Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars

Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars 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 © 2023 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or ™ where indicated. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Worlds, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Random House is a registered trademark, and Random House Worlds and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. Hardback ISBN 9780593598603 International ISBN 9780593722671 Ebook ISBN 9780593598610 randomhousebooks.com Book design by Elizabeth A. D. Eno, adapted for ebook Cover art: Anthrox Studios ep_prh_6.0_142846694_c0_r0 Contents Cover Title Page Copyright The Star Wars Novels Timeline Epigraph Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Dedication Acknowledgments By Sam Maggs About the Author _142846694_ A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…. Today was going to be a good day for the Jedi. Jedi Knight Cal Kestis was going to make certain of that. Sure, it was possible that he was one of maybe only two Jedi left. But those Jedi? They were going to have a good day. “Hey, buddy, things looking clear?” Cal asked, his voice reverberating in his ears inside his helmet. From his back, Cal heard two little taps from his droid, BD-1’s way of communicating with him while on a stealth mission. Cal could hear BD-1’s trills via comms, but sound was risky while sneaking and the droid often preferred to communicate by a more rapid and tactile method, knowing the rest of the crew couldn’t understand him anyway. “Thanks, Beedee. Have I told you lately you’re the best?” A pause. Then: Tap. Cal laughed. “Well, this is me telling you. I won’t slack off on it again.” Tap tap. A damn good day. Which wasn’t usually the case, when a guy was crouched on a small, fast-moving space rock hurtling around a large asteroid in the middle of deep space, but Cal’s life wasn’t usual, and he preferred it that way. Kitted out in a full space suit, Cal took stock of his surroundings, breathing in recycled air slowly and steadily so as not to waste it. The orbital debris field circling the asteroid was dense; Cal had to make his way, leaping shard by rocky shard, each one a step closer to the main asteroid at its center, a massive excavated rock, home to a Haxion Brood base Cal and his crew were currently attempting to infiltrate. Ironic, considering the last time Cal had been around a Brood base he’d been trying to break out of it. That time, on Ordo Eris, he’d been captured. This time, the better move was to get someone on the rock first in order to disable the security systems so that nothing would pick up the Stinger Mantis, Cal’s ship, entering from orbit. And the best way to do that was for someone to hop, from tiny rock to tiny rock, all the way down to the surface of the big rock. From one moving asteroid to the next, flying through space without a tether. No problem. Taking a deep breath, squinting his eyes in concentration, Cal bent his knees before pushing off from the craggy rock beneath his boots. It didn’t take much out here. One jump, and Cal was—airborne wasn’t the right word, without atmosphere or air to be found. It was more like floating. Different from flying, entirely; when Cal pushed himself into the air with the Force, he always felt that swoop in his stomach, the familiar lurch of his still-very-human body alerting him to the fact that he was far, far too high above land for good sense. But out here in space, this felt more like swimming, forward propulsion, his body with no concept of up or down, right or wrong, too high or too low. Forward, floating, only. He missed the little swoop. Cal aimed himself toward the next fragment asteroid, soaring straight for it with purpose. Slowly but surely. The first time his master, Jaro Tapal, had taken Cal out into space, he’d told his Padawan: Once you set something to motion in space, it will continue to move in exactly that way—the same direction, and at the same speed—unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Today, for whatever it meant, Cal was that unbalanced force. Arms straight out in front of him, Cal’s hands scrabbled for purchase the second they made contact with the next floating fragment. Cal’s impact sent the little asteroid, and him, spinning. He hung on for dear life until, after what felt like ten minutes but was surely just a few seconds, BD engaged Cal’s gription boots and, magnetically driven, they came slamming forward into the rock, stabilizing the Jedi. Cal had—in polite company, he would say “rescued”—these boots off a Haxion Brood bounty hunter, part of a kit the hunter would no longer be needing after Cal and Merrin had dealt with him. The boots were one of the best salvages Cal and his crew had made to date. Shakily, Cal let go of the rock and slowly returned to a standing position. He was glad this was his second-to-last jump. He was used to swinging around from handhold to handhold, making giant leaps of faith first as he worked as a scrapper back on Bracca and then as he infiltrated one shady Imperial facility or another over the years, but for some contrarian reason, the pull of gravity was a comfort to Cal. Did it mean, if he missed a jump or his climbing claws failed him, that he’d go plummeting to the ground in almost certain death? Sure. A little bit, probably. But it