Hero's Trial: Agents of Chaos I Read online

  The excitement of the

  bestselling Star Wars saga,

  THE NEW JEDI ORDER,

  continues to heat up …

  as the alien Yuuzhan Vong press relentlessly forward in their quest to conquer the galaxy, and Han Solo struggles with grief and anger at the greatest loss of his life!

  We gather in memory of Chewbacca: honorable son, beloved mate, devoted father, loyal friend and comrade in arms, champion and clan uncle to all of us in spirit …

  In Chewbacca, the defiant flame burned brightest. On Kashyyyk or farr afield on distant worlds, he was never less than courageous and incorruptible—a Wookiee with heart enough for ten and eagerr strength enough forr fifty …

  Now, in the same way the branches of the wroshyr seek out and support one another, Chewbacca’s spirit merges with and gives sustenance to ourr own, strengthening us forr the challenges we have yet to confront …

  —from Agents of Chaos I: HERO’S TRIAL, by James Luceno

  A Del Rey®Book

  Published by The Random House Publishing Group

  Copyright © 2000 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 Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House 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.delreybooks.com

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-103877

  eISBN: 978-0-307-79553-3

  v3.1

  DEDICATION

  For my young son Jake,

  and The New Jedi Order

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to extend heartfelt thanks to those who kept me on track and loaned a hand along the way: Dan Wallace, who knows the expanded universe better than anyone; Rob Brown, whose suggestions helped shape chapter 7; and Alex Newborn, who steered me to a new character for chapter 14. Thanks, too, to Mike Kogge, Matt Olsen, Eelia Goldsmith Henderscheid, Enrique Guerrero, and Kris Boldis for their keen commentaries; fellow authors Robert Salvatore, Mike Stackpole, and Kathy Tyers for their detail work; and Shelly Shapiro, Sue Rostoni, and Lucy Autrey Wilson, without whom The New Jedi Order would never have taken shape. Finally, infinite gratitude to my late friend and collaborator, Brian Daley.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Dramatis Personae

  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

  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

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  About the Author

  Also by this Author

  Introduction to the Star Wars Expanded Universe

  Excerpt from Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse

  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

  Nom Anor; executor (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  Malik Carr; commander (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  Reck Desh; Peace Brigade mercenary (male human)

  Droma; spacer (male Ryn)

  Elan; priestess (female Yuuzhan Vong)

  Harrar; priest (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  Belindi Kalenda; New Republic Intelligence (female human)

  Raff; battle tactician (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  Roa; captain, Happy Dagger (male human)

  Major Showolter; New Republic Intelligence (male human)

  Luke Skywalker; Jedi Master (male human)

  Mara Jade Skywalker; Jedi Master (female human)

  Anakin Solo; Jedi Knight (male human)

  Han Solo; captain, Millennium Falcon (male human)

  Leia Organa Solo; New Republic ambassador (female human)

  Tla; commander (male Yuuzhan Vong)

  Vergere; Elan’s familiar (female Fosh)

  ONE

  If the system’s primary was distressed by the events that had transpired on and about the fourth closest of its brood, it betrayed nothing to the naked eye. Saturating local space with golden radiance, the star was as unperturbed now as it was before the battle had begun. Only the conquered world had suffered, its punished surface revealed in the steady crawl of sunlight. Regions that had once been green, blue, or white appeared ash-gray or reddish-brown. Below banks of panicked clouds, smoke chimneyed from immolated cities and billowed from tracts of firestormed evergreen forests. Steam roiled from the superheated beds of glacier-fed lakes and shallow seas.

  Deep within the planet’s shroud of cinder and debris moved the warship most responsible for the devastation. The vessel was a massive ovoid of yorik coral, its scabrous black surface relieved in places by bands of smoother stuff, lustrous as volcanic glass. In the pits that dimpled the coarse stretches hid projectile launchers and plasma weapons. Other, more craterlike depressions housed the laser-gobbling dovin basals that both drove the vessel and shielded it from harm. From fore and aft extended bloodred and cobalt arms, to which asteroidlike fighters clung like barnacles. Smaller craft buzzed around it, some effecting repairs to battle-damaged areas, others keen on recharging depleted weapons systems, a few delivering plunder from the planet’s scorched crust.

  Farther removed from the battle floated a smaller vessel, black, as well, but faceted and polished smooth as a gemstone. Light pulsed through the ship at intervals, exciting one facet, then another, as if data were being conveyed from sector to sector.

  From a roost in the underside of its angular snout, a gaunt figure, cross-legged on cushions, scanned the flotsam and jetsam a quirk of a gravitational drift had borne close to his ship: pieces of New Republic capital ships and starfighters, space-suited bodies in eerie repose, undetonated projectiles, the holed fuselage of a noncombat craft whose legend identified it as the Penga Rift.

  In the near distance hung the blackened skeleton of a defense platform. Off to one side a ruined cruiser rolled end over end in a decaying orbit, surrendering its contents to vacuum like a burst pod scattering fine seeds. Elsewhere a fleeing transport, snagged by the spike of a bloated capture vessel, was being tugged inexorably toward the bowels of the giant warship.

  The seated figure beheld these sights without cheer or regret. Necessity had engineered the destruction. What had been done needed to be done.

  An acolyte stood in the rear of the command roost, relaying updates as they were received by a slender, living device fastened t
o his right inner forearm by six insectile legs.

  “Victory is ours, Eminence. Our air and ground forces have overwhelmed the principal population centers and a war coordinator has installed itself in the mantle.” The acolyte glanced at the receiving villip on his arm, whose soft bioluminescent glow added appreciably to the roost’s scant light. “Commander Tla’s battle tactician is of the opinion that the astrogation charts and historical data stored here will prove valuable to our campaign.”

  The priest, Harrar, glanced at the warship. “Has the tactician made his feelings known to Commander Tla?”

  The acolyte’s hesitancy was answer enough, but Harrar suffered the verbal reply anyway.

  “Our arrival does not please the commander, Eminence. He does not dismiss out of hand the need for sacrifice, but he asserts that the campaign has been successful thus far without the need for religious overseers. He fears that our presence will only confound his task.”

  “Commander Tla fails to grasp that we engage the enemy on different fronts,” Harrar said. “Any opponent can be beaten into submission, but compliance is no guarantee that you have won him over to your beliefs.”

  “Shall I relay as much to the commander, Eminence?”

  “It is not your place. Leave that to me.”

  Harrar, a male of middle years, rose and moved to the lip of the roost’s polygonal transparency, where he stood with three-fingered hands clasped at the small of his back—the missing digits having been offered in dedication ceremonies and ritual sacrifices, as a means of escalating himself. His tall slender frame was draped in supple fabrics of muted tones. A head cloth, patterned and significantly knotted, bound his long black tresses. The back of his neck showed vibrant markings etched into skin stretched taut by prominent vertebrae.

  The planet turned beneath him.

  “What is this world called?”

  “Obroa-skai, Eminence.”

  “Obroa-skai,” Harrar mused aloud. “What does the name signify?”

  “The meaning is unknown at present. Though no doubt some explanation can be found among the captured data.”

  Harrar’s right hand gestured in dismissal. “It’s a dead issue.”

  A flash of weapons drew his eye to Obroa-skai’s terminator, where a yorik coral gunship was angling into the light, spewing rear fire at a quartet of snub-nosed starfighters that had evidently chased it from the planet’s dark side. The little X-wings were closing fast, thrusters ablaze and wingtips lancing energy beams at the larger ship. Harrar had heard that the New Republic pilots had become adept at foiling the dovin basals by altering the frequency and intensity of the laser bolts the fighters discharged. These four pursued the gunship with a single-mindedness born of thorough self-possession. Such fierce confidence spoke to qualities the Yuuzhan Vong would need to keep solidly in mind as the invasion advanced. Largely oblivious to nuance, the warrior caste would have to be taught to appreciate that survival figured as strongly in the enemy’s beliefs as death figured in the beliefs of the Yuuzhan Vong.

  The gunship had changed vector and was climbing now, seemingly intent on availing itself of the protection offered by Commander Tla’s warship. But the four fighters were determined to have it. Breaking formation, they accelerated, ensnaring the gunship at the center of their wrath.

  The X-wing pilots executed their attack with impressive precision. Laser bolts and brilliant pink torpedoes rained from them, taxing the abilities of the gunship’s dovin basals. For every bolt and torpedo engulfed by the gravitic collapses the dovin basals fashioned, another penetrated, searing fissures in the assault craft and sending hunks of reddish-black yorik coral exploding in all directions. Stunned by relentless strikes, the gunship huddled inside its shields, hoping for a moment’s respite, but the starfighters refused to grant it any quarter. Bursts of livid energy assailed the ship, shaking it off course. The dovin basals began to falter. With defenses hopelessly compromised, the larger ship diverted power to weapons and counterattacked.

  In a desperate show of force, vengeful golden fire erupted from a dozen gun emplacements. But the starfighters were simply too quick and agile. They made pass after pass, raking fire across the gunship’s suddenly vulnerable hull. Gouts of slagged flesh fountained from deep wounds and lasered trenches. The destruction of a plasma launcher sent a chain of explosions marching down the starboard side. Molten yorik coral streamed from the ship like a vapor trail. Shafts of blinding light began to pour from the core. The ship rolled over on its belly, shedding velocity. Then, jolted by a final paroxysm, it disappeared in a short-lived globe of fire.

  It looked as if the X-wings might attempt to take the fight to the warship itself, but at the last moment the pilots turned tail. Salvos from the warship’s weapons crisscrossed nearby space, but no missiles found their mark.

  His scarified face a deeply shadowed mask, Harrar glanced over his shoulder at the acolyte. “Suggest to Commander Tla that his zealous gunners allow the little ones to escape,” he said with incongruous composure. “After all, someone needs to live to speak of what happened here.”

  “The infidels fought well and died bravely,” the acolyte risked remarking.

  Harrar pivoted to face him fully, a bemused glint in his deeply set eyes. “Is that respect I hear?”

  The acolyte nodded his head in deference. “Nothing more than an observation, Eminence. To earn my respect, they would have to embrace willingly the truth we bring them.”

  A herald of lesser station appeared in the roost, offering salute by snapping his fists to opposite shoulders. “Belek tiu, Eminence. I bring word that the captives have been gathered.”

  “How many?”

  “Several hundred—of diverse aspect. Do you wish to oversee the selection for the sacrifice?”

  Harrar squared his shoulders and adjusted the fall of his elegant robes. “I am most eager to do so.”

  The transport gullet’s diaphanous seal opened on an immense hold, packed to the bulkheads with captives taken on and in the skies above Obroa-skai. Harrar’s entourage of personal guards and attendants moved into the hold, followed by the priest himself, perched atop a levitated cushion, one leg folded beneath him, the other dangling over the edge. The throbbing heart-shaped dovin basal that kept the cushion aloft answered to Harrar’s quiet prompts, attracting itself to the hold’s vaulted ceiling when the priest called for greater elevation, drawing itself toward one or another distant bulkhead when Harrar wished to be borne forward, backward, or to either side.

  Well illuminated by bioluminescent patches that rashed the walls and ceiling, the hold had been sectioned off into a score of separate inhibition fields, arranged in two parallel rows and maintained by larger dovin basals. Pressed shoulder to shoulder in each field stood scholars and researchers from a host of worlds, humans and others—Bothans, Bith, Quarren, and Caamasi—all jabbering at once in a welter of tongues, while black-clad wardens armed with amphistaffs supervised the winnowing process. Meant for coralskipper sustenance rather than living cargo, the immense space reeked of natural secretions, blood, and sweat.

  Mostly, though, fear was in the air.

  Harrar hovered on the cushion, surveying the scene with hooded eyes. His retainers fell back so that he could proceed directly down the center aisle and inspect prisoners to both sides. In order to reach the first pair of inhibition fields, however, the priest was obliged to circumvent a large access shaft that had been filled to overflowing with confiscated droids, hundreds of them, heaped together in a mound of entangled limbs, appendages, and other mechanical parts.

  When Harrar ordered a halt alongside the small mountain of machines, those droids that constituted the summit began to tremble under his scrutiny. With a whirring of strained servomotors, domed, rectangular, and humaniform heads swiveled, audio sensors perked up, and countless photoreceptors came into sharp focus. A momentary avalanche sent several machines screeching and tumbling to the base of the pile, far belowdecks.

  Harrar’s intrigued
gaze fell on a contorted protocol droid whose upper right arm boasted a band of colored cloth. He commanded the cushion to bring him within reach of the immobilized machine. “Why are some of these abominations affecting garments?” he asked his chief attendant.

  “They appear to have functioned as research assistants, Eminence,” the attendant explained. “Obroa-skai’s libraries could be accessed only by those who had contracted with trained researchers. The symbol depicted on the machine’s armband is that of the so-called Obroan Institute.”

  Harrar was aghast. “Do you mean to say that serious researchers consorted with these things as equals?”

  The attendant nodded once. “Apparently so, Eminence.”

  Harrar’s expression changed to one of contempt. “Allow a machine to think of itself as an equal and it will soon come to consider itself superior.” He reached out, tore the armband from the droid’s arm, and threw it to the deck. “Include a representative sampling of these monstrosities in the sacrifice,” he ordered, “and incinerate the rest.”

  “We’re done for,” a muffled synthetic voice whined from deep within the pile.

  Living arms of sundry lengths, colors, and textures reached imploringly for Harrar as the cushion carried him toward the closest inhibition field. Some of the prisoners begged for mercy, but most fell silent in stark apprehension. Harrar regarded them indifferently, until his eyes happened on a furred humanoid, from whose bulging brow emerged a pair of ringed, cone-shaped horns. Bare hands and feet were hardened by physical labor, but the calluses belied a deep intelligence evidenced in the creature’s limpid eyes. The humanoid wore a sleeveless sacklike garment that fell raggedly to the knees and was cinched at the waist by a braided cord fashioned from natural fiber.

  “What species are you?” Harrar asked in flawless Basic.

  “I am Gotal.”

  Harrar indicated the belted sackcloth. “Your attire befits a penitent more than a scholar. Which are you?”