Star Wars: Journey to The Force Awakens: The Crimson Corsair and the Lost Treasure of Count Dooku Read online

  Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away

  The Face of Evil

  All Creatures Great and Small

  The Crimson Corsair and the Lost Treasure of Count Dooku

  High Noon on Jakku

  © & TM 2015 Lucasfilm Ltd.

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Lucasfilm Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Lucasfilm Press, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.

  ISBN 978-1-4847-5686-7

  Designed by Gegham Vardanyan

  Visit the official Star Wars website at: www.starwars.com.

  Do not wait for opportunity to strike. Steal it instead!

  —The Book of Hondo

  Contents

  Title Page

  Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 01

  Chapter 02

  Chapter 03

  Chapter 04

  Chapter 05

  Chapter 06

  Chapter 07

  Chapter 08

  Chapter 09

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  A LONG TIME AGO…

  The battle droid designated B1-CC14 focused its photoreceptors and scanned the ruins of the Separatist cruiser’s bridge. There was very little positive information for the droid to process. The Republic gunships had come out of nowhere, dropping from lightspeed into a sector previously believed to be off the grid. The battle cruiser had little opportunity to raise its defenses.

  Fire erupted from a nearby console. B1-CC14 heard an MSE droid scream in panic as it searched for a safe haven that did not exist. The ship was doomed.

  Tilting his bone-white elongated face, B1-CC14 accessed multiple simulations. Only one had any reasonable percentage of a chance for a desirable outcome.

  “Programming primary hyperdrive to activate. Coordinates random,” B1-CC14 said to no one in particular.

  The droid knew that what it was doing was generally considered to be a very bad idea; blasting into hyperspace without a set of preprogrammed coordinates was almost certainly going to lead to the battle cruiser’s total destruction. But given the value of the cargo on board…B1-CC14 had been programmed with very specific orders. Under no circumstances could Count Dooku’s prize be seized.

  B1-CC14 pulled back on the hyperdrive lever, and the stars in the cracked viewscreen began to warp. The computer beeped and chirped in droidspeak, delivering a torrent of discouraging data.

  B1-CC14 complied with protocol, initiating the homing beacon and broadcasting a heavily encrypted message on Confederacy frequencies. It was a useless gesture, the droid knew. There was no salvation for the ruined ship. But protocols were written for a reason and B1-CC14 followed his orders, always. Then, feeling a need to answer the robust computer system that was struggling pointlessly to take the ship somewhere safe, the droid vocalized a response.

  “Roger, rog—”

  Sadly, however B1-CC14 was going to complete that sentiment will likely never be known; it was at that moment that the massive Confederacy battle cruiser abruptly dropped back out of lightspeed and crashed directly into the sunbaked southern hemisphere of a remote desert planet on the far Outer Rim.

  And B1-CC14, the Separatist cruiser, and the precious cargo that it carried, were considered lost forever and were forgotten. And the Clone Wars raged on without them.

  SEVERAL DECADES and quite a few wars later…

  From within the shade of the derelict bar that the crew of the Meson Martinet called home, Quiggold sighed heavily. The planet Ponemah was not known for its hospitable climate. Nor was it renowned for its incredible wealth of goods and resources. It did, however, have a vast overabundance of one thing: sand.

  Yes, even by the standards of the many dry and hot desert worlds that seemed more and more commonplace throughout the galaxy, the Gabdorin pirate thought, Ponemah was particularly overrun with an excess of sand.

  Quiggold unceremoniously shook some of the aforementioned sand from his thick sandal and wiped his nostril ridges clean with the heavy sleeve of his tunic. Months of desert living had not been kind to the large, roundheaded Gabdorin, an amphibian from a wet world.

  A tall and thin cloaked figure leaned against a nearby wall, his face impossible to read under the red Kaleesh mask he always wore. His name was Sidon Ithano—though most simply referred to him as the Crimson Corsair—and he was waiting with a cool patience that seemed out of place on the uncomfortable world of Ponemah.

  “Well…it’s an old signal,” an Ishi Tib by the name of Pendewqell said, uncomfortable under the cold gaze of the red-masked pirate captain. Pendewqell was hovering near a large piece of equipment the crew had salvaged—a signal receiver capable of picking up almost any open transmission on the planet.

  “Like…‘Clone Wars’ old,” Pendewqell continued. “We picked it up…” he said, tapping the receiver. “Probably no one else has decoded it yet. Here…”

  Quiggold pressed a button on the ancient receiver system, initiating playback. The sound was broken and filled with bursts of static, but overall the message was audible: “—have sustained heavy damage en route to the palace of Count Dooku on Serenno. The Count’s cargo is intact and must be retrieved.”

  The broadcast continued. “All Separatist ships…this is a code three mission. Mayday. Mayday. This is B1-CC14 of the cruiser Obrexta III. We have sustained heavy—”

  With an abrupt crack of static, the message went dead. The crew exchanged glances. There were six of them in all: the Corsair, Quiggold, Pendewqell, an Arcona named Reeg Brosna, a red-skinned female Twi’lek called Reveth, and an axe-wielding but surprisingly friendly Gamorrean nicknamed Squeaky.

  The Crimson Corsair eyed the Gabdorin. Quiggold felt his massive sweat glands tingle. But it didn’t matter. He turned toward the Ishi Tib and asked the question he knew the captain wanted answered: “You sure about this, Pen? Big waste if you’re wrong….”

  Pendewqell grimaced and turned to face the Crimson Corsair.

  “Captain, listen…that’s what we’ve been waiting for.” The Ishi Tib licked his beak. “The lost treasures of Count Dooku…ours for the taking.

  “This is our big score. I know it.”

  UNFORTUNATELY for the Corsair’s crew, they were not the only group to pick up and decode the signal. That was unsur
prising, really: the population of Ponemah comprised mostly scavengers and mercenaries—pirates, thieves, and outlaws of all kinds, always on the lookout for the next score. Any and every broadcast on the planet would eventually be picked up and distributed across the grid.

  The broadcast originated from the southern hemisphere of the planet, a region known as the Sea of Sand. It was an unpopulated sector of the desert world, for as inhospitable as the northern section was, the area in the region of the Southern Pole was particularly nasty: fifteen-meter waves of caustic sand continually rose and cascaded down again, intermittent lava geysers randomly peppered the already dangerous landscape, and the sky…the sky was filled with a never-ending storm of ionic lightning. Flight was impossible. Cruisers would be swallowed instantly. The only vehicles that could manage the hellish sea were repulsor skiffs; they could surf the waves, provided they weren’t disrupted by a stray ionic bolt or blasted apart by the turbulent lava geysers.

  And then there were the worms.

  There was little indigenous life on Ponemah, but as any colonist or pirate worth his salt might tell you, there is life everywhere—and it usually wants to eat you.

  No one knew how big the worms could grow. The largest known beast (found dead on the shores of the Sea of Sand) measured over ninety meters long, with a mouth that was nine meters wide. And if all that weren’t bad enough, it was said the creatures could spit acid.

  Generally, they were avoided. Generally, the entire territory was avoided.

  But no one lived on Ponemah because they were rich. The chance—even a life-risking, meager chance—of attaining wealth, of finding a buried treasure like the one promised by the Separatist battleship? Impossible to resist.

  So they sailed forth, rushing to be the first to reach the prize. Scorza and his Weequay gang. The one-eyed Ortolan. Plus the Gray Gundarks, Toltek the Devaronian…

  The race was officially on.

  QUIGGOLD, along with several other crew members, sat in the shade of the massive solar panel sails on the top of the Shrike—a retrofitted sail barge painted blood red, with the two-eyed flag of the Corsair flying from its mast. Years before, those barges were used mostly as pleasure vehicles. Though largely considered out of date, the heavy armor and strong engines on the easily customized vessels made them excellent for pirates and other criminal groups.

  “But what could it be?” asked Reeg Brosna. The Arcona’s triangular head was hidden under a heavy hood for extra shade. Despite belonging to a desert species, Reeg looked far more uncomfortable in the heat than Quiggold did. “The Clone Wars is ancient history. What could possibly be intact on that ship that would matter now?”

  “Ha!” Pendewqell yawped. “I imagine you never heard the stories. Old pirates like to tell them after too many drinks in the cantinas. What was the most valuable of prizes during the Clone Wars?”

  Reveth shrugged, her red lekku swaying back and forth. “Credits? Pre-Empire would be mostly worthless now…Aurodium?” she mused. “Wupiupi coins?”

  Quiggold nodded. He knew the stories as well as anyone. He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “Lightsaber crystals. Ripped from the weapons of the fallen Jedi during the wars. Even one is worth a fortune, and Count Dooku is said to have collected them all…but when he fell, no one ever found them. This ship…this could be where they went. I suppose. But it’s just a story….”

  The Ishi Tib looked flustered, and his beak clattered nervously. “We know the ship was carrying a treasure for Dooku—it has to be the lost crystals!”

  Quiggold stared toward the bow of the barge. The captain stood there, staring out across the endless expanse of sand, his cape billowing in the breeze.

  “You’d best be right about this, Pen,” the first mate said, rubbing the prayer beads he always carried. “You’d best be right or there’ll be dark sailing ahead.”

  SCORZA HATED being second.

  The aging Weequay climbed up the ladder from the hold of the battered sand skiff he had commandeered, his leathered face and sunken eyes giving him a permanent expression of anger. The rig hadn’t come cheap, but it didn’t matter; it was fast. Faster than the old junk heap the Corsair was sailing, anyway.

  Scorza and Sidon Ithano had served together years earlier, back on the ill-fated Outer Rim cruiser named the New Gilliland. The Gilliland had burned after a particularly nasty run-in with the Hutt syndicate, and yet somehow, against all reason, the Corsair had not only survived the ordeal but had gotten out with enough plunder to finance his own gang—a gang that Ithano had stubbornly refused to invite Scorza to join!

  Scorza growled to himself, deep in thought. Yes, maybe he had been the one to betray the New Gilliland to the Hutts in the first place, but business was business. The Corsair had a nasty habit of making things personal.

  Ever since, Scorza had always found himself one step behind the captain of the Meson Martinet. Well, not that day. That day the Weequay and his crew were ready to strike. A monitoring beacon hidden on the Martinet had alerted Scorza’s crew to the broadcast. There was no way Scorza was going to miss that haul; no way would he come in second to the Crimson Corsair again.

  “Sir?” The voice belonged to C5-D9, a bright-green-and-purple protocol droid that served as cabin boy and general messenger to Scorza and his crew.

  “Sir?” the droid continued, in a deeply polite baritone voice. “I have the sad duty to report that we are far behind the trail of Sidon Ithano, and according to long-range sensors, he is already preparing to enter the Sea of Sand.”

  The Weequay captain rubbed his temples fiercely. “I thought this ship was fast. I thought we were supposed to reach the sea hours before anyone else could.”

  “It seems…” the droid said, “that we have been misinformed, and that the Crimson Corsair’s barge has been outfitted with an aftermarket set of illegal repulsor boosters. Honestly, it’s really not fair. No, not fair at all.”

  The droid angled his head quizzically. “Would you like me to send a message and see if they will wait?”

  Scorza’s crew knew better than to complain when he threw C5-D9 overboard.

  THE BIKER gang known as the Gray Gundarks, a gang made up of a dozen species—none of which were actually gundarks—revved their speeders. They knew they had intercepted the signal late. They knew that it had taken time for them to decode the ancient encryption system of the Clone Wars–era battle cruiser.

  Didn’t matter.

  Too many pirate crews had intercepted the brief broadcast. Too many old rivalries would resurface and soon…soon it wouldn’t just be a race to the prize. No…

  It would be a full-on pirate war. Chaos. Explosions.

  The Gray Gundarks weren’t about to miss that kind of fun.

  THE ORTOLAN known as One-Eye sat within the bowels of his massive heavily armored and heavily air-conditioned sandcrawler.

  He was in the circular control station, scanning the data with his one good eye. His vehicle was slow, yes. But it was sturdy. The Sea of Sand was a nightmare to traverse, and few ever returned from that hell alive.

  But none of them had a reconditioned war-grade sandcrawler.

  The crawler had been refitted a dozen times over; it could withstand ionic lightning, caustic sand, intense heat. There wasn’t a storm on the planet that could crack the hull of the beastly vehicle.

  One-Eye pressed a button on the keyboard to his left, and the music of his people blasted through the crawler’s comm system. Most Ortolans were gifted with an acute sense of hearing—but not One-Eye. The same explosion that had cost him his eye had also made him a bit deaf.

  The crawler pressed forward. It was an imposing sight: painted with an angry-looking Ortolan skull on the side, bursting with flames from its aftermarket engines, and blasting the thunderous tones through gigantic speakers—“music” that could only appeal to an angry, half-insane Ortolan.

 
Inside, One-Eye smiled. He’d be damned if some jumped-up pirate and his crew were going to beat him to the prize.

  THE SHRIKE’S repulsor engines whined as the mighty sail barge crested the peak of a ten-meter wave of sand.

  Sidon Ithano nodded to Quiggold.

  “Hold steady!” yelled the Gabdorin as he stood on the deck.

  The crew was determined to do exactly that—in part because their leader inspired confidence and determination, but also because every member of the Shrike’s crew was desperately hoping to stay alive.

  Alongside the ship, an explosion of lava burst from the sand. “Port side!” the first mate shouted. And indeed, the blast forced the sturdy barge to the port side—right toward another deadly geyser.

  “Captain!” Quiggold signaled as he clung to a railing, “it’s too much! The tide of sand is pulling us off course…toward the…the…”

  Quiggold squinted.

  Through the colossal squalls of acrid sand that cleaved the air, he saw a shape…a funnel-like shadow rising from the surface of the Sea of Sand and up into the black sky.

  “Just what in blazes is that?”

  Squeaky pulled a winch, the Gamorrean’s considerable strength barely holding the sails in place. With great effort, the massively overweight pirate emitted a loud grunt from his porcine snout.

  Quiggold’s face dropped. “It’s a storm,” he muttered. “It’s a tornado of sand!”

  Sidon Ithano silently held up a hand, then dropped it abruptly. Quiggold knew what that meant and turned to shout at the crew. “Squeaky! Starboard sharp! All engines! Reeg, prepare the torpedoes!”

  The Gabdorin gripped the rail firmly, knowing that what the captain planned could easily backfire. “All hands to stations! We’re taking this desert down!”

  AS HIS SKIFF crested a massive sand wave, Scorza stared through the lens of the ocular scope. The image was distorted, but still…he knew the outline of that barge.