Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor Page 36

  “Korunnai?” Palpatine frowned absently. “Aren’t those your people, Master Windu?”

  “My … kin.” He made himself unclench his jaw. “Yes, Chancellor. You have a good memory.”

  “A politician’s trick.” Palpatine gave a gently self-deprecating smile and waved a dismissive hand. “Please go on.”

  The agent shrugged as though there was little more to tell. “There have been a lot of … disturbing reports. Execution of prisoners. Ambushes of civilians. On both sides. Usually they can’t be verified. The jungle … swallows everything. So when we got this tip—”

  “You found this because somebody wanted you to find it,” Mace finished for him. “And now you think—”

  Mace turned the data wafer over and over through his fingers, watching it catch splinters of light. “You think those people might have been killed just to deliver this message.”

  “What a hideous idea!” Palpatine lowered himself slowly onto the edge of his desk. He appealed to the agent. “This can’t be true, can it?”

  The agent only hung his head.

  Yoda’s ears curled backward, and his eyes narrowed. “Some messages … most important, is how they are framed. Secondary, their content is.”

  Palpatine shook his head in disbelief. “These ULF partisans—we ally ourselves with them? The Jedi ally with them? What sort of monsters are they?”

  “I don’t know.” Mace handed the wafer back to the agent. “Let’s find out.”

  He slotted it into a port on the side of the holoprojector and touched a control.

  The holoprojector’s phased-wave speakers brought the jungle around them to life with noise: the rush of wind-rattled leaves, skrills and clatters of insect calls, dim dopplered shrieks of passing birds, the howls and coughs of distant predators. Through the eddies and boils of sound drifted a whisper sinuous as a riversnake: a human or near-human whisper, a voice murmuring in Basic, sometimes comprehensible for a word here or phrase there, sometimes twisting below the distorting ripples of the aural surface. Mace caught the words Jedi, and night—or knife—and something about look between the stars …

  He frowned at the agent. “You can’t clean this up?”

  “This is cleaned up.” The agent produced a datapad from his travelcase, keyed it alight, and passed it to Mace. “We made a transcript. It’s provisional. Best we can do.”

  The transcript was fragmentary, but enough to draw chills up Mace’s arms: Jedi Temple … taught (or possibly taut) … dark … an enemy. But … Jedi … under cover of night.

  One whisper was entirely clear. He read the words on the datapad’s screen as the whisper seemed to come from just behind his shoulder.

  I use the night, and the night uses me.

  He forgot to breathe. This was bad.

  It got worse.

  The whisper strengthened to a voice. A woman’s voice.

  Depa’s voice.

  On the datapad in his hand, and murmuring in the air behind his shoulder—

  I have become the darkness in the jungle.

  The recording went on. And on.

  Her murmur drained him: of emotion, of strength, even of thought; the longer she rambled, the emptier he got. Yet her final words still triggered a dull shock inside his chest.

  She was talking to him …

  I know you will come for me, Mace. You should never have sent me here. And I should never have come. But what’s done can never be undone. I know you think I’ve gone mad. I haven’t. What’s happened to me is worse.

  I’ve gone sane.

  That’s why you’ll come, Mace. That’s why you’ll have to.

  Because nothing is more dangerous than a Jedi who’s finally sane.

  Her voice trailed off into the jungle-mutter.

  No one moved or spoke. Mace sat with interlocked fingers supporting his chin. Yoda leaned on his cane, eyes shut, mouth pinched with inner pain. Palpatine stared solemnly through the holographic jungle, as though he saw something real beyond its boundary.

  “That’s—uh, that’s all there is.” The agent extended a hesitant hand to the holoprojector and flicked a control. The jungle vanished like a bad dream.

  They all stirred, rousing themselves, instinctively adjusting their clothing. Palpatine’s office now looked unreal: as though the clean carpeted floor and crisp lines of furniture, the pure filtered air, and the view of Coruscant that filled the large windows were the holographic projection, and they all still sat in the jungle.

  As though only the jungle were real.

  Mace spoke first.

  “She’s right.” He lifted his head from his hands. “I have to go after her. Alone.”

  Palpatine’s eyebrows twitched. “That seems … unwise.”

  “Concur with Chancellor Palpatine, I do,” Yoda said slowly. “Great risks there would be. Too valuable you are. Send others, we should.”

  “There is no one else who can do this.”

  “Surely, Master Windu”—Palpatine’s smile was respectfully disbelieving—“a Republic Intelligence covert ops team, or even a team of Jedi—”

  “No.” Mace rose, and straightened his shoulders. “It has to be me.”

  “Please, we all understand your concern for your former student, Master Windu, but surely—”

  “Reasons he must have, Supreme Chancellor,” Yoda said. “Listen to them, we should.”

  Even Palpatine found that one did not argue with Master Yoda.

  Mace struggled to put his certainty into words. This difficulty was a function of his particular gift of perception. Some things were so obvious to him that they were hard to describe: like explaining how he knew it was raining while he stood in a thunderstorm.

  “If Depa has … gone mad—or worse, fallen to the dark side,” he began, “it’s vital that the Jedi know why. That we discover what did it to her. Until we know this, no more Jedi should be exposed to it than is absolutely necessary. Also, this all might be entirely false: a deliberate attempt to incriminate her. That ambient noise on the recording …” He glanced at the agent. “If her voice was faked—say, synthesized by computer—that noise could be there precisely to blur the evidence of trickery, couldn’t it?”

  The agent nodded. “But why would someone want to frame her?”

  Mace waved this off. “Regardless, she must be brought in. And soon—before rumor of such massacres reaches the wider galaxy. Even if she had nothing to do with them, having a Jedi’s name associated with these crimes is a threat to the public trust in the Jedi. She must answer any charges before they are ever publicly made.”

  “Granted, she must be brought in,” Palpatine allowed. “But the question remains: why you?”

  “Because she might not want to come.”

  Palpatine looked thoughtful.

  Yoda’s head came up, and his eyes opened, gleaming at the Supreme Chancellor. “If rogue she has gone … to find her, difficult it will be. To apprehend her …” His voice dropped, as though the words caused him pain. “Dangerous, that will be.”

  “Depa was my Padawan.” Mace moved away from the desk and stared out the window at the shimmering twilight that slowly darkened the capital’s cityscape. “The bond of Master and Padawan is … intense. No one knows her better—and I have more experience in those jungles than any other living Jedi. I’m the only one who can find her if she doesn’t want to be found. And if she must be—”

  He swallowed, and stared at the moondisk of light scattered from one of the orbital mirrors. “If she must be … stopped,” he said at length, “I may be the only one who can do that, too.”

  Palpatine’s eyebrows twitched polite incomprehension.

  Mace took a deep breath, finding himself once more looking at his hands, through his hands, seeing only an image in his mind, sharp as a dream: lightsaber against lightsaber in the Temple’s training halls, the green flash of Depa’s blade seeming to come from everywhere at once.

  He could not unmake what he had made.

&nbs
p; There were no second chances.

  Her voice echoed inside him: Nothing is more dangerous than a Jedi who’s finally sane, but he said only—

  “She is a master of Vaapad.”

  In the silence that followed, he studied the folds and wrinkles of his interlaced fingers, focusing his attention into his visual field to hold at bay dark dream-ghosts of Depa’s blade flashing toward Jedi necks.

  “Vaapad?” Palpatine repeated, eventually. Perhaps he’d grown tired of waiting for someone to explain. “Isn’t that some kind of animal?”

  “A predator of Sarapin,” Yoda supplied gravely. “Also the nickname it is, given by students, for the seventh form of lightsaber combat.”

  “Hmp. I’ve always heard there are only six.”

  “Six there were, for generations of Jedi. The seventh … is not well known. A powerful form it is. Deadliest of all … But dangerous it is—to its master, as well as its opponent. Few have studied. One student alone to mastery has risen.”

  “But if she’s the only master—and this style is so deadly—what makes you think—”

  “She’s not the only master, sir.” He lifted his head to meet Palpatine’s frown. “She is my only student to become a master.”

  “Your only student …,” Palpatine echoed.

  “I didn’t study Vaapad.” Mace let his hands fall to his sides. “I created it.”

  Palpatine’s brows drew together thoughtfully. “Yes, I seem to recall now: a reference in your report on the treason of Master Sora Bulq. Didn’t you train him as well? Didn’t he also claim to be a master of this Vaapad of yours?”

  “Sora Bulq was not my student.”

  “Your … associate, then?”

  “And he did not master Vaapad,” Mace said grimly. “Vaapad mastered him.”

  “Ah—ah, I see …”

  “With respect, sir, I don’t think you do.”

  “I see enough to worry me, just a bit.” The warmth of Palpatine’s smile robbed insult from his words. “The relationship of Master and Padawan is intense, you said; and I well believe it. When you faced Dooku on Geonosis …”

  “I prefer,” Mace said softly, “not to talk about Geonosis, Chancellor.”

  “Depa Billaba was your Padawan. And she is still perhaps your closest friend, is she not? If she must be slain, are you so certain you can strike her down?”

  Mace looked at the floor, at Yoda, at the agent, and in the end he had to meet Palpatine’s eyes once more. It was not merely Palpatine of Naboo who had asked; this question had come from the Supreme Chancellor. His office demanded an answer.

  “May the Force grant, sir,” Mace said slowly, “that I will not have to find out.”

  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.

  DAY ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  FATMAN SHIVERED, her metal groaning, as Zeerid pushed her through Ord Mantell’s atmosphere. Friction turned the air to fire, and Zeerid watched the orange glow of the flames through the transparisteel of the freighter’s cockpit.

  He was gripping the stick too tightly, he realized, and relaxed.

  He hated atmosphere entries, always had, the long forty-count when heat, speed, and ionized particles caused a temporary sensor blackout. He never knew what kind of sky he’d encounter when he came out of the dark. Back when he’d carted Havoc Squadron commandos in a Republic gully jumper, he and his fellow pilots had likened the blackout to diving blind off a seaside cliff.

  You always hope to hit deep water, they’d say. But sooner or later the tide goes out and you go hard into rock.

  Or hard into a blistering crossfire. Didn’t matter, really. The effect would be the same.

  “Coming out of the dark,” he said as the flame diminished and the sky opened below.

  No one acknowledged the words. He flew Fatman alone, worked alone. The only things he carted anymore were weapons for The Exchange. He ha
d his reasons, but he tried hard not to think too hard about what he was doing.

  He leveled the ship off, straightened, and ran a quick sweep of the surrounding sky. The sensors picked up nothing.

  “Deep water and it feels fine,” he said, smiling.

  On most planets, the moment he cleared the atmosphere he’d have been busy dodging interdiction by the planetary government. But not on Ord Mantell. The planet was a hive of crime syndicates, mercenaries, bounty hunters, smugglers, weapons dealers, and spicerunners.

  And those were just the people who ran the place.

  Factional wars and assassinations occupied their attention, not governance, and certainly not law enforcement. The upper and lower latitudes of the planet in particular were sparsely settled and almost never patrolled, a literal no-being’s-land. Zeerid would have been surprised if the government had survsats running orbits over the area.

  And all that suited him fine.

  Fatman broke through a thick pink blanket of clouds, and the brown, blue, and white of Ord Mantell’s northern hemisphere filled out Zeerid’s field of vision. Snow and ice peppered the canopy, frozen shrapnel, beating a steady rhythm on Fatman’s hull. The setting sun suffused a large swath of the world with orange and red. The northern sea roiled below him, choppy and dark, the irregular white circles of breaking surf denoting the thousands of uncharted islands that poked through the water’s surface. To the west, far in the distance, he could make out the hazy edge of a continent and the thin spine of snowcapped, cloud-topped mountains that ran along its north–south axis.

  Motion drew his eye. A flock of leatherwings, too small to cause a sensor blip, flew two hundred meters to starboard and well below him, the tents of their huge, membranous wings flapping slowly in the freezing wind, the arc of the flock like a parenthesis. They were heading south for warmer air and paid him no heed as he flew over and past them, their dull, black eyes blinking against the snow and ice.