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  The galaxy is at peace, ruled by the glorious REPUBLIC and protected by the noble and wise JEDI KNIGHTS.

  As a symbol of all that is good, the Republic is about to launch STARLIGHT BEACON into the far reaches of the Outer Rim. This new space station will serve as a ray of hope for all to see.

  But just as a magnificent renaissance spreads throughout the Republic so does a frightening new adversary. Now the guardians of peace and justice must face a threat to themselves, the galaxy, and the Force itself….

  Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or ™ where indicated. All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  DEL REY is a registered trademark and the CIRCLE colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Soule, Charles, author.

  Title: Light of the Jedi / Charles Soule.

  Other titles: At head of title: Star Wars

  Description: New York: Del Rey Books, [2020]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020030118 (print) | LCCN 2020030119 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593157718 (hardcover; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780593157725 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593159750 (international edition)

  Subjects: LCSH: Star Wars fiction. | GSAFD: Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3619.O8766 L54 2020 (print) | LCC PS3619.O8766 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020030118

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020030119

  Ebook ISBN 9780593157725

  Cover art: Joseph Meehan

  randomhousebooks.com

  ep_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Epigraph

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Star Wars Novels Timeline

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  Part One: The Great Disaster

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Interlude

  Part Two: The Paths

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Interlude

  Part Three: The Storm

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Charles Soule

  About the Author

  A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….

  The Force is with the galaxy.

  It is the time of the High Republic: a peaceful union of like-minded worlds where all voices are heard, and governance is achieved through consensus, not coercion or fear. It is an era of ambition, of culture, of inclusion, of Great Works. Visionary Chancellor Lina Soh leads the Republic from the elegant city-world of Coruscant, located near the bright center of the Galactic Core.

  But beyond the Core and its many peaceful Colonies, there is the Rim—Inner, Mid, and finally, at the border of what is known: the Outer Rim. These worlds are filled with opportunity for those brave enough to travel the few well-mapped hyperspace lanes leading to them, though there is danger as well. The Outer Rim is a haven for anyone seeking to escape the laws of the Republic, and is filled with predators of every type.

  Chancellor Soh has pledged to bring the Outer Rim worlds into the embrace of the Republic through ambitious outreach programs such as the Starlight Beacon. But until it is brought online, order and justice are maintained on the galactic frontier by Jedi Knights, guardians of peace who have mastered incredible abilities stemming from a mysterious energy field known as the Force. The Jedi work closely with the Republic, and have agreed to establish outposts in the Outer Rim to help any who might require aid.

  The Jedi of the frontier can be the only resource for people with nowhere else to turn. Though the outposts operate independently and without direct assistance from the great Jedi Temple on Coruscant, they act as an effective deterrent to those who would do evil in the dark.

  Few can stand against the Knights of the Jedi Order.

  But there are always those who will try…

  All is well.

  Captain Hedda Casset reviewed the readouts and displays built into her command chair for the second time. She always went over them at least twice. She had more than four decades of flying behind her, and figured the double check was a large part of the reason she’d survived all that time. The second look confirmed everything she’d seen in the first.

  “All is well,” she said, out loud this time, announcing it to her bridge crew. “Time for my rounds. Lieutenant Bowman, you have the bridge.”

  “Acknowledged, Captain,” her first officer replied, standing from his own seat in preparation to occupy hers until she returned from her evening constitutional.

  Not every long-haul freighter captain ran their ship like a military vessel. Hedda had seen starships with stained floors and leaking pipes and cracks in their cockpit viewports, lapses that speared her to her very soul. But Hedda Casset began her career as a fighter pilot with the Malastare–Sullust Joint Task Force, keeping order in their little sector on the border of the Mid Rim. She’d started out flying an Incom Z-24, the single-seat fighter everyone just called a Buzzbug. Mostly security missions, hunting down pirates and the like. Eventually, though, she rose to command a heavy cruiser, one of the largest vessels in the fleet. A good career, doing good work.

  She’d left Mallust JTF with distinction and moved on to a job captaining merchant vessels for the Byne Guild—her version of a relaxed retirement. But thirty-plus years in the military meant order and discipline weren’t just in
her blood—they were her blood. So every ship she flew now was run like it was about to fight a decisive battle against a Hutt armada, even if it was just carrying a load of ogrut hides from world A to world B. This ship, the Legacy Run, was no exception.

  Hedda stood, accepting and returning Lieutenant Jary Bowman’s snapped salute. She stretched, feeling the bones of her spine crackle and crunch. Too many years on patrol in tiny cockpits, too many high-g maneuvers—sometimes in combat, sometimes just because it made her feel alive.

  The real problem, though, she thought, tucking a stray strand of gray hair behind one ear, is too many years.

  She left the bridge, departing the precise machine of her command deck and walking along a compact corridor into the larger, more chaotic world of the Legacy Run. The ship was a Kaniff Yards Class A modular freight transport, more than twice as old as Hedda herself. That put the craft a bit past her ideal operational life, but well within safe parameters if she was well maintained and regularly serviced—which she was. Her captain saw to that.

  The Run was a mixed-use ship, rated for both cargo and passengers—hence “modular” in its designation. Most of the vessel’s structure was taken up by a single gigantic compartment, shaped like a long, triangular prism, with engineering aft, the bridge fore, and the rest of the space allotted for cargo. Hollow boom arms protruded from the central “spine” at regular intervals, to which additional smaller modules could be attached. The ship could hold up to 144 of these, each customizable, to handle every kind of cargo the galaxy had to offer.

  Hedda liked that the ship could haul just about anything. It meant you never knew what you were going to get, what weird challenges you might face from one job to the next. She had flown the ship once when half the cargo space in the primary compartment was reconfigured into a huge water tank, to carry a gigantic saberfish from the storm seas on Tibrin to the private aquarium of a countess on Abregado-rae. Hedda and her crew had gotten the beast there safely—not an easy gig. Even harder, though, was getting the creature back to Tibrin three cycles later, when the blasted thing got sick because the countess’s people had no idea how to take care of it. She gave the woman credit, though—she paid full freight to send the saberfish home. A lot of people, nobles especially, would have just let it die.

  This particular trip, in comparison, was as simple as they came. The Legacy Run’s cargo sections were about 80 percent filled with settlers heading to the Outer Rim from overpopulated Core and Colony worlds, seeking new lives, new opportunities, new skies. She could relate to that. Hedda Casset had been restless all her life. She had a feeling she’d die that way, too, looking out a viewport, hoping her eyes would land on something she’d never seen before.

  Because this was a transport run, most of the ship’s modules were basic passenger configurations, with open seating that converted into beds that were, in theory, comfortable enough to sleep in. Sanitary facilities, storage, a few holoscreens, small galleys, and that was it. For settlers willing to pay for the increased comfort and convenience, some had droid-operated auto-canteens and private sleeping compartments, but not many. These people were frugal. If they’d had credits to begin with, they probably wouldn’t be heading to the Outer Rim to scrape out a future. The dark edge of the galaxy was a place of challenges both exciting and deadly. More deadly than exciting, in truth.

  Even the road to get out here is tricky, Hedda thought, her gaze drawn by the swirl of hyperspace outside the large porthole she happened to be passing. She snapped her eyes away, knowing she could end up standing there for twenty minutes if she let herself get sucked in. You couldn’t trust hyperspace. It was useful, sure, it got you from here to there, it was the key to the expansion of the Republic out from the Core, but no one really understood it. If your navidroid miscalculated the coordinates, even a little, you could end up off the marked route, the main road through whatever hyperspace actually was, and then you’d be on a dark path leading to who knew where. It happened even in the well-traveled hyperlanes near the galactic center, and out here, where the prospectors had barely mapped out any routes…well, you had to watch yourself.

  She put her concerns out of her mind and continued on her way. The truth was, the Legacy Run was currently speeding along the best-traveled, best-known route to the Outer Rim worlds. Ships moved through this hyperlane constantly, in both directions. Nothing to worry about.

  But then, more than nine thousand souls aboard this ship were depending on Captain Hedda Casset to get them safely to their destination. She worried. It was her job.

  Hedda exited the corridor and entered the central hull, emerging in a large, circular space, an open spot necessitated by the ship’s structure that had been repurposed as a sort of unofficial common area. A group of children kicked a ball around as adults stood and chatted nearby; all just enjoying a little break from the cramped confines of the modules where they spent most of their time. The space wasn’t fancy, just a bare junction spot where several short corridors met—but it was clean. The ship employed—at its captain’s insistence—an automated maintenance crew that kept its interiors neat and sanitary. One of the custodial droids was spidering its way along a wall at that very moment, performing one of the endless tasks required on a ship the size of the Run.

  She took a moment to take stock of this group—twenty people or so, all ages, from a number of worlds. Humans, of course, but also a few four-armed, fur-covered Ardennians, a family of Givin with their distinctive triangular eyes, and even a Lannik with its pinched face, topknot, and huge, pointed ears protruding from the side of its head—you didn’t see many of those around. But no matter their planet of origin, they were all just ordinary beings, biding time until their new lives could begin.

  One of the kids looked up.

  “Captain Casset!” the boy said, a human, olive-skinned with red hair. She knew him.

  “Hello, Serj,” Hedda said. “What’s the good word? Everything all right here?”

  The other children stopped their game and clustered around her.

  “Could use some new holos,” Serj said. “We’ve watched everything in the system.”

  “All we got is all we got,” Hedda replied. “And stop trying to slice into the archive to see the age-restricted titles. You think I don’t know? This is my ship. I know everything that happens on the Legacy Run.”

  She leaned forward.

  “Everything.”

  Serj blushed and looked toward his friends, who had also, suddenly, found very interesting things to look at on the absolutely uninteresting floor, ceiling, and walls of the chamber.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, straightening. “I get it. This is a pretty boring ride. You won’t believe me, but in not too long, when your parents have you plowing fields or building fences or fighting off rancors, you’ll be dreaming of the time you spent on this ship. Just relax and enjoy.”

  Serj rolled his eyes and returned to whatever improvised ball game he and the other kids had devised.

  Hedda grinned and moved through the room, nodding and chatting as she went. People. Probably some good, some bad, but for the next few days, her people. She loved these runs. No matter what eventually happened in the lives of these folks, they were heading to the Rim to make their dreams come true. She was part of that, and it made her feel good.

  Chancellor Soh’s Republic wasn’t perfect—no government was or ever could be—but it was a system that gave people room to dream. No, even better. It encouraged dreams, big and small. The Republic had its flaws, but really, things could be a hell of a lot worse.

  Hedda’s rounds took over an hour—she made her way through the passenger compartments, but also checked on a shipment of supercooled liquid Tibanna to make sure the volatile stuff was properly locked down (it was), inspected the engines (all good), investigated the status of repairs to the ship’s environmental recirculation systems (in progress and pr
oceeding nicely), and made sure fuel reserves were still more than adequate for the rest of the journey with a comfortable margin besides (they were).

  The Legacy Run was exactly as she wanted it to be. A tiny, well-maintained world in the wilderness, a warm bubble of safety holding back the void. She couldn’t vouch for what was waiting for these settlers once they dispersed into the Outer Rim, but she would make sure they got there safe and sound to find out.

  Hedda returned to the bridge, where Lieutenant Bowman all but leapt to his feet the moment he saw her enter.

  “Captain on the bridge,” he said, and the other officers sat up straighter.

  “Thank you, Jary,” Hedda said as her second stepped aside and returned to his post.

  Hedda settled into her command chair, automatically checking the displays, scanning for anything out of the ordinary.

  All is well, she thought.

  KTANG. KTANG. KTANG. KTANG. An alarm, loud and insistent. The bridge lighting flipped into its emergency configuration—bathing everything in red. Through the front viewport, the swirls of hyperspace looked off, somehow. Maybe it was the emergency lighting, but they had a…reddish tinge. They looked…sickly.

  Hedda felt her pulse quicken. Her mind snapped into combat mode without thinking.

  “Report!” she barked out, her eyes whipping along her own set of screens to find the source of the alarm.