Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor Part 1

Star Wars.

Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor.

by Matthew Stover.

BRIEFING.

Lorz Geptun stood outside the command cabin door and tried to swallow. Really, this was too much: to be summoned before Luke Skywalker, of all people. A Jedi. Not only a Jedi, but the son of Anakin Skywalker. And now Geptun had to meet him. Face-to-face!

He tugged at the collar of his dress-blue uniform tunic, slid a finger behind it to try to stretch the fabric just a hair more. He grimaced at how difficult he found this simple task to be; surely his tailor had miscalculated-again-because he couldn't possibly have put on so much weight since he'd had this made. Could he? In, what had it been, three Standard months? A man of his admittedly advanced age-he would never see seventy again-should have settled on a size, and left it at that.

Geptun was not much in favor of dress uniforms, anyway. He'd left his own behind on his homeworld decades before, at the beginning of the Clone Wars, trading it in for mufti; in those days, Republic Intelligence had been a largely covert service, and had had no use for uniforms. He'd left Republic Intelligence not long after it had become Imperial Intelligence; his investigation of the so-called Jedi Rebellion had uncovered entirely too much of certain truths that the Imperial Executive had preferred to conceal, and for a number of years he'd been forced to make a living as a freelance broker of information while doing his best to avoid attracting any official Imperial attention.

Eventually, he'd offered his services to the Rebel Alliance. Though he had little interest in politics-his primary political conviction was a profound interest in his own safety and comfort-he'd recognized that the prospective government the Rebels planned to install would, owing to its youthful amateurish untidiness, afford him a great deal more opportunity for the freedom to make his own way in his own way. Which was another way of saying: to live and work in the lucrative shadows outside official scrutiny.

Which made his current situation all the more ironic.

He sighed. Nothing ever works out how we wish, yes? Doesn't mean one can't turn it to one's advantage. He sighed again and raised a finger to trigger the cabin's door chime . .. but before he could, the door slid open, and a voice that sounded a great deal older and wearier than Geptun had expected said, "Inspector Geptun. Please come in."

Geptun grimaced again. He'd become accustomed, this twenty-plus years past, to a galaxy without Jedi. He wasn't at all sure he was looking forward to their return.

He took a deep breath and waddled through the door. "General Skywalker," he said with a slight bow-no salute, as the Judicial Service was outside the military chain of command-and a pleasant smile. "How may I be of service?"

The young general sat on the edge of his desk, head lowered and hands clasped before him. He wore close-fitting civilian clothing of a somber black, very much in the style his celebrated father had made famous. Geptun reflected with a flash of annoyance that if he'd known Skywalker would be out of uniform, he would have come to this meeting in a comfortable blazer instead of this b.l.o.o.d.y jookley suit.

Skywalker lifted his head as though he had felt Geptun's annoyance-and he might very well have, Geptun reminded himself. b.l.o.o.d.y Jedi. "Inspector Lorz Geptun," Skywalker said slowly. "I know a little about you, Inspector. You were a military governor and director of planetary intelligence for the (MS during the Clone Wars."

Geptun's too-tight collar suddenly seemed to tighten further, "Briefly. At the beginning of the..."

"Then you were a Republic spy."

"Well..."

"And after that, you made your living tracking targets for bounty hunters."

"Not specifically for..."

"And now you're a JS investigator. Through all this, there's a running theme. You have a talent."

Geptun said carefully, "Do I?"

"You seem to be pretty good at finding the truth."

Geptun relaxed. "Oh, well, thank you for..."

"And at making money off it."

"Erm." He cleared his throat, but found he had nothing to say.

Skywalker pushed himself to his feet. His face was drawn, and far more deeply lined than Geptun had expected from a lad of twenty-four. He looked like he hadn't been sleeping for some few days now. His movements were slightly unsteady, and the shadows under his eyes were shading toward purple-but they were nothing compared to the shadows within his eyes. "That's what I know about you. What do you know about me?"

Geptun blinked. "General?"

"Come on, Inspector." Skywalker sounded even more tired than he looked. "Everybody knows stuff about me. What do you know?"

"Oh, well, you know, the usual-Tatooine, Yavin, Endor, Bakura, Death Star One and Two..." Geptun realized he was babbling and shut up.

Skywalker nodded. "The usual. The stories. The press releases. The problem is that those stories and press releases aren't really about me at all. They're about the guy everybody wants me to be, understand?"

Geptun eyed him warily; he sensed that he'd been maneuvered onto dangerous ground. "I'm afraid," he said slowly, "that I don't understand."

Skywalker nodded with a slow, tired sigh. "That's because you don't know that less than a month ago, I murdered about fifty thousand innocent beings."

Geptun goggled at him, then blinked and cleared his throat again as he figured out what the young Jedi was talking about. "You mean Mindor?"

Skywalker's eyes drifted shut; he winced as though he were looking at something painful on the inside of his eyelids. "Yeah. Mindor. I say about fifty thousand because I don't know the real number. n.o.body does. The records were destroyed along with the system."

"From what I've heard, your victory at the Battle of Mindor would hardly const.i.tute murder..."

"From what you've heard. More stories."

"Well, I had heard-I, ah . .." Geptun coughed delicately. "What is it, exactly, that you want me to do?"

"You're an investigator. I want you to investigate."

"Investigate what?"

"Mindor." Skywalker's face twisted. "Me."

He looked like something hurt. Or like everything hurt.

"Well, I, ah... erm." Geptun could think of several dozen ways to earn a tidy sum from such a project. "If you don't mind, may I inquire as to how my name came up for this?"

Skywalker looked away. "You were recommended by an old friend."

"Was I? And how did your old friend come to..."

"Not my old friend," Skywalker said. "Yours. His name was Nick."

"Nick?" Geptun frowned. "I don't know any..."

"He said to give you this." Skywalker held out a hook-shaped, curved, metallic-looking object. "Careful. It's sharp."

Geptun accepted the object gingerly . .. and as soon as it touched his palm, his mind was flooded with images of a dark-skinned man with tight-cropped hair, a c.o.c.ky grin, and startling blue eyes. "Nick Rostu?" he breathed. "I haven't thought of Nick Rostu in .. . years. Decades. I thought he was dead."

Skywalker shrugged. "He probably is."

"I don't understand." But he did understand, at least a little. The object in his hand was from his-and Nick Rostu's-homeworld.

It was a bra.s.svine thorn, "So he was right about that, anyway." Skywalker nodded at the thorn. "He said you can read objects. That you can touch them and sense things about their owners."

Geptun shrugged. Why trouble to deny it? "It's a minor talent-but useful in an intelligence a.n.a.lyst."

"Or an investigator."

Geptun's nod was noncommittal. "What else did Rostu tell you about me?"

"He said you're vicious, venal, and corrupt. That you don't have a shred of decency, and about as much human feeling as a glacier lizard."

Geptun nodded abstractedly. "That does sound like Rostu..."

"He also said that you've got plenty of guts, that you're the smartest guy he ever met, and that once you get started on something, you never, ever quit. You don't like Jedi, and you don't much care who rules the galaxy as long as you can make a decent living. All of which makes you exactly the man for this job."

"And what job, if you don't mind saying, is this?"

"I want you to build a case. Talk to people. Everyone who survived Mindor. Get the facts, and make sense of them, and make a case."

"What sort of case?"

"War crimes," Skywalker said grimly. "Crimes against civilization, dereliction of duty, desertion. That kind of thing. Anything you can find out."

Geptun angled his head. "About whom? Who is the war criminal you wish to indict?"

"I thought that was obvious." The shadows in Skywalker's eyes swelled as though they might swallow his whole life. "It's me."

Geptun said, "I'll do it."

Six months after the destruction of the second Death Star and the downfall of the evil Emperor Palpatine. Luke Skywalker and the victorious Rebel Alliance still struggle against surviving Imperial forces, who remain as determined as ever to crush all that is good in the galaxy.

Black-armored stormtroopers under the command of the mysterious warlord 5hadowsp.a.w.n now raid the infant New Republic, taking up piracy, pillage, and destruction in the wake of the Empire's collapse. Attacking at will, they have shaken galactic confidence in the Republic's ability to maintain order and security.

In deep s.p.a.ce along the Corellian Run. the Alliance's premier fighter squadron springs a trap on Shadowsp.a.w.n's marauders...

CHAPTER 1.

The Corellian Queen was a legend: the greatest luxury liner ever to ply the s.p.a.ceways, an interstellar pleasure palace forever beyond the grasp of all but the galaxy's super-elite-beings whose wealth transcended description. Rumor had it that for the price of a single c.o.c.ktail in one of the Queen's least-exclusive dining clubs, one might buy a stars.h.i.+p; for the price of a meal, one could buy not only the stars.h.i.+p, but the port in which it docked, and the factory that had built it. A being could not simply pay for a berth on the Corellian Queen; mere wealth would never suffice. To embark upon the ultimate journey into hedonistic excess, one first had to demonstrate that one's breeding and manners were as exquisite as would be the pain of paying one's bar bill. All of which made the Corellian Queen one of the most irresistible terrorist targets ever: who better to terrorize than the elite of the Elite, the Powers among the powerful, the greatest of the Great?

And so when some presumably unscrupulous routing clerk in the vast midreaches of the Nebula Line corporation quietly offered for sale, to select parties from Kindlabethia to Nar Shaddaa, a hint as to the route of the Corellian Queen's upcoming cruise, it attracted considerable interest.

Two pertinent facts remained concealed, however, from the winning bidder. The first pertinent fact was that this presumably unscrupulous routing clerk was neither unscrupulous nor, in fact, a routing clerk, but was a skilled and resourceful agent of the intelligence service of the New Republic. The second pertinent fact was that the Corellian Queen was not cruising at all that season, having been replaced by a breakaway disposable sh.e.l.l built to conceal a substantial fraction of a starfighter wing, led by-as was customary in such operations-the crack pilots of Rogue Squadron.

It was approximately the moment that R4-G7 squalled a proximity alarm through his X-wing's sensor panel and his HUD lit up with image codes for six TIE Defenders on his tail that Lieutenant Derek "Hobbie" Klivian, late of the Alliance to Restore Freedom to the Galaxy, currently of the New Republic, began to suspect that Commander Antilles's brilliant ambush had never been brilliant at all, not even a little, and he said so. In no uncertain terms. Stripped of its blistering profanity, his comment was "Wedge? This plan was stupid. You hear me? Stupid, stupid, stuYOW-!"

The yow was a product of multiple cannon hits that disintegrated his right dorsal cannon and most of the extended wing it had been attached to. This kicked his fighter into a tumble that he fought with both hands on the yoke and both feet kicking att.i.tude jets and almost had under control until the pair of the Defenders closest on his tail blossomed into expanding spheres of flame and debris fragments. The twin shock fronts overtook him at exactly the wrong instant and sent him flipping end-over-end straight at another Defender formation streaking toward him head-on. Then tail-on, then head-on again, and so forth.

His s.h.i.+p's comlink crackled as Wedge Antilles's fighter flashed past him close enough that he could see the grin on the commander's face. "That's 'stupid plan, sir,' Lieutenant."

"I suppose you think that's funny."

"'Well, if he doesn't," put in Hobbies wingman, "I sure do."

"When I want your opinion, Janson, I'll dust your s.h.i.+p and scan for it in the wreckage." The skewed whirl of stars around his c.o.c.kpit gave his stomach a yank that threatened to make the slab of smoked terrafin loin he'd had for breakfast violently reemerge. Struggling grimly with the controls, he managed to angle his s.h.i.+p's whirl just a hair, which let him twitch his s.h.i.+p's nose toward the four pursuing marauders as he spun. Red fire lashed from his three surviving cannons, and the Defenders' formation split open like an overripe snekfruit.

Hobbie only dusted one with the cannons, but the pair of proximity-fused flechette torpedoes he had thoughtfully triggered at the same time flared in diverging arcs to intercept the enemy fighters; these torpedo arcs terminated in spectacular explosions that cracked the three remaining Defenders like rotten snuffle eggs.

"Now, that was satisfying," he said, still fighting his controls to stabilize the crippled X-wing. "Eyeball souffle!"

"Better watch it, Hobbie-keep that up, and somebody might start to think you can fly that thing."

"Are you in this fight, Janson? Or are you just gonna hang back and smirk while I do all the heavy lifting?"

"Haven't decided yet." Wes Janson's X-wing came out of nowhere, streaking in a tight bank across Hobbie's subjective vertical. "Maybe I can lend a hand. Or, say, a couple torps."

Two brilliant blue stars leapt from Janson's torpedo tubes and streaked for the oncoming TIEs.

"Uh, Wes?" Hobbie said, flinching. "Those weren't the flechette torps, were they?"

"Sure. What else?"

"Have you noticed that I'm currently having just a little trouble maneuvering?"

"What do you mean?" Janson asked as though honestly puzzled. Then, after a second spent watching Hobbie's s.h.i.+p tumbling helplessly directly toward his torpedoes' targets, he said, "Oh. Uh... sorry?"

The flechette torpedoes carried by Rogue Squadron had been designed and built specifically for this operation, and they had one primary purpose: to take out TIE Defenders.

The TIE Defender was the Empire's premier s.p.a.ce-superiority fighter. It was faster and more maneuverable than the Incom T-65 (better known as the X-wing); faster even than the heavily modified and updated 65Bs of Rogue Squadron. The Defender was also more heavily armed, packing twin ion cannons to supplement its lasers, as well as dual-use launch tubes that could fire either proton torpedoes or concussion missiles. The s.h.i.+elds generated by its twin Novaldex deflector generators were nearly as powerful as those found on capital s.h.i.+ps. However, the Defenders were not equipped with particle s.h.i.+elds, depending instead on their t.i.tanium-reinforced hull to absorb the impact of material objects.

Each proton torpedo sh.e.l.l had been loaded with thousands of tiny jagged bits of durasteel, packed around a core of conventional explosive. On detonation, these tiny bits of durasteel became an expanding sphere of shrapnel; though traveling with respectable velocity of their own, they were most effective when set off in the path of oncoming Defenders, because impact energy, after all, is determined by relative velocity. At starfighter combat speeds, flying into a cloud of durasteel pellets could transform one's s.h.i.+p from a starfighter into a very, very expensive cheese grater.

The four medial fighters of the oncoming Defender formation hit the flechette cloud and just... shredded. The lateral wingers managed to bank off an instant before they would have been overtaken by two sequential detonations, as the explosion of one Defender's power core triggered the other three's cores an eyeblink later, so that the unfortunate Lieutenant Klivian was now tumbling directly toward a miniature plasma nebula that blazed with enough hard radiation to cook him like a bantha steak on an obsidian fry-rock at double noon on Tatooine.

"You're not gonna make it, Hobbie," Janson called. "Punch out."

"Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" Hobbie snarled under his breath, still struggling grimly with the X-wing's controls. The fighter's tumble began to slow. "I've got it, Wes!"

"No, you don't! Punch out, Hobbie-PUNCH OUT!"