Star Wars: The Truce at Bakura
RAVE REVIEWS FOR PREVIOUS
STAR WARS® ADVENTURES:
HEIR TO THE EMPIRE
“Moves with a speed-of-light pace that captures the spirit of the movie trilogy so well, you can almost hear John Williams’s soundtrack.”
—The Providence Sunday Journal
“A splendidly exciting novel … read and enjoy, the magic is back.” —Nashville Banner
DARK FORCE RISING
“Continues [Zahn’s] remarkable extrapolation from George Lucas’s trilogy.” —Chicago Sun-Times
“Zahn has perfectly captured the pace and flavor of the Star Wars movies. This is space opera at its best.”
—Sunday Oklahoman
THE LAST COMMAND
“Intelligent, fast-paced fun, a worthy conclusion to the trilogy.” —Chicago Sun-Times
“Filled with characteristic Star Wars technology and cosmic battles … the detail and plot development far exceed what are possible in a two-hour movie.”
—Indianapolis Star
“Zahn has been faithful to the regular characters, capturing the nuances of their personalities to the point that reading the books is like watching the movies again and again.… Sit back with this book and savor the fun and excitement. It moves at the pace of a Star Destroyer in hyperspace.”
—The Flint Journal
This edition contains the complete
text of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
STAR WARS: THE TRUCE AT BAKURA
A Bantam Spectra Book
Bantam hardcover edition / January 1994
Bantam reissue / February 1997
SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks
of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
®, TM & © 1994 by Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved.
Used under authorization.
Copyright © 1997 Lucasfilm Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 93-11388.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.
eISBN: 978-0-307-79627-1
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada.
v3.1
DEDICATION
I can’t think of Star Wars without remembering the opening fanfare from its soundtrack. I can’t imagine an Imperial Star Destroyer’s long, triangular silhouette without hearing ominous triplet rhythms. And who can picture the Mos Eisley cantina without that inimitable jazz band?
It is with grateful admiration that I dedicate this novel to the man who composed the musical scores for the three Star Wars movies:
John Williams
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
About the Author
Also by this Author
Introduction to the Star Wars Expanded Universe
Excerpt from Star Wars: Luke Skywalker & the Shadows of Mindor
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
CHAPTER
1
Above a dead world, one habitable moon hung suspended like a cloud-veiled turquoise. The eternal hand that held the chain of its orbit had dusted its velvet backdrop with brilliant stars, and cosmic energies danced on the wrinkles of space-time, singing their timeless music, neither noticing nor caring for the Empire, the Rebel Alliance, or their brief, petty wars.
But on that petty human scale of perspective, a fleet of starships orbited the moon’s primary. Carbon streaks scored the sides of several ships. Droids swarmed around some, performing repairs. Metal shards that had been critical spaceship components, and human and alien bodies, orbited with the ships. The battle to destroy Emperor Palpatine’s second Death Star had cost the Rebel Alliance heavily.
Luke Skywalker hustled across one cruiser’s landing bay, red-eyed but still suffused with victory after the Ewoks’ celebration. Passing a huddle of droids, he caught a whiff of coolants and lubricants. He ached, a dull gnawing in all his bones from the longest day of his life. Today—no, it was yesterday—he had met the Emperor. Yesterday, he had almost paid with his life for his faith in his father. Yet a passenger sharing his shuttle up to the cruiser from the Ewok village had already asked if Luke really killed the Emperor—and Darth Vader—single-handed.
Luke wasn’t ready to announce the fact that “Darth Vader” had been Anakin Skywalker, his father. Still, he’d answered firmly: Vader killed Emperor Palpatine. Vader had flung him into the second Death Star’s core. Luke would be explaining that for weeks, he guessed. For now, he merely wanted to check on his X-wing fighter.
To his surprise, it was overrun by service crew. Behind and above it, a magnacrane lowered Artoo-Detoo into the cylindrical droid socket behind his cockpit. “What’s up?” Luke asked, standing to catch his breath.
“Oh. Sir,” answered a khaki-suited crewman, disengaging a collapsible fuel hose, “your relief pilot’s going out. Captain Antilles came back on the first shuttle and went on patrol immediately. He intercepted an Imperial drone ship—one of those antiques they used for carrying messages back before the Clone Wars. Incoming from deep space.”
Incoming. Someone had sent a message to the Emperor. Luke smiled. “Guess they haven’t heard yet. Wedge wants company? I’m not that tired. I could go.”
The crewman didn’t smile back. “Unfortunately, Captain Antilles touched off a self-destruct cycle while trying to release its message codes. He is manually blocking a critical gap—”
“Cancel the relief pilot,” Luke exclaimed. Wedge Antilles had been his friend since the days of the first Death Star, where they’d flown in the final attack together. Without waiting to hear more, Luke spun toward the ready-room. A minute later, he was hopping back and pulling up one leg of an orange pressure suit.
Crewers scattered. He sprang up the ladder and into his inclined, padded seat, yanked on his helmet, then touched on the ship’s fusion generator. A familiar high-energy whine built around him.
The man who’d spoken climbed up behind him. “But, sir, I think Admiral Ackbar wanted to debrief you.”
“I’ll be right back.” Luke closed his cockpit canopy and ran an Alliance-record speed check of his systems and instruments. Nothing flagged his attention.
He switched on his comlink. “Rogue Leader, ready for takeoff.”
“Opening hatch, sir.”
He punched in
the drive. An instant later, the dull ache in his body turned to ferocious pain. All the stars in his field of vision split into binaries and spun around each other. Crewers’ voices babbled in his ears. Dizzily, he reached down inside himself for the quiet center Master Yoda had taught him to touch …
To touch …
There.
Exhaling one trembling breath, he measured his mastery of the pain. Stars shrank into singular gleams again. Whatever had caused that, he’d deal with it later. Through the Force, he quested outward and found Wedge’s presence. His hands moved on the X-wing’s controls almost effortlessly as he steered toward that end of the Fleet.
On his way, he got his first good look at the battle damage, the swarming repair droids and tow vessels. Mon Calamari Star Cruisers were plated and shielded to withstand multiple direct hits, but he thought he remembered several more of the huge, lumpy crafts. Fighting for his life, his father, and his integrity in the Emperor’s throne room, he hadn’t even felt the gut-wrenching Force disturbances from all those deaths. He hoped he wasn’t getting used to them.
“Wedge, do you copy?” Luke asked over the subspace radio. He vectored out among the big ships of the Fleet. Scanners indicated that the nearest heavy transport was cautiously moving away from something much smaller. Four A-wings swooped along behind Luke. “Wedge, are you out there?”
“Sorry,” he heard faintly. “Almost out of range of my ship’s pickup. You see, I’ve got to …” Wedge trailed off, grunting. “I’ve got to keep these two crystals apart. It’s a self-destruct of some sort.”
“Crystals?” Luke asked, to keep Wedge talking. There was pain under that voice.
“Electrite crystal leads. Leftovers from the old ‘elegance’ days. The mechanism’s trying to push them together. Let ’em touch … poof. The whole fusion engine.”
Tumbling slowly above the blue glimmer of Endor, Luke spotted Wedge’s X-wing. Alongside it drifted a nine-meter-long cylinder bearing Imperial markings, fully as long as the X-wing and almost all engine, a type of drone ship the Alliance still couldn’t afford. For some reason, the drone gave him an eerie foreboding. The Empire never used such antiques any more. Why hadn’t the sender been able to use standard Imperial channels?
Luke whistled. “No, we don’t want to blow that big of an engine.” No wonder the transport was moving away.
“Right.” Wedge clung to one end of the cylinder, wearing a pressure suit and connected to the X-wing by a life-support tether. He must have blown his cockpit air and dove for the cylinder’s master control the moment he realized he’d accidentally armed it to detonate. In a space pilot’s lightweight pressure suit and closed-face emergency helmet, he could survive vacuum for several minutes.
“How long’ve you been out here, Wedge?”
“I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. The view’s terrific.”
Closing in, Luke reversed engines with care. Wedge held one hand inside a hinged panel. His head swiveled to follow Luke’s X-wing as Luke used short, delicate engine bursts to match his momentum with the cylinder.
“Sure could use another hand.” Wedge’s words sounded cocky but the tone betrayed his strain. That hand must be half crushed. “What are you doing out here?”
“Enjoying the view.” Luke considered his options. The A-wing pilots decelerated and hung back, probably assuming Luke knew what he was doing. “Artoo,” he called, “what’s the reach on your manipulator arm? If I got in close enough, could you help him?”
No—2.76 meters short at optimum angle, appeared on his head-up display.
Luke frowned. Sweat trickled on his forehead. Anything small, solid, and disposable would help. If he didn’t hurry, his friend was dead. Already Wedge’s sense in the Force wobbled dizzily.
Luke glanced at his lightsaber. He wasn’t about to dispose of that.
Not even to save Wedge’s life? Besides, he’d be able to get it back. Cautiously he slipped the saber into the flare ejection port’s feed tube. He launched it out, then extended a hand toward it across ten meters of vacuum. He sent it gliding toward Wedge. Once near the target, he twisted his wrist.
The green-white blade appeared, silent in the vacuum of space. Wedge’s wide brown eyes blinked behind his faceplate.
“On my signal,” Luke said, “jump free.”
“Luke, I’ll lose fingers.”
“Way free,” Luke repeated. “You’ll lose more than fingers if you stay there.”
“What’s the chance you could Jedi me a little nerve blockage? This hurts like crazy.” Wedge’s voice sounded weaker. He pulled in his knees and braced to push off.
At moments like these, moisture farming for Uncle Owen back on Tatooine didn’t sound too bad. “I’ll try,” said Luke. “Show me the crystals. Look at them closely.”
“Ho-kay.” Wedge pulled around to stare into the hatchway. Letting the lightsaber drift, Luke felt for Wedge’s friendly presence. He trusted Wedge not to resist this, to let him …
Through Wedge’s eyes, and fighting the excruciating pain in Wedge’s hand, Luke glimpsed a pair of round, multifaceted jewels—one inside his palm, the other crushing inward at the end of a spring mechanism from the back of his hand. Fist-sized, they reflected pale golden sparks of saber light out the hatch onto Wedge’s orange suit. Luke didn’t think the flight glove alone would keep them apart, or he’d’ve simply told Wedge to slip out of it. Brief depressurization didn’t damage extremities much.
If Wedge jumped, Luke would have a second at most to slice one crystal free, and only a little longer before Wedge fainted. Wedge was tethered and he’d be able to keep breathing, but he could lose a lot of blood. The glimpse blurred at the edges.
Luke tweaked Wedge’s pain perception.
Too much to juggle. Luke’s own aches began to ooze up from under control. “Got it,” he grunted.
“Got what?” Wedge asked dreamily.
“The view,” Luke said. “Jump on the count of three. Jump hard. One.” Wedge didn’t object. Clenching his teeth, Luke eased into a closer accord with the saber. So long as he focused on the saber, he could maintain control. “Two.” Keeping up a steady count, he felt the saber, the crystals, and the critical gap, all as parts of the universe’s wholeness.
“Three.” Nothing happened. “Jump, Wedge!” Luke cried.
Weakly, Wedge launched himself. Luke swept in. One crystal soared free, reflecting a whirling green kaleidoscope onto the X-wing’s upper S-foil.
“Ooh,” crooned Wedge’s voice in his ear. “Pretty.” He spun, clutching his right hand.
“Wedge, reel in!”
No response. Luke bit his lip. He stabilized the tumbling saber and deactivated its blade. Wedge’s tether stretched taut, high above the other X-wing. His limbs wobbled randomly.
Luke slapped his distress beacon. “Rogue Leader to Home One. Explosives disarmed. Request medical pickup. Now!”
From behind the A-wings, hanging back out of the danger zone, a med runner swooped into sight.
Wedge’s body rose and sank with each breath as he floated upright in the Fleet’s clear tank of healing bacta fluid. Much to Luke’s relief, they’d saved all his fingers. Surgical droid Too-Onebee set the control board and then swiveled to face Luke. Slender, jointed limbs waved in front of his gleaming midsection. “Now you, sir. Please step behind the scanner.”
“I’m all right.” Luke leaned his stool against the bulkhead. “Just tired.” Artoo-Detoo bleeped softly beside him, sounding concerned.
“Please, sir. This will only take a moment.”
Luke sighed and shuffled around a man-high rectangular panel. “Okay?” he called out through it. “May I go now?”
“One moment more,” came the mechanical voice, then clicking sounds. “One moment,” the droid repeated. “Have you experienced double vision recently?”
“Well …” Luke scratched his head. “Yes. But just for a minute.” Surely that little spell wasn’t significant.
As the diagnostic panel
retracted into the bulkhead, a medical flotation bed extended itself from the wall beside Too-Onebee. Luke backstepped. “What’s that for?”
“You’re not well, sir.”
“I’m just tired.”
“Sir, my diagnosis is sudden and massive calcification of your skeletal structure, of the rare type brought on by severely conductive exposure to electrical and other energy fields.”
Energy fields. Yesterday. Emperor Palpatine, leering as blue-white sparks leaped off his fingertips while Luke writhed on the deck. Luke broke a sweat, the memory was so fresh. He’d thought he was dying. He was dying.
“The abrupt drop in blood minerals is causing muscular microseizures all over your body, sir.”
So that was why he ached. Until an hour ago, he hadn’t had a chance to sit still and notice. Deflated, he stared up at Too-Onebee. “But it’s not permanent damage, is it? You don’t have to replace bones?” He shuddered at the thought.
“The condition will become chronic unless you rest and allow me to treat you,” answered the mechanical voice. “The alternative is bacta immersion.”
Luke glanced at the tank. Not that, again. He’d tasted bacta on his breath for a week afterward. Reluctantly he pulled off his boots and stretched out on the flotation bed.
He awakened, squirming, some time later.
Too-Onebee’s metal-grate face appeared at his bedside. “Painkiller, sir?”
Luke had always read that humans had three bones in each ear. Now he believed it. He could count them. “I feel worse, not better,” he complained. “Didn’t you do anything?”
“Treatment is complete, sir. Now you must rest. May I offer you a painkiller?” he repeated patiently.