• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Leia frowned angrily and turned to the flight officer once more, cutting her eyes back and forth between him and the sizable crowd gathering at the foot of the ship’s boarding ramp. “Surely the ship can accommodate a few more.”

The officer’s lips became a thin line. “We’re already at maximum payload, Ambassador.” He followed her gaze to the crowd, then blew out his breath. “But we can probably cram in four more.”

Leia touched his forearm in indebtedness, and the two of them hastened for the ramp. Behind a barricade of soldiers, at the head of the line of evacuees, stood a group of tailed, spike-haired, and velvet-furred aliens attired in colorful if threadbare vests and wraparound skirts.

Ryn, Leia realized in surprise—the species to which Han’s new friend Droma belonged.

“Four,” the flight officer reminded, even as Leia was doing a head count of the Ryn. “Some of them will have to be left behind.”

Six Ryn, to be exact, she told herself. Even so, four was better than none. She edged between two broad-shouldered soldiers closest to the ramp and beckoned to the aliens in line. “You four,” she said, pointing to each in turn. “Hurry!”

Expressions of relief and joy appeared. The chosen four turned to exchange embraces with those who would be abandoned. A swaddled infant was passed from the rear to one of the females up front. Leia heard someone say, “Melisma, should you find Droma, tell him we’re here.”

Leia gave a start and glanced about for the one who had said the name, but there wasn’t time to seek out the Ryn. Already the soldiers were backing their way up the ramp, taking her with them.

“Hold on!” she said, coming to a sudden stop and refusing to be moved. “Skidder. Where’s Skidder? Is he already aboard?”

She leaned forward to gaze across the devastated landing zone and spotted him dashing for the ship, dragging a human female behind him and cradling a longhaired infant in his left arm. The sight gave Leia pause. Maybe Skidder had changed, after all.

“Make certain they get aboard,” Leia instructed the officer in charge, pausing when a coralskipper-delivered projectile impacted the permacrete only meters from the ramp. “And I don’t care if you have to use a shoehorn to do it.”

THE OLD REPUBLIC

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

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