Onslaught: Star Wars Legends: Dark Tide, Book I (Star Wars: The New Jedi Order 2) by Michael A. Stackpole

Author:Michael A. Stackpole [Stackpole, Michael A.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780345467416
Publisher: Random House Worlds
Published: 2003-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

Luke slowly seated himself on his wife’s bunk aboard the Courage. When her eyes fluttered open, he raised a finger to his lips. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay.” Her voice came a bit hoarsely and remained a whisper. “I’ve been sleeping too much lately.”

“You’ve been under a lot of stress. The illness …”

She nodded slowly but not weakly, and that heartened Luke. Even when he’d found her close to complete collapse there in the mountains, she would not let him carry her and even made a weak attempt at demanding that she be allowed to copilot the blastboat. She refused to admit defeat or acknowledge any weakness.

Luke found this a great comfort, and it took him a moment or two to determine why. His aunt Beru had been utterly unlike Mara save in one aspect: She was a hardened survivor. Living on Tatooine required that of people. If you were inclined toward being soft or weak, the desert world dried you out, sanded you down to your bones, then buried you. Everyone he had known as he grew up had prided themselves in defying the planet every single day, and that inspired in him an appreciation of that survival sense.

Mara drew a small bottle from the shelf at the head of the bunk and drank some water. A droplet coursed down from the corner of her mouth. She tried to get it with a swipe of her hand, but missed.

Luke leaned forward and brushed it away with a finger. She caught his hand in hers, then raised his fingers to her lips. She kissed them, once, then clutched his hand against her breastbone. “I never doubted I would get out of those mountains. When I saw you … I thought poor Anakin …” Her grip tightened on his hand. “I’m so thankful you saved him.”

“The least I could do for his saving you.” Luke sighed. “I should have known better than to have you go to Dantooine. Ithor is farther back from the Rim. It would have been safer.”

Mara sipped a bit more water. “Would it?”

“What do you mean?”

She scrunched the pillow up behind her and pulled herself into a semisitting position. “The Yuuzhan Vong were at Dubrillion and Belkadan. They are here at Dantooine. My guess is that they’ve hit other worlds, too. Either scouts or lots of troops. The whole of the Rim could be down.”

“You’re right. We don’t know how far they’ve penetrated the galaxy. If they are as far as Ithor …” Luke shuddered. If the Yuuzhan Vong could reach Ithor, they would have carved a fairly wide swath through the galaxy and would be in a position to threaten many of the key Core worlds. Conquer them and the New Republic’s economy would die. If that happened, the New Republic’s constituent states would begin to look to each other for support, and the New Republic would fragment.

“If they are as far as Ithor, we’re going to die right here, because there will be no help coming for us.

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