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“I can’t believe you’d leave me out of the loop on something like this. I’m not just your road manager. I’m your best friend. I’m the one who’s been pulling you out of scrapes since we were teenagers. Do I have to remind you of the lengths to which obsessed individuals will go? Do you remember any of our so-called adventures on Tatooine? That Zabrak spacer who thought you’d make the perfect little wifey. That guy who wanted to buy out Chalmun and set you up as the house chanteuse? The stormtroopers who—”

Javul raised her hands against the volley of words. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. I should have said something before. But … well, at first I was thinking it was just an overzealous fanboy and then … I don’t know. I figured if the guy was on Coruscant—I mean, Imperial Center—and we were leaving …”

“Yeah, well, apparently he’s taking his show on the road, too.”

The truth of that statement made Javul’s throat tighten. She clasped her hands together in her lap, flexing her fingers to make the rainbow stones inlaid into each nail glitter and flash. “So now you know. What do you think we should do?”

Kendara tilted her head to one side in thought. Then she said, “Two things. One, I’d split us into two travel parties. Second, I’d hire bodyguards.”

“Okay on the splitting up—but bodyguards?”

“Yeah. Steely-eyed, laser-toting, massively intimidating bodyguards.”

Javul shook her head. “I don’t know, Dara. It’s already freakishly hard to keep a low profile in this business, and if we contract with a security company, we increase our footprint, our baggage … and the number of people who have to have oversight.”

“I’m not thinking of hiring from a security firm.”

“Then where am I supposed to come by these steely-eyed, laser-toting … characters?”

A smile curved Kendara Farlion’s lips and her teeth showed, white and even in her face. “I never thought I’d say this, but there are advantages to being from Mos Eisley. I know exactly where to look for that kind of character.”

THE OLD REPUBLIC

(5,000–33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A NEWHOPE)

Long—long—ago in a galaxy far, far away … some twenty-five thousand years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: A New Hope … a large number of star systems and species in the center of the galaxy came together to form the Galactic Republic, governed by a Chancellor and a Senate from the capital city-world of Coruscant. As the Republic expanded via the hyperspace lanes, it absorbed new member worlds from newly discovered star systems; it also expanded its military to deal with the hostile civilizations, slavers, pirates, and gangster-species such as the slug-like Hutts that were encountered in the outward exploration. But the most vital defenders of the Republic were the Jedi Knights. Originally a reclusive order dedicated to studying the mysteries of the life energy known as the Force, the Jedi became the Republic’s guardians, charged by the Senate with keeping the peace—with wise words if possible; with lightsabers if not.

But the Jedi weren’t the only Force-users in the galaxy. An ancient civil war had pitted those Jedi who used the Force selflessly against those who allowed themselves to be ruled by their ambitions—which the Jedi warned led to the dark side of the Force. Defeated in that long-ago war, the dark siders fled beyond the galactic frontier, where they built a civilization of their own: the Sith Empire.

The first great conflict between the Republic and the Sith Empire occurred when two hyperspace explorers stumbled on the Sith worlds, giving the Sith Lord Naga Sadow and his dark side warriors a direct invasion route into the Republic’s central worlds. This war resulted in the first destruction of the Sith Empire—but it was hardly the last. For the next four thousand years, skirmishes between the Republic and Sith grew into wars, with the scales always tilting toward one or the other, and peace never