Conquest: Edge of Victory I Read online

  A Del Rey® Book

  Published by The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group

  Copyright © 2001 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™.

  All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  www.starwars.com

  www.starwarskids.com

  www.delreydigital.com

  Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 2001116216

  eISBN: 978-0-307-79554-0

  v3.1

  For Charlie Sheffer

  And all of my friends at Salle Auriol Seattle

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to Shelly Shapiro, Sue Rostoni, Jim Luceno, and Troy Denning for their help during the writing of the manuscript. To Mike Stackpole, for his advice and assurance this would be a fun ride, and Kris Boldis who gave that a strong second. Thanks to Chris Cerasi, Leland Chee, Ben Harper, Enrique Guerrero, and Lisa Collins for meticulous fact-checking and editing.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Dramatis Personae

  Prologue

  Part One: Praxeum

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part Two: The Shamed and the Shapers

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Part Three: Conquest

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by this Author

  Introduction to the Star Wars Expanded Universe

  Excerpt from Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Edge of Victory II: Rebirth

  Introduction to the Old Republic Era

  Introduction to the Rise of the Empire Era

  Introduction to the Rebellion Era

  Introduction to the New Republic Era

  Introduction to the New Jedi Order Era

  Introduction to the Legacy Era

  Star Wars Novels Timeline

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Anakin Solo; Jedi Knight (male human)

  Ikrit; Jedi Master (male unknown)

  Imsatad; Peace Brigade captain (male human)

  Jacen Solo; Jedi Knight (male human)

  Jaina Solo; Jedi Knight (female human)

  Kam Solusar; Jedi Master (male human)

  Luke Skywalker; Jedi Master (male human)

  Mara Jade Skywalker; Jedi Master (female human)

  Mezhan Kwaad; master shaper (female Yuuzhan Vong)

  Nen Yim; shaper adept (female Yuuzhan Vong)

  Remis Vehn; Peace Brigade pilot (male human)

  Sannah; Jedi student (female Melodie)

  Shada D’ukal; Talon Karrde’s business associate (female human)

  Tahiri Veila; Jedi student (female human)

  Talon Karrde; Independent Information Broker (male human)

  Tionne; Jedi Knight (female human)

  Tsaak Vootuh; commander (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  Tsavong Lah; warmaster (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  Uunu; Shamed One (female Yuuzhan Vong)

  Valin Horn; Jedi student (male human)

  Vua Rapuung; warrior (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  Yal Phaath; master shaper (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  PROLOGUE

  Dorsk 82 ducked behind the stone steps of the quay, just in time to dodge a blaster bolt from across the water.

  “Hurry on board my ship,” he told his charges. “They’ve found us again.”

  That was an understatement. Approaching along the tide embankment was a mob of around fifty Aqualish, jostling each other and shouting hoarsely. Most carried makeshift weapons—clubs, knives, rocks—but a few had force pikes and at least one had a blaster, as the smoking score on the quay testified.

  “Join us, Master Dorsk,” The 3D-4 protocol droid close behind him pleaded.

  Dorsk nodded his bald yellow-and-green mottled head. “Soon. I have to slow their progress across the causeway, to give everyone time to board.”

  “You can’t hold them off yourself, sir.”

  “I think I can. Besides, I need to try to talk to them. This is senseless.”

  “They’ve gone mad,” the droid said. “They’re destroying droids all over the city!”

  “They aren’t mad,” Dorsk averred. “They’re just frightened. The Yuuzhan Vong are on Ando, and may well conquer the planet.”

  “But why destroy droids, Master Dorsk?”

  “Because the Yuuzhan Vong hate machines,” the Khommite clone answered. “They consider them to be abominations.”

  “How can that be? Why would they believe that?”

  “I don’t know,” Dorsk replied. “But it is a fact. Go, please. Help the others board. My pilot is already at the controls with the flight instructions, so even if something happens to me, you’ll be okay.”

  Still the droid hesitated. “Why are you helping us, sir?”

  “Because I am a Jedi and I can. You don’t deserve destruction.”

  “Neither do you, sir.”

  “Thank you. I do not intend to be destroyed.”

  He raised his head up again as the droid finally followed its clattering, whirring comrades to the waiting ship.

  The crowd had reached the ancient stone causeway connecting the atoll-city of Imthitill to the abandoned fishing platform Dorsk now crouched on. It seemed they were all on foot, which meant all he had to do was prevent them from crossing the causeway.

  With a single bound, Dorsk propelled his thin body up onto the causeway, forsaking the cover of the step down to the fishing platform. Lightsaber held at his side, he watched the mob approach.

  I am a Jedi, he thought to himself. A Jedi knows no fear.

  Almost surprisingly, he didn’t. His training with Master Skywalker had been fretted with attacks of panic. Dorsk was the eighty-second clone of the first Khommite to bear his name. He’d grown up on a world well satisfied with its own peculiar kind of perfection, and that hadn’t prepared him for danger, or fear, or even the unexpected. There were times when he believed he could never be as brave as the other Jedi students or live up to the standard set by his celebrated predecessor, Dorsk 81.

  But watching the large, dark eyes of the crowd that was drawing close, he felt nothing but a gentle sadness that they had been driven to this. They must fear the Yuuzhan Vong terribly.

  The destruction of droids had begun small, but in a few days had become a planetwide epidemic. The government of Ando—such as it was—neither condoned nor condemned the brutality, so lon
g as no nondroids were killed or injured in the mess. Without help from the police, Dorsk 82 was the only chance the droids had, and he didn’t plan to fail them. He had already failed too many.

  He ignited his lightsaber and for an instant saw everything around him at once. The setting sun had spilled a glorious slick of orange fire into the ocean and lit the high-piled clouds on the horizon into castles of flame. Higher, the sky faded to gold-laced jade and aquamarine and then the pale of night. The lights in the cylindrical white towers of Imthitill were winking on, one by one, and so, too, were the lights of the fishing platforms floating in the deeps, spangling the ocean with lonely constellations.

  His own planet hadn’t any such untamed spectacles. Khomm’s weather was as predictable and homogenous as its people. Likely he, Dorsk 82, was the only person of his entire species who could appreciate this sky, or the iron-dressed waves of the sea.

  Salt air buffeted around him. He lifted his chin. Somehow, after all of these years, he felt he was doing the thing he had dreamed about at last.

  One of the Aqualish stepped before the rest. He was smaller than many, his tusks incised in the local style. He wore the dappled slicksuit of a tug worker.

  “Move, Jedi,” he commanded. “These droids are none of your business.”

  “These droids are under my protection,” Dorsk replied calmly.

  “They are not yours to protect, Jedi,” the Aqualish shouted back. “If their owners do not object, you have no say in the matter.”

  “I must disagree,” Dorsk replied. “I also plead with you to see reason. Destroying the droids will not appease the Yuuzhan Vong. They are beyond appeasing.”

  “That’s our business,” the self-appointed spokesman of the group shouted. “This isn’t your planet, Jedi. It’s ours. Didn’t you hear? The Yuuzhan Vong just took Duro.”

  “I had not heard,” Dorsk replied. “Nor does it matter. Go back to your homes in peace. I don’t want to hurt any of you. I’m taking these droids with me. You will not see them on Ando again. I swear it.”

  This time he saw the blaster lift—held by an Aqualish deep in the crowd. Dorsk grasped it with the Force and whisked it through the air until it came to rest in his left hand.

  “Please,” he said.

  For a long moment, neither side moved. Dorsk felt them wavering, but the Aqualish were a stubborn and violent lot. It was easier to stop a nova once it had started than to calm a whole mob of Aqualish.

  He heard a sudden hum and saw a security speeder approaching. He stepped back and allowed it to settle between him and the crowd. He did not relax his guard, even when eight Aqualish troopers in bright yellow body armor piled out and started motioning the crowd back.

  The officer stepped forward. “What’s going on here?” he asked.

  Dorsk motioned slightly with his head. “These people are intent on destroying a group of droids. I am protecting them.”

  “I see,” the officer said. “That’s your ship?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are there any other Jedi on board?”

  “No.”

  “Very well.” The officer spoke into a small comlink, too low for Dorsk to hear, but the clone suddenly sensed what was about to happen.

  “No!” he shouted. He spun on his heel and ran toward the ship, but even as he did so, several flares of light too bright to look upon struck it. A column of white flame leapt toward the sky, carrying with it the fragments and ions that had once been his ship, his pilot Hhen, and thirty-eight droids.

  Dorsk was still watching, mouth working soundlessly at the pointless destruction, when the stun baton hit him.

  He fell, turning that same uncomprehending stare on his attackers. The officer he’d been speaking to stood there, holding the baton.

  “Stay down, Jedi, and you’ll live.”

  “What? Why?…”

  “I suppose you haven’t heard. The Yuuzhan Vong have proposed a peace. They will stop their conquest with Duro, and leave Ando, so long as we turn you Jedi over to them. They will take you dead, but they would rather have you alive.”

  Dorsk 82 summoned the Force, washed away the pain and paralysis of the blast, and stood.

  “Drop your lightsaber, Jedi,” the officer said.

  Dorsk straightened himself and looked into the muzzles of the blasters. He dropped the one he had taken from the crowd. He hooked his lightsaber onto his belt.

  “I will not fight you,” he said.

  “Fine. Then you won’t mind surrendering your weapon.”

  “The Yuuzhan Vong will not keep their word. Their only desire is that you rid them of their worst enemies for them. With the Jedi out of the way, they will come for you. If you betray me, you betray yourselves.”

  “We’ll take that chance,” the officer said.

  “I’m walking away from here,” Dorsk said with a slight wave of his hand. “You will not stop me.”

  “No,” the officer said. “I won’t stop you.”

  “Nor will any of the rest of you.”

  Dorsk 82 started forward. One of the troopers, more strong willed than the others, lifted his blaster in a shaking hand.

  “Don’t,” Dorsk pleaded. He held out his hand.

  The blaster bolt grazed Dorsk in the palm, and he stepped back, but the action shook the other troopers from the suggestion he had placed in their minds. The next shot seared a hole through his thigh. He dropped to his knees.

  “Stop,” the officer said. “No more mind tricks.”

  Dorsk torturously pushed himself back to his feet. He took another step forward.

  I am a Jedi. A Jedi knows no fear.

  The dusk lit with blasterfire.

  Help.

  The automated signal was weak but faint.

  “Got ’em,” Uldir said. “I told you, didn’t I?”

  Dacholder, his copilot, clapped him on the back. “No doubt about it, lad. You’re the best rescue flier in the unit.”

  “I have good hunches, that’s all,” Uldir replied. “See if you can contact them.”

  “Sure thing.” Dacholder activated the comm unit. “Pride of Thela to injured vessel. Injured vessel, can you hear me?”

  The answer was static—but modulated static.

  “They’re trying to answer,” Uldir said. “Their comm unit must be damaged. Maybe when we get closer. Hey, there they are now.”

  Long-range sensors showed a craft dead in space, medium transport–sized. It ought to be the Winning Hand, a pleasure craft that had made a jump from the Corellian sector and vanished somewhere en route. The Hand’s jump had taken her dangerously near Obroa-skai, which was now in Yuuzhan Vong space. Though they hadn’t moved overtly on any planets since the fall of Duro, the Yuuzhan Vong had been setting up occasional dovin basal interdictors near their space, yanking from hyperspace ships bold or careless enough to approach their somewhat fuzzy borders. Most were never found again, but the Winning Hand had managed to get off a garbled transmission placing them along the Perlemian Trade Route not far from the Meridian sector. That was still a lot of space, but search and rescue had been Uldir’s business for the past six years. At the ripe old age of twenty-two, he was one of the best fliers in the corps.

  “Dead-on,” Dacholder said. “Congratulations. Again.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  Dacholder was a little older than Uldir, his hair prematurely shot with gray and receding from his forehead so fast Uldir could almost see it redshifting. He wasn’t a great pilot, but he was competent enough, and Uldir liked him.

  “Say, Uldir,” Dacholder began, in an inquisitive tone, “I never asked you—when the Vong came along, why didn’t you request transfer to a military unit? The way you fly, you could be an ace.”

  “Too hot for me,” Uldir replied.

  “Carbon flush. Rescue is twice the danger with a tenth of the firepower. During the fall of Duro I heard you picked up three stranded pilots under fire from four coralskippers with no backup at all.”

 
“I was pretty lucky,” Uldir demurred.

  “You sure it’s not something else?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I heard you attended that Jedi academy of Skywalker’s.”

  Uldir could only laugh at that. “Attended isn’t the right word. I was there, caused a systemful of trouble in a real short time, and had no talent for the Jedi thing at all. Still, maybe you’re right. I guess I figured if I couldn’t be a Jedi, I could at least emulate ’em. Search and rescue seemed like the best way. And we’re needed in wartime just as much as the flyboys.”

  “And you don’t have to kill.”

  Uldir shrugged. “That sounds about right. When did you start thinking about me so much, Doc?” He flipped the magnification up on the visual. “Look there,” he said, as the derelict ship came on-screen. “She doesn’t look half bad. Maybe they didn’t have any casualties.”

  “We can only hope,” Dacholder said.

  “See anything else out there?”

  “Not a thing,” Dacholder replied.

  “That’s good. We’re outside of Yuuzhan Vong space, but not that far outside. Even with all the tinkering I’ve done on this baby, I don’t want to run up against one of their interdictors.”

  “I noticed you coaxed another twenty percent from the inertial dampeners. Good work.”

  “Shows what you can do when you’ve got no life but the service, I guess,” Uldir replied. He adjusted their trajectory a bit. “Looks like they’re limping, but life support seems to be okay.”

  “Yeah.”

  Uldir gave his copilot a sidewise glance. Doc seemed a little nervous, which was odd. Not that he had the steadiest nerves in the unit, but he was no coward. Maybe it was because they were out so far without backup. The war had forced everyone to spread resources thin.