Star Wars - [Black Fleet Crisis 03] - Tyrant's Test (by Michael P Kube-McDowell)

VIP免费

2024-12-20 0 0 926.11KB 631 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

The Black Fleet Crisis: Tyrant's Test

By: Michael P. Kube-McDowell

BANTAM BOOKS NEW YORK TORONTO LONDON SYDNEY AUCKLAND

Dedication

For the stalwart crew, Russ Galen Tom Dupree Sue Rostoni Lynn Bailey

And the bold captain, George Lucas

Acknowledgments

Writing "The Black Fleet Crisis" has been either the most grueling fun

or the most enjoyable marathon of my writing career. Either way, the

last seventeen months have been amazingly full--a new home, two new

babies (Amanda and Gavin), and more than three hundred thousand new

words of fiction.

Though I was on my own in the many long hours I spent with my old

friend Qwerty, I couldn't have had those hours, or done nearly as much

with them, without the help of a grand conspiracy of allies.

First among them are my immediate family, Gwen Zak and my son Matt, and

my de facto extended family, Rod Zak and Arlyn Wilson. With unflagging

grace and good humor, they pitched in wherever they were needed, doing

whatever had to be done to keep the home fires burning and the dragons

at bay.

The seasoned professionals of this conspiracy were SCG superagent Russ

Galen, Bantam editor Tom Du-pree, BDD Audio producer Lynn Bailey, and

Lucasfilm's Sue Rostoni. Working their mysterious ways through such

arcane media as the fax, the telephone, and E-mail,

they skillfully

managed the more far-reaching elem of the master plan.

Then there were the many sympathizers, who, though not formally part of

my cell nevertheless fered their knowledge or services to further our

cause.

Prominent on that long list are DanWallace, Craig ert Carey, Timothy

O'Brien, R. Lee Brown, Mic Armstrong, Jim Macdonald, Daniel Dworkin,

Ev.

Cainto, and Mike Stackpole.

Meanwhile, John Vester, Dave Phillips, and nifer Hrynik took the point

on a fiendishly clever' information campaign.

Though security concerns limit my freedom to name names, I also want to

acknowledge the aid and comfort I drew from the volunteer flyspeckers

in CompuServe's SF Media Two forum (GO SFMEDTWO) Genie's SF Roundtable

Three (SFRT3), and from the cals of RASSM.

I offer my most earnest salute to the chief archi of the Rebellion,

George Lucas, without whose inspiration none of us would be here.

Finally, I want to thank the true believers of cause--Star Wars fans

around the globe--for coming along on this journey. Your boundless

enthusiasm and vocal support have meant a great deal to me.

--Michael Paul McDowell: August 31, 1996

Okemos, Michigan

Dramatis Personae

On Coruscant, capital of the New Republic:

Princess Leia Organa Solo, President of the Senate an- Chief of State

of the New Republic

Alole and Tarrick, aides to Leia

Admiral Hiram Drayson, chief of Alpha Blue

General Carlist Rieekan, head of New Republic Intelligence

Brigadier Collomus, operations senior staff for NRI

First Administrator Nanaod Engh, administrative director of the New

Republic

Mokka Falanthas, minister of state

Senator Behn-Kihl-Nahm, chairman of the Defense Council and friend and

mentor to Leia

Senator Rattagagech of Elom, chairman of the Science and Technology

Council

Senator Doman Beruss of Illodia, chairman of the Ministry Council

Senator Borsk Fey'lya of Kothlis, chairman of the Justice Council

Senator Tig Peramis of Walalla

Belezaboth Ourn, extraordinary consul of t] Paqwepori

With the Fifth Battle Group of the New Republic Defense Fleet, in

Farlax Sector:

General Etahn A'baht, Fleet commander

Colonel Corgan, staff tactical officer

Colonel Mauit'ta, staff intelligence officer

Captain Morano, commander of the flagship Intrepid

Plat Mallar, sole survivor of the Yevethan raid on Polneye

Aboard the Teljkon Vagabond:

General Lando Calrissian, Fleet liaison to the expedition

Lobot, chief administrator of Cloud City, on vacation

See-Threepio, protocol droid

Artoo-Detoo, astromech droid

Aboard the yacht Lady Luck, in pursuit of the Vagabond:

Colonel Pakkpekatt, expedition commander Republic Intelligence

Captain Bijo Hammax, foray commander Pleck and Taisden, NRI technical

agents

Aboard the Obroan Institute research vessel P Rift, at Maltha Obex: Dr.

Joto Eckels, senior archaeologist

On N'zoth, spawnworld of the Yevetha, in Kc Cluster, Farlax Sector:

Nil Spaar, viceroy of the Yevethan Protectorate

Eri Palle, aide to Nil Spaar

Dar Bille, proctor of the Yevethan flagship Tal Fraan, proctor cogent

to the viceroy

General Han Solo, a prisoner

Aboard the skiff Mud Sloth, en route to J't'p'tan, in the Koornacht

Cluster, Farlax Sector

Luke Skywalker, a Jedi Master

Akanah, an adept of the White Current On Kashyyyk, homeWorld of the

Wookiees:

Chewbacca, participating in coming-of-age ceremonies for his son

Lumpawarrump

Tyrant's T est

(Chapter 1

Three levels down from Rwookrrorro and eighteen kilometers northeast

along the Rryatt Trail, the Well of the Dead appeared as a solid green

wall ahead of Chewbacca and his son Lumpawarrump.

This deep in the wroshyr jungle of Kashyyyk, the tangled web of trunks

and branches was ordinarily almost barren. So little light penetrated

the dense canopies overhead that any leaves that sprouted quickly

withered. Only the gray bridal-veil sucker and the pad-dle-leafed mock

shyr, both parasites, and the ubiquitous kshyy vines decorated the runs

and paths.

But neither the bridal-veil nor the mock shyr was abundant enough to

block those runs and force the Wookiees to the underside of the web of

branches.

They--and the creatures that made their homes at that level--could move

freely over the top of the tangled maze. Despite the dim light,

sightlines of up to five hundred meters were the norm, with the trunks

of the wroshyr trees themselves providing the only cover.

It was the Shadow Forest, the realm of the nimble rkkrrkkrl, or

trap-spinner, and the slow-moving rroshm, which helped keep the paths

clear by grazing on bridal-veil.

tongued needlebugs, whose sucking proboscides could pierce the tough

wroshyr bark and draw on the juices within.

The most dangerous inhabitants were the elusive kkekkrrg rro, the

five-limbed Shadow Keepers, which preferred to roam the underside and

even more strongly preferred the taste of meat. The Shadow Keepers

would not attack an adult Wookiee, but long history, now mostly

forgotten, had made the kkekkrrg rro the personification of the

skulking unseen enemy, and it was the rare Wookiee who would not reach

for his weapon on seeing one.

All this and more Chewbacca had shown and explained to his son as they

journeyed down from the hunting ground of the Twilight Gardens, a level

above.

The whole time, memories had swirled around him on the stagnant air.

Some were memories of his own journey of ascendance in the company of

his father, Attitch-itcuk, of the tests that had earned him the right

to wear his baldric, to carry a weapon in city, to choose and confirm

his name.

Two hundred years, and the forest is still the same--only I am the

father now, not the son ....

Chewbacca also vividly remembered the foolish expedition he and

Salporin had made to the Shadow Forest in advance of their

coming-of-age. Unarmed but for a single ryyyk blade Salporin had

pilfered from his eldest brother, Chewbacca and his friend had left the

nursery ring and descended into realms forbidden to the children they

still were.

They had thought to prepare themselves for the unknown, but managed

only to scare themselves with it.

Their courage had faded with the failing light, and by the time they

reached Shadow Forest, all it took was a skittish trap-spinner to send

them fleeing back to the safety of the familiar.

And what we thought we saw filled our nightmares until our tests of

ascension finally came--poor Salporin!

I only had to wait six days.

If Attitchitcuk knew--then or later--what they had done, he had never

let on.

Chewbacca looked at his son appraisingly. He doubted that there were

any secret journeys concealed behind those nervous eyes. Years ago, a

very young Lumpawarrump had gone alone into the forest near Rwookrrorro

in search of wasaka berries and gotten himself lost--a misadventure

that had grown much in the retelling, until it became a family fable

populated by every monster of the dark depths of both jungle and

imagination. But the scare had been real even if the danger had not,

and since then his son had been content to stay close to the nursery

ring and the home tree.

And Mallatobuck and Attitchitcuk had been content to allow it, to let

him be different. Neither, it seemed, had pushed him to take part in

the toughen-ing--the unstructured rough-and-tumble play of the nursery

ring, where young Wookiees learned their fearlessly headlong fighting

style. When Chewbacca had greeted his son with a fierce growling rush,

Lumpawar-rump had turned from it, yielding as though he were already

wounded.

It had been a difficult moment for everyone. But in the aftermath,

Chewbacca realized that he was seeing part of the price his son had

paid for his absence.

In honoring a life debt to Han Solo, Chewbacca had left his son to be

raised by mother and grandfather.

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

TheBlackFleetCrisis:Tyrant'sTestbyBy:MichaelP.Kube-McDowell BANTAMBOOKSNEWYORKTORONTOLONDONSYDNEYAUCKLAND Dedication Forthestalwartcrew,RussGalenTomDupreeSueRostoniLynnBailey Andtheboldcaptain,GeorgeLucas Acknowledgments Writing"TheBlackFleetCrisis"hasbeeneitherthemostgruelingfunorthemostenjoyablema...

展开>> 收起<<

Star Wars - [Black Fleet Crisis 03] - Tyrant's Test (by Michael P Kube-McDowell).pdf

共631页,预览127页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Star Wars - [Black Fleet Crisis 03] - Tyrant's Test (by Michael P Kube-McDowell)

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: