• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 602 0

of the Old. And even then peace hadn't endured for long. Already beset with problems, the New Republic had been invaded by an extragalactic species known as the Yuuzhan Vong, who brought an unprecedented level of barbarity to the galaxy. Planets had been destroyed or transformed; entire species exterminated. Worlds like Coruscant and Obroa-skai were still recovering from the alien mantle the Yuuzhan Vong had seeded. Even more recently, the Galactic Alliance had suffered a threat from a young Jedi Knight who, like Anakin Skywalker before him, had embraced the teachings and tactics of the Sith in an attempt to foment a new order. And now, irony of ironies, guidance of the Galactic Alliance rested in the hands of a former Imperial officer named Natasi Daala.

The crushing revelations, the entries recounting the brutal deaths of so many of his friends and family members, the utter devastation of cities, worlds, species he had come to cherish, were enough to make Jadak's own problems seem insignificant. Though his legs were healing, he came to dread the approach of each immersion session, not because of the sickly-sweet aftertaste of the bacta treatments themselves, but for what the tutorials continued to reveal about the tortured state of the galaxy.

For a week Jadak had resisted doing a HoloNet search on himself, and he was sorry when he finally gave in to the urge. The entries were accurate up to a point, but history hadn't been entirely kind to the memory of Tobb Jadak. Initially regarded as one of the finest competitive swoop and starship racers to appear on the scene in a hundred years—he'd set a speed record of 655 kilometers per hour on the Grandine Swoop Loop—he was, following the Balmorra Invitational, reduced to a might-have-been in the kinder entries, a discredit to the sport in others. Even those entries that told of Jadak's having been forced to throw the race as part of a point-shaving scheme controlled by Hutts aligned with the Rigorra/Groodo Family held him in contempt for having bet widely on himself to lose the race. The fact that not a single entry told the full story weighed on him. But how could it have been otherwise when the HoloNet was all but devoid of references to the Republic Group, let alone mentions of Jadak's service, despite all that had come to light about the so-called Clone Wars and Palpatine's evil plottings?

It was true that the Hutts had ordered him to throw the race. They had promised to engineer a comeback for Jadak, but he knew that a comeback, if it happened at all, would come too late to rescue his reputation or his self-respect. So he could either comply and accept the credits the Hutts were offering as compensation, or be killed along with the rest of his family. But betting on himself to lose had not been Jadak's idea; that was the Republic Group's doing. Having somehow learned of the Hutts' directive, representatives of the group had approached him shortly before the race, saying that they had a fast ship that needed a skilled pilot who was as distrustful of Palpatine as the members of the group were, and from what they knew of Jadak, he fit the bill perfectly. He wasn't surprised. He had never known when to keep his political opinions to himself, especially when some pretty reporter was pushing a microphone toward him. But the Republic Group wasn't looking for an ally so much as a being with a tarnished reputation who could mix and mingle with the galaxy's information brokers without suspicions being aroused. They needed him to play the part of a down-on-his-luck mercenary who would do anything for a credit, but in fact serve the interests of the Republic Group as a spy and courier.

Initially Jadak had refused the offer. Just because he was finished on the swoop and starship race circuit didn't mean he couldn't find piloting work with a police force, a security organization, or a private investigation firm. But as Palpatine's power increased and war began to seem inevitable, he had a change of heart. If nothing else, he could at least put his piloting abilities to some good