The Force Awakens (Star Wars) Read online

  Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a work of fiction.

  Names, places, and incidents either are products

  of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons,

  living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or TM where indicated.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey,

  an imprint of Random House, a division of

  Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered

  trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  ISBN 9781101965498

  ebook ISBN 9781101965504

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Elizabeth A. D. Eno, adapted for ebook

  v4.1

  prh

  prh-3

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Timeline

  Epigraph

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  By Alan Dean Foster

  About the Author

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

  First comes the day

  Then comes the night.

  After the darkness

  Shines through the light.

  The difference, they say,

  Is only made right

  By the resolving of gray

  Through refined Jedi sight.

  —Journal of the Whills, 7:477

  Luke Skywalker has vanished.

  In his absence, the sinister

  FIRST ORDER has risen from

  the ashes of the Empire

  and will not rest until

  Skywalker, the last Jedi,

  has been destroyed.

  With the support of the

  REPUBLIC, General Leia Organa

  leads a brave RESISTANCE.

  She is desperate to find her

  brother, Luke, and gain his

  help in restoring peace and

  justice to the galaxy.

  Leia has sent her most daring

  pilot on a secret mission

  to Jakku, where an old ally

  has discovered a clue to

  Luke’s whereabouts….

  I

  SHE NEEDED HIM. And he was nowhere to be found.

  There was no one else she could rely on. No one like her brother. No one else at all, now that the New Republic stood on the verge of implosion, of destruction, of complete collapse.

  They had thought that with the fall of the Empire it would all be so easy. That people would understand the need for patience, that time would be required to rebuild that which the Empire had taken away. Cities, communications, trade: All these could and were well on their way to full restoration. It was the intangibles that proved so much more difficult to re-establish throughout galactic society.

  Freedom, for example. The freedom to speak one’s mind, to object, to dispute. She sighed. Those who had led the rebellion had under-estimated the deeply buried desire of far too large a proportion of the population who simply preferred to be told what to do. Much easier it was to follow orders than to think for oneself. So everyone had argued and debated and discussed. Until it was too late.

  Pacing the chamber, she caught a glimpse of herself in a length of polished metal. She knew she looked tired. Sometimes she wished she had been born a commoner, an ordinary citizen, instead of planetary royalty. Such thoughts led her inevitably to memories of Alderaan. Her home world, now many years gone, reduced to ashes.

  And her own father had been a party to it. It was a legacy she could not escape. She could not let something like that happen again, to any other world, to any other people. It was her responsibility, and the weight of it was heavy. Too heavy?

  Easier if she had help. The kind of help only her brother was capable of providing. If he wasn’t dead.

  No. Surely not. Wherever he was, if he had passed on, she would have sensed his demise. Of that she was certain. Of that much she had to be certain.

  There had come a hint, a clue. Not much, but better than any report that had found its way to her in some time. She would have followed up on it herself, for who better to search for clues to the location of a missing brother than his own sister? When she had proposed the idea, the shock of objection on the part of her fellow Resistance leaders could have been heard halfway across the galaxy. Reluctantly, she had conceded to reason. Someone would go in her stead.

  The name of a particular pilot had been put forth. His record was no less than remarkable, and she could hardly argue that a pilot scouting solo would draw less attention than a perambulating princess. So she agreed.

  “Finding one man should not, in the final analysis, be so difficult,” insisted one of her colleagues. “Even on all the known worlds, there are only so many hiding places.”

  “For an ordinary man, yes,” she had replied. “But we’re not trying to find an ordinary man. We’re looking for Luke Skywalker.”

  There had been some further argument, especially from other leaders who had remained convinced that the pilot chosen to follow up on the slender lead was too young for such a crucial task. In the end, harmony had triumphed.

  Once again she caught her reflection in the metal. It had been some time since she had not prevailed in the course of such discussions.

  A thin, knowing smile gleamed back at her. No doubt her authority in such matters derived from her shy, retiring nature. The smile faded. No time for sardonic reflection now, she told herself. No time for extended, lengthy discussion. Times were desperate. The ruthless First Order was on the march, threatening to overwhelm the shaky framework of the weak, increasingly vulnerable, and still-developing New Republic.

  Where was her brother?

  —

  The Star Destroyer Finalizer was massive and new. It had been forged and assembled in the distant orbital factories of the First Order, constructed in secret and uninfected by the virus that was the New Republic. Its devoted and fanatical builders had designed it to be more powerful, more technologically advanced, than anything that had come before it. Certainly there was nothing in the possession of the new Resistance that could stand against the vessel.

  Almost invisible when they first dropped from a port in the side of the immense Resurgent-class Star Destroyer, the four transport vessels were of a proven design. Their function straightforward and simple, they had no need of the extensive redesign embraced by their mother ship. For all that, the transports still performed their prescribed role with brute efficiency.

  As they went about their mundane daily tasks below, the inhabitants of the glowing orb known as Jakku had no idea they were about to receive a visit from four elite squadrons of Imperial stormtroopers.

  On board the quartet of transports, the eighty white-armored troopers prepared for touchdown in the manner of soldiers everywhere. W
isecracks alternated with nervous speculation about what might await them. Surging adrenaline generated nudges and the occasional comradely whack on a neighbor’s arm. They knew one another well, had confidence in their team, and felt certain they could cope with anything the minor world toward which they were descending could throw at them.

  Squad leaders barked commands. Weapons were armed, checked, rechecked. Flame troopers made certain their special weapons were loaded to capacity. Each trooper made a point of inspecting the armor of a neighbor, ensuring that joints were sealed and panels tight.

  The ensuing silence was replaced by a deep rumbling, motionlessness by jolts and bangs, as the four craft entered Jakku’s atmosphere. Someone made a particularly inappropriate comment and was immediately quieted by those seated across from him. After that, the only noise within each transport was the roar and thunder as they bucked their way down through thick air.

  An automated electronic voice sounded the “Prepare for landing!” warning. Armored bodies tensed. There was a single sharp jolt, followed by the return of a silence so thorough it was shocking. Hands tightened on weapons, bodies tensed, and inside the bay all eyes turned to the transport’s bow doorway. The quiet was barely broken by the slightest of mechanical hums as the front of the ship started to lower toward the unseen ground.

  —

  There were smaller villages on Jakku. More primitive, more rural. No one passing over, or even through, Tuanul would have suspected that it held a secret. Even if they had, they would have found no reason to linger. The worlds of the galaxy were full of secrets, and there was no reason to suspect Jakku was any different. But this particular secret…

  It was a peaceful place, as was the case with most small communities situated on desert worlds. Despite the desolation that was apparent at first glance, it boasted its characteristic assortment of indigenous life-forms. Regardless of the absence of much in the way of visible vegetation, the distant isolated hoots and mewlings of nocturnal native animals indicated that life was present even where none could readily be seen. A single wind chime yodeling in the occasional breeze provided a tinkling counterpoint to the yelps of hidden sand-dwellers.

  With neither the place nor the motivation to hide, a creature that was decidedly non-native rolled eastward out of the village. Consisting of a rounded head floating above a much larger sphere, it was dull white with striking orange markings. Designated BB-8, the droid was, at the moment, very, very concerned.

  Where a human would see only empty night sky, advanced calibrated synthetic optics saw a moving point of light. When the light resolved itself into four separate points, the droid commenced an agitated beeping. The phenomenon he was seeing might signify nothing, except…

  The quartet of lights was descending in a controlled manner, on what could only be described as a calculated path, and they were rapidly slowing. If they continued in the observed fashion they would make a controlled touchdown at…BB-8 performed an almost instantaneous calculation.

  Too near. Too near for coincidence. One such light was reason for concern. Four hinted at possibilities dire to contemplate.

  Beeping and whistling in something approaching cybernetic panic, the droid spun and sped back toward the village. That is, its head spun. Facing all directions simultaneously, the spherical body did not need to turn, only to accelerate. This BB-8 did with alacrity. While it could have transmitted the conclusion it had reached, it did not do so for fear of any such message being intercepted, possibly by those it feared might be inhabiting the source of the four descending lights.

  In addition to its motley group of mixed galactic peoples, Tuanul was home to an assortment of used but still valuable machinery. A fair portion of the village population eked out a modest living modifying and restoring such equipment for resale in larger towns and cities. As the droid sped past, the occasional human or alien worker glanced up from the task at hand, frowning, bemused by the droid’s apparently unwarranted haste as it raced through the community. Then they returned to their work, shrugging with the appropriate body parts.

  Machines in various degrees of dismemberment and disarray did not slow BB-8, who dodged effortlessly around and through them. The flocks of bloggins the droid encountered were not so easily avoided. Whereas deconstructed devices tended to sit in one place and not move, bloggins not only wandered where they wished, but regarded whatever patch of land or sand they happened to be occupying at the moment as exclusively theirs, and took raucous exception to interlopers. The birdlike creatures promptly objected to the droid’s chosen path. The pecking he ignored, and he could have barreled on straight through them. But the domesticated flocks provided food for a number of the villagers, and their owners would not have been pleased to see them flattened.

  So BB-8 was forced to dodge and avoid, which he did with skill and patience, beeping and shrieking at the shamble of pseudo-avians in order to clear a nondestructive path. Eventually the last of the annoying beasts was behind him. Deep within the village, there was far less likelihood of encountering anything domesticated that was worth eating: a biological process he understood from an objective point of view but for which he could never rouse much empathy. His goal was close, and there was not a nanosecond to lose.

  Like most of the buildings in Tuanul, the residence toward which he was speeding was an odd amalgamation of the contemporary and the very primitive. Dwellings on many of the minor desert worlds were like that: designs dictated by necessity as well as the environment. Though BB-8’s intended destination resembled little more than a primeval hut, it contained electronics and multiple concealed enhancements capable of making living in a harsh, dry climate more than merely tolerable.

  —

  Though he was fatigued, Poe Dameron tried not to let it show. He owed that much to his host. Besides, he had a reputation to uphold. He had come a long way through difficult and dangerous circumstances to be in this place, in this moment—all on behalf of the Resistance and specifically on the orders of General Organa herself. He was not about to let a minor inconvenience like exhaustion tarnish a farewelling.

  His visage, framed by dark, thick waves of hair, was a bit proud of countenance: something that others, not knowing him, might mistake for arrogance. Confident in his skills and in his mission, he sometimes displayed an impatience that arose only from a desire to fulfill the task at hand. His worn-down red-and-sand-hued flight jacket had been with him as long as he had been in the Resistance, rising through its ranks.

  From the moment of Poe’s arrival, Tuanul had struck him as somewhat less than imposing. This was in notable contrast to his host. While Lor San Tekka appeared physically capable of removing the heads from various unthinking carnivores, his manner was more that of a Soother, and a professional one at that. One immediately relaxed in his company. Provided one held no inimical intentions toward the hut’s owner, of course. Though their visit had been brief, the pilot felt quite confident of his analysis.

  Coming close, Tekka placed a small leather sack in Poe’s open palm, then covered both with his own hand. He smiled softly and nodded.

  “These days I can only do so much. Would that I could do so much more.” He sighed heavily. “And there is so much more that needs to be done. But…this will begin to make things right.”

  As the older man’s hand withdrew, Poe tightened his fingers around the leather bag. In size, it was small. In importance…

  “Legend says this map is unobtainable,” Poe noted. “How’d you do it?”

  The older man just smiled, clearly not willing to give up all his secrets just yet.

  Poe grinned back at him, accepting it. “I’ve heard stories about your adventures since I was a kid. It’s an honor to meet you. We’re grateful.”

  Tekka shrugged—an old man’s shrug, slow and full of meaning. “I’ve traveled too far and seen too much to ignore the collective anguish that threatens to drown the galaxy in a f
lood of dark despair. Something must be done; whatever the cost, whatever the danger. Without the Jedi, there can be no balance in the Force, and all will be given over to the dark side.”

  Though Poe was reasonably secure in his knowledge of such things, he was also intelligent enough to know he could not begin to discuss them in depth with someone like Lor San Tekka. Rather than make a fool of himself by trying to do so, he prepared to take his leave. Besides, he had a delivery to make. Casual philosophical conversation could wait for a better time.

  “The general has been after this a long time,” Poe said, as a way of beginning to take his leave.

  Tekka smiled at some secret thought. “ ‘General.’ To me, she’s royalty.”

  “Yeah, but don’t call her Princess,” Poe told him. “Not to her face. She doesn’t like it anymore. Really doesn’t like it.”

  He was about to elaborate when a frantic metal sphere rolled into the room, barely braking in time to avoiding hitting the two men, and began to spew a stream of electronic chatter. The two men exchanged a glance before rushing toward the building’s entrance.

  Poe had his quadnocs in his hands even before he stopped running. Aiming them toward the general section of sky indicated by BB-8, he let the integrated automatic tracker focus on any targets in the vicinity. The device located four almost immediately. Lowering it, he spoke without turning, his gaze fixed on the horizon.

  “Not to be presumptuous, sir, but you need to hide.”

  Tekka didn’t need quadnocs. He had already identified the incoming ships by the sound they made as they finished their descent. “Not to overstate the obvious, but you need to leave.”

  Despite the importance of his mission, Poe found himself conflicted. Not only did he respect Lor San Tekka, he liked him. How could he leave him here? “Sir, if you don’t mind, I—”