Dark Force Rising | Chapter 28 | The Lost Holocron

12/25/24 • 60 min

Chapter 28 of Star Wars: Dark Force Rising (1992) (EU: 9 ABY) by Timothy Zahn.
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## The Story So Far ##
Grand Admiral Thrawn has an alliance with Joruus C’baoth. Multiple failed attempts by the Empire to capture Luke or Leia have left C’baoth impatient.
Han and Lando discovered a Rebel splinter cell led by Garm Bel Iblis with six dreadnaughts of the Katana Fleet. He gave them the location of the dealer who sold them their ships, but Thrawn tracks them, extracting the contact first.
Talon Karrde, freed from Imperial detainment by Luke and Mara, provides the location of the Katana Fleet to the New Republic. Fey’lya took command of the recovery mission, but anticipating the politicking, Karrde sent Mara and Leia to rally other teams.
Upon arriving, Luke directed their team towards the flagship Katana. Fey’lya’s ship Quenfis is not far behind. With the arrival of the Imperial Star Destroyer Judicator, and in a bout of verbal manoeuvring, Karrde has Fey’lya unknowingly announce his cold disposition of military lives. Captain Virgilio has him removed from command, deferring to Leia.
The Chimaera is called for backup, but the untimely arrival of C’baoth forced Thrawn to send the Peremptory in their stead.
## Chapter 28 ##
Gold Squadron joins Rogue Squadron, commencing the Battle for the Katana Fleet. Wedge leads a partially-successful engagement against the boarding assult.
Aboard the Katana, the defenders booby trapped the hallways leading out of the hangar and give ground to overwhelming Imperial numbers. Luke can sense something is amiss with the boarding party troopers. Through the Force, he senses their movements, so Luke and Han look for a way to slow their progress while Lando and Chewbacca fall back to the bridge.
From aboard the Judicator, Captain Brandei is still waiting for Peremptory to support, but the tide of the battle is not looking fortuitous. As he orders the Judicator into combat range, Karrde's smugglers drop out of hyperspace behind them.
With her specialist knowledge of Imperial hardware, Mara is able to blind the Star Destoryer, allowing the smugglers a free run at its underside. Mara radios with Karrde, morose in her assessment that a second Star Destroyer would spell disaster.
Bel Iblis arrives unexpectedly, tipping the calculations in the New Republic's favour. Leia enthusiastically accepts his aid, and Bel Iblis uses the ion cannons of his dreadnaughts to enfeeble the Judicator. Having completed a sensor scan of the Fleet, Karrde points out that there are only fifteen of the original two-hundred-odd ships left.
The Peremptory drops out of hyperspace, splitting the New Republic front, outgunned despite the six dreadnaughts from Bel Iblis. Mara is hit and forced to eject, her ejection in line with the ion bombardment. She loses all electronics, including life support, and blacks out.
Back on the Katana, Luke senses Mara is lost, frustration building. He spaces the Stormtroopers by destroying the anteroom to the bridge. Luke champs at their lack of recourse. Han makes a last ditch effort to take remote control of the a single functional dreadnaught and uses it to ram into the Peremptory, sealing victory. Acknowledging defeat, Brandei orders the retreat.
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Dark Force Rising | Chapter 27 | The Lost Holocron

Chapter 27 of Star Wars: Dark Force Rising (1992) (EU: 9 ABY) by Timothy Zahn.
Full Show Notes
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## The Story So Far ##
Karrde has been sitting on the location of the Katana Fleet for many years, waiting for the most profitable opportunity to sell this knowledge. Unwittingly betrayed by Mara Jade, Thrawn captured the smuggler to extract the coordinates.
Even after the death of the Emperor, Mara is compelled to enact his revenge upon Skywalker, but he is the only person she could ask for help. She found him having followed C'baoth's call. They clashed with the mad Jedi and left him unconscious at his castle. Together, they freed Karrde and set course for Coruscant.
Thrawn has also been tracking a splinter faction lead by Garm Bel Iblis. Bel Iblis had acquired six of the Katana dreadnaughts, and after meeting with Han and Lando, gave them a contact for his supplier. Not careful enough, they were tracked by ship thief Niles Ferrier. The Empire intercepted and made away with the supplier.
On Coruscant, Fey'lya stalled a full-blown recovery effort in favour of an investigatory team. Knowing that the clock is running down, Karrde sent Mara to regroup their organisation and had Leia commission a rogue team to arrive ahead of Fey'lya’s hand-picked one.
## Chapter 27 ##
Luke, Han, Lando, Chewbacca, and Wedge arrive at the coordinates. Luke guided by the Force, directs the boarding party to the fleet’s flagship and namesake, the Katana. Luke and Han lead one team to the bridge, while Lando and Chewbacca head another to engineering. The Katana is eerily pristine, but in spite of that, the sublight drives are inoperable, indicating a cumbersome recovery operation.
Fey’lya, Karrde, and Leia arrive in the command suite aboard the Quenfis. From the bridge, Captain Virgilio hails Han to surrender and turn themselves into their custody. Han encourages Wedge to back down before cutting his own comm.
It’s at this moment that the Imperial Star Destroyer Judicator drops out of hyperspace, immediately launching their own boarding party. Rogue Squadron moves to engage, but Fey’lya demands Captain Virgilio to prepare to retreat. Before Leia can add her voice, Fey’lya cuts the intercom to the bridge and presses his authority; brandishing a blaster for emphasis.
On the Katana, Han fires a single, deterring turbolaser lance before the batteries overload. Without recourse, they regroup towards the hangar to repel the incoming Imperials.
Aboard Quenfis, Fey’lya admonishes Leia for her sentimentality for soldiers. Karrde drops a surreptitious message for Leia to turn on the intercom. She uses her Jedi powers to activate every comm unit while Karrde sets up Fey’lya to confess his political self-interest. With Fey’lya’s cold denouncement of the lives of soldiers, Captain Virgilio orders the Quenfis to full battle readiness, and has him placed under guard.
The Chimaera is waiting at a nearby staging area when it receives the engagement report from the Judicator. Before they can jump to assist, C’baoth arrives, demanding to speak with Thrawn. The Peremptory is ordered to go in the Chimaera’s stead. Pellaeon and Thrawn share quiet concerns that C’baoth is becoming ungovernable.
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Dark Force Rising | Chapter 29 | The Lost Holocron

Chapter 29 of Star Wars: Dark Force Rising (1992) (EU: 9 ABY) by Timothy Zahn.
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## The Story So Far ##
Grand Admiral Thrawn has been plotting the downfall of the Rebellion. Since his return from the Unknown Region, he has discovered the Emperor’s Wayland Storehouse of technological prototypes. Taking ysalamiri from Myrkr, they discovered clone Jedi Joruus C’baoth and made an alliance; C’baoth’s battle meditation to augment the Imperial warfront, in exchange for the capture of Force-sensitives Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa Solo. Thrawn claimed the technology held within Mount Tantiss and established a new Imperial military outpost.
Warships are in short supply between the two factions, and with the re-emergence of the Katana Fleet, both superpowers race to find it. The New Republic joins forces with Karrde’s Smugglers and Garm Bel Iblis’s Rogue Rebel Faction in the final hours of the race. They arrive too late to claim the entire Katana Fleet, but manage to repel the Imperials from possessing the last fifteen ships (including the Flagship, the Katana itself) by ramming one of the dreadnaughts into Imperial Star Destroyer Peremptory. Thrawn and C’baoth’s alliance has been an unsteady one, and at that critical point C’baoth used his unnerving Force-powers to coerce an audience to renegotiate their agreement, having forced Thrawn to send the now-destroyed Peremptory in his stead.
## Chapter 29 ##
Luke uses the Force to achieve the impossible task of locating Mara among the debris of the space battle. She is barely alive and rushed to a medical frigate by Karrde's people. Luke wonders why she was so important to save. Although already on his way back to the Katana, Han radios to hasten his return. They look down at the dead Imperial soldiers of the boarding party, suddenly understanding how the Empire plans to crew their new dreadnaught fleet.
Elsewhere aboard the Chimaera, Thrawn and C'baoth bristle over their current alliance. To place himself in a position that he cannot be overlooked or discarded, C'baoth declares himself overseer of the Mount Tantiss Project: the Imperial Spaarti cloning operation.
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