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PROLOGUE A long time ago in a galaxy far far away During the Battle of Yavin Sith Lord Darth Vader piloted piloted his own Imperial TIE fighter to defend the Death Star space station against a Rebel Alliance assault While engaged in a dogfight with an X-wing starfighter starfighter he sensed the enemy pilot was strong with the Force Vader was about to fire upon the X-wing when he and his two wingmen were attacked by a Corellian YT-1300 transport Vader survived but his damaged TIE fighter went spinning out of control Seconds later the Death Star was blown into a billion pieces After Darth Vader brought his crippled spacecraft to an Imperial outpost he began his investigation He did not have to identify the Corellian transport He’d seen it before when it had been captured by a Death Star tractor beam and deposited in hangar 3207 The transport had been readily identified as the Millennium Millennium Falcon the same ship that had eluded Imperial
soldiers on Tatooine during their search for an R2 unit that had carried the plans for the Death Star Among the Millennium Falcon’s passengers from Tatooine was Vader’s former Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi On the Death Star Kenobi’s allies succeeded in their mission to rescue Princess Leia Organa the Rebel leader who’d placed the Death Star plans in the R2 unit Because Darth Vader had once lived on Tatooine he was nagged by two questions How long had Obi-Wan been there And why
CHAPTER 1 The lone Star Destroyer traveled silently across interstellar interstellar space with the precision of a massive dart An Imperial-class warship it mea sured 1,600 meters long from its aft ion engines to its sharp-tipped bow and was equipped with enough firepower to reduce a civilization to ashes Even without its sixty turbolaser turbolaser batteries and equal number of ion cannons the wedge-shaped starship looked like it was ready to cut through anything in its path The ship’s name was the Avenger its commanding officer was Captain Needa The Avenger arrived at its designated coordinates then deployed its cargo of hyperdrive pods from a recessed launch bay Each 3.4-meter-long pod was programmed to travel thousands of light-years on a one-way trip to a specific destination never to return to the Avenger or any other Imperial ship Across the galaxy other Star Destroyers carried out the same task releasing hyperdrive pods into space
