Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [2]
“From what I’ve heard, your victory at the Battle of Mindor would hardly constitute 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 cocky 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 brassvine 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 analyst.”
“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.”
None of the stories people tell about me
can change who I really am.
—Luke Skywalker
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 Shadowspawn 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 space along the Corellian Run, the Alliance’s premier fighter squadron springs a trap on Shadowspawn’s marauders …
CHAPTER 1
THE CORELLIAN QUEEN WAS A LEGEND: THE GREATEST luxury liner ever to ply the spaceways, 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