Star Wars.

Galaxy of Fear.

Eaten Alive.

by John Whitman.

PROLOGUE.

The security door slid open with a hiss. A dark figure stepped into the laboratory, where a single scientist stood over an examination table.

On the table, something was still alive.

As the dark figure approached, the scientist did not turn around.

Only two other beings in the entire galaxy had access to his hidden fortress, and he knew who had come to see him.

"Welcome, Lord Vader," the scientist said.

The figure covered in black armor took a step closer. His face was hidden behind a black, skull-like breath mask. He was Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, the cruel right hand of the Emperor of the galaxy.

"Have you completed your research?"

The scientist turned. In his hands he held a sharp, hooked instrument.

Behind him, the creature on the table shuddered, then grew still.

"Very nearly. The first five stages of my experiment are under way.

Soon I will be able to complete the sixth and final stage. Then I shall provide the Emperor with the greatest power in the galaxy."

"That claim has been made before," Vader said. "The Death Star was supposed to be the ultimate mechanical terror. It destroyed the planet Alderaan, but then the Rebels destroyed the Death Star."

"Pah!" the scientist replied. "That battle station was a toy. My designs are not machines... I control the power of life itself. I will create the ultimate weapon for the Emperor."

"The ultimate weapon," Vader cautioned, "is the Force."

"Of course, of course."

Vader stared at the scientist for a moment, his breath rasping through his mask like a threatening hiss. "You are running out of time.

Already your work may have been discovered."

The scientist scowled. "You mean by him? Don't worry about him. I will deal with him when the time comes."

Vader raised one hand in caution. "If this secret should leak as did the secrets of the Death Star, the Emperor and I will be most displeased."

Then the Dark Lord turned away.

The scientist stared after the armored figure, his eyes burning a hole into Vader's back. Soon, he thought, very soon, he would have the power to destroy even Darth Vader. Then he would take his place at the Emperor's side.

He turned back to his experiments. He lowered his hooked blade. On the table, the creature screamed....

CHAPTER 1.

The attack came without warning.

In a small quadrant of s.p.a.ce, an X-wing starfighter altered its flight path slightly to avoid the ma.s.sive red moon looming ahead. As it did, a twin- ion engine ship, or TIE fighter, appeared in the moon's shadow, its two solar panels glinting with reflected light. Streaking through the void, the TIE opened fire, its dual turbo-lasers spitting out streaks of flame.

One of those laser shots creased the X-wing's hull. The X-wing's shields deflected most of the blast, and the shaken fighter banked away and accelerated to attack speed.

Relentlessly the TIE fighter followed. Not only was the TIE fast and maneuverable, but the pilot had an added advantage. She knew her opponent. She eyed him coldly as he twisted and turned in an effort to shake off his pursuer. But she stuck with him, sparing only quick glances at her tactical display, waiting for her target to fall into her sights.

She grinned. "You are mine."

The fleeing X-wing made a sharp course adjustment and headed straight for the small red moon. That pilot knew who was behind him. It was the same enemy he had faced a hundred times. She was good. If he was going to survive, he would have to be better.

"Try this," he challenged.

The X-wing pilot aimed the nose of his ship at the moon. Instantly the moon's gravity grabbed hold of him, and his speed increased. At the last possible moment, the pilot veered away. Keeping just within gravity's reach, the X-wing pilot gunned his engines and sc.r.a.ped along the moon's atmosphere. The belly of his ship left a trail of flames in the air as the tiny ship looped around the moon.

The effect was like a slingshot. Pulled forward by gravity, the X-wing hurtled around the moon's perimeter, far ahead of the pursuing TIE fighter. He came around the far side with his own lasers firing.

But the TIE pilot was ready for him. "Oldest trick in the manual!"

she gloated. She had changed her course to intercept her quarry before he completed his backdoor maneuver, blasting the X-wing with laser fire. The X- wing jerked hard left in a desperate roll. Laser bolts exploded around his ship, but amazingly, not a single shot hit him. Laughing, the X-wing pilot scooted past the TIE fighter, then curled around to continue the dogfight.

"You are so lucky," the TIE pilot snapped.

Suddenly a metallic hand as large as the red moon descended from the heavens to block the X-wing's path. But the starfighter pa.s.sed right through it.

The owner of the hand looked down at the holotable where the starfighter combat had taken place. He was D-V9-or Deevee for short-a silver droid designed to imitate the appearance and behavior of humans.

Since his head and face were made of durasteel, the droid couldn't frown, but it gave the definite impression of doing just that. "Tash. Zak. Stop this ridiculous game. "

The two pilots dropped their control disks, and the holographic starfighters, tiny in comparison to the droid looming over them, immediately froze in place. They hung in midair over the holotable, along with the computer-generated moon and planet that served as a playing field.

The holotable was in a corner of a small lounge, which was in the forward compartment of a star cruiser called the Lightrunner, which was at that moment hurtling through hypers.p.a.ce.

The X-wing pilot stood up from the holotable. His name was Zak Arranda. He brushed back a lock of his messy brown hair and grinned at his opponent.

The TIE fighter's pilot was his sister, Tash. At thirteen, she was a year older than her brother, and an inch taller. Her thick blond hair was arranged in a neat braid, and her lightly freckled face was turned down in a serious frown.

"You are sooo lucky," she repeated.

"That was prime!" Zak laughed. "And anyway it's not luck, it's skill."

Tash wasn't convinced. "No one could have gotten away from that barrage. Besides, everyone knows all hologames are rigged so the Imperial ships have an advantage. The Empire would never let anyone else come out on top. But you always win." She shook her head. "I just don't get it."

"What you will get," said the impatient droid beside her, "is dull-witted from playing hologames. They're an utter waste of time. Besides, it's time for your zoology lesson." The droid put his hands on his swivel-socketed hips and waited.

"Lessons?" Zak groaned. "We're in the middle of hypers.p.a.ce!"

Deevee delivered the electronic version of a sniff. "There is no respite from learning."

Or from bionic baby-sitters, Zak thought; aloud, he argued, "But hologames are educational. They improve hand-eye coordination and encourage quick thinking, and-"

"And we're ready for lessons, Deevee," Tash interrupted.

Not that she was very interested in zoology. She would much rather be reading one of her data files on Jedi lore or downloading information from the HoloNet. But sometimes it was good to set an example for a younger brother.

Besides, she hated-really hated-being the Imperial TIE fighter-ever since the Empire had blown her and Zak's homeworld of Alderaan to bits.

Zak and Tash had been away for two weeks and had returned home to find that, well, their home was gone. Their parents, friends, and neighbors were all killed in the explosion.

Deevee punched a few commands into the holo-table's control panel.

"Zoology lessons," the droid muttered to no one in particular. If he could have, he would have rolled his eyes. "I have the brain capacity of a supercomputer and I'm giving zoology lessons."

Zak and Tash hardly noticed. Deevee had been complaining about his new job since the day they had come to live with Uncle Hoole.

D-V9 was a cla.s.s-one scientific research unit with an OmniTask computer brain fast enough to calculate and record ten million bits of information about alien cultures per second. He had been carefully designed to help his master, Hoole the anthropologist, with important research into cultures across the galaxy. He was the envy of every droid he knew-until six months ago, when he was stuck with the job of caretaker to two young orphans.

Deevee didn't like his new a.s.signment, and he reminded Zak and Tash of it every chance he got.

At the droid's command, the star-battle program melted away and was replaced by a stream of holograms detailing various animals throughout the galaxy. The program settled on one odd image: an enormous, fanged beast, sitting without moving while three or four tiny birds fluttered in and out of its mouth. A recorded voice said: "One of the more unusual relationships in galactic nature is this one. The bloodthirsty rancor will kill everything it sees... except the gibbit bird, which roams freely inside the rancor's mouth. The rancor allows this because the gibbit birds pick the flesh from the rancor's jaws, and this helps keep the rancor's teeth clean..."

Unfortunately, as the zoology lesson continued, Tash found herself drifting off. She was a good student, but science was not her favorite subject. Tash slipped a datapad out of her pocket and held it in her lap, where neither Zak nor Deevee could see it. She keyed in a command, and the screen lit up with lines of text.

It was a story about the Jedi Knights.

It was also illegal. Legends of the Jedi Knights had been banned by the Empire since before Tash was born. But one day Tash had come across a story uploaded onto the galaxywide communications service known as the HoloNet. Sitting at her desk in her room on Alderaan, Tash could sign on to the HoloNet and scan libraries on distant planets or talk to people on worlds light-years away. One day she discovered a coded message filed under a word Tash had never seen before: Jedi. It had taken her hours to break the code, but finally the file had unscrambled before her eyes.

The story Tash discovered was written by someone code-named ForceFlow, and it told the history of the Jedi Knights, a group of people who used something called the Force to protect the galaxy from evil.

According to the story, the Jedi Knights had been the guardians of the Old Republic for a thousand generations. The only weapon a Jedi carried, Tash had learned, was a lightsaber, a handheld weapon made of pure energy. But the Jedi used violence only as a last resort. Instead they relied upon a mysterious power known as the Force.

Curious, Tash had sent a message to ForceFlow, hoping to learn more. But ForceFlow didn't respond, and his original story was erased from the Net.

After that, Tash kept her eye out for any information on the Jedi.

She visited libraries, scanned the Net, and talked to anyone who had a story about the Jedi or knew of the Force. She hoped to meet a Jedi someday. She hoped to be one someday. But soon after the first story was wiped from the Net, all information about the Jedi vanished from the public records. It was replaced by a single report, stamped with the Imperial seal, stating that the Jedi had died out when the Old Republic gave way to the Empire. According to the official reports, the Jedi were...

"Extinct," Deevee droned. "Imagine that."

Tash looked up from her datapad. D-V9 was standing beside the image of a flock of blue-winged birds. The image was fading, and Deevee was obviously wrapping up his commentary. She had missed the entire lesson.

"Well, that's enough for today," the droid said. "There will be an exam on this lesson next week."

Excused by their tutor, Zak and Tash escaped from the lounge. Tash looked at her brother and could see that she wasn't the only one who'd been daydreaming.

"What's on your mind?" she said.

"Home. Alderaan. Skimboarding in the park." Zak paused. "Mom and Dad. I miss them."

"Me too," Tash said softly. Just thinking about her parents made her want to cry. But she was the older sister and couldn't cry in front of Zak. "Uncle Hoole's our family now."

Zak sulked. "Not really. He's-"

"Not even human," Tash finished.

"Yeah, and he's-"

"Only related to us because his brother married Aunt Beryl."

"Right," said Zak. "I don't even-"

"Know why he bothered to take us in?"

"Stop that!" Zak glared at his sister. She had an annoying habit of finishing other people's sentences.

"Sorry," his sister replied. She hadn't noticed she was doing it again. "But we've talked about Uncle Hoole before. He's not human-he's a Shi'ido. They believe all their relatives are part of their close family.

So Hoole felt that he had to take us in when..." She could hardly say it.

"When Mom and Dad died. We should be happy we get to live with someone who cares about us."

"He never shows it. He always looks like he's going to a funeral."

"You're just too hard on him." Tash argued harder than she believed. "He can be very friendly."

"Oh, yeah?" Zak huffed. "Then what's his first name?"

"Well, that's easy, his name is... I mean, I'm sure I've heard him... That is..." She stopped. Now that she thought about it, Uncle Hoole never had told them his first name. "Maybe he doesn't have a first name," she decided. "Maybe he's just Hoole."

"Maybe," Zak said with a sudden gleam in his eyes, "he just doesn't want us to know. Maybe it's something secret. Maybe there's a price on his head!"