Star Wars, page 1
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First Edition, September 2023
Hardcover ISBN 978-1-368-09379-8
eBook ISBN 978-1-368-09471-9
Visit the official Star Wars website at: www.starwars.com.
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
INTRODUCTION
by Michael Siglain
STAR WARS TIMELINE
THE QUEEN’S BLOOM
by Zoraida Córdova
A CLOSED FIST HAS NO CLAWS
by Tessa Gratton
SHIELD OF THE JEDI
by George Mann
THE LONELY TRAVELER IS HOME
by Daniel José Older
AFTER THE FALL
by Claudia Gray
THE FORCE PROVIDES
by Justina Ireland
ALL JEDI WALK THEIR OWN PATH
by Charles Soule
LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS
by Cavan Scott
THE CALL OF CORUSCANT
by Lydia Kang
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Hello there, and welcome to the glorious era of the High Republic. You’re in for a real treat. Before you are stories filled with adventure, betrayal, horror, friendship, and hope. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
As you may or may not know, Star Wars: The High Republic is an ambitious multipublisher megastory set centuries before Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo put an end to the tyranny of the Galactic Empire. Told in three phases, it mirrors the Skywalker saga in that it tells the middle of the story (Phase I: Light of the Jedi), then the beginning (Phase II: Quest of the Jedi), and then the end (Phase III: Trials of the Jedi). It begins with a galactic renaissance, then a Great Disaster, and it will ultimately answer the question: “What scares the Jedi?”
From the very first days of this initiative, Star Wars: The High Republic has been a collaborative effort. From our all-star authors to our incredible artists to the editors and all the people behind the scenes, everyone has worked tirelessly to create this all-new era that showcases the Jedi at their height. And nowhere is that more evident than in this book.
Lucasfilm Publishing strives to offer a story and a format for every reader, and with this book, we certainly try to deliver on the former. In this eclectic anthology, our luminous authors have put their hearts and souls into all-new stories set before, during, and after our phases. Some expand on stories that have already seen print in novels, comics, and magazines, and some tease stories yet to come.
If you haven’t read any of the other stories set in The High Republic—don’t worry. All are welcome here. We’ve saved you a seat on a Longbeam. And if you have read some of our stories—great! You’ll surely catch all the little Easter eggs and connections sprinkled throughout. Either way, you’re in for tales of excitement and escapism.
Without giving anything away, I will say that the stories included here are epic tales of Jedi adventures, personal stories that spotlight specific heroes and villains, and larger looks—both backward and forward—at the events of this era. Some stories will introduce new characters; some will reveal the fate of others. But all will transport you to a dangerous time filled with opportunity and anticipation, a time when the bright blade of the lightsaber shone its hopeful and protective glow over the vast Galactic Frontier—the golden age of the Jedi Knights.
With that, it’s time to begin. And these stories begin the same way all great Star Wars stories do: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. . . .
I hope that you enjoy the journey, and I thank you for reading.
For light and life!
Michael Siglain
Creative Director, Lucasfilm Publishing
ONE
Axel Greylark was dying.
Or so it seemed. Beads of sweat peppered the bow of his upper lip and his smooth brow, matting his soft black waves against his temples. Grabbing the nurse droid’s metal wrist, Axel writhed in his damp sheets.
Despite his raspy voice, he managed to eke out, “Save yourself. Leave me be.”
“Bluthers!” Ry Harket, dean of student life, positively fumed. The Bivall female’s large, protruding eyes didn’t even seem to blink, as if she was sure if she did, Axel Greylark would pull off another prank right under her nostrils. “Take his temperature again.”
The nurse droid swiveled its white metallic head, photoreceptor blinking blue as it readied a response. “Patient has exhibited a temperature of 38.8889 four times in a row. Mistress, a fifth time would be the definition of insanity.”
Axel hid his smile with a loud, perhaps over-the-top cough. Throughout his years at Reena University, Axel had developed a favorable bond with the nurse droids. This one, whom he’d taken to calling Una, had a personality chip no one could seem to alter.
“Take. It. Again,” Dean Harket said, one of her bulging eyes not so much blinking as twitching.
Una beeped the acceptance of the command, and her head plate whirled to face the ailing seventeen-year-old boy. He clutched his stomach but cooperated. He parted his lips and allowed the cold metal stick to be placed under his tongue. His fringe of black lashes blinked slowly, though nothing could truly hide the mischievous glint there.
“38.50,” Una said in that soothing mechanical voice.
“A fraction less,” Dean Harket barked in weak victory. She rubbed her long, skinny fingers together, as if she could manifest the truth from thin air. “Clearly he’s found a way to fake an illness to get out of class and his duties during the celebration.”
“I assure you, Mistress”—the nurse droid’s head spun again as it retracted its thermometer arm—“fever, stomach cramps, headache, and sore throat. Axel Greylark is exhibiting the same symptoms as the common malongo pox making its way through the east tower. If he’s lucky, he’ll sleep it off. If he isn’t, next come the pus-filled blisters.”
“Save yourself, Dean Harket,” Axel managed between whooping coughs.
Una said, “Aquatic beings are immune to malongo pox.”
“Lucky me,” the Bivall sniveled. Her comlink pinged relentlessly, and she finally responded to the call. “Yes, yes, I’ll be right down to the fairgrounds.” She turned to the droid and added, “Give him a sedative.”
“Negative,” Una said. “Mr. Greylark’s file says he cannot be administered sedatives.”
Dean Harket’s composure broke. Her upper lip curled to reveal tiny teeth. “And why not?”
“Gives me nightmares.” Axel winced as he propped himself up on the bed. “My parents will be so thrilled when they arrive tomorrow, Dean Harket. I’ll be sure to commend you on how well you’ve tended to me.” He reached for the cup of hot tea at the side of his bed.
As the nurse droid rolled back on its wheels, Dean Harket crouched at Axel’s bedside. The Bivall woman pitched her seething voice to a whisper. “I know it was you. I know it was you who graffitied the atrium with lewd drawings. I know it was you who let loose the mynocks from the laboratory. And I know it was you who flooded the refreshers in the west tower’s dormitories. I don’t know how and I don’t know when, but I’m going to catch you, Axel Greylark.”
Axel, whose face had managed to remain the perfect balance between innocent and deathly ill, allowed the barest hint of a smile. “As every investigation revealed, I am innocent. But I thoroughly hope the rascal is brought to justice.”
“It was you,” the dean hissed, then cleared her throat and tugged on the collar of her structured red dress cloak. “I look forward to meeting your parents at the festival tomorrow and discussing how often you’ve been sick this term.”
Axel Greylark had racked up thirty absences, each one signed off on by a nurse droid. The school’s administration had inspected the droids for possible tampering but found nothing. Besides, having the son of Coruscant’s political royalty as a student outweighed a few sick days. He had top marks, was a powerful orator in galactic debate tournaments, and was center striker in grav-ball. When it came to merits, the young Mr. Greylark was second only to Lord Kozmo Sundrel IV of Luzalite.
The dean of student affairs was momentarily discouraged from further antagonizing Axel, but she’d keep a large keen eye on him. With a final glare, she backed out of his room, Una following at her heeled feet, and stalked off to the fairgrounds.
Axel eased onto his feather-soft pillows. He picked at something in his teeth and flicked a tiny red seed away. He sat up and stretched his arms, still sore from practice two days before. He stood and arched his back until he heard a tiny crack. Reaching beneath his pillow, he removed the stems of three tiny guiji fire peppers. Each one was barely five centimeters long. Used to make a condiment oil, a single drop of the stuff could set one’s tongue on fire, and he’d consumed—well, several raw peppers. Enough to temporarily mimic the symptoms of the malongo pox, minus the actual pox.
He al most felt bad for Dean Harket. After all, if she’d had the nurse droid check his temperature even once more, the drop in degrees would have signaled his miraculous recovery. He’d tried other methods with less success: A furious minute of calisthenics, the effects of which faded too quickly. Drinking piping-hot tea right when he heard the droid’s clanking wheels approaching. Nearly fainting in a steam bath to bring on the vapors.
The dean could have caught him if she were only more patient, more vigilant. So really, whose fault was it that Axel got away with a few harmless pranks in the hallowed halls of Reena University?
Axel undressed and quickly showered for the day. His dormitory suite in the east tower had everything he could need—food, drinks, holograms, and a small lounge where he tested the boundaries of the “no parties” rule.
By the time he was dressed in a forest-green suit and raking fingers through his damp hair, his suite bell chimed.
“It’s me,” came the sweetest voice he’d ever heard.
He punched the door open and leaned just out of view of the busy hall. A strange sensation buzzed in the pit of his stomach when he saw her: Leyli Romero. The first thing that always struck him about Leyli was the twin gold-star tattoo mods under the corners of her eyes. Actually, everything about her struck him all at once. Her smile, the blush pink of her skin, the gentle peaks of her ears, the shock of dark pink hair she always styled in two long plaits that whipped around her shoulders.
He’d noticed Leyli right away when he’d returned for the new start of term. The Kilotowan girl always sat alone in lecture halls, the cafeteria, the common rooms. Then he’d introduced himself, and she’d sat with him ever since. Her family, the Romero Clan, hailing from the remote world of Kilotowa, had a reputation in the Mid Rim as thieves and spice runners hiding behind a farming empire. With no charges, that reputation remained rumor. The more he’d gotten to know her, the less he could imagine her having anything to do with her father’s enterprise. And even if she did, Leyli had explained one night, wasn’t she allowed to be her own person? After all, his own father, Lexxir Greylark, was a senator from Coruscant, as was his mother. Kyong Greylark even had her sights set on the chancellor’s seat in the upcoming elections. Axel came from a long lineage of politicians, explorers, adventurers, and whatever measures of success the university seemed to care about, but he wanted nothing to do with it. He’d much prefer to make his own mark.
Axel’s good mood was diminished when he saw the boy standing behind Leyli.
“Kozmo,” Axel remarked in the same tone he’d say “unseasoned boiled vegetables.”
The pair of them waltzed in and made themselves at home in his lounge. The room no longer felt big enough for the three of them.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Kozmo said in his regal, clipped Basic. “Leyli mentioned you were in need of a speeder for an excursion.”
Axel gnawed at the corner of his lip. He looked at Leyli, but she shrugged innocently. “There’s a bay full of ships we could borrow.”
“Because I can steal doesn’t mean I have to do it,” she said. “Especially when someone is so willing to help.”
Something inside him twisted when the girl he was mooning over and his worst enemy shared a look—the kind of look that placed a secret between them. He wanted Leyli’s secrets to be his. How she dreamed of retiring on a small island away from the troubles of her family. How she hated the way even the professors at the university acted scared of her and failed to challenge her on account of rumors that her father cut off the limbs of his enemies. What was she telling Kozmo, with his ridiculous curly coif and outlandish medallion pendant made of the Luzalite diamond found only on his world?
“Don’t you have better things to do today?” Axel asked his rival. Kozmo’s family contributed to his mother’s political campaign, which meant they had to see each other at galas on Coruscant, but that didn’t mean he wanted to spend his university days with the boy whose arrogance and entitlement rivaled those of literal princes he’d met.
“I had a test in advanced mineralogy, and I got top marks.” Kozmo grinned, helping himself to Axel’s fizzy water.
Because his parents always stressed the importance of being a good host, he said nothing. Nothing about the water, at least. “Right, is that where you play with shiny rocks?”
“Cutting class?” Kozmo mused. “Is that where you play with yourself?”
Axel chuckled once, then shot up with every intention of throwing Kozmo out by his ridiculous medallion. Leyli was there before he could blink, her hands firm against his chest. When he focused on the gold stars under her eyes, he suddenly found how easy it was to forget about Kozmo’s jab.
“Look, none of us exactly want to waste the first perfect day of the season volunteering at the Queen’s Bloom Festival. Especially,” Leyli said, walking her fingers across his chest, right over his heart, then tapping her gold nail on his nose, “when all the real parties are down at the waterfront and Kozmo is generous enough to take us. Unless. . .you’re too ill to come along.”
Axel chafed at the idea that he needed any help from Lord of Stoopas over there. But he sort of liked that Leyli had included the two of them in an us. Us versus Kozmo was better than the alternative.
“What are we waiting for?” Axel asked, turning his very best smile on the pair of them. “I do feel I’ve made a miraculous recovery.”
TWO
Reena University hadn’t been Axel Greylark’s first choice. He’d have preferred to go to Alderaan or remain on Coruscant. Yet his mother had insisted that he’d grow a little character being farther away from home. If he could survive the snotty royal children of the Core Worlds, he could survive anywhere, so he’d been shipped off to the prestigious university in the colonies.
Within his first year of accelerated studies, he’d learned every nook and cranny of the towering buildings, the ancient halls made of gleaming metal and glass that housed students from all over the galaxy. He learned the name of every groundskeeper, every cook, every lowly adjunct professor. He made sure they knew his name, too. And the thing was, he liked getting to know them. They had real stories and real problems. They had real lives that didn’t include hosting a campaign donor and their terrible spouse for dinner.
Perhaps that was why he and Leyli Romero had gravitated to one another. Even though Axel was born to the elite of the Core, he struggled to follow the path that had been carved out for him before he was even born. Any child of his parents would have the best tutors, the best everything, and still be expected to apprentice in the Senate, to accompany the Greylarks on missions of peace, to make a meaningful contribution that shaped the future of worlds he might never visit. All because he was a Greylark and was expected to lead.
He’d do all that. But in the interim, he’d have a little fun.
As he led Leyli and Kozmo through a servants’ corridor that ran from the east tower to the fairgrounds, he chased the thrill that sparked in his stomach. Though that spark could very well have been the three guiji fire peppers he’d eaten to give himself a fever.
Axel waved at the Twi’lek janitor, who grinned and let the trio pass.
“I heard you pay off the servants so they won’t snitch on you,” Kozmo said, his voice echoing off the stone path. “Is that true?”
“Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t.” Axel had given the janitor a few credits, but it was only because he’d overheard the Twi’lek asking the dean for an advance on his wages to pay for his daughter’s surgery, and the dean had refused. Besides, they weren’t his credits. They were his parents’.
Leyli squeezed Axel’s hand as they reached the fairgrounds. Every year the university took part in the Queen’s Bloom Festival. Following a season of torrential rain, the whole of the planet erupted in color. Every field, mountainside, and garden flowered with incandescent blossoms.
Axel understood the phenomenon was caused by some sort of photoproteins in the rainfall that caused the pollen to shine with bioluminescence when the petals first opened. It was rather pretty, he could admit, but he assumed it was just an excuse for the entire planet to throw a great big party that attracted tourists from all over the system.
Reena University held its share of the festivities. They had a petting zoo of exotic breeds, and food vendors offering salty, sweet treats. They had booths explaining the science behind the blooming, games for children, and performances from the school’s many musical groups. Before he’d caught the malongo pox, Axel, who was quite proficient at the double viol, had been expected to participate.
