Search Worlds Without End

Former bounty hunter Boba Fett has survived the Sarlacc pit, nursed back to health and taken in by a tribe of Tuskens on Tatooine. When the tribe is slaughtered, Boba seeks revenge, and sets himself up in Jabba the Hutt's old palace along with his new right hand, assassin Fennec Shand. But the fight for power on Tatooine goes deeper than expected, and Boba will need help from new and old allies in order to secure his position and avenge his tribe.

It's just business. Or is it?

Set before the events of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, this new novel is a thrilling follow-up to Star Wars: Darth Plagueis.

It's kill or be killed in the space penitentiary that houses the galaxy's worst criminals, where convicts face off in gladiatorial combat while an underworld gambling empire reaps the profits of the illicit blood sport. But the newest contender in this savage arena, as demonic to behold as he is deadly to challenge, is fighting for more than just survival. His do-or-die mission, for the dark masters he serves, is to capture the ultimate weapon: an object that will enable the Sith to conquer the galaxy.

Sith lords Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious are determined to possess the prize. And one of the power-hungry duo has his own treacherous plans for it. But first, their fearsome apprentice must take on a bloodthirsty prison warden, a cannibal gang, cutthroat crime lord Jabba the Hutt, and an unspeakable alien horror. No one else could brave such a gauntlet of death and live. But no one else is the dreaded dark-side disciple known as Darth Maul.

In the time immediately following the destruction of the Death Star and the years between the Battle of Yavin and the foundation of the Rebel Base on Hoth, the Empire's grip on the galaxy has become an unyielding fist of retribution. Pressed into action by Emperor Palpatine, Imperial forces have stepped up efforts to hunt down and imprison Rebel sympathizers, shipping them off to newly formed detainment moons via huge prison barges. By necessity these barges are floating chambers of degradation and vice, notoriously unreliable spacecraft staffed by Imperial corrections officers whose cruelty rivals that of the inmates.

The Imperial Prison Barge Virtue is hauling its load of prisoners, criminals and murderers, human and non-human, across the galaxy, when it breaks down in deep space. Soon after, the ship's warden discovers a derelict Star Destroyer, seemingly abandoned, and sends a boarding party to scavenge parts to repair the Virtue. Half of them don't come back. The ones that do are infected with a virus so deadly that within hours, it has wiped out ninety-nine percent of the barge's population.

But for the handful of survivors -- two brothers, the Virtue's female chief medical officer, and a sadistic captain of the guards, along with a certain rogue smuggler and his Wookiee sidekick - the true horror is just begun. Because those inmates and guards who died of the virus don't stay dead... and when they come back, they're extremely hungry. Against their better judgment, the survivors take refuge aboard the massive creaking emptiness of the Destroyer, only to discover that its original population has not disappeared at all -- and that they've been waiting for them.

Unlike other young Jedi sidelined to the Agricultural Corps--those whose abilities have not proved up to snuff--Hestizo Trace possesses one extraordinary Force talent: a gift with plants. But suddenly her quiet existence among greenhouse and garden specimens is violently destroyed by the arrival of an emissary from Darth Scabrous, a Sith Lord with a fanatical dream poised to become nightmarish reality. For the rare black orchid that Hestizo has nurtured and bonded with is the final ingredient in an ancient Sith formula--crucial to the Dark Lord's obsession, but with consequences far worse than fatal. Now, spawned by a heretofore unknown virus, the rotting, ravenous dead are rising, driven by a bloodthirsty hunger for all things living--and commanded by a Sith Master who lusts for power and the ultimate prize: immortality... no matter the cost.