The Force Unleashed: Star Wars Legends

by Williams, Sean

• ISBN13: 9780345502858
• ISBN10: 034550285X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-25
• Publisher: Del Rey

Summary

"The Sith always betray one another. . . . I'm sure you'll learn that soon enough." The overthrow of the Republic is complete. The Separatist forces have been smashed, the Jedi Council nearly decimated, and the rest of the Order all but destroyed. Now absolute power rests in the iron fist of Darth Sidiousthe cunning Sith lord better known as the former Senator, now Emperor, Palpatine. But more remains to be done. Pockets of resistance in the galaxy must still be defeated and missing Jedi accounted for . . . and dealt with. These crucial tasks fall to the Emperor's ruthless enforcer, Darth Vader. In turn, the Dark Lord has groomed a lethal apprentice entrusted with a top-secret mission: to comb the galaxy and dispatch the last of his masters' enemies, thereby punctuating the dark side's victory with the Jedi's doom. Since childhood, Vader's nameless agent has known only the cold, mercenary creed of the Sith. His past is a void; his present, the carrying out of his deadly orders. But his future beckons like a glistening black jewel with the ultimate promise: to stand beside the only father he has ever known, with the galaxy at their feet. It is a destiny he can realize only by rising to the greatest challenge of his discipleship: destroying Emperor Palpatine. The apprentice's journeys will take him across the far reaches of the galaxy, from the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk to the junkyard planet of Raxus Prime. On these missions, the young Sith acolyte will forge an unlikely alliance with a ruined Jedi Master seeking redemption and wrestle with forbidden feelings for his beautiful comrade, Juno Eclipse. And he will be tested as never beforeby shattering revelations that strike at the very heart of all he believes and stir within him long-forgotten hopes of reclaiming his name . . . and changing his destiny. From the Hardcover edition.

Author Biography

Sean Williams is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of more than sixty short stories and eighteen novels, including (co-written with Shane Dix) the Star Wars New Jedi Order Force Heretic novels: Remnant, Refugee, and Reunion. Williams lives with writer Kirsty Brooks in Adelaide, South Australia.

www.seanwilliams.com.au


From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpts

Chapter 1

The life of Darth Vader’s secret student took a strange and deadly turn the day his Master first spoke of General Rahm Kota.

He’d had no warning that a moment of such significance was approaching. During his nightly meditations, kneeling on the metal floor of his chamber while construction droids built the Executor, unaware of his existence, he had seen no visions in the pure, angry red of the lightsaber that he held like a burning brand in front of his eyes. Although he had stared until the world vanished and the dark side flowed through him in a bloody tide, the future had remained closed.

Nothing, therefore, prepared him for the sudden deviation from the day’s punishing and unpredictable exercises. His Master was not a patient teacher; neither was he a talkative one. He preferred action to debate, just as he preferred recrimination to reward. Never once in all the days they had sparred together, with lightsaber, telekinesis, or suggestion, had the Dark Lord offered a single word of encouragement. And that was as it should be, he knew. A teacher’s job was not to drag a student along a single, well-worn path. Rather it was to let the student forge his or her own way through the forest, intervening only when the student was hopelessly lost and needed to be corrected.

Even on the wrong paths, he knew, lay some wisdom. What didn’t kill him only made him more powerful in the dark side.

And there had been many, many times he had thought he might die . . .

Breathing heavily after a punishing round of blows, lightsaber lowered in submission, he knelt before his Master and prepared for the killing strike. He could feel the wrath radiating from the Dark Lord like heat—a visceral, angry heat that brought out his skin in gooseflesh. For a moment that seemed to stretch for years, all he could hear was the regular, implacable respiration that kept the man inside the mask alive.

“You were weak when I found you.” The voice seemed to come from the far end of a long, deep tunnel. “You should never have survived my training.”

He closed his eyes. He had heard these words before. They were the closest thing to a bedtime story he’d had as a child. The moral he had taken from them was burned into his mind: Learn . . . or die.

Behind his eyelids he pictured again the clean, cleansing heat of the lightsaber. He had brushed his skin against it many times, defying the pain, and taken numerous small wounds while dueling with his Master. He imagined that he knew what the blade would feel like when it struck him down. Part of him longed for it.

The lightsaber drifted so close to his neck that he could smell his hair burning.

“But now, your hatred has become your strength.”

The lightsaber retreated. With a hiss it deactivated.

“At last, the dark side is your ally.”

He didn’t dare nod or look up. What was this? Some new ruse to lure him into overconfidence and failure?

His Master’s next words made his heart trip a beat.

“Rise, my apprentice.”

Apprentice. So he had always thought himself, but never before had it been said aloud! And that strange motion with the lightsaber . . . Could he possibly have just been knighted?

His lightsaber retracted. It was all he could do to balance on knees that felt suddenly made of rubber. The black shape looming over him was unreadable, limned with crimson from the light of the star shining through the wide viewport to their right. Metal, angular, and functional, the space around them was as familiar to him as the scars on the back of his hand, but suddenly, disconcertingly, everything seemed different.

The apprentice kept his eyes up and his voice level.

“What is your will, my Master?”

“You have defeated many of my rivals. Your training is

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Excerpted from Star Wars the Force Unleashed by Sean Williams
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.