Catalyst Read online

  BY JAMES LUCENO

  THE ROBOTECH SERIES

  (As Jack McKinney, with Brian Daley)

  THE BLACK HOLE TRAVEL AGENCY SERIES

  (As Jack McKinney, with Brian Daley)

  THE YOUNG INDIANA JONES CHRONICLES

  The Mata Hari Affair

  STAR WARS

  Cloak of Deception

  Darth Maul: Saboteur (eBook)

  The New Jedi Order—Agents of Chaos I: Hero’s Trial

  The New Jedi Order—Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse

  The New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force

  Labyrinth of Evil

  Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader

  Millennium Falcon

  Darth Plagueis

  Tarkin

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  Head Hunters

  A Fearful Symmetry

  Illegal Alien

  The Big Empty

  Kaduna Memories

  The Shadow

  The Mask of Zorro

  Rio Passion

  Rainchaser

  Rock Bottom

  Hunt for the Maya Looking-Glass: The Adventures of 3Sky and Flint

  Written in partnership with Leland Chee, Pablo Hidalgo, Matt Martin, and Rayne Roberts of the Lucasfilm Story Group.

  With special thanks to Gareth Edwards and the screenwriters and producers of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

  Star Wars: Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or ™ where indicated. All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  ISBN 9780345511492

  Ebook ISBN 9781101967010

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Elizabeth A. D. Eno, adapted for ebook

  Death Star illustrations by Chris Reiff and Chris Trevas

  Cover design: Scott Biel

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  By James Luceno

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chronology

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One: Life During Wartime

  Chapter 1: Pressure

  Chapter 2: Isolation

  Chapter 3: Secret Weapons

  Chapter 4: Beginnings

  Chapter 5: Hostages to Fortune

  Chapter 6: Bonding

  Chapter 7: In Thrall to Grand Ideas

  Chapter 8: Public Displays of Affectation

  Chapter 9: Angry Red Planet

  Chapter 10: The Long Comm

  Chapter 11: Mundane Science

  Chapter 12: A Cog in Something Turning

  Chapter 13: Kyber Crystal Persuasion

  Part Two: The Pursuit of Peace

  Chapter 14: Congruence

  Chapter 15: On the Shoulders of Giants

  Chapter 16: Unexpected Value

  Chapter 17: Material Implications

  Chapter 18: Combinatory Play

  Chapter 19: Closed Interval

  Chapter 20: Deep Truth

  Chapter 21: Subgroups

  Chapter 22: Exit Wounds

  Part Three: Dead Reckoning

  Chapter 23: Derivatives

  Chapter 24: Cardinality

  Chapter 25: The Still Point in the Turning World

  Chapter 26: Exponents

  Chapter 27: End of Proof

  Chapter 28: Transposed

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For Udi Saly and Liz Conover, “bonfire hearts.” May the Force be with you infinitely.

  A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….

  “WHAT IF…”

  It was as much as Galen Erso got out before falling silent and pacing away from the alphanumeric data field that hovered above the holoprojector. Galen’s fragment of a question also seemed to hang in the air, and his fellow researchers in the control room stopped what they were doing to regard him in palpable expectation. One of them, Nurboo, broke the pregnant silence.

  “You’ve a new idea, Galen? Should we delay the test?”

  Galen either didn’t hear him or didn’t care to. He stood motionless for a moment, his gaze unfocused, then resumed his determined pacing, mumbling numbers and calculations to himself.

  A second Valltii gave his large and hirsute head a doleful shake. “It’s no good, we’ve lost him.”

  From across the room, Tambo’s gravelly voice shushed him.

  “Can’t you see he’s thinking?”

  Galen’s pose certainly said as much. His head was lowered, eyes and lips narrowed, and his thick arms were folded across his chest, as if clutching something to himself. The new idea, perhaps.

  Standing just over 1.8 meters tall, he was broad-shouldered and well developed, despite having spent most of his thirty-odd standard years in earnest rumination and reflection, often scribbling the results of all that thinking on whatever was handy. His hair was uncombed, falling around his face in heavy strands in a way that made him dashing in sunlight, dangerous in the dark.

  Lyra finally pushed herself out of her chair and ambled over to him.

  “What if…” she said in a patient, leading way.

  Everyone in the control room took it as a good sign when the thumb and forefinger of Galen’s left hand went briefly to the corners of his mouth, stretching the skin.

  “We’re getting there,” Lyra said. She loved it when Galen went so deep that he essentially disappeared from the world, going where few could follow, to his own private hyperspace.

  A few centimeters shorter than him, she had a high forehead and layered auburn hair that just reached her shoulders. Arching brows and a slightly downturned mouth gave her a somewhat somber look, though she was anything but. She and Galen had wed on Coruscant almost five years earlier, and she was every bit her husband’s equal in appeal, with the physique of a natural athlete, honed by a lifetime of exploration on dozens of remote worlds. Bundled up in a coarse sweater and baggy trousers, Lyra affected a colorful earflapped cap made of local yarn, and she wore it well.

  The only humans among the research group, they were a long way from the Core, and even farther from the conflict that had recently erupted between the Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems, the so-called Separatists. The six stout Valltii they had lived and worked with for the past four standard months had large round faces and mouths made for chewing meat. Beneath lustrous growths of facial hair, their skin was as blue as the glacial ice that covered half the planet. Galen and Lyra conversed with them in a pidgin of Galactic Basic and the indigenous language, which was guttural and filled with lengthy words that were confounding to humans. With an ear for mimicry, Lyra did better with the language than Galen did.

  She was on the verge of goading him again when he blinked as if remembering who or where he was, and his attention returned to the data field.

  She smiled lightly. He was back.

  Reviewing the lengthy differential equations top to bottom, Galen stepped closer to the field, as if there were something to be discerned behind it or along its faintly oscillating edges.

  “Assis,” he said finally, addressing the droid on the far side of the holoprojector.

  “Yes, Dr. Erso.”

  “Line four. Change the coefficient to five and rec
alculate.”

  The TDK-160 research-assistant, a reconfigurable droid that just then was standing on two slender alloy legs, complied and sent the results to the holotable.

  Everyone kept their attention on the field while the quotient groups, coefficients, and derivatives began to shift.

  The control room was designed to house technology rather than living beings. Lined with humming machines, it lacked windows and was always colder than it had any right being. Heat was pumped in through ducts high overhead, but the room’s real warmth came from its having acquired a lived-in look through long months of research and experimentation. No one minded the unpacked crates stacked in the corners, the empty food containers piled on Nurboo’s worktable, or the litter of backup data storage devices. As cluttered and claustrophobic as it was, it was more hospitable than just about anywhere outside.

  Thick walls broken by sliding entryways kept out the worst of the cold. A rear doorway accessed a ramp leading to a labyrinth of corridors that connected disparate parts of the facility, a few of them wide enough to accommodate compact utility speeders. Elsewhere were banks of computers and analyzers, plotting boards, comm stations, even a rudimentary HoloNet transceiver for extraplanetary communications.

  It wasn’t Lyra’s kind of place at all, but she had formed fast friendships with Galen’s colleagues, and Vallt was home for now.

  Most of the ignition facility lay far below them, where gases were compelled to mingle and intense heat was generated. There, too, was the superheated ion-plasma reactor and the superconducting coils that cooled it, along with the hydrothermal autoclaves in which enormous crystals were synthetically grown. The fusion plant itself could power Vallt’s entire northern continent, and one day it might, but that wasn’t its present purpose. The goal was to generate outbursts of raw power that could be harvested, stored in capacitors, and doled out sustainably to worlds in need. The place hadn’t come cheap even in prewar credits, and Zerpen Industries, headquartered in an autonomous system in the Outer Rim, was still awaiting a return on its investment.

  “The equation won’t resolve,” Nurboo said when the data field began flashing as if beside itself in confusion.

  Galen addressed the droid once more. “Assis, go back.”

  The original integrals and summation symbols returned to the field, and Galen studied them for a long moment.

  “Is that a smile?” Tambo asked. “Lyra, is he smiling?”

  Instead of retasking Assis, Galen leaned into the field and began to wave his arms in the air like an orchestra conductor or magician, altering the calculation. When the field had transformed and stabilized, everyone gathered around the holotable to scrutinize the results.

  “That’s a fine number,” one of the Valltii said.

  “An elegant solution,” another pronounced.

  “Shall we conduct the test now?”

  The six of them scattered to their workstations and instruments, exchanging comments and suggestions as they went about their responsibilities with renewed enthusiasm.

  “The boule is in place,” Easel reported, referring to the synthetic crystal.

  Galen fixed his gaze on the central display screen.

  Nurboo cleared his throat. “Test sequence initiated.”

  Illumination in the control room dimmed briefly as deep below them immense pressure was brought to bear on a massive crystal that had been grown only two months earlier. The synthetic gem had been modeled on an actual kyber, which Zerpen had gone to great lengths and cost to acquire. Relatively rare, the so-called living crystals were almost exclusively the property of the Jedi, who seemed to regard the kyber as sacrosanct. Finger-sized ones powered their lightsabers, and larger ones were rumored to adorn the ornate façades of their isolated temples.

  “Results show a piezoelectric effect of point-three above previous,” Nurboo said.

  The researchers watched Galen, who was shaking his head back and forth.

  “No?” Tambo said.

  “We should be seeing a much larger increase.” Galen firmed his lips and scowled at no one in particular, wrestling with what might have gone wrong. “The unit cell stacking in the synthetic isn’t stable enough. We’ll have to run a spectrographic autopsy and begin again. The entire batch of boules might be flawed.”

  It was nothing they hadn’t been through countless times, but disappointment hung in the cool air regardless.

  Galen returned to his thinking pose.

  “We could try applying more pressure,” Easel suggested in the gentlest way. “Perhaps return the crystal to the vapor chamber and introduce a new dopant.”

  Galen glanced around him, dubious and distracted. He had his mouth open to reply when a short chime issued from the control room comm station.

  “Main gate,” one of the Valltii said.

  Lyra rolled her chair over to the comm suite and watched the monitor. A meter of fresh snow had fallen during the night, and the air still swirled with flurries. The subsurface heaters that usually kept the principal access road clear had malfunctioned, so snow was piled high in windblown drifts from the gate all the way to the facility entrance. Where Lyra expected to see a taqwa-hauled supply sled waiting, the monitor showed a dilapidated military troop carrier. The word taqwa translated as “snow-strider,” although the approximation provided no hint of the quadrupeds’ innate ferocity.

  “The troop carrier hails from the Keep,” Nurboo said from over her shoulder.

  “Iron Gauntlet Legion,” Easel added. “The camouflage eddies are distinctive.”

  Uncertainty furrowed Lyra’s brow. The sight of the military vehicle filled her with sudden misgiving. “What would soldiers want at this hour?”

  “Another request to provide power for their base?”

  Nurboo tried to make light of the situation. “And here I was hoping for a food delivery.”

  Galen joined them at the comm suite. “Whatever the reason, we’ll be our usual courteous and accommodating selves.”

  “If we must,” Tambo said.

  Lyra blew out her breath in resignation. “I’ll see to it.”

  She had just begun to rise when Nurboo nimbly placed himself in her path. “You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’ve been spending entirely too much time on your feet.”

  A second Valltii agreed. “You haven’t been resting enough.”

  Her eyes darted back and forth between them, a tolerant smile tugging at her lips. “Keep your lab coats on, boys, I’m only going down to let them in.”

  “One of us will go in your place,” Nurboo insisted.

  “All of a sudden I’m more delicate than one of your ice figurines?”

  “And more precious.”

  Lyra’s smile broadened. “That’s sweet of you to say, Nurboo, but I already have a mother. Fortunately, she’s about twenty parsecs from here, and the last thing I’m going to do is let all of you start falling over yourselves to keep me a prisoner—”

  A second chime from the comm suite interrupted her. The main gate attendant’s face appeared on the central screen.

  “What do the soldiers want, Rooni?” Lyra asked toward the mike.

  Rooni said something she couldn’t make out, so she swung back to Nurboo and the others. “Will all of you stop your clucking! It’s like a henhouse in here.” When they fell silent, she turned back to the mike. “Say again, Rooni.”

  “King Chai is dead,” the Valltii said. “Phara now rules the Keep.”

  “Marshal Phara lacked the military support to overthrow King Chai,” Nurboo said, his expression worried. “There must be some mistake.”

  “Unless she received support from the Separatists,” Tambo said.

  “The Separatists?” Nurboo tried to make sense of it. “Why would Count Dooku want to wade into Vallt’s internal affairs?”

  No one spoke for a moment, then Easel looked from Nurboo and Tambo to Galen. “For Galen,” Easel said. “The Separatists want his research. Phara must have promised to deliver him into th
eir custody.”

  Nurboo’s eyes widened, and his whiskers stood on end. “It’s the only explanation,” he told Galen. “Count Dooku wants that big brain of yours.”

  Galen made his lips a thin line. Close to Lyra’s ear, he said: “The war has caught up with us.”

  Lyra felt the truth of it in her chest. The safe bubble they thought they had created was bursting. For the first time in as long as she could remember she was frightened, not so much for herself or Galen, but for the future she had imagined. “Is it true, Rooni?” she said toward the microphone. “Are the soldiers here for Galen?”

  Rooni’s big bushy head returned a slow nod. “Marshal Phara has appropriated all extraplanetary concerns. The facility is today the property of Vallt.”

  “Zerpen will have something to say about that,” Galen said.

  “Perhaps,” Rooni allowed. “But you and Lyra need to leave immediately and let Zerpen Industries deal with Phara.”

  “You must heed Rooni’s advice,” Nurboo said. “Phara wouldn’t have dispatched a troop carrier unless she means business.”

  Galen regarded the Valltii for a moment, then shook his head. “Leave here how, exactly?”

  “The tunnels,” Easel said. “If you go now, you’ll have time enough to reach your ship and launch.”

  Galen gazed around the room in clear dismay, refusing to give ground. All the months of research just to make a start. How could Phara take this away from him? Didn’t she realize what Vallt and so many other worlds stood to lose by interrupting his work?

  Nurboo drew himself up. “Galen! The two of you are wasting precious time.”