For excerpts from Chapter One, first see Random House's official site here. Then, check out Paul Kemp's blog for an additional excerpt.
Star Wars: Crosscurrent is scheduled for release on January 26th.
The Past: 5,000 Years Before the Battle of Yavin
Relin and Drev sat in pensive silence as their Infiltrator streaked through the churning blue tunnel of hyperspace. They watched their instrumentation intently, hoping for the telltale beep denoting detection of the hyperspace beacon secreted aboard Harbinger. Lingering silence would mean they'd lost Saes.
"Scanners functioning normally," Drev said. After a sidelong glance at Relin, he began to hum, a free-form, lively tune from his homeworld.
"Must you?" Relin asked, smiling despite himself as he adjusted the instrumentation.
"Yes," said Drev, also smiling, but without looking up from his instruments. "I must."
Relin admired his Padawan's ability to find joy in everything he did, though Relin thought -- and taught -- that it was more important to maintain emotional evenness. Extremes of emotion could lead to the dark side.
Still, he wondered sometimes if Drev was the only one doing the learning in their relationship. It seemed Relin smiled only when in Drev's presence. Saes's betrayal had cut the mirth out of him as skillfully as a surgeon.
Drev tapped the scanner screen with a thick finger."Come out, come out, whither you hide."
Presently, the scanner picked up a faint signal. Relin and Drev exhaled as one and leaned forward in their seats.
Drev chuckled and put a finger on the scanner screen. "There. They did it."
Relin let the navicomp digest the scanner's input and cross-referenced the coordinates. "The Phaegon system."
Without waiting for instruction, Drev pulled up the onboard computer's information on the system.
"There's nothing there," Drev said, eyeing the readout.
"What is he doing?"
"Still looking, maybe," Relin said, and took the controls. "We will know soon enough."
The signal grew in strength as the Infiltrator hurtled through hyperspace.
"He's deep in-system," Relin said. "We emerge ten light-seconds out."
Drev nodded and input the commands into the navicomp.
"The system has four planets, each with multiple moons. An asteroid belt divides the third from the fourth."
"Use it as cover until we understand what Saes is doing."
"Deactivating the hyperdrive in five, four . . ."
"Activating signature scrambler and baffles," Relin said. At the same moment, he used the Force to mask his and Drev's Force signatures, lest Saes perceive their arrival.
". . . two, one," Drev said, and deactivated the hyperdrive.
The blue tunnel of hyperspace gave way to the black void of stars, planets, and asteroids.
Instantly a wave of dark side energy, raw and jagged, saturated the ship. Unready for the assault, Relin lost his breath, turned dizzy. Drev groaned, lurched back in his seat as if struck, then vomited down the front of his robes.
"Where is that coming from?" Relin said between gritted teeth.
Drev shook his head, still heaving. He reached for the scanner console.
"Leave it," Relin said, and adjusted the scanners himself.
They showed nothing nearby but the spinning chaos of the asteroid belt, and Phaegon III and its many moons.
Relin took a moment to clear his head, then drew on the Force to shield them from the ambient dark side energy.
With his defenses in place, he felt the energy as only a soft, unpleasant pressure in his mind, incessant raindrops thumping against his skull, but it no longer affected his senses.
"All right?" he asked Drev.
Drev cleared his throat, eyed his flight suit and robes in embarrassment. "I am all right. Apologies, Master."
Relin waved away the apology. He had been unprepared, too.
"My meal tasted better the first time," Drev said, smiling, his cheeks bright red.
"Smelled better, too," Relin said, chuckling as he pored over the scanner's output.
"So, it's vomit that looses your sense of humor," Drev said. He stripped off his robe, balled it up, and retook his seat. He took a gulp of a flavored protein drink in a plastic pouch, swished it around his mouth. "I will keep that in mind. Maybe scatological humor will amuse you also?"
Relin only half smiled. His mind was on their situation.
What had they stumbled onto? He had never before experienced such a wash of pure dark side energy. Whatever Saes had been searching for, he must have found it in the Phaegon system. Drev must have sensed his seriousness.
"What do you make of it?" Drev asked. "A dark side weapon? A Sith artifact maybe?"
Relin shook his head. The energy was not intense, simply widespread. "We will soon know."
He engaged the ion drive and started to take them into the asteroid belt, but thought better of it. He took his hands from the controls.
"Take us in, Drev," he said.
He felt his Padawan's eyes on him. "Into the belt?"
Relin nodded. The Infiltrator's sensor scrambler and the churn of the asteroid belt would foil any Sith scanners.
"Are you certain, Master?"
"Still your mind," he said to his Padawan. "Feel the Force, trust it."
Drev was one of the best raw pilots in the Order. With time and training in the use of the Force, he would become one of the Jedi's finest.
"Take us in," Relin repeated. Drev stared out of the cockpit, at the ocean of whirling rocks. He paused for a long, calming breath, then took the controls and piloted the Infiltrator into the asteroid belt.
He accelerated without hesitation and the ship darted through the field of slowly spinning rock, diving, ascending, rolling. Pitted stones flashed on the viewscreen for a moment, vanished as Drev cruised under them, over them, around them. One of the Infiltrator's wings caught an oblong asteroid and the ship lurched, started to spin.
"Master -- "
"Calm, Drev," Relin said, and his Padawan zagged out of the way of another asteroid as he righted the starfighter.
"Well done, Padawan," Relin said. "Well done."
A smile split Drev's face as he continued through the belt.
Relin monitored the sensors. "There is an asteroid on the edge of the belt, more than ten kilometers in diameter, in a very slow spin."
"I see it."
"Set us down there but stay powered up. Let us see what we see."
Drev maneuvered them over the asteroid and set down the Infiltrator. Phaegon III loomed large in their viewscreen against a backdrop of stars.
Drev was still smiling. Relin chose to ignore his Padawan's emotional high.
"Give me a heads-up display and magnify."
A HUD appeared off center in the cockpit window. Drev input a few commands and magnified the image.
Plumes of smoke spiraled from the charred surface of one of Phaegon III's small moons. Saes's dreadnought and its sister ship hung like carrion birds in low orbit over the moon's corpse. A steady stream of transports moved between the moon's surface and the belly-slung landing bays of the two Sith ships.
Drev lost his smile as he worked the scanners. "That is not -- how can -- ? Master, that moon should be covered in vegetation." He looked up from his scan. "And life."
Relin felt his Padawan's anger over the destruction. He knew where anger led. The young man moved from joy to rage as if his emotions were on a pendulum.
"Stay focused on our task, Drev. The scope of the matter cannot affect your thinking. Do not let anger cloud your mind."
Drev stared at him as if he were something appalling he'd found on the bottom of his boot. "The matter? It is not a mere matter. They incinerated an entire moon! It is an atrocity."
Relin nodded. "The word fits. But you are a Jedi. Master your emotions. Especially now. Especially now, Padawan."
Drev stared at him a moment longer before turning back to the scanners. When he spoke, his voice was stiff. "There are hundreds of mining droids on the moon."
More to himself than Drev, Relin said, "Saes incinerated the crust, then loosed the mining droids." He focused his Force sense on the transports and their cargo. Though he had been ready, the dark side backlash elicited a gasp and set him backward in his chair.
"It is the cargo."
"The cargo? What did he pull out of that moon?"
