(Extended Edition)
Episode V: Rebirth of the Jedi
They were not cruel to us, and yet they drained us of vitality by their mere presence among us. Our sun, our moons, our museums of ancient relics, our ruins of former cycles, our cities, our palaces, our future, our present, and our past had all undergone a transfer of title.
--Robert Silverberg, Nightwings
It was now a year after the fall of the New Republic.
A ragtag fleet of the old government’s surviving leaders limped through space, reduced once more to the status of Rebels.
The victorious Yuuzhan Vong, having seized control of the capital world of Ton-Muund, were aghast at the conditions in the planet’s stygian under-dwellings, where the laboring poor lived in darkness and poverty. Naturally, they attributed this great social ill to the fallen Republic, and did not realize that it was largely (though not entirely) the Empire’s doing.
The conquerors resettled the proletarians of Ton-Muund elsewhere, and terraformed the city-planet by flooding its lightless lower levels with water. Thus what had been a world of dank, fog-begrimed skyscrapers was transformed into a shining city of silver spires and glass towers, rising out of a shimmering blue-gray sea.
Luke Starkiller, the highest-ranking fugitive of the old government, was a wanted man, but as yet no definite information had come to the Yuuzhan Vong about his location.
Yet the Vong could not rest easy in their conquest.
A series of assassinations rocked the newly installed overseer government in the months after the takeover. Some attributed these deaths to the vengeance of Luke Starkiller.
Others, however, said that the murders were the work of a faceless figure in white armor, a nameless implacable enemy of the Yuuzhan Dominion, whose nickname had in the last five years become a whispered rumor among the Vong, and a terror by night to their children: “the White Death.”
Crix na Bolg, Governor of the Second Galaxy, had no time to worry about such legends.
His first wife, Ciara, was dying.
She was wracked by a terrible disease, which, Crix knew, would likely kill her. He would rather by far have ended her suffering with an injection of drugs… but the religion of the Yuuzhan Dominion forbade the Vong to take the lives of any but an outlaw and an enemy.
Those who watched as Ciara wasted away said in hushed voices that she was likely dying of poison, administered by Crix’s second wife, Ciara’s sister Cordala. But they did not say so to the Governor’s face, for fear of his wrath. Even the Governor’s deputy did not dare voice this common thought to his master, though he agreed with it privately, and confided as such to the Governor’s translator droid, C-3PO.
So Crix na Bolg, the ruling governor of the Yuuzhan Dominion on Ton-Muund, the crafty warrior feared across two galaxies, sat in his chair of office, or traveled to other planets on visits of state. And all the while he could do nothing to ease the suffering of his beloved wife.
Nothing, until the figure in white armor arrived.
This figure, the “White Death” of Yuuzhan Vong mythmaking, was in fact the very person whom Luke Starkiller now sought. Luke and his young companion Kyle Katarn, now being trained as a Jedi, believed that this mysterious armored avenger, whose legend had sprung up only recently among the aliens, might hold the key to restoring the Republic.
Luke and Kyle (and their loyal companion R2-D2), in turn, were being pursued by the Inquisitor Jan Ors, charged by the Dominion government with apprehending the fugitive Jedi Knight.
Not knowing the reason behind their journey, or even that Kyle Katarn was traveling alongside Luke Starkiller, Jan was alarmed that Luke’s movements more and more shadowed the official itinerary of Governor Crix na Bolg.
Eventually, Luke tracked his quarry to the capital world in the Yuuzhan Vong galaxy, a strange planet of white plastic cities floating on rain-soaked green seas. Here Luke Starkiller waylaid the White Death, and, after overpowering the armored warrior, removed his helmet.
But it wasn’t a he who stared back at him.
The face revealed was that of a woman, with red hair and green eyes, and a scar on one cheek.
Startled by this unexpected revelation, Luke paused long enough for this mysterious woman to take back her helmet and escape into the night. With Jan Ors on his trail, Luke was forced to break off the pursuit for the time being.
On this same planet, as she hunted the fugitive Luke Starkiller, Inquisitor Ors was assisted in her quest by a young officer from the local Dominion garrison, a human turncoat like herself. They got on well together, and she found herself attracted to him.
It was only later, when Luke escaped her once again, that this “officer” revealed himself as Kyle Katarn, who had secretly worked to misdirect her pursuit, and now joined Luke in his flight.
On Ton-Muund, in the private quarters of the Governor of the Second Galaxy, as Crix na Bolg returned from a trying journey to his home galaxy, he found a helmeted figure in white armor waiting for him.
He who had dealt out death to so many on the battlefields of yesteryear did not flinch from this stark sentinel, come to take his life. Instead, he asked of it something strange.
Crix na Bolg requested the White Death to be kind enough to kill his beloved wife, Ciara, for he knew that soon she must die, whether painlessly or in agony.
To his surprise, the legendary killer removed “his” helmet, revealing the face of a woman, though scarred by years of hard living.
She who wore the mask of the White Death attended Ciara na Bolg. She recognized the symptoms of the disease: a sickness endemic to the conquered galaxy, but normally extremely mild—at least in humans. In taking over this new galaxy, the Yuuzhan Vong had not foreseen the latent power of bacterial microbes.
The human woman gave Ciara a set of pills to ease her passing. Then she put on her mask once more, and prepared to depart.
Crix asked her why she did not kill him. She did not answer. Though she would have been loath to admit it, some part of her had been touched by the compassion displayed that night by this normally unflappable warrior.
Before she left, the White Death said to him that what he evidently suspected—that Ciara had been poisoned by Crix’s other wife, Cordala—was untrue. When Crix asked how she could be sure, the masked vigilante replied simply, “I know.”
Then she was gone again, out into the night of Ton-Muund.
Afterward, Crix went to see Cordala, who was sleeping in her private chambers. Cordala revealed to her husband that she had known of the masked human’s presence in their apartment. Indeed, she herself had asked the White Death to ease her sister’s suffering.
Crix na Bolg’s heart leapt in joy at his wife’s faithfulness to him and to Ciara.
Unknown to him, however, the Governor’s deputy, who had long suspected Cordala’s complicity in Ciara’s illness, had set recording devices in her chambers. These captured the conversation between Crix and Cordala.
On tape, Cordala had admitted to knowing, and doing nothing, when a human woman entered her lord’s apartment without his knowledge. Not only that: she had exhorted the human to end the life of a Vong of the Yuuzhan, a thing taboo under Yuuzhan religious law.
Shortly afterward, the Yuuzhan Vong Overlord arrived on Ton-Muund, touring his Dominion’s newly conquered galaxy. Word reached him from the Governor’s deputy that Cordala na Bolg had invited a human woman, a stranger, into the Governor’s house against his will, who did murder there (by Yuuzhan Vong standards).
Justice must be done.
As Crix na Bolg presided helplessly in the central square of Ton-Muund, Cordala na Bolg was stripped and shorn permanently of hair from head to foot, the punishment for petty treason against her lord and husband. Crix did not, however, divorce her, as was usual in such cases, for it was his right as paterfamilias to forgive her.
Meanwhile, on the streets of Ton-Muund, Luke Starkiller and Kyle Katarn split up, hoping thus to stymie their pursuers for a time, while they sought out their common prey. Alone, in a back-alley nightclub, Luke finally succeeded in tracking down the woman known as the White Death.
This time, Luke recognized her, from his buried memories and Force-guided visions of his own past: Nellith Starkiller, his long-lost sister.
At the time of the Empire’s rise, Ben Kenobi had entrusted young Nellith to the care of a noble house of the Republic on the outer reaches of the galaxy, lest the Empire become aware of her. But this strategy backfired when the Yuuzhan Vong, making a foray into the known galaxy, raided her planet, slew all the adults, and took Nellith as a captive.
For many years she lived as a slave in one of the great Yuuzhan Vong households, subject to the whims and desires of her master. At length she escaped, killing her owner, and afterward sought to avenge herself upon the race which had kidnapped her. The Yuuzhan Dominion’s conquest of her home galaxy gave her added reason to hate these pale-skinned aliens.
Recognizing Nellith at last, Luke brought her over to a secluded corner of the cantina. There he told her as briefly as he could of their shared history, and sought to convince her to join him and help restore the fallen Republic.
She agreed. But as they spoke, Jan Ors arrived in the nightclub with a squad of elite soldiers, and arrested them both in the name of the Dominion.
Luke Starkiller, whose crimes against the Yuuzhan regime were generally non-violent, was sentenced to death in the arena, pitted against a trio of wild beasts.
Attending the spectacle was the Yuuzhan Vong Overlord, to whom the Governor of the Second Galaxy was directly responsible. R2-D2, Luke’s faithful astromech droid, was reduced to the status of waiter, serving drinks to the Overlord and his guests.
Nellith, however, was immediately scheduled for public execution by injection of a lethal cocktail of drugs.
Crix na Bolg had pity on Nellith, who had eased the suffering of his late wife Ciara. Present at the execution ceremony in his capacity as Governor, Crix injected Nellith with a drug he had procured himself. It would, he said, ease her pain.
As Luke Starkiller faced off against a wild beast of the Arena—a blood sport which for religious reasons Governor Crix na Bolg had no authority to ban—Kyle Katarn, watching in disguise in the audience, suddenly jumped into the arena himself.
Together, the two Jedi defeated the beast against which Luke Starkiller had been set. The Overlord, outraged at this irregularity, ordered that they both be summarily executed. However, Jan Ors, also in attendance, argued that the two should be given another chance.
Thus, Luke and Kyle now found themselves facing off against two wild beasts. These too they defeated, though they were both sorely injured by the end.
Then, to punish their insolence, the Overlord ordered yet another beast, the most ferocious of all, to be unleashed against them.
This was too much for Jan Ors, who despite herself admired the bravery of young Kyle Katarn, close in years to her own age. She as well jumped down into the arena, and together the trio slew this last and greatest monster.
In the nameless tombs allotted to common criminals, Nellith Starkiller woke up. Crix na Bolg, and Cordala, were by her side, waiting for her to awaken. Crix explained that, during the execution ceremony, he did not dare say even to her what he had really been doing—injecting an antidote into Nellith’s veins, which prevented the executioner’s lethal cocktail from having its intended effect.
Together, Nellith, Cordala, and Crix raced to the arena to save Nellith’s brother. Behind them waddled C-3PO, chattering on in inconveniently loud astonishment at the return of “Master Luke.”
The Overlord was about to pronounce sentence of immediate death upon Luke, Kyle, and Jan. But before he could, he was taken by surprise, with the feared White Death and his most trusted generals together holding him at lightsaber-point.
The Governor’s deputy, who tried to attack Crix na Bolg, found himself suddenly deprived of a head. Strangely, however, after his death both head and body vanished, and in place of the deputy’s robes there remained on the ground only a coarse black cloak.
But before that could be investigated, the stalemate in the arena had to be settled.
If these barbarians killed him, the Overlord reflected, they would surely be slain by his guards. But he would be no less dead.
So the Overlord, compelled by necessity, stayed his hand. Crix na Bolg took from him his crown of office, and assumed for himself the Overlordship of the Dominion.
Soon surviving Republic officials and Yuuzhan Vong dignitaries sat down for formal peace talks. From the heroism of two galaxies was born the Third Intergalactic Republic.
Crix na Bolg remained in office as Hegemon of the Republic. He married as a second wife Nellith Starkiller, whose bravery and compassion had impressed him greatly. Cordala na Bolg, meanwhile, took to wearing wigs made of precious blue stones imported from the Second Galaxy.
Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors were likewise married.
Luke Starkiller re-founded the Jedi Order, and began to seek out prospective students for his new Academy. But he never wed, and people wondered if he still mourned for Leia Organa.
C-3PO and R2-D2, now reunited, once more bickered constantly as though they had never been apart.
And, with the days of war finally drawing to a close, the two galaxies, those of the humans and the Vong, enjoyed peace at last for many years.
But Luke remained troubled by the question of Crix na Bolg’s mysterious deputy.
He had been a Dark Side user, probably another Bogan Lord: that much was obvious. But if so, how many more of them remained, and what dangers did they yet pose to the Republic?