Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel (Star Wars)

by James Luceno

For her, governments of any stripe would have their constituents believe that they were attempting to remove chaos from the galaxy, that they were trying to make things perfect, when only the Force was perfect. For ordinary beings, life was a constant interplay between order and chaos, day and night, light and dark.

in constructing a mobile orb of such size that it will seem to some nothing less than a small moon.

One might as well try to clone the Force itself, or turn to magic in an effort to simulate the power.

“Mathematics isn’t just science, it is poetry—our efforts to crystallize the unglimpsed connections between things. Poetry that bridges and magnifies the mysteries of the galaxy. But the signs and symbols and equations sentients employ to express these connections are not discoveries but the teasing out of secrets that have always existed. All our theories belong to nature, not to us. As in music, every combination of notes and chords, every melody has already been played and sung, somewhere, by someone—”

What neither of them knew or could have known was that the war, so abruptly begun three years earlier, was just as suddenly over.

“Start that band of yours.”

He wasn’t there for that joke though ….

That’s why it has always been said of kybers that they are more often grown than mined.

Realigning the lattices along a dark or nighttime axis might allow for greater control over the crystals’ almost deliberate tendency to diffract.

Was there such a thing as a noble lie?

Violence is hardwired into most of us and there’s no eliminating the impulse—