InsaneJournal

Of course, to get across the parts I think are most needed, I've got to cut out a lot. Ah well. Read the books! They're not hard to find!

Like each of the movies, it starts with blue text on a black background. "Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away...."

Like each of the movies, it has an opening crawl.

Heir to the Empire

Five years after the destruction of the second Death Star, the Rebel Alliance has driven the remnants of the old Imperial Starfleet to a distant corner of the galaxy. The Alliance has established its fledgling government, the New Republic, in the old Imperial Palace on the planet Coruscant. Princess Leia and Han Solo are married and expecting Jedi twins, and Luke Skywalker has become the first in a long-awaited line of Jedi Knights.

But thousands of light-years away, the last of the Emperor's warlords has taken command of the shattered Imperial fleet, readied it for war, and pointed it at the fragile heart of the New Republic.

Like each of the movies, the first scene is of a Star Destroyer drifting through space. Someone on board informs Captain Pellaeon that the scout ships have just come out of lightspeed.

Captain Pellaeon scolds a lieutenant who's shouting for his attention, saying that this is not a cattle market. This is the bridge of an Imperial Star Destroyer. Information is not simply shouted in the recipient's direction. He then has the lieutenant report. The scouts are back from their scan raid on the Obroa-Skai system. Pellaeon says the wing commander should report to the bridge as soon as all ships are aboard, and watches the man leave, thinking unhappily about how the entire crew is so young, mostly conscripts and raw recruits. He tells someone in the crew pit to keep tracing those lines. He'll be in Grand Admiral Thrawn's quarters.

On the way, Thrawn's Nohgri bodyguard Rukh greets him from behind and startles him. The artist seems to have forgotten that a key element of what Nohgri look like is that they are small. They can be mistaken for children if their faces are hidden. Instead, Rukh is a tall hulking creature.

Pellaeon enters Thrawn's quarters, and Thrawn is looking at a holographic display of art from various worlds. We find that the Grand Admiral calls the New Republic the Rebellion, and that the scouts are back and were pursued somewhat. Thrawn believes that while the wing commander thinks he lost the pursuit, he didn't.



I'm not a fan of this art. Pellaeon does not look like Pellaeon. This is Pellaeon. He is awesome, one of my favorites. In this trilogy, he's the Commander Contrarian, the one always questioning his boss's plans.



Cut to Luke Skywalker sitting on a roof on Coruscant, thinking about Obi-Wan. In the novels, Obi-Wan had just said goodbye to Luke for the last time. Threepio interrupts, and they talk a bit. Luke mentions that thinking about Obi-Wan(who he calls Ben) makes him a little depressed. Threepio says he was always kind to him and Artoo, and Luke says that Threepio has just delivered Ben's last lesson.



In a seedy bar, Han and Chewie sit at a table; a man in an orange New Republic flightsuit stands conspicuously at the bar. A smuggler with goggles comes to meet the two and says to Han "I hear you made General and married the Princess. And got twins on the way." "I resigned the General part." (You would not believe how many novels have been made out of those four bits of information.) We find that Han, on the New Republic's behalf, is looking to hire smugglers, since the New Republic is short on ships and pilots. The smuggler says no one's going to buy this. Han went respectable. He doesn't know what it's like anymore. We find that while the Empire may be shrinking, there's a rumor about someone new in charge. And that now that Jabba's gone, the big fish is someone named Talon Karrde.

Han wants to find him, but the smuggler, Dravis, doesn't say anything. Except that the pilot at the bar is the most obvious back-up man he's ever seen. He leaves, and the pilot says he thought that was the idea. The other backup man appears and said that Dravis wasn't even armed - he really must have trusted Han. Apparently, Admiral Ackbar being on the Council makes smugglers leery. Mon Calamari hate smugglers. Leaving, Han says he wants to swing through Obroa-Skai and see if anyone knows what happened to that missing Elomin task force.



She's Mara Jade. He's Talon Karrde. I love them both, even in a watered-down version of the novel and portrayed with art I don't care for.



A three-winged shuttle descends from the Chimera to the surface of a world called Wayland. Pellaeon doesn't see why the ysalamiri are necessary, Thrawn tells him that they're a precaution. He's certain that the guardian of the Emperor's personal storehouse is a Dark Jedi. They fly close to Mount Tantiss and find a sort of city. "Interesting... there are at least three styles of architecture. Human plus two alien species." "Any idea whether those alien species are hostile to strangers?" "Probably. Most aliens are."



In the novel, the arrow hit him and he was protected by his body armor. Also, he spoke into a disk that magnified his voice. The gray creature is his Nohgri bodyguard.

They are met by an old man who says that they are strangers from offworld. He rules here, and since they want to see the Guardian of the Mountain, he'll take them there. He leads them into a massive chamber lit by countless tiny candles. They mark the graves of the offworlders who came there since the guardian's death. The old man killed them, of course, just as he'll kill them now.







In a New Republic meeting room, Han is besieged by Admiral Ackbar and the Bothan Borssk Fey'lya. His smuggler friends won't sign on; they either don't see the profit in going respectable or they think it's a trap. Ackbar sardonically says "Because of me, of course." He and Fey'lya don't get along, and this comic doesn't show that right. Eventually Mon Mothma bangs a gavel and says the meeting is adjourned. Leia just has to give something to Winter, and she and Han can go.

Outside of that room, Leia exposits that things were getting rough. Fey'lya brought up Obroa-Skai and the lost Elomin force and insinuated that Ackbar couldn't handle being commander in chief. Mon Mothma interrupts and tells Leia to take Luke and go to Bimmsaari for the talks. They go, and Han with them, but reluctantly.

...I had to cut all the Bimmsari stuff. Long story short, Bimms are all fanboys and fangirls over heroes, Chewie stays in the Falcon, Luke gets to take his lightsaber but no blasters are allowed, the city celebrates their arrival. A negotiator just became ill, so they just kind of wander around. Luke heads up into a tower to look at tapestries, Han and Leia go through a marketplace and their guide vanishes. Nohgri commandos show up with Stokhli sticks, which shoot a paralyzing spray-net two hundred meters. Leia says Luke's not going to be able to help - they've got him too.

Next issue.

Luke, surrounded by Nohgri, thinks that Leia's in trouble. He fights the Nohgri, gets to the rooftop, reluctantly kills them all, and sees his sister and brother-in-law surrounded down on the ground. To stall for time and get to his comlink, Han snatches a box of jewelry and gets pounced on by overzealous Bimms. Luke uses a spray stick like a webshooter and swings down to the ground, then fights off Nohgri until the Falcon arrives to carry off our heroes.







Aw, they left out Thrawn's line about how he has no qualms about accepting a good idea just because it's not his own!

Back on Coruscant, the Council is unhappy that Solo decided on his own to cancel the Bimmsari mission. Ackbar agrees with his judgement. Fey'lya says the gray-skinned beings are not on the records of the Old Senate and can't be a big threat. Mon Mothma wants Leia to head back to Bimmisaari. She knows Leia wanted a leave of absence, but right now there are too many urgent demands on her time. Han scowls at Fey'lya, saying that there was a time when they only fought the Empire, and they knew who their enemies were.

A fleet of Star Desroyers heads out into hyperspace. C'baoth is commanding two other task forces; this one comes out into realspace within striking range of the planet Bpfassh. Thrawn, commanding and carrying a ysalamiri, spares a moment to ask C'baoth how the attacks in the other two systems are going. C'baoth says that they proceed.

Pellaeon looks at something or other and realizes that this strike force is running at forty percent greater efficiency. Thrawn relays instructions - fighters back to ships, all ships then to lightspeed, for the other two forces as well as this one - to C'baoth, who clearly resents it. Thrawn asks Pellaeon if there are any further leads on those mole miners he wanted, and is told that the Athega system is the best bet. Thrawn says that if the jump is accurately done, the ship will only be in direct sunlight for a few minutes. C'baoth complains that he doesn't have his Jedi.









There's a small explosion and a pillar of "pressurized korfaise gas", and Wedge waves over the real Falcon and Rogue Squadron. Over communications Ackbar says they might want to bring Leia back to Coruscant, but Han doesn't think she'll be any safer there. Leia refuses to hide somewhere where she'll be out of touch. Han decides that Lando might have some contacts.

Luke visits Dagobah, goes into that cave under the evil tree looking for a certain signal, and has a vision where he's back on the skiff over the Sarlaac pit, but a redheaded woman catches his lightsaber and laughs evilly. Shaking free of the vision, he finds that the signal is coming from a small rectangular device that he takes with him. Artoo conveys to Luke that Lando had something like this, and so they head to the Athega system to talk to Lando.

The specific planet in the Athega system is Nkllon, much too close to the sun for normal ships, so anything flying to it needs to stay in the shade of a big umbrella-like shieldship. There's a scene where Han says "No, I don't have a transit permit for Nkllon. I'm trying to reach Lando Calrissian. Just give him a call, will you? Tell him it's an old friend who'd like to play a hand of sabacc."

The shieldship wants them to transmit slave circuit codes for locking, but Han refuses to slave his ship to anyone, so they just have to follow the course. The shieldship, which doesn't know who they are, tells them there's another craft coming in without a slave circuit, and they're both going to go in together. It's Luke. Without slave circuits, it takes ten hours to get to Nkllon.

They get there, and it's night on Nkllon. Han worries about Luke, who's currently asleep while Artoo flies the X-Wing. They see drill-jets and come up on Lando's operation.



Next issue.

The Falcon and Luke's X-wing fly up; Lando's fighters are staying close to protect the complex. Luke will go on ahead, and all of them will stay low.







Lando rants briefly that they took fifty-one mole miners, almost half of his work force. Then he pours on the charm for Leia, and after a bit realizes that they're here for help. He'll do what he can.

Lando takes a look at Luke's signal thingy and is told about how Leia needs somewhere to lie low without losing touch with what's going on. It would be good to have a really good encrypt code-slicer.

He doesn't know any that he'd trust. Only one that might come close works for Talon Karrde, and Lando can't get to the man. Chewbacca suggests taking Leia to Kashyyk; the Wookiees don't care for human visitors, but if they keep the visit to Leia, Chewie, and the New Republic rep, it should be fine. Lando offers her his ship and decides to come along with Han.

They rig up Threepio with Leia's voice, much to the droid's dismay. Luke tells his sister that he'll come with them as far as the shieldship goes, then he's off to Jomark to see if C'baoth is there, even if it's a trap.

He flies off, Chewie and Leia take Lando's ship, the Lady Luck, while Han and Lando with Threepio in tow decide to go looking for Talon Karrde. Kashyyk is a temporary solution.



Aaaaah, I love Thrawn.

Pellaeon says Skywalker's vector is consistent with a course for Jomark, so Thrawn says that's where they're going. They have at least four days of lead time and need an Interdictor cruiser and an expendable freighter.

Luke is dragged out of hyperspace by the Interdictor's gravity-well generators, and on seeing the Star Destroyer and the freighter, he... you know, I wrote about the novel's version of this on TVTropes. I'll put it here.

"Whoa, it's practically on top of me! I'm in tractor range, I can't go to lightspeed in this gravity well, and they're hailing me. There's a freighter with it, there are no living things on board. Where's the nearest edge of the gravity well - gun for it. The freighter is between me and them, I'll send a timed proton torp to blow up the freighter, debris should shield us, okay done - damn, they're moving to keep me in the gravity well, I'll go laterally - tractored! They'll pull us in, if I can change speed I can get it to let go, I'll swing to get as close to the edge of the gravity well, then reverse-trigger the inertial compensator at full power - there, dead stop, the tractor's not on me for just a moment, I'll fire proton torpedos to be caught by the tractor and pulled in. Done, fly! They're finally firing on me, we're far enough away, jump to lightspeed!"

Thrawn tells Pellaeon to come with him.



That scene was so much better in the book. The fact that Pieterson was a conscript wasn't such a big deal. Bah. Incidentally, both of those were Contest Winner Cameos.

Grand Admiral Thrawn tells his captain that the maneuver Luke used - "reverse-triggering the inertial compensator at full power" - blew out his hyperdrive and his communications, and he can't be more than a light-year away. He decides to get all the local smugglers - Brasck, Karrde, Par'tah - to follow Skywalker's vector and fetch him for a bounty. Pellaeon says that if he knew Skywalker's escape was only temporary - "The Empire is at war, Captain. We cannot afford men who cannot adapt to unexpected situations."

Drifting out in space, Luke realizes that they can't leave, aren't likely to be found, and can't call for help. He decides to take the hyperdrive motivators and try to salvage enough components to put together one that works. It's possible...



About to land on Kashyyk, Leia hears him, but since she gets no response she shrugs it off. They land and are greeted by a Wookiee named Ralrra who speaks Basic, conveniently making it easier for both her and the readers to understand him.



Leia says she saw one of the creatures that attacked on Bimmisaari, and the Wookiees raid the home, but don't find anything. Ralrra tells Leia that they'll take her to safety and then go looking for the intruder.

Artoo wakes up Luke as the freighter Wild Karrde approaches and offers to help him. He takes Artoo and comes aboard. Luke senses only four others on the ship, and the aft section is dark to him. The man who meets him takes him to Talon Karrde, who knows who he is. It's not hard to guess. He's got a lightsaber, after all. They were expecting to find him here - Karrde's associate, Mara Jade, led them.