Shadows of the Empire Read Online Free PDF

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    “Very well. I’ll have the fleet supply admiral contact you with details.”
    “It is my honor to serve,” Xizor said. Again he gave Vader a military bow, a bit lower and slower than before.
    Anybody watching would see only how courteous and eager to please Xizor was.
    Without another word Vader turned. The wall slid back again, and he swept from the room.
    And anybody watching would see how close to the edge of rudeness Lord Vader walked.
    Again Xizor allowed himself a tiny smile.
    Everything was going according to plan.

3
    L uke stared at the little furnace, as if so doing could hurry the process. Inside, the ingredients for a lightsaber gem cooked at an incredible heat and pressure, hot enough to melt denscris, intense enough to collapse durasteel into a liquid ball. And yet from a meter away, except for the red operating diode, you couldn’t tell the thing was even on. Well, except maybe for a little bit of a smell something like a blaster bolt, a kind of ozone odor.
    The furnace had been working for hours and the little yellow diode had not yet begun to blink, the signal that the process was in the final stage.
    He looked around at the inside of what had been Ben Kenobi’s home. It was a small place on the edge of the Western Dune Sea, made, as so many of the local structures were, of synstone—crushed local rock mixed into a slurry with dissolvants and cast or sprayed onto frames to harden. The resulting buildings were sturdy and proof against the sandstorms. Ben’s house lookedalmost as if it could have been a natural rock formation, smoothed and rounded by centuries of too-hot-by-day and too-cold-by-night desert weather.
    Ben. Struck down by Vader on the Death Star. The memory was equal parts grief and rage.
    His teacher hadn’t left much behind, not for a man who had once been Obi-Wan Kenobi, a Jedi Knight and a general in the Clone Wars. Perhaps the most valuable thing was the old and intricately carved boa-wood trunk and its contents, including an ancient leather-bound book. A book that contained all manner of wondrous things for a would-be Jedi, such as plans for building a lightsaber. The thumbprint clasp on the volume had accepted Luke’s right thumb to unlock it, and once it was open, he saw the flashpacket rigged inside the cover. Had anybody tried to force the clasp, the book would have burst into flame.
    Somehow, Ben had known Luke would find this book. Somehow, he had prepared it so that only he could open it safely.
    Amazing.
    According to that book, the best lightsabers used natural jewels, but there weren’t a lot of the kind he needed lying around where he could find them on Tatooine. He’d managed to collect most of the electronic and mechanical parts in Mos Eisley—power cells, controls, a high-energy reflector cup—but he had to make his own focusing jewel. Ideally, the best lightsabers also had three of those, different densities and facets, for a fully adjustable blade, but for his first attempt at building the Jedi weapon, Luke wanted to keep it as simple as possible. Even so, it was trickier than the book made it out. He was pretty sure he had the superconductor tuned right, the amplitude for the length set where it was supposed to be, and the control circuitry boards correctly installed. He couldn’t be positive until the jewel was finished, and the book didn’t mention exactly how long that took. Supposedly thefurnace would shut down automatically when it was done.
    If everything went right, he’d be able to cut the jewel, polish and install it, tune the photoharmonics, and then he’d only have to hit the switch to have a working lightsaber. He had followed the instructions to the letter; he was pretty good with tools and it
ought
to be okay, but there was a small worry that when he switched it on it might not work. That would be embarrassing. Or worse, it might work in a way it wasn’t supposed to. That would be worse than embarrassing: Luke Skywalker, up-and-coming