Abyss (48 page)

The spaceport facilities offered little shade, so the Skywalkers stood in the darkness cast by
Jade Shadow
, but even without the heat of direct sunlight, the moist, windless air was still as oppressive as a blanket.

Luke poured thoughts of helpfulness and reasonability into the Force, but it was no use. The man before him, nearly two skinny meters of redheaded obstructiveness, would not yield a centimeter.

The man, who had given his name as Tarth Vames, again waved his datapad beneath Luke’s nose. “It’s simple. That vehicle—” His wave indicated
Jade Shadow
. “Neither it, nor anything with an enclosed or enclosable interior, can be inland under your control or your kid’s.” He turned his attention to Ben, who stood, arms folded across his chest, beside his father. Ben glared but did not reply.

Luke sighed. “Is any other visitor to Dathomir operating under that restriction?”

“Don’t think so, no.”

“Then why us?”

Vames thumbed the datapad keyboard so that the message scrolled downward several screens. “Here, right here. An enclosed vehicle, according to these precedents—there’s about eight screens of legal precedents—can be interpreted as a mobile school, especially if
you’re
in it, especially if its presence constitutes a continuation of a school that’s been here in the past.”

“This is harassment.” Ben’s words were quiet, but loud enough for Vames to hear.

The tall man glowered at Ben. “Of course it’s not harassment. The order came specifically from Chief of State Daala’s office. Public officials at that level don’t harass.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

“Ben.” Luke added a chiding tone to his voice. “No point in arguing. Vames, are you also prohibited from answering a few questions?”

“Always happy to help. So long as it’s within latitudes permitted by the regulations.”

“Within the last couple of days, have you seen any sign of a dilapidated yacht called
She’s a Chancer
?” Luke knew the yacht had to be here; he had run his blood trail to ground on Dathomir, and the girl had not departed this world. But anything this man could add to his meager store of knowledge might help.

Vames entered the ship name in his datapad, then shook his head. “No vehicle under that name made legal planetfall.”

“Ah.”

“Dilapidated, you say? A yacht?”

“That’s right.”

Vames keyed in some more information. “Last night, shortly after dusk, local time, a vehicle with the operational characteristics of a SoroSuub yacht made a sudden descent from orbit, overflew the spaceport here, and headed north. There was some comm chatter from the pilot about engines on runaway, that she couldn’t cut them or bring her repulsors online for landing.”

Ben frowned at that. “Last night? And you didn’t send out a rescue party?”

“Of course we did. As per regulations. Couldn’t find the crash site. No further communication from the vehicle. We still have searchers up there. But no luck.”

“Actually, that
is
helpful.” Luke turned to his son. “Ben, no enclosed vehicles.”

“Yeah?”

“Get us a couple of speeder bikes, would you? Beg, borrow …” Luke glanced at the spaceport official and decided that the man wouldn’t grasp that
steal
would have been a joke. “Or rent them.”

Ben grinned. “Yes, sir.”

Fifteen minutes later they were on their way, equipped with two rented speeder bikes and one piece of useful information that they had not possessed before, courtesy of questions asked and credcoins dropped by Luke.

The model of SoroSuub yacht the Sith girl had taken from Sinkhole Station was not one that normally came equipped with a hypercomm system. From the time it had left the Maw Cluster to its arrival on Dathomir, it had not lingered at any star system long enough for its pilot to make any substantial contact with locals. And in the time since its arrival on Dathomir, the planet’s sole hypercomm system, based out of this spaceport, had not been utilized to send any message packet large enough to include the complex navigational data required to instruct someone how to enter the Maw and find Sinkhole Station.

What that meant, ultimately, was that the Sith girl had likely not been able to communicate instructions to her Sith masters on how to reach the station or the powerful dark-side Force mystery it held. Luke probably did not have to fear that the Sith would find that power—until and unless they retrieved the Sith girl.

For once, if only temporarily, time was on Luke’s side.

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 Legends
novel set in the Old Republic era.

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 had 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.