• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Han Solo would take the job. He would infiltrate the Imperial satellite station, and while there, he would find…

Well, that was the question, wasn't it?

The man returned to the alley behind the club. These days, he felt more comfortable in the shadows. "I still don't like this," he said, to the open air.

He paused for a moment, feeling rather silly, waiting for a response that might never come.

"We agreed on this course." The figure shimmering before him was solid and not solid, there and not there, all at the same time. He glowed with an inner light, and yet the night remained dark, "Search yourself, Ferus. You know this is right."

"Perhaps. But it feels wrong." Ferus Olin was decades away from his apprenticeship at the Jedi Temple, a sanctuary that no longer existed. And yet, even from beyond the grave, Master Obi-f0 Wan Kenobi still had the ability to make him feel like a rebellious Padawan. Not that Ferus had ever been a rebellious Padawan. He'd done everything he was told, accepted every order without question, performed every task perfectly and without hesitation—until the day he'd made a fateful mistake, and someone had been killed. Not just someone. A friend.

And not just my mistake, he thought. Anakin's, too.

Ferus had walked away from the Jedi Order. Forever, he thought. And yet here he was, decades later, learning at the feet of a Master all over again.

He had gotten a valuable lesson all those years ago, the day Thel-Tanis had died. Sometimes a wrong decision can get someone killed. Ferus had vowed never to make such a decision again.

Yet he'd made several.

"Whatever information is on that station, I can get it myself," he said. "There's no reason to risk Han's life."

"The life is his to risk," Obi-f0 Wan said. "The decision was his to make."

"But we're not giving him a decision!" Ferus countered. "We're manipulating him."

After nearly two decades undercover on Alderaan, looking out for Princess Leia's safety, Ferus had struck out on his own. Darth Vader was on the trail of the pilot who had blown up the Death Star, and he couldn't be allowed to discover the truth. If he found Luke—if he guessed the truth—all would be lost.

Ferus was on the trail of First Lieutenant Slej Hant, an Imperial officer whom Vader had assigned to ferret out the information. But as he passed through the Arkanis sector, one of Ferus's informants had tipped him off about another Imperial on the same mission. According to the informant, a high-ranking officer had parked himself on a satellite station in the Zoma system, a nearly forgotten outpost that would keep him far from Vader's prying eye. Ferus's spy claimed that the man was desperate to find the Death Star's destroyer before Vader did…and he was getting close.

But so was Slej Hant, and he was about to take off for the Subterrel sector, a far-flung corner of space beyond the Outer Rim. An Imperial agent could have no possible business there.

Unless he was headed for Polis Massa, the arid, remote planetoid where Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa had been born.

Ferus was torn. Worried as he was about this other Imperial, he couldn't allow Vader's minion to ferret out Luke and Leia's identities. Obi-f0 Wan, as usual, had cut through the confusion, speaking with infuriating certainty, even from beyond the grave. "Han Solo will infiltrate the station. He'll find the answers that he needs."

"Solo?" Ferus had asked in confusion. "The pilot?" They'd met briefly on Delaya, but Ferus had paid little attention. Because Delaya had also been the site of his first meeting with Luke Skywalker. Every moment they had spent together, Ferus had been wracked with doubts. Should he tell the boy the truth?

Or accede to Obi-f0 Wan's wishes, and let him chart his own course for just a little longer?

Amidst all the confusion, Han Solo had barely made an impression.

"The pilot." Obi-f0 Wan's cryptic smile was just as infuriating in death as in life. "He's on his own now, searching. He needs direction. And he will find it on the Zoma station."

"That makes no sense," Ferus had complained.