The Unifying Force (74 page)

“Involved in
what
matter?” Kyp asked.

“That is of no concern to the Galactic Alliance,” Tswek said. He bowed to the council at large. “My apologies for taking so much of your time.”

“No apologies are necessary,” Luke said. He considered dropping the name of Chaf’orm’bintrani, an Aristocra he and Mara had met on a mission some years earlier, but it was impossible to know how this would be received. Chiss politics were as volatile as they were secretive, and for all Luke knew Formbi’s had been one of the five ruling families that had mysteriously disappeared while the rest of the galaxy fought the Yuuzhan Vong. “Anything in which our Jedi Knights involve themselves concerns this council.”

“Then I suggest you do a better job supervising them in the future,” Tswek said. When Luke did not step out of his way, he turned to Omas. “I’m quite finished here, Chief.”

“Of course.” Omas shot Luke a look imploring him to stand aside, then said, “An escort will meet you at the Temple entrance. I believe I need to have a word with these Jedi.”

“In that case, I’ll thank you for your hospitality now.” Tswek bowed to the Chief, then started for the door. “I’ll be returning to the Ascendancy within the hour.”

Omas waited until the Aristocra was gone, then scowled at Luke. “Well?”

Luke spread his hands. “At this point, Chief Omas, you know more than we do.”

“I was afraid of that,” Omas growled. “Apparently, a team of Jedi have involved themselves in a border dispute with the Chiss.”

“How can that be?” Mara asked. Luke knew that she meant the question literally. Before departing, Jaina had sent the council a set of destination coordinates that she and the others had calculated by triangulating the direction from which the mysterious call had come. An astronomical reconnaissance had revealed not even a star in the area, and certainly no indication that the coordinates would be of interest to the Chiss. “Their destination was over a hundred light-years from Ascendancy space.”

“Then our Jedi
are
out there,” Omas said. “What in the blazes for? We can’t spare
one
Jedi at the moment, much less seven.”

Mara’s green eyes looked ready to loose a stream of blaster bolts. “
Our
Jedi, Chief Omas?”

“Forgive me.” The Chief’s voice was more placating than apologetic; Luke knew that, in his heart, Omas considered the Jedi as much servants of the Galactic Alliance as he was. “I didn’t mean to imply anything.”

“Of course not,” Mara said, in a tone that suggested he had better be serious. She turned to the rest of the council. “Mitt’swe’kleoni said
seven
Jedi. What do we make of that?”

“This one only countz five.” Saba lifted her hand and began to raise her taloned fingers. “Jaina, Alema, Zekk, Lowbacca, and Tesar.”

Kyp added two fingers. “Tekli and Tahiri?”

Omas frowned. “How could you know that? I thought they were with Zonama Sekot in the Unknown Regions.”

“They’re supposed to be,” Corran said. “But, like the others, they’re also Myrkr survivors.”

“I don’t understand,” Omas said. “What does this have to do with the Myrkr mission?”

“I wish we knew,” Luke said. Undertaken in the middle of the war with the Yuuzhan Vong, the Myrkr mission had been as costly as it had been successful. Anakin Solo and his strike team had destroyed the enemy’s Jedi-killing voxyn. But six young Jedi Knights had died in the process—including Anakin himself—and another was missing and presumed lost. “All I can tell you is that for several weeks, Jaina and the other survivors of that mission reported feeling a ‘call’ from the Unknown Regions. On the day they left, that call became a cry for help.”

“And since we know Tenel Ka is still on Hapes,” Mara explained, “it seems likely the extra Jedi are Tekli and Tahiri.”

Nobody suggested that Jaina’s brother, Jacen, might be one of the extras. The last anyone had heard, he had been somewhere on the far side of the galaxy, sequestered with the Fallanassi.

“What
about
Zonama Sekot?” Omas asked. Zonama Sekot was the living planet that had agreed to serve as home to the defeated Yuuzhan Vong. “Could the call have come from it?”

Luke shook his head. “Zonama Sekot would have contacted me directly if it needed our help. I’m convinced this has something to do with the mission to Myrkr.”

Omas stayed silent, waiting for more of an explanation, but that was all Luke knew.

Instead, Luke asked, “What did Mitt’swe’kleoni tell you?”

Omas shrugged. “He demanded to know why the Galactic Alliance had sent its Jedi
—his
words—to interfere in a Chiss border dispute. When he saw how surprised I was, he demanded to speak to you.”

“This is bad,” Mara said. “Very bad.”

“I agree,” Omas said. “Either he thinks we’re all lying—”

“Or he believez our Jedi Knightz have gone rogue,” Saba finished. “In either case, the result will be the same.”

“They’ll try to solve the problem themselves,” Omas said. He ran a hand through his thinning hair. “How hard will this be on them?”

“Our Jedi Knights can take care of themselves,” Luke said.

“I know
that
!” Omas snapped. “I’m asking about the Chiss.”

Luke felt Mara’s ire rise, but she chose to overlook Omas’s tone and remain silent. Now was a poor time to remind him that the Jedi did not expect to be addressed as though they were unruly subordinates.

“If the Chiss take action against them, Jaina and the others will attempt to defuse the situation … for a time,” Luke said. “After that, it depends on the nature of the conflict.”

“But they won’t hesitate to meet force with force,” Mara clarified. “Nor would we ask them to. If the Chiss push things, sooner or later Jaina is going to bloody their noses.”

Omas paled and turned to Luke. “You need to put a stop to this, and soon. We can’t let it come to killing.”

Luke nodded. “We’ll certainly send someone to—”

“No, I mean
you
personally.” Omas turned to the others. “I know the Jedi have their own way of doing things. But with Jaina Solo leading those young Jedi Knights, Luke is the only one who can be sure of bringing them home. That young woman is as headstrong as her father.”

For once, nobody argued.

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.

D
essel was lost in the suffering of his job, barely even aware of his surroundings. His arms ached from the endless pounding of the hydraulic jack. Small bits of rock skipped off the cavern wall as he bored through, ricocheting off his protective goggles and stinging his exposed face and hands. Clouds of atomized dust filled the air, obscuring his vision, and the screeching whine of the jack filled the cavern, drowning out all other sounds as it burrowed centimeter by agonizing centimeter into the thick vein of cortosis woven into the rock before him.

Impervious to both heat and energy, cortosis was prized in the construction of armor and shielding by both commercial and military interests, especially with the galaxy at war. Highly resistant to blaster bolts, cortosis alloys supposedly could withstand even the blade of a lightsaber. Unfortunately, the very properties that made it so valuable also made it extremely difficult to mine. Plasma torches were virtually useless; it would take days to burn away even a small section of cortosis-laced rock. The only effective way to mine it was through the brute force of hydraulic jacks pounding relentlessly away at a vein, chipping the cortosis free bit by bit.

Cortosis was one of the hardest materials in the galaxy. The force of the pounding quickly wore down the head of a jack, blunting it until it became almost useless. The dust clogged the hydraulic pistons, making them jam. Mining cortosis was hard on the equipment … and even harder on the miners.

Des had been hammering away for nearly six standard hours. The jack weighed more than thirty kilos, and the strain of keeping it raised and pressed against the rock face was taking its toll. His arms were trembling from the exertion. His lungs were gasping for air and choking on the clouds of fine mineral dust thrown up from the jack’s head. Even his teeth hurt: the rattling vibration felt as if it were shaking them loose from his gums.

But the miners on Apatros were paid based on how much cortosis they brought back. If he quit now, another miner would jump in and start working the vein, taking a share of the profits. Des didn’t like to share.

The whine of the jack’s motor took on a higher pitch, becoming a keening wail Des was all too familiar with. At twenty thousand rpm, the motor sucked in dust like a thirsty bantha sucking up water after a long desert crossing. The only way to combat it was by regular cleaning and servicing, and the Outer Rim Oreworks Company preferred to buy cheap equipment and replace it, rather than sinking credits into maintenance. Des knew exactly what was going to happen next—and a second later, it did. The motor blew.