{"product_id":"the-force-unleashed-star-wars-legends-isbn-9780345502858","title":"The Force Unleashed: Star Wars Legends","description":"\u003cb\u003eDarth Vader’s young Sith apprentice will forge an unlikely alliance with a ruined Jedi Master seeking redemption as he ventures to destroy Emperor Palpatine.\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e“The Sith always betray one another. . . . I’m sure you’ll learn that soon enough.”\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The overthrow of the Republic is complete. Absolute power now rests in the iron fist of Darth Sidious–the cunning Sith Lord better known as Emperor Palpatine.But more remains to be done. Pockets of resistance in the galaxy must still be defeated and missing Jedi accounted for . . . and dealt with. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese crucial tasks fall to the Emperor’s ruthless enforcer, Darth Vader, who in turn has groomed a lethal, nameless Sith apprentice to secretly dispatch the last of his masters’ enemies. Since childhood, Vader's nameless agent has known only the cold, mercenary creed of the Sith. His past is a void; his present, the carrying out of his deadly orders. But his future beckons like a glistening black jewel with the ultimate promise: to stand beside the only father he has ever known, with the galaxy at their feet. But there is one, in control of his master, that stands in the way. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis acolyte’s journey will take him across the far reaches of the galaxy and test him with shattering revelations that strike at the very heart of all he believes, stirring within him long-forgotten hopes of reclaiming his name . . . and changing his destiny.\u003cb\u003eSean Williams\u003c\/b\u003e is the #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling and award-winning author of more than seventy published short stories and thirty novels, including \u003ci\u003eStar Wars: The Force Unleashed \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eStar Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance. \u003c\/i\u003eHe is a judge for the Writers of the Future contest, which he won in 1993. He is also a multiple winner of Australia’s speculative fiction awards and is the recipient of both the Ditmar and the Aurealis for \u003ci\u003eThe Crooked Letter,\u003c\/i\u003e marking the first time in the history of the awards that a fantasy novel has won both.\u003cb\u003eChapter 1\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The life of Darth Vader’s secret student took a strange and deadly turn  the day his Master first spoke of General Rahm Kota.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He’d had no warning that a  moment of such significance was approaching. During his nightly meditations, kneeling  on the metal floor of his chamber while construction droids built the Executor, unaware  of his existence, he had seen no visions in the pure, angry red of the lightsaber  that he held like a burning brand in front of his eyes. Although he had stared until  the world vanished and the dark side flowed through him in a bloody tide, the future  had remained closed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Nothing, therefore, prepared him for the sudden deviation from  the day’s punishing and unpredictable exercises. His Master was not a patient teacher;  neither was he a talkative one. He preferred action to debate, just as he preferred  recrimination to reward. Never once in all the days they had sparred together, with  lightsaber, telekinesis, or suggestion, had the Dark Lord offered a single word of  encouragement. And that was as it should be, he knew. A teacher’s job was not to  drag a student along a single, well-worn path. Rather it was to let the student forge  his or her own way through the forest, intervening only when the student was hopelessly  lost and needed to be corrected.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Even on the wrong paths, he knew, lay some wisdom.  What didn’t kill him only made him more powerful in the dark side.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And there had  been many, many times he had thought he might die . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Breathing heavily after  a punishing round of blows, lightsaber lowered in submission, he knelt before his  Master and prepared for the killing strike. He could feel the wrath radiating from  the Dark Lord like heat—a visceral, angry heat that brought out his skin in gooseflesh.  For a moment that seemed to stretch for years, all he could hear was the regular,  implacable respiration that kept the man inside the mask alive.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You were weak when  I found you.” The voice seemed to come from the far end of a long, deep tunnel. “You  should never have survived my training.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He closed his eyes. He had heard these  words before. They were the closest thing to a bedtime story he’d had as a child.  The moral he had taken from them was burned into his mind: Learn . . . or die.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Behind  his eyelids he pictured again the clean, cleansing heat of the lightsaber. He had  brushed his skin against it many times, defying the pain, and taken numerous small  wounds while dueling with his Master. He imagined that he knew what the blade would  feel like when it struck him down. Part of him longed for it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The lightsaber drifted  so close to his neck that he could smell his hair burning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “But now, your hatred  has become your strength.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The lightsaber retreated. With a hiss it deactivated.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “At last, the dark side is your ally.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He didn’t dare nod or look up. What was  this? Some new ruse to lure him into overconfidence and failure?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e His Master’s next  words made his heart trip a beat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Rise, my apprentice.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Apprentice. So he had  always thought himself, but never before had it been said aloud! And that strange  motion with the lightsaber . . . Could he possibly have just been knighted?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e His  lightsaber retracted. It was all he could do to balance on knees that felt suddenly  made of rubber. The black shape looming over him was unreadable, limned with crimson  from the light of the star shining through the wide viewport to their right. Metal,  angular, and functional, the space around them was as familiar to him as the scars  on the back of his hand, but suddenly, disconcertingly, everything seemed different.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The apprentice kept his eyes up and his voice level.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “What is your will, my Master?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “You have defeated many of my rivals. Your training is nearly complete. It is time  now to face your first true test.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A roll call of past missions sped through the  apprentice’s mind. Lord Vader had instructed him to dispatch numerous enemies within  the Empire down the years: spies and thieves, mainly, with the occasional high-ranking  traitor as well. He felt only satisfaction at having fulfilled his duty. His victims  had brought their fates upon themselves, these vermin that gnawed at the footings  of the Empire’s magnificent edifice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But this was different. He could sense it in  more than his Master’s words. Darth Vader wasn’t talking about some low-life smuggler  with no awareness at all of the Force. There could be only one foe he was worthy  to fight now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Your spies have located a Jedi?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Yes. General Rahm Kota.” The name  meant nothing to the apprentice: just one of many in an archive of unconfirmed Jedi  kills. “He is attacking a critical shipyard above Nar Shaddaa. You will destroy him  and bring me his lightsaber.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Excitement filled the apprentice. He had trained and  hoped for this moment as long as he could remember. At last it had come. He could  never truly call himself a Sith until he had taken the life of one of his Master’ s traditional enemies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I’ll leave at once, Master.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He had taken barely a step  toward the door when Darth Vader’s irresistible voice stopped him. “The Emperor cannot  discover you.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “As you wish, my Master.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Leave no witnesses. Kill everyone aboard,  Imperials and insurgents alike.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The apprentice nodded, keeping his sudden uncertainty  carefully clouded.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Do not fail in this.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The lightsaber hanging back at his hip  was a comforting, reassuring weight. “No, my lord,” he said, back straight and voice  firm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Darth Vader turned away and gripped his hands behind his back. The red sun  painted his helmet with lava highlights.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Thus dismissed, his secret apprentice hurried  about his latest, darkest duty.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e* * * \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e General Rahm Kota.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The name ran through his  mind as he hurried through the warren connecting his Master’s secret chambers. They  were sparse, functional spaces, consisting of a meditation chamber, a droid workshop,  sleeping quarters large enough for one, and a hangar deck. All were on a concealed  level of Darth Vader’s flagship, a space long since written out of the floor plans;  it would go unnoticed by the future crew.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Emperor cannot discover you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Excited  though he was by the thought of hunting Jedi, the reminder of the goal his Master  allowed him to share was instantly sobering. All his life he had been trained to  turn fear into anger, and anger into power. It was no different, he realized, for  Darth Vader. Where else could Lord Vader look for increased power than to the Emperor  himself? People were either predators or prey. That was one of the most basic rules  of life. Together, Darth Vader and his apprentice would ensure that their joint power  only increased.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But first he had to survive an encounter with a Jedi. That his Master  had found one at liberty was unsurprising. A handful were suspected to have survived  the Great Jedi Purge, and none was more adept at finding them than Darth Vader. The  dark side infiltrated every corner of the galaxy; nothing could remain hidden from  it forever. Perhaps one day, the apprentice thought, he, too, could seek out his  enemies by their thoughts and feelings alone, but like the visions of the future  that were closed to him, that ability remained elusive. He had never met a Jedi.  Their natures were mysterious to him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Their history, however, was not. His Master  set no lesson plans or written examinations, but Darth Vader did give him access  to records surviving from the Republic and the Order he had helped unseat from its  position of undeserved privilege. The apprentice had devoted himself to the study,  understanding that knowledge of his enemy might mean the difference one day between  life and death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e General Rahm Kota.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The name still brought forth no details of combat  styles, character, or last sightings from his memory. He would access the records  when he reached the Rogue Shadow. There would be time to research on the journey  to Nar Shaddaa. If he dug deeply enough, he might find some small detail that would  give him an edge when he most needed one. That was the only preparation he required.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Entering the hangar bay, he wound his way through the familiar maze of crates, weapons  racks, and starfighter parts. The ambient lighting was dim, with shadows pooling  in every corner. The air tasted of metal and ozone—a sharp stink that had by now  become very familiar. For some, the underbelly of a Star Destroyer might have seemed  a strange place to grow up, but for him it was a comfort to be surrounded by such  unambiguous symbols of technological and political power. Ships like these had patrolled  the trade lanes of the galaxy for years. They had put down insurrections and quashed  resistance around hundreds of worlds. Where else would a Sith apprentice live and  learn?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Kill everyone aboard, Imperials and insurgents alike. Leave no witnesses.Based on a story by Haden Blackman; #1 New York Times bestseller; Based on the bestselling video game from LucasArts!","brand":"Random House Worlds","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300719218917,"sku":"NP9780345502858","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345502858.jpg?v=1767739393","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-force-unleashed-star-wars-legends-isbn-9780345502858","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}