Star Wars_ The New Rebellion - Kristine Kathryn Rusch [199]
Except he did know, at least in part. It told him that someone out there was playing for keeps. What the game was, or who the players were, Han had not the slightest idea. But it had to be Corellia. It had to be.
Han stared at the dead machine by the light of the burning packing cases, and wondered what to do about the probe’s carcass. The fact that it had been here at this particular time and place had some unpleasant connotations. If the NRI’s agents were being followed, he certainly wasn’t going to rush to them and report this little incident. No. Best keep it as quiet as possible. “No one hears about this,” Han said. “Not the NRI, not Luke, not Leia. Nothing they could do about it except get upset, and there might be other listeners out there. We get rid of this thing, fast, clean up the mess, and that’s that.”
Chewbacca looked at Han and nodded his agreement.
Han knelt down next to the Wookiee and started trying to figure out how to get rid of the probe. Later he could worry about the other trifling problems, such as the question of who had sent the thing and why.
It occurred to Han that he really only knew two things for certain.
First, he knew that if someone out there was trying to make him not want to head for Corellia, they were going about it the wrong way. Spies and vague threats and probe droids might intimidate other men, but Han never had been much for responding to intimidation.
And second, he knew it was going to be an interesting trip.
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 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 lasting. The galaxy was a place of almost constant strife: Sith armies against Republic armies; Force-using Sith Lords against Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights; and the dreaded nomadic mercenaries called Mandalorians bringing muscle and firepower wherever they stood to gain.
Then, a thousand years before A New Hope and the Battle of Yavin, the Jedi defeated the Sith at the Battle of Ruusan, decimating the so-called Brotherhood of Darkness that was the heart of the Sith Empire—and most of its power.