Star Wars: Bloodline

by Claudia Gray

Mon Calamari to the small, woolly Ashaftan, in what looked like perfect unity.

That was what happened when someone grew up on the run, under siege, always expecting capture or death at any moment. Paranoia became the only way of seeing the world, unable to ever be fully set aside.

(When she thought of her father, she thought only of Bail Organa. He had been her father in spirit, and surely that was more important than anything else.)

Yendor

When the people with authority don’t have to answer to citizens of the galaxy, the result is tyranny.”

man one moment longer than necessary. Besides, C-3PO

The

as pleased to meet Senator Casterfo,” hissed Magistrate Xun. “So new

But few sabacc players had learned the game from Han Solo and Lando Calrissian.

genders Leia had spotted thus far.

“I’ve said yes.” Princess Leia poured herself more caf with studied nonchalance.

knew how to learn the true measure of an individual: Watch what he does to someone he believes is at his mercy.

for one of his racing teams. You’ve got a lot going for you, for a Centrist.”

“But

Tai-Lin Garr settled himself onto the long cushions that lined Varish’s table,

To

Someday was the sun disappearing behind a cloud, a morning lost to darkness long before night should have come.

Yet victory demanded more of a person than defeat did.

Amaxines? The pilot chuckled as she lifted her ale. “Oh,

angular eyebrows at him, and he thought, You have got to stop trying so hard.

Death Star stations, and when we could supply them with nothing more,

far-right

Emperor’s Wrath. Interceptor Fire. Avenger of Jakku.

grin on his blue face. Leia smiled in return. “It used to be Princess

Hoth.” “We’re not on Hoth now,” Yendor said in good humor.

“To this day, they’ve never adequately explained what happened to the first Death Star. Yes, we all know the big story, Luke Skywalker single starfighter blah blah blah, but honestly, does that sound credible to you? The Empire had the greatest engineers in the galaxy, and the Death Star was their finest achievement. There’s no way it could’ve been vulnerable to that kind of attack. The Emperor had to have been betrayed by someone on the inside.”

Skywalker had been so long away on his strange quest for the lore of the Jedi that he no longer had much influence outside his own acolytes. He was a figure of myth more than one of flesh and blood.

A group of Ottegans swaggered past, smelling faintly of spice.

the old rebel pilots, you know? They went up against the Death Stars in X-wings. And we’re repaying them by treating Palpatine

Order. Someday, the entire galaxy would shout them with pride, but

Bail had never known this; he’d never had to face just how terribly his

so protectively. It turned out the hovering was actually kind of sweet.

Leia

“Got

I

Had it been like that for her father? She could never know. But for the first time in a very long while, she had some sense of who Anakin Skywalker might have been before his fall, and of the goodness that must have survived in him through all the darkness, all the years.

“The sun is setting on the New Republic,” Leia said. “It’s time for the Resistance to rise.”