BETRAYAL

"BETRAYAL begins approximately 4 months into year 40 ABY (based on a 12month/368-day calendar)...something like 122 days into year 40 ABY." Sue Rostoni

The novel begins on Coruscant with Luke Skywalker awake in bed and saying that a mysterious man in his dreams doesn't exist to his wife Mara. He wonders if it might be someone like Raynar Thul, whom Luke confronted four years earlier at the end of the Swarm War. Luke and Mara consider that it might not be anything important, although Luke still has his doubts. On Adumar, at the Dammant Killers company, Jacen Solo and Ben Skywalker are investigating what the company has in terms of safety procedures for their employees. Duly, Jacen and Ben find that the Dammant Killers are producing illegal weapons for other planets without the permission of the Galactic Alliance, and they narrowly escape from being killed by the resurgent employees. Outside the building, after more employees try to kill them, Jacen and Ben escape Adumar, with Ben transmitting the information about Adumar producing the weapons and sending this information to the Galactic Alliance. Later, at the Solos' apartment on Coruscant, Han and Leia have a reunion with their children, Jaina and Jacen, the Skywalker clan, and Zekk, who is still with Jaina because of their Force connection made by their Joining with the Killiks five years earlier. During the reunion, when Han is told about the Dammant Killers operating with weapons without the Galactic Alliance's supervision, he is offended, because Adumar is an example of the countless planets around the galaxy who want to secede from the Alliance. This is because the Alliance is now being seen by all of these planets as approaching the tyrannical behaviour of the Galactic Empire in its heyday. Disturbingly, Han's home planet of Corellia happens to be among those planets opposing the Galactic Alliance. Knowing this, Luke confers with Jacen to brief him about a Corellia-related mission; recently, Galactic Alliance Intelligence had collected information that Thrackan Sal-Solo has just reactivated Centerpoint Station and that he plans to use it to further the cause of Corellian independence from the Galactic Alliance's rule. Luke asks Jacen if he can stop Centerpoint from being reactivated, and leaves it up to Jacen if he wants to take Ben along. Jacen accepts, and he confirms that he is taking Ben along on the mission. As they head back to the reunion, Luke notices a mysterious woman in the far darkness watching him. Meanwhile, retired Galactic Alliance General Wedge Antilles is kidnapped from his home of Corellia by Galactic Alliance agents, who trick him into coming with them willingly because they think that he is part of the Corellian rebellion against the GA. Of course, Wedge manages to escape from his captivity on Coruscant and heads back to Corellia as the Galactic Alliance enter the Corellia system in an attempt to cement their authority there. Corellia decides to act against the Alliance by attacking them.

During the battle, Luke leads Hardpoint Squadron against the defenders as Jaina, Zekk and two Jedi apprentices, Kolir Hu'lya and Thann Mithric, attempt to kidnap Five Worlds Prime Minister Aidel Saxan so as to convince the Corellians to fall back under Galactic Alliance rule. However, because of an earlier meeting with Han and Leia, who told her that the Galactic Alliance might pull off something like this, Saxan comes prepared and has her convoy that Jaina, Zekk and the two apprentices capture be equipped with YVH droids. The four Jedi battle the droids, and report their mission in kidnapping Saxan to be a failure. With that, the Jedi manage to grab a shuttle and head away from Corellia along with Hardpoint Squadron. Meanwhile, aboard Centerpoint Station, Jacen and Ben carry out their mission to deactivate Centerpoint. Jacen confronts Thrackan Sal-Solo and chases him throughout the station, fighting past his bodyguards, but in the end, Sal-Solo escapes. Ben, on the other hand, meets Anakin Sal-Solo, a giant robot who believes that he is the resurrected Anakin Solo. When Ben convinces him that he is just a robot, and that Thrackan somehow managed to utilize the late Anakin Solo's DNA aboard the station to create the robot, and thus, reactivate Centerpoint, Anakin Sal-Solo, depressed about the revelation of his nature, decides to set off false selfdestruct alarms in order to evacuate everyone aboard the station, then shut the whole station down. With that, Jacen and Ben succeed in deactivating Centerpoint. After the failed attempt to convince Corellia to fall back under the GA's rule, the Galactic Alliance captures Tralus. The Galactic Alliance and Corellia decide to negotiate terms to resolve the conflict between the two governments at Toryaz Station. But during the negotiations between Supreme Commander Gilad Pellaeon and Prime Minister Saxan, the station is attacked by dying Corellian warriors, and Saxan is killed, while Pellaeon is only saved because he was smart enough to have a decoy fill his place and save his life with the impostor's death. But, because of Saxan's death, any peace between the Galactic Alliance and Corellia will be that much harder to achieve. During the investigation on the station for who may have been responsible for hiring the warriors, Wedge discovers an object made of tassels, and passes it on to Jaina for investigation, who shows it to Jacen. Jacen finds a special meaning to this tassel pattern, which he takes with him to further his own part in the investigation, as he tells Jaina. However, in reality, he wants to find out about the secret meaning to the pattern. He finds a source at the planet Lorrd, taking Ben with him again with the same lie he told Jaina, and the two Jedi meet Jedi Knight Nelani Dinn, who is a guardian of the planet and can help Jacen find out what the tassel pattern means. But during the three Jedi's stay, a series of suicidialhomicidal incidents occur because of Jedi-related obsession from each of the peace violators for different reasons, to which Jacen willingly lets die. In fact, he even helps because the circumstances had called for those victims to die anyway. At the end of this disastrous series of events, the three Jedi meet a Force-sensitive woman named Brisha Syo, who the Lorrd Security Force had captured for suspicious reasons. She tells the three of them that she has been having some bad dreams that seem to be affecting all of those individuals and inciting their suicidal acts. She tells them that she can take them to the source of where the Force has been corrupting her; the Home, which can also help fully translate the meaning of the tassels.

While the Corellian forces retake Tralus from the Galactic Alliance, and Leia is forced to secretly betray GA forces in order to save her husband and Wedge, Brisha takes Jacen, Ben and Nelani to her asteroid habitat nearby Bimmiel. Brisha, who is really the Dark Lady of the Sith Lumiya, deliberately separates herself and Jacen from Ben and Nelani to launch the ghost battles. She does this by using the dark side of the Force to have Jacen fight Luke and Ben fight Mara through the Force, and all sides of the fights see their opponents as the dark side versions of who they are really fighting, while Nelani fights a strange man and dark side apparitions of mynocks. Lumiya ends the fights by releasing her concentration of sustaining the apparitions and reveals to Jacen her Sith artefacts in her home within the Home, telling Jacen that not all Sith throughout the centuries have been evil, such as Darth Vectivus (the ghost of the man Nelani had dueled). Prior to Vectivus being a Sith, he had supervised the mining operation on the asteroid before it became the Home centuries earlier because of the dark side emissions from it, and he used his knowledge not to destroy the Jedi or rule the galaxy, but to improve on his own knowledge of the dark side for his own way of life. Lumiya seduces Jacen to the dark side by telling him that he can stop the upcoming war between the Galactic Alliance and Corellia by giving in to the Sith, which was what the late Vergere wanted of him during his captivity with the Yuuzhan Vong. Nelani is with Jacen when Lumiya tells him about this, and the two women fight. Lumiya surrenders and allows Nelani to arrest her for her actions during the Galactic Civil War, but when Jacen sees into the future using the Force, he finds that this will only lead to bloody conflict, and even destroy the Home, thus wiping out any chance that Jacen could use as knowledge to stop the GA-Corellian conflict. So he saves Lumiya and fights Nelani, killing her. Jacen then takes Ben's unconscious form from his fight with Mara, erasing his memory about Lumiya and Nelani, and they leave to get back to Coruscant. Lumiya then talks to the future Jacen as a Sith Lord, saying that the present Jacen's fate is sealed, and that his destiny as a Sith will be fulfilled. The future Jacen also reminds Lumiya that if the present Jacen ever finds out that she was responsible for the Toryaz attack, thus ruining the one chance that the galaxy had in avoiding the coming war, Jacen will kill her. The meaning of the tassels is also revealed as a prophetic message in the dark steps that Jacen must take as a Sith Lord to bring peace to the galaxy. The novel ends with Mara giving the news to Luke that Jacen and Ben are returning to Coruscant, with Luke sensing that his unknown enemy is near.

BLOODLINES

Day 25: Boba Fett captures H'buk. Day 26: Han and Leia Organa Solo learn that Thrackan Sal-Solo has a contract out on Han. Fett's doctor tells him he is dying from a viral infection in his cloning genes that will give him a year to live if he is lucky enough. This prompts Fett to find the Kaminoan scientist Taun We and her data to help cure him. Day 27: The explosion on Coruscant, which prompts Galactic Alliance action to search for Corellian terrorists on the GA capital planet. Day 28: At Coronet, Dur Gejjen, Leia, and Han meet in a caf and discuss deposing Thrackan. Leia kills an assassin on the Millennium Falcon. Jacen Solo visits the rebuilt Jedi Temple and flow-walks back in time to explore Darth Vader's emotions at the time when he was slaughtering Jedi in the Temple during Order 66. He then summons Lumiya to Coruscant and tests her by bringing her in the presence of Luke Skywalker. The Corellian Sanctuary has been desecrated. Fett meets Mirta Gev and hires her to take him to Ailyn Vel, Fett's daughter. Day 29: Luke Skywalker senses that Lumiya has returned. Han and Leia return to Coruscant the Falcon is in bad shape. The water supply in parts of Coruscant is contaminated thanks to Corellian terrorists. Day 30: Jacen is appointed Colonel and heads the secret police to intern Corellians suspected of harboring illegal weaponry. Day 31: Gilad Pellaeon resigns as Supreme Commander of the Galactic Alliance Defense Force - Cha Niathal is appointed as his replacement. Day 32: Han and Leia buy a shuttle and head back to Corellia. Jacen raids Jabi Town Day 33: Fett finds Taun We and takes her data without further incident to the Kaminoan scientist. Day 34: Galactic Alliance Chief of State Cal Omas puts new emergency measures into effect on Coruscant against the Corellian threat. Day 36: Ben Skywalker finds three Corellian agents and a bounty hunter. Jacen arrests Ailyn Vel, who goes under the assumed name of Ailyn Habuur. Day 39: Omas announces the blockade of Corellia. Day 42: Senate Building protest.

Day 43: Jacen interrogates Ailyn as to who she was planning to assassinate, considering that the weaponry that the GA raiding company found is proof that an assassination was meant to take place. When she does not answer, Jacen repeatedly bashes her head against the interrogation table to get some answers out of her, and Ailyn dies of head trauma when she still does not answer. Jacen would later figure out that Ailyn didn't intend to kill Cal Omas, but was hired to kill Han and Leia. Fett meets with Sal-Solo with the latter wanting to discuss details of a contract that can have Fett and some Mandalorian bounty hunters protect Centerpoint Station from the GA while it is being reactivated. Fett does not outright accept, and agrees to kill SalSolo under a deal with Gejjen. Day 44: Han and Fett meet. Han agrees to get Jacen to release Ailyn, both unaware that she is dead; Fett agrees to kill Sal-Solo. Jacen flow-walks back to Anakin Skywalker's era and believes that Anakin's downfall was a result of faulty training from the Jedi Order. Day 45: Mirta kills Sal-Solo by shooting him in the head after Han and Fett have him cornered in his office, and both characters hesitate to end him. Jacen suspends Jaina from duty when she refuses to fire on a Corellian blockade runner. Day 46: Leia learns that Jacen killed Ailyn and tells him that she was Fett's daughter. In her grief over Aiyln, Mirta reveals that she was Ailyn's daughter sent to lure Fett to Coruscant so that Aiyln could kill him in vengeance for leaving her and her mother. On Coruscant, Ben kills two men harboring missile launchers, which makes him feel guilty, seeing as how one of them was unarmed when he killed them in self-defense. Day 48: Jacen delivers Ailyn's body for his parents to transfer to Fett. Learning what Jacen did to Ailyn, Han disowns him, and Leia does not see Jacen as her son anymore. Fett learns via Goran Beviin that it was Jacen who killed Ailyn, but rather than kill him in vengeance, he takes note of the strife between him and his family, as well as his increasing attitude against Corellians on Coruscant. Fett figures that in time, thanks to this increasing attitude, Jacen will become like his grandfather, Darth Vader, breaking his family's hearts, and he will take vengeance by seeing and allowing that to happen, assuming that it will take place whether he's still alive, or whether or not it happens after Fett probably gets the cure to his disease. He takes Ailyn's body and leaves for Mandalore, with a brief stop at Geonosis, where his father died. Day 49: Jacen thinks he may have to kill his secret lover, Tenel Ka Djo, and his daughter, Allana, as sacrifices in order to further his destiny as a Sith. Tempest begins on day 56.