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Synopsis:
Throughout the galaxy, it was believed that Jedi Knight
Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One, had died on Coruscant
during the siege of the Jedi Temple. And, to some
extent, that was true. Anakin was dead.
From the site of Anakin Skywalker’s last stand, on the
molten surface of the planet Mustafar, where he sought
to destroy his friend and former master, Obi-Wan Kenobi,
a fearsome spectre in black has risen. Once the most
powerful Knight ever known to the Jedi Order, he is now
a disciple of the dark side, a lord of the dreaded Sith,
and the avenging right hand of the galaxy’s ruthless
new Emperor. Seduced, deranged, and destroyed by the
machinations of the Dark Lord Sidious, Anakin Skywalker
is dead and Darth Vader lives.
Word of the events that created him, the Jedi Council’s
failed mutiny against Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, the
self-crowned Emperor’s retaliatory command to
exterminate the Jedi Order, and Anakin’s massacre of
his comrades and Masters in the Jedi Temple, has yet to
reach all quarters. On the Outer Rim world of Murkhana,
Jedi Masters Roan Shryne and Bol Chatak and Padawan Olee
Starstone are leading a charge on a Separatist
stronghold, unaware that the tide, red with Jedi blood,
has turned suddenly against them.
When the three narrowly elude execution and become the
desperate prey in a hunt across space, it’s neither
clone soldiers, nor the newly deployed stormtroopers,
nor even the wrath of the power-hungry Emperor himself
they must fear most. The deadliest threat rests in the
hideously swift and lethal crimson lightsaber of Darth
Vader, behind whose brooding mask lies a shattered
heart, a poisoned soul, and a cunning, twisted mind
hell-bent on vengeance.
For the handful of scattered Jedi, survival is
imperative if the light side of the Force is to be
protected and the galaxy somehow, someday reclaimed. Yet
more important still is the well-being of the twin
infants, Leia and Luke Skywalker, the children of Anakin
and his doomed bride, Padmé Amidala. Separated after
Padmé’s death, they must be made safe at all costs,
lest the hope they represent for the future be turned to
horror by the new Sith regime–and the unspeakable
power of the dark side.
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