrepid
’s forward viewstation, knowing that it meant six young men were dead.

THE NEW REBELLION
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Setting: Thirteen years after
Return of the Jedi

Victorious though the New Republic may be, there is still no end to the threats to its continuing existence—this novel explores the price of keeping the peace. First, somewhere in the galaxy, millions suddenly perish in a blinding instant of pain. Then, as Leia prepares to address the Senate on Coruscant, a horrifying event changes the governmental equation in a flash
.

Here is that latter calamity, in an early scene from
The New Rebellion:

An explosion rocked the Chamber, flinging Leia into the air. She flew backward and slammed onto a desk, her entire body shuddering with the power of her hit. Blood and shrapnel rained around her. Smoke and dust rose, filling the room with a grainy darkness. She could hear nothing. With a shaking hand, she touched the side of her face. Warmth stained her cheeks and her earlobes. The ringing would start soon. The explosion was loud enough to affect her eardrums.

Emergency glow panels seared the gloom. She could feel rather than hear pieces of the crystal ceiling fall to the ground. A guard had landed beside her, his head tilted at an unnatural angle. She grabbed his blaster. She had to get out. She wasn’t certain if the attack had come from within or from without. Wherever it had come from, she had to make certain no other bombs would go off.

The force of the explosion had affected her balance. She crawled over bodies, some still moving, as she made her way to the stairs. The slightest movement made her dizzy and nauseous, but she ignored the feelings. She had to.

A face loomed before hers. Streaked with dirt and blood, helmet askew, she recognized him as one of the guards who had been with her since Alderaan.
Your Highness
, he mouthed, and she couldn’t read the rest. She shook her head at him, gasping at the increased dizziness, and kept going.

Finally she reached the stairs. She used the remains of a desk to get to her feet. Her gown was soaked in blood, sticky, and clinging to her legs. She held the blaster in front of her, wishing that she could hear. If she could hear, she could defend herself.

A hand reached out of the rubble beside her. She whirled, faced it, watched as Meido pulled himself out. His slender features were covered with dirt, but he appeared unharmed. He saw her blaster and
cringed. She nodded once to acknowledge him, and kept moving. The guard was flanking her.

More rubble dropped from the ceiling. She crouched, hands over her head to protect herself. Small pebbles pelted her, and the floor shivered as large chunks of tile fell. Dust rose, choking her. She coughed, feeling it, but not able to hear it. Within an instant, the Hall had gone from a place of ceremonial comfort to a place of death.

The image of the death’s-head mask rose in front of her again, this time from memory. She had known this was going to happen. Somewhere, from some part of her Force-sensitive brain, she had seen this. Luke said that Jedi were sometimes able to see the future. But she had never completed her training. She wasn’t a Jedi.

But she was close enough.

The Corellian Trilogy:
AMBUSH AT CORELLIA
ASSAULT AT SELONIA
SHOWDOWN AT CENTERPOINT
by Roger MacBride Allen
Setting: Fourteen years after
Return of the Jedi

This trilogy takes us to Corellia, Han Solo’s homeworld, which Han has not visited in quite some time. A trade summit brings Han, Leia, and the children—now developing their own clear personalities and instinctively learning more about their innate skills in the Force into the middle of a situation that most closely resembles a burning fuse. The Corellian system is on the brink of civil war, there are New Republic intelligence agents on a mysterious mission which even Han does not understand, and worst of all, a fanatical rebel leader has his hands on a superweapon of unimaginable power—and just wait until you find out who that leader is!

Here is an early scene from
Ambush
that gives you a wonderful look at the growing Solo children (the twins are Jacen and Jaina, and their little brother is Anakin):

Anakin plugged the board into the innards of the droid and pressed a button. The droid’s black, boxy body shuddered awake, it drew in its wheels to stand up a bit taller, its status lights lit, and it made a sort of triple beep. “That’s good,” he said, and pushed the button again. The droid’s status lights went out, and its body slumped down again. Anakin picked up the next piece, a motivation actuator. He frowned at
it as he turned it over in his hands. He shook his head. “That’s
not
good,” he announced.

“What’s not good?” Jaina asked.

“This thing,” Anakin said, handing her the actuator. “Can’t you
tell
? The insides part is all melty.”

Jaina and Jacen exchanged a look. “The outside looks okay,” Jaina said, giving the part to her brother. “How can he tell what the
inside
of it looks like? It’s sealed shut when they make it.”

Anakin, still sitting on the floor, took the device from his brother and frowned at it again. He turned it over and over in his hands, and then held it over his head and looked at it as if he were holding it up to the light. “There,” he said, pointing a chubby finger at one point on the unmarked surface. “In there is the bad part.” He rearranged himself to sit cross-legged, put the actuator in his lap, and put his right index finger over the “bad” part. “Fix,” he said. “Fix.” The dark brown outer case of the actuator seemed to glow for a second with an odd blue-red light, but then the glow sputtered out and Anakin pulled his finger away quickly and stuck it in his mouth, as if he had burned it on something.

“Better now?” Jaina asked.

“
Some
better,” Anakin said, pulling his finger out of his mouth. “Not
all
better.” He took the actuator in his hand and stood up. He opened the access panel on the broken droid and plugged in the actuator. He closed the door and looked expectantly at his older brother and sister.

“Done?” Jaina asked.

“Done,” Anakin agreed. “But
I’m
not going to push the button.” He backed well away from the droid, sat down on the floor, and folded his arms.

Jacen looked at his sister.

“Not me,” she said. “This was your idea.”

Jacen stepped forward to the droid, reached out to push the power button from as far away as he could, and then stepped hurriedly back.

Once again, the droid shuddered awake, rattling a bit this time as it did so. It pulled its wheels in, lit its panel lights, and made the same triple beep. But then its holocam eye viewlens wobbled back and forth, and its panel lights dimmed and flared. It rolled backward just a bit, and then recovered itself.

“Good morning, young mistress and masters,” it said. “How may I surge you?”

Well, one word wrong, but so what? Jacen grinned and clapped his hands and rubbed them together eagerly. “Good day, droid,” he said. They had done it! But what to ask for first? “First tidy up this room,”
he said. A simple task, and one that ought to serve as a good test of what this droid could do.

Suddenly the droid’s overhead access door blew off and there was a flash of light from its interior. A thin plume of smoke drifted out of the droid. Its panel lights flared again, and then the work arm sagged downward. The droid’s body, softened by heat, sagged in on itself and drooped to the floor. The floor and walls and ceiling of the playroom were supposed to be fireproof, but nonetheless the floor under the droid darkened a bit, and the ceiling turned black. The ventilators kicked on high automatically, and drew the smoke out of the room. After a moment they shut themselves off, and the room was silent.

The three children stood, every bit as frozen to the spot as the droid was, absolutely stunned. It was Anakin who recovered first. He walked cautiously toward the droid and looked at it carefully, being sure not to get too close or touch it. “
Really
melty now,” he announced, and then wandered off to the other side of the room to play with his blocks.

The twins looked at the droid, and then at each other.

“We’re dead,” Jacen announced, surveying the wreckage.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael A. Stackpole is an award-winning author, editor, game and computer game designer. As always, he spends his spare time playing indoor soccer and now has a new hobby, podcasting. Mike will publish
A New World
, the sequel to
Cartomancy
, this July, and is currently at work on ideas for a half-dozen other novels.

To learn more about Mike’s podcasting, please visit www.tsfpn.com (the website of The SciFi Podcast Network).

BOOKS BY MICHAEL A. STACKPOLE

THE WARRIOR TRILOGY

Warrior: En Garde

Warrior: Riposte

Warrior: Coupé

THE BLOOD OF KERENSKY

TRILOGY

Lethal Heritage

Blood Legacy

Lost Destiny

Natural Selection

Assumption of Risk

Bred for War

Malicious Intent

Grave Covenant

Prince of Havoc

Ghost War

THE FIDDLEBACK TRILOGY

A Gathering Evil

Evil Ascendant

Evil Triumphant

Eyes of Silver
^*

Dementia

Wolf and Raven

Once a Hero
^*

Talion: Revenant
^*

STAR WARS® X-WING SERIES

Rogue Squadron
^*

Wedge’s Gamble
^*

The Krytos Trap
^*

The Bacta War
^*

Isard’s Revenge
^*

Star Wars®: I, Jedi
^*

Star Wars®: Dark Tide

Star Wars®: Onslaught

Star Wars®: Ruin

THE DRAGONCROWN

WAR CYCLE

The Dark Glory War
^*

Fortress Draconis
^*

When Dragons Rage
^*

The Grand Crusade
^*

THE AGE OF DISCOVERY

A Secret Atlas
^*

Cartomancy
^*

*
published by Bantam Books

STAR WARS—
The Expanded Universe

You saw the movies. You watched the cartoon series, or maybe played some of the video games. But did you know …

In
The Empire Strikes Back
, Princess Leia Organa said to Han Solo, “I love you.” Han said, “I know.” But did you know that they actually got married? And had three Jedi children: the twins, Jacen and Jaina, and a younger son, Anakin?

Luke Skywalker was trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. But did you know that, years later, he went on to revive the Jedi Order and its commitment to defending the galaxy from evil and injustice?

Obi-Wan said to Luke, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” Did you know that over those millennia, legendary Jedi and infamous Sith Lords were adding their names to the annals of Republic history?