Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [157]
Luke Skywalker was trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. But did you know that, years later, he went on to revive the Jedi Order and its commitment to defending the galaxy from evil and injustice?
Obi-Wan said to Luke, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” Did you know that over those millennia, legendary Jedi and infamous Sith Lords were adding their names to the annals of Republic history?
Yoda explained that the dreaded Sith tend to come in twos: “Always two, there are. No more, no less. A Master, and an apprentice.” But did you know that the Sith didn’t always exist in pairs? That at one time in the ancient Republic there were as many Sith as Jedi, until a Sith Lord named Darth Bane was the lone survivor of a great Sith war and created the “Rule of Two”?
All this and much, much more is brought to life in the many novels and comics of the Star Wars expanded universe. You’ve seen the movies and watched the cartoon. Now venture out into the wider worlds of Star Wars!
Turn the page or jump to the timeline of Star Wars novels to learn more.
Chapter
1
The children had been kidnapped.
Leia ran headlong toward the glade, leaving behind the courtiers and the chamberlain of Munto Codru, leaving her attendants, leaving the young page who—completely against protocol—had stumbled into Leia’s receiving room, bleeding from nose and ears, incoherent.
But Leia understood her: Jaina and Jacen and Anakin had been stolen.
Leia ran, now, through the trees and down a soft mossy path that led into her children’s playground. Jaina imagined the path was a starship course, set to hyperspace. Jacen pretended it was a great mysterious road, a river. Anakin, going through a literal phase, insisted that it was only a path through the forest to the meadow.
The children loved the forest and the meadow, and Leia loved exclaiming in wonder at the treasures they brought her: a squirmy bug, a stone with shiny bits trapped in its matrix—rare jewels, perhaps!—or the fragments of an eggshell.
Her vision blurred with tears. Her soft slipper snared in the tangled moss. She stumbled, caught herself, and plunged onward, holding the skirts of her court robe high.
In the old days, she thought, in the old days, I’d be wearing boots and trousers, I wouldn’t be hampered and tripped by my own clothing!
Her breath burned in her throat.
And I’d be able to run from my receiving room to the forest glade without losing my breath!
The green afternoon light shifted and fluttered around her. Before her, the light brightened where the forest opened into a water-meadow, the meadow where her children had been playing.
Leia ran toward it, gasping, her legs heavy.
She was running toward an absence, not a presence, toward a terrible void.
She cried out to herself, How could this happen? How is this possible?
The answer—the only way it could be possible—terrified her. For a short time, her ability to sense the presence of her children had been neutralized. Only a manipulation of the Force could have such an effect.
Leia reached the meadow. She ran toward the creek where Jaina and Jacen had splashed and played and taught little Anakin to swim.
A crater was ripped into the soft grass. The leafy blades had been flattened into a circle around the raw patch of empty dirt.
A pressure bomb! Leia thought in horror.
A pressure bomb had gone off, near her children.
They aren’t dead! she told herself. They can’t be, I’d know if they were dead!
At the edge of the blast area, Chewbacca lay sprawled in a heap. Blood flowed bright against his chestnut coat.
Leia fell to her knees beside him, oblivious to the mud. She feared he was dead—but he was still bleeding, still breathing. She pressed her hand against the deep gash in his leg, desperate to stop the flow of blood and save his life. His powerful pulse drove the blood from his body. Like the page, he