Paul S. Kemp - Star Wars: The Old Republic: Deceived

BY PAUL S. KEMP
Star Wars: Crosscurrent

THE EREVIS CALE TRILOEY
Twilight Falling
Dawn of Night
Midnights Mask

THE TWILIGHT WAR
Shadowbred
Shadowstorm
Shadowrealm

Star Wars: The Old Republic: Deceived is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright 2011 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & or TM where indicated.

All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.

Excerpt from Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Outcast by Aaron Allston copyright 2009 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & or TM where indicated. All Rights Reserved.
Used Under Authorization.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

D EL R EY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

This work contains an excerpt from Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Outcast by Aaron Allston, originally published in hardcover by Del Rey, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2009.

Jacket design and illustration by ATTIK

eISBN: 978-0-345-52988-6

www.starwars.com
www.starwarstheoldrepublic.com
www.delreybooks.com

v3.1

For Jen, and Riordan, and Roarke

My thanks to Shelly, Sue, Leland, and David, for all their help and encouragement.

Adraas; Sith Lord (human male)

Angral; Sith Lord (human male)

Arra Yooms; child (human female)

Aryn Leneer; Jedi Knight (human female)

Eleena; servant (Twilek female)

Malgus; Sith Lord (human male)

Ven Zallow; Jedi Master (male, species unknown)

Vrath Xizor; mercenary (human male)

Zeerid Korr; smuggler (human male)

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

FATMAN SHIVERED , her metal groaning, as Zeerid pushed her through Ord Mantells atmosphere. Friction turned the air to fire, and Zeerid watched the orange glow of the flames through the transparisteel of the freighters cockpit.

He was gripping the stick too tightly, he realized, and relaxed.

He hated atmosphere entries, always had, the long forty-count when heat, speed, and ionized particles caused a temporary sensor blackout. He never knew what kind of sky hed encounter when he came out of the dark. Back when hed carted Havoc Squadron commandos in a Republic gully jumper, he and his fellow pilots had likened the blackout to diving blind off a seaside cliff.

You always hope to hit deep water, theyd say. But sooner or later the tide goes out and you go hard into rock.

Or hard into a blistering crossfire. Didnt matter, really. The effect would be the same.

Coming out of the dark, he said as the flame diminished and the sky opened below.

No one acknowledged the words. He flew Fatman alone, worked alone. The only things he carted anymore were weapons for The Exchange. He had his reasons, but he tried hard not to think too hard about what he was doing.

He leveled the ship off, straightened, and ran a quick sweep of the surrounding sky. The sensors picked up nothing.

Deep water and it feels fine, he said, smiling.

On most planets, the moment he cleared the atmosphere hed have been busy dodging interdiction by the planetary government. But not on Ord Mantell. The planet was a hive of crime syndicates, mercenaries, bounty hunters, smugglers, weapons dealers, and spicerunners.

And those were just the people who ran the place.

Factional wars and assassinations occupied their attention, not governance, and certainly not law enforcement. The upper and lower latitudes of the planet in particular were sparsely settled and almost never patrolled, a literal no-beings-land. Zeerid would have been surprised if the government had survsats running orbits over the area.

And all that suited him fine.

Fatman broke through a thick pink blanket of clouds, and the brown, blue, and white of Ord Mantells northern hemisphere filled out Zeerids field of vision. Snow and ice peppered the canopy, frozen shrapnel, beating a steady rhythm on Fatmans hull. The setting sun suffused a large swath of the world with orange and red. The northern sea roiled below him, choppy and dark, the irregular white circles of breaking surf denoting the thousands of uncharted islands that poked through the waters surface. To the west, far in the distance, he could make out the hazy edge of a continent and the thin spine of snowcapped, cloud-topped mountains that ran along its northsouth axis.

Motion drew his eye. A flock of leatherwings, too small to cause a sensor blip, flew two hundred meters to starboard and well below him, the tents of their huge, membranous wings flapping slowly in the freezing wind, the arc of the flock like a parenthesis. They were heading south for warmer air and paid him no heed as he flew over and past them, their dull, black eyes blinking against the snow and ice.

He pulled back on the ion engines and slowed still further. A yawn forced itself past his teeth. He sat up straight and tried to blink away the fatigue, but it was as stubborn as an angry bantha. Hed given the ship to the autopilot and dozed during the hyperspace run from Vulta, but that was all the rack hed had in the last two standard days. It was catching up to him.

He scratched at the stubble of his beard, rubbed the back of his neck, and plugged the drop coordinates into the navicomp. The comp linked with one of Ord Mantells unsecured geosyncsats and fed back the location and course to Fatman. Zeerids HUD displayed it on the cockpit canopy. He eyed the location and put his finger on the destination.

Some island no one has ever heard of, up here where no one ever goes. Sounds about right.

Zeerid turned the ship over to the autopilot, and it banked him toward the island.

His mind wandered as Fatman cut through the sky. The steady patter of ice and snow on the canopy sang him a lullaby. His thoughts drifted back through the clouds to the past, to the days before the accident, before hed left the marines. Back then, hed worn the uniform proudly and had still been able to look himself in the mirror