The Joiner King (71 page)
Authors: Troy Denning
But even though Kre’fey had assured the escape of his force, the battle was far from over. The Yuuzhan Vong commander was angry and his warriors still possessed the suicidal bravery that marked their caste. Ships were hard hit, and starfighters vaporized, and hulls broken up to tumble through the cold emptiness of Ylesian space, before the fleet exited the traitor capital’s mass shadow and made the hyperspace jump to Kashyyyk.
“I don’t want to do
anything
like that again,” Jaina said. She was in the officers’ lounge of
Starsider
, sitting on a chair with a cup of tea in her hand, her boots off, and her stockinged feet in Jag Fel’s lap.
“Ylesia was like hitting your head again and again on a brick wall,” she went on. “One tactical problem after another, and the solution to each one was a straightforward assault right at the enemy, or straightforward flight with the enemy in pursuit.” She sighed as Jag’s fingers massaged a particularly sensitive area of her right foot. “I’m better when I can be Yun-Harla the Trickster,” she said. “Not when I’m playing the enemy’s game, but when I can make the enemy play mine.”
“You refer to sabacc, I take it,” Jag said, a bit sourly.
Jaina looked at Jacen, sitting opposite her and sipping on a glass of Gizer ale. “Are you going to take Kre’fey up on his offer of a squadron command?”
Jacen inhaled the musky scent of the ale as he considered his answer. “I think I may serve better on the bridge of
Ralroost
,” he said finally, and thought of his finger floating in Kre’fey’s holo display, pointing at the enemy fleet that wasn’t there.
“Ylesia,” he continued, “showed that my talents seem to be more spatial and, uh, coordinative. Is
coordinative
a word?”
“I hope not,” Jag said.
Jacen felt regret at the thought of leaving starfighters entirely. He had joined Kre’fey’s fleet in order to guard his sister’s back, and perhaps that was best done by flying alongside her in an X-wing. But he suspected that he’d be able to offer a higher
order of assistance if he stayed out of a starfighter cockpit, instead using the Jedi meld to shape the way the others fought.
“Look,” Jag pointed out, “Jaina’s got it wrong. Ylesia wasn’t a defeat. Jaina’s downed pilots were rescued, and so were mine. We hurt the enemy a lot more than they hurt us, thanks in part to Spooky Mind-Meld Man, here.” He nodded toward Jacen. “We destroyed a collaborationist fleet and captured enough of the Peace Brigade’s upper echelon to provide dozens of splashy trials. The media will be occupied for months.”
“It didn’t
feel
like a victory,” Jaina said. “It felt like we barely escaped with our necks.”
“That’s only because you don’t have a sufficiently detached perspective,” Jag said seriously.
Mention of the Peace Brigade had set Jacen’s mind thinking along other channels. He looked at Jaina. “Do you think Thrackan’s really innocent?”
Jaina was startled. “Innocent of
what
?”
“Of collaboration. Do you think the story he told about being forced into the Presidency could possibly have been true?”
Jaina gave a disbelieving laugh. “Too ludicrous.”
“No, really. He’s a complete human chauvinist. I know he’s a bad guy and he held us prisoner and wants to rule Corellia as diktat, but he hates aliens so much I can’t believe he’d work with the Yuuzhan Vong voluntarily.”
Jaina tilted her head in thought. Jag’s foot massage had put a blissful expression on her face. “Well, he
did
call Pwoe a Squid Head. That’s a point in his favor.”
“If Sal-Solo wishes to prove his innocence,” Jag said, “he need only volunteer for interrogation under truth drugs. If his collaboration was involuntary, the drugs would reveal it.” Grim amusement passed across his scarred features. “But I think he’s afraid that such an interrogation would reveal how he came to be in the hands of the Yuuzhan Vong in the first place.
That’s
what would truly condemn him.”
“Ahh,” Jaina said. Jacen couldn’t tell if she was enlightened or, in light of the foot rub, experiencing a form of ecstasy.
Jacen, sipping his ale, decided that whatever the truth of the matter, it wasn’t any of his business.
* * *
Thrackan Sal-Solo paced across the durasteel-walled prison exercise yard, his mind busy with plans.
Tomorrow, he’d been told, he would be transferred to Corellia, where he would undergo trial for treason against his home planet.
He’d accept the transfer peacefully, and behave as a model prisoner for most of the way home. But that was only to lull his guards.
He’d catch them at a disadvantage, and bash them over the head with an improvised weapon—he didn’t know what exactly, he’d work that out later. Then he’d take command of the ship-he hoped it was an Incom model, he could fly anything Incom made. He’d crash the ship into a remote area of Corellia and make it appear he died in the flames.
Then he’d make contact with some of the people on Corellia he could still trust. He’d reorganize the Centerpoint Party, strike, and seize power. He would
rule the world
! No,
five
worlds.
It was his destiny, and nothing could stop him. Thracken Sal-Solo wasn’t meant to be condemned to a miserable life on a prison planet.
Well. Not more than
once
, anyway.
For Curtis Smith
Who invited me to play in the Galaxy Far, Far Away
A long, long time ago
T
ROY
D
ENNING
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Abyss; Star Wars: Tatooine Ghost; Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Star by Star;
the
Star Wars: Dark Nest
trilogy:
The Joiner King, The Unseen Queen
, and
The Swarm War;
and
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Tempest, Inferno
, and
Invincible
—as well as
Pages of Pain, Beyond the High Road, The Summoning
, and many other novels. A former game designer and editor, he lives in western Wisconsin with his wife, Andria.
WATERDEEP
DRAGONWALL
THE PARCHED SEA
THE VERDANT PASSAGE
THE CRIMSON LEGION
THE AMBER ENCHANTRESS
THE OBSIDIAN ORACLE
THE CERULEAN STORM
THE OGRE’S PACT
THE GIANT AMONG US
THE TITAN OF TWILIGHT
THE VEILED DRAGON
PAGES OF PAIN
CRUCIBLE: THE TRIAL OF CYRIC THE MAD
THE OATH OF STONEKEEP
FACES OF DECEPTION
BEYOND THE HIGH ROAD
DEATH OF THE DRAGON (with Ed Greenwood)
THE SUMMONING
THE SIEGE
THE SORCERER
STAR WARS:
THE NEW JEDI ORDER: STAR BY STAR
STAR WARS:
TATOOINE GHOST
STAR WARS:
DARK NEST I: THE JOINER KING
STAR WARS:
DARK NEST II: THE UNSEEN QUEEN
STAR WARS:
DARK NEST III: THE SWARM WAR
STAR WARS:
LEGACY OF THE FORCE: TEMPEST
STAR WARS:
LEGACY OF THE FORCE: INFERNO
STAR WARS:
FATE OF THE JEDI: ABYSS
Many people contributed to this book in ways large and small. Thanks are especially due to: Andria Hayday, for advice, encouragement, critiques, and much more; James Luceno for being such a fun target for idea-bouncing; Enrique Guerrero for his suggestions and our many useful Chiss discussions; Shelly Shapiro and all the people at Del Rey who make this so much fun, particularly Keith Clayton and Colleen Lindsay; Sue Rostoni and the wonderful people at Lucasfilm, particularly Howard Roffman, Amy Gary, Leland Chee, and Pablo Hidalgo. And, of course, to George Lucas for opening his galaxy to the rest of us.
—LEGENDS
What is a legend? According to the Random House Dictionary, a legend is “a nonhistorical or unverifiable story handed down by tradition from earlier times and popularly accepted as historical.” Merriam-Webster defines it as “a story from the past that is believed by many people but cannot be proved to be true.” And Wikipedia says, “Legends are tales that, because of the tie to a historical event or location, are believable, though not necessarily believed.” Because of this inherent believability, legends tend to live on in a culture, told and retold even though they are generally regarded as fiction.
Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a legend was born: The story of Luke Skywalker and his fellow heroes, Princess Leia and Han Solo. Three blockbuster movies introduced these characters and their stories to millions of people who embraced these tales and began to build upon them, as is done with myths everywhere. And thus novels, short stories, and comic books were published, expanding the
Star Wars
universe introduced in the original trilogy and later enhanced by the prequel movies and the animated TV series
The Clone Wars
. The enormous body of work that grew around the films and
The Clone Wars
came to be known as
The Expanded Universe
.
Now, as new movies, television shows, and books move into the realm of the official canon,
The Expanded Universe
must take its place firmly in the realm of legends. But, like all great legends, the fact that we can’t prove the veracity of every detail doesn’t make the stories any less entertaining or worthy of being read. These legends remain true to the spirit of
Star Wars
and in that way are another avenue through which we can get to know and understand our beloved heroes in that galaxy far, far away.
—Del Rey Books, May 2014
Turn the page or jump to the
timeline
of
Star Wars Legends
novels to learn more.
Like thieves all across the galaxy, Tibanna tappers worked best in darkness. They slipped and stole through the lowest levels of Bespin’s Life Zone, down where daylight faded to dusk and shapes softened to silhouettes, down where black curtains of mist swept across purple, boiling skies. Their targets were the lonely platforms where honest beings worked through the endless night de-icing frozen intake fans and belly-crawling into clogged transfer pipes, where the precious gas was gathered atom by atom. In the last month alone, the tanks at a dozen stations had been mysteriously drained, and two Jedi Knights had been sent to bring the thieves to justice.
Emerging into a pocket of clear air, Jaina and Zekk saw BesGas Three ahead. The station was a saucer-shaped extraction platform, so overloaded with processing equipment that it seemed a wonder it stayed afloat. The primary storage deck was limned in blue warning strobes, and in the flashing light behind one of those strobes, Jaina and Zekk saw an oblong shadow tucked back between two holding tanks.
Jaina swung the nose of their borrowed cloud car toward the tanks and accelerated, rushing to have a look before the processing facility vanished behind another curtain of mist. The shadow was probably just a shadow, but down here at the bottom of the Life Zone, heat and pressure and darkness all conspired against human vision, and every possibility had to be investigated up close.
Spin-sealed Tibanna gas had a lot of uses, but the most important was to increase the yield of starship weapons. So if somebody was stealing Tibanna gas, especially as much as had been disappearing from Bespin in recent weeks, the Jedi needed to find out who they were—and what they were doing with it.
As Jaina and Zekk continued to approach, the shadow began to acquire a tablet-like shape. Zekk readied the mini tractor beam, and Jaina armed the twin ion guns. There was no need to remark that the shadow was starting to look like a siphoning balloon, or to complain that the strobe lights were blinding them, or even to discuss what tactics they should use. Thanks to their stay with the Killiks, their minds were so closely connected that they scarcely knew where one began and the other ended. Even after a year away from the Colony, ideas and perceptions and emotions flowed between them without effort. Often, they could not even tell in whose mind a thought had formed—and it did not matter. They simply shared it.
A blue glow flared among the holding tanks, then a small tapper tug shot into view, its conical silhouette wavering against the pressure-blurred lights of the station’s habitation decks. An instant later three siphoning balloons—the one Jaina and Zekk had spotted and two others—rose behind it, chased by long plumes of Tibanna gas still escaping from siphoning holes in the holding tanks.
Jaina opened fire with the ion guns, narrowly missing the tug, but spraying the station’s central hub. Ion beams were safer to use around Tibanna gas than blaster bolts, since all they did was disable electronic circuitry, so the barrage did not cause any structural damage. But it did plunge two levels of habitation deck into a sudden blackout.
Zekk swung the tractor beam around and caught hold of a siphoning balloon. The tappers released it, and the balloon came flying straight at the cloud car. Zekk deactivated the beam immediately, but Jaina still had to swing wide to avoid being taken out by the huge, tumbling bag of supercooled gas.