Novel References

Dark Tide: Onslaught

PAGE QUOTATION COMMENTS

1-2
Standing there, on the bridge of his Nebulon-B frigate, the pirate Urias Xhaxin clasped his cybernetic left hand to the small of his back with his right hand. He stared straight ahead at the tunnel of light into which his ship, the Free Lance, flew. Given the nature of the frigate's design, with the bridge so far forward, he felt as if he were flying there alone, making his way deep into the territory of the Outer Rim where no one in his right mind would be found.
... the Twi'lek working the navigation station. "Time to reversion, Khwir?"
....
A dark-haired woman stepped up beside Xhaxin. "You really think his haul will earn us enough to retire?"
"It depends upon the quality of retirement you desire, Dr Karl." The white-haired, white-bearded man turned and smiled at her. ... Anet Karl frowned.

characters: Urias Xhaxin, Dr Anet Karl, Khwir - pirates preying on shipping to the Imperial Remnant.
starship: Free Lance, pirate frigate.

2
"Ever since the peace between the Imperial Remnant and the New Republic six years ago, we've been forced to go after smaller and smaller targets. The New Republic never condoned what we did, but they turned a blind eye to it while the Imperials were still a threat. Pickings were good as unreconstructed Imperials fled out here to the Remnant, but that trade has been trickling off...."
....
"... They gathered at Garqi, have headed out, and the last of them should be hitting the rendezvous point in ten minutes."

chronology: This novel takes place approximately six years after Vision of the Future.
loctions: The Imperial Remnant - apparently a remote part of the galaxy where surviving active Imperial forces regrouped. This must be different from the Deep Core regions, which were the Imperial holdouts in tales such as Dark Empire, Darksaber and Tyrant's Test. Is this just a continuity error, or did a great disaster occur to expel the Imperial warlords from the Deep Core in the eight years between The Black Fleet Crisis and The New Jedi Order?
location: Garqi, a planet within a double-jump reach of the Imperial Remnant.

3-4
A Duros looked up through holographic displays of data, his long face wearing an expression that was even more morose than usual. "Gravitic anomalies, sir, everywhere."
"Tractor beams? Gravity-well generators?"
"Different, sir." The Duros frowned as a wash of data filled his holograph with overlapping spheres of colour. "Focused, tighter beams, more powerful."
.... The shots looked to be on target, then deviated sharply in their flight. The bolts sharpened their angle of attack, coming together nearly half a kilometre before they hit the asteroid. Xhaxin expected the beams to flash through that new focal point and still hit the target, but instead they vanished.
... His gunner, an Iotran named Mirip Pag, shook his head in disbelief. "We had firing solutions, Captain. We were on target."
The Duros, Lun Deverin, stabbed a quivering finger at a small sphere in a holograph. "A gravitic anomaly pulled the shots in. It's as if they're using a black hold to shield themselves."
....
Pen Grasha, the Free Lance's starfighter control officer, shouted above the warning sirens.

technology: An interesting quotation for two reasons: (1) it confirms that tractor beams and gravity-well generators are gravitic devices, something which wasn't explicitly stated in previous references; (2) it gives a qualitative picture of the capabilities of the Yuuzhan Vong gravitic devices, relative to galactic standard gravitics.
characters: Lun Deverin, Mirip Pag, Pen Grasha. Bridge officers and crew on Free Lance.

7
She looked around at the massive chamber and across the sea of senators filling it. It didn't have the grandeur of the old chamber, the one in which she had first served, but she felt a rich sense of tradition in it from the New Republic's days. Back in the Imperial era — after Palpatine had seized full power — there were no more than a handful of non-humans in the chamber, and then they were just aides to human senators. Now the humans were in the minority, much as they had been in the Old Republic. She could see Senator Viqi Shesh of Kuat and one of her telbuns, and Senator Cal Omas from Alderaan, but beyond them she had a hard time seeing more humans.

location: Galactic Senate chamber on Coruscant, a replacement for a different Senate chamber damaged in The New Rebellion.
Princess Leia clearly believes the rebel accusations of systematic anti-nonhuman bias in Palpatine's regime (despite the canonical counter-evidence, eg. Palpatine's mentoring and association with Darth Maul and the Neimoidians in TPM). Whatever the intentions may have been, the numerical outcome in senatorial representation is noteworthy.
What changes took place so that senatorial elections/appointments were weighted against humans during some decades, but weighted in favour of humans in other decades? Were sector boundaries shifted or enlarged in ways that provided most sectors with a majority of human-dominanted worlds? Or did the basis of senatorial representation change from equal weighting of star systems to population-based weighting? Were some systems given full franchise under one government but reclassified as dependent territories under another regime?
With a majority human population in the galaxy (judging by the movies) the senatorial system in the Old/New Republic seems likely to have been structured to favour minorities; Imperial sectorial representation may have followed a more majoritarian pattern. Perhaps Palpatine made the voting system more majoritarian to make victory easier for his endorsed candidates, with the side-effect of making election harder for minorities. Some countries on Earth have different legislative houses which produce very different patterns of representation, simply because of differences in the way votes are counted.

8
Danni Quee, the young woman who barely two months ago had survived an attack and capture by an aggressive alien group that had assaulted several worlds on the galaxy's Outer Rim. Danni had been working at a research site used to monitor space beyond the edge of the galaxy and had collected some evidence to suggest the invaders had actually come from another galaxy. Their ruthless tactics, coupled with the sheer ecnomics of mounting an invasion from a distant galaxy, suggested to Leia that the aliens had to be intent on taking a great portion of this galaxy for their own. ....
Beside the petite, brunette woman stood Bolphur, Leia's Noghri bodyguard.

characters: Danni Quee, Bulphur [introduced in Vector Prime].
Princess Leia's assessment of the practicality of intergalactic aggression. The inhabitants of her galaxy have had a static, self-enclosed civilisation for at least tens of thousands of years; this may affect their subjective responses to the notion of extragalactic travel. It may actually be not so much harder than long intra-galactic journeys, except that it entails loss of the security and known resources of the home galaxy.

9
"... A previously unknown species has launched a series of attacks in the Rim. They wiped out the ExGal-4 station on Belkadan, attacked the world of Dubrillion, destroyed the New Republic ship Rejuvenator at Helska, and annihilated the world Sernpidal by crashing its moon into it. We managed to locate the alien base at Helska 4 and destroy it, but this does not end the threat."

Summary of the battles and disasters of Vector Prime.
starship: Rejuvenator.

10
Before she could continue, a hunchbacked, saurian senator representing the various Baragwin communities stood slowly.
....
"Senator Wynl ...."

character: Senator Wynl, a Baragwin (the species of which Hermi Odle was a member).

11
Niuk Niuv, the senator from Sullust, rose to his feet...
The Quarren, Pwoe, rose and brushed finger tips over his pointed chin. ....

characters: Niuk Niuv, Sullustan senator; Pwoe another senator (presumably for the Mon Calamari sector).

11
A human senator Leia failed to recognise rose to speak. "Forgive me, but it is a well-known and long-established fact that a hyperspace disturbance on the edge of the galaxy makes travel into or out of the galaxy impossible. This supposed invasion could not have taken place."
Leia shook her head. "If that barrier does exist, they found a way around it. They were here, and there is ample evidence of their invasion in the Outer Rim."

Colourful folklore about a barrier surrounding the galaxy. (Since hyperspace is not really a medium — it is merely a supralight way of experiencing the usual universe — it isn't obvious how it could be "disturbed.") This myth was probably invented by some inhabitants of the galaxy as a rationalisation for their societal reluctance to enquire beyond the galaxy's bounds. Those eccentric, enquiring minds who did study the possiblities of other galaxies (eg. Danni Quee and the ExGal Society) did not believe that there was a fundamental obstacle to intergalactic travel.
In medieval times on Earth, the Europeans invented tales of dangerous barriers at the ends of the world. They were technically capable of cross-oceanic sailing but they lacked the incentive of a known destination, and civilisation at home was comfortingly self-sufficient and self-enclosed. The same is almost certainly true of the STAR WARS civilisation.

21
"We need more research to be certain, but it appears that they have creatures called dovin basals that are part of the fighter itself. They manipulate gravity, which is how they were able to soak off your shots and rip down your shields. We think that boosting the sphere of the inertial compensator can actually prevent shields being taken down...."

technology: An assessment of the capabilities of Yuuzhan Vong gravitic propulsion and weaponry. It also confirms the potential to project the field of an inertial compensator beyond the hull of a starship. This extension should also be possible for a ship's artificial gravity effect. (That may be how the crew of the Millennium Falcon were able to stand and walk on the ground of the asteroid cave in The Empire Strikes Back.)

25-26
The Corellian hesistated, then bowed his head. "Valin was certainly among those who were impressed, but I'm more worried about the cadre of young Jedi Knights who are looking at Miko as a martyr. Too many seem to want to take his place. Ganner Rhysode and Wurth Skidder were right there with Kyp,..."

characters: Ganner Rhysode, Wurth Skidder young Jedi Knights of the proactive school of thought. Skidder was introduced in Vector Prime. Rhysode appears on p.49.

49-50
The man stood a full head taller than Corran. His broad shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist and hips, but the man's body fairly rippled with muscle. Jet-black hair had been combed back to emphasise a widow's peak. The mustache and goatee he wore combined with his handsome features and piercing blue eyes to give him the sort of rakish good looks that easily made the man the object of admiring glances. The midnight blue and black Jedi robes he wore set him apart from the jungle and gave him the bearing of a government official.

character: Ganner Rhysode, physical description.

52
+Though some are taking refuge in the idea that the hyperspace disturbance around the gaalxy will keep out all but the few Yuuzhan Vong who squirted through, I think the analogy that it's like a storm, a storm that may be abating, is more likely true. If so, we will likely fnd Yuuzhan Vong on that world and many others. I'll be ready."

Ganner, a Jedi, appears to adhere to the quaint (and undemonstrated) superstition about a difference in the characteristics of hyperspace outside the galaxy.

59-60
The Bothan Assault Cruiser was one of the latest additions to the New Republic fleet. While slightly smaller than a Victory-class Star Destroyer, and possessed of leaner and less angular lines, the Ralroost boasted 20 percent more firepower than a Vic and almost half again as much in terms of shielding and armour. the ship had been designed to take a severe pounding and still hammer an enemy.
.... The fighter hangars were amidships and had launch apertures that would let the fighters head up or down, as needed, to get into battle. The dual launch paths also meant recovering fighters after a battle was faster, ....

starship: Ralroost, an example of a new class of Bothan warship.

60
His two subordinate commanders, Major Inyri Forge and Major Alinn Varth, acknowledged his command, and not for the first time did the incongruity of having female voices linked to those flight designators strike him. For almost the whole of Gavin's time in the squadron, Nine had been Corran Horn, and Five had been Hobbie or Janson or Tycho Celchu.

characters: Inyri Forge, Alinn Varth. Unless Varth is a common name, we are probably supposed to assume that this Varth is a relative of the Commander Varth described in early roleplaying game references.

60
... an asteroid belt separating two small, very hot planets from three larger gas giants. None of the planets themselves supported life, though the largest gas giant did have some moons that were almost hospitable — if one could tolerate a low-oxygen, high-nitrogen mix for breathing. If not for some mining done in the asteroids, and the fact that traffic from Bastion uses this as a nav point to the Corporate Sector, this would be another dull spot on star charts.
The system didn't even have a name....

location: nameless system somewhere between the Imperial Remnant and the Corporate Sector.

67
"... Keyan Farlander was but one of their sons and daughters that flew from here to wage war against the Empire."
....
"... I have no doubtv that if not for the courage of Keyan Farlander, I certainly would not be standing here before you."

character: Keyan Farlander, from Agamar, a rebel pilot who is the player-character in the X-Wing computer game. What does his implicit incorporation in the official timeline imply about the Battle of Yavin? There is not necessarily any discontinuity here, but which contingent history from the computer game is considered the true history of the novel and comic book literature?

70
“Please forgive me, I don't often address important people. I think that if I took to this sort of thing, I would not have become a scientist. In my work at ExGal, I was involved in looking outside the galaxy, where it was supposed nothing existed. Maybe I looked outside because looking back meant I would face crowds, and that scares me more than a little. ... What scares me more, now, is a combination of two things. One is the fact that there is something from beyond the galaxy. I know the stories you've all heard, the theories that have been taught, that a disturbance in hyperspace makes travel outside the galaxy impossible. That's a wonderful theory, but those who advanced it didn't think scientifically about it. A storm that lasts an hour would have been a lifetime of storm for an insect. Just because the disturbance has existed for as long as we've been able to measure it doesn't mean that it always did, or always will.”

Danni Quee discusses the possible nature of the "hyperspace disturbance" of popular galactic folklore.

74
He stared intently at a trio of overlapping holographically projected data windows. One showed Bimmiel as a khaki ball with slender stripes of blue radiating out from a large ocean in the southern hemisphere. ice caps covered either pole, with the one in the south extending out into the ocean. Atmospheric readings and other data filled the space around the world. A second window showed a group of images of flora and fauna native to the world. Third and final — and the window Ganner was studying hardest — was the image of a communications relay satellite that appeared, to Corran, to have lost its antenna array.

location: Bimmiel, destination of Rhysode and Horn; site of the marooned scholars.

75
The freighter, which was a modified Corellian YT-1210, had a flat disk shape that enabled Corran to slide it into the Bimmiel atmosphere without a lot of difficulty.

starship: Dalliance [named on p.76] a YT-1210 freighter. By its number and manufacturer, it should be a relative of vessels like the Millennium Falcon and Outrider.

79-81
Corran searched for life beneath the sand. Again he found insects and the small mammals — with many of the latter huddled together deep in a crevasse in the rocks. Others were moving through the sand, into one of the tents and back out again. Their course was so regular that Corran assumed they were moving along a tunnel and raiding a food store of some sort.
".... The small creatures are called shwpi. The Imp survey team found them fairly common. The report says they're herbivores and indicates they grazed on abundant vegetation."
....
He sensed a life-form speeding within the lighter, dusty layer of sand near the surface. .... The thing burst from the dune. Nothing more than a grey and white blur, it shot past Corran and dived into the next dune. It's powerful flat tail snapped back and forth, then disappeared within the sand. The beast shot off to the south, and both men watched the sand shift in its wake.
....
The sizzling silver blade caught the creature behind the jaw and right in front of its shoulders, at what should have been a neck. Grey fur combusted into acrid smoke, and black blood splashed over the sand. ....
The creature's snout was long an tapered back into a wedge-shaped skull that was entirely covered in chitin or keratin, like fingernails, but much thicker and polished smooth by moving through the sand. Short but powerful limbs sprouted long claws, clearly designed for digging. The creature's grey fur was little more than down except for a fringe at the back of the skull, and the long flat tail was covered with keratin scales. Its side-to-side undulation obviously helped propel the supple body through the sand.
As striking as the creature's physical presence was the horrid stink it gave off. It smelled to Corran like vapour from rotting ronto meat mixed with the sourest ale and harshest cigarra he'd ever tasted.

creatures: shwpi, herbiovres; slashrat, predator.

80
Ganner pulled a lightsabre from his belt and ignited a sulfurous-yellow blade.

technology: Ganner Rhysode's lightsabre has a yellow beam.

84-85
Part of Jacen understood exactly what had happened to Belkadan. The Yuuzhan Vong had released some sort of biological agent that had radically altered the planet's ecology, and apparently had something else in place to restore it again to near normal. Jacen was well aware of other examples of a population managing to alter a world's climate and ecology to suit them, so the Yuuzhan Vong's action wasn't unprecedented.
What was stunning was the speed with which they had accomplished the changes. Just two months had passed since Yomin Carr had destroyed the ExGal facility here, and already Belkadan was back to normal.

technology: Jacen Solo reflects on the process of terraforming a world, and the unusual speed of the Yuuzhan Vong technologies.

88
A littlerudder and a gentle easing of the yoke forward brought the Skipray blastboat, Courage, into the atmosphere.

starship: Courage, the ship carrying Luke Skywalker and Jacen Solo to Belkadan.

102
"Koyi Komad? I've met her." Corran kept his voice even. ... "She got married, must have been fourteen or fifteen years ago. She married a Quarren from the squadron, as a matter of fact."
.... "I'm Anki Pace. I'm running this archeological survey of Bimmiel for the University of Agamar. .... Various sites, archeologically significant sites, have suffered thefts. The items, though they've not been studied enough for us to be certain, have been suggested to be related to the Jedi Knights, before the purge. They're priceless, of course, since the Empire tried to destroy as much of that material as they could. More importantly, though, they can tell us much of how the Jedi used to be."

character: Koyi Komad, Twi'lek first introduced as a university student in The Phantom Affair comic.
Personnel from Rogue Squadron seem to have an unusually high incidence of interspecies romance and marriage. Perhaps it is associated with their ideology, or an extreme reaction to their perception of their Imperial enemies. But if their tendencies were typical of galactic society then their species' populations would be shrinking terminally.
character: Dr Anki Pace of the University of Agamar. The university is involved in research into pre-Imperial Jedi archeology.

104
Dr Pace patted the youth on the shoulder. "Vil, you and Denna go back to your posts. I think the slashrats are all tied up in a killball, but they might come for us, so you'll discourage them."

characters: Vil; Denna. Vil [p.103] had parents on Carida, a planet destroyed by Kyp Durron.

105-106
A slender, black-haired woman that Corran judged to be half his age came walking over. She had a pert nose and just a touch of dirt that somehow enhanced her beauty rather than detracted from it. "Yes, Dr Pace?"
"These ... Jedi are interested in your theories about the ecology of Bimmiel." Pace waved her forward. +This is Trista Orlanis, one of my graduate students.
....
"... the Imperial team came here as Bimmiel was inbound in its elliptical orbit. As the planet nears the sun, it warms up, naturally, and the ice caps begin to melt. The resulting moisture triggers an abundance of plant growth. The heat also brings the shwpi out of hibernation. They are herbivores, so they eat, multiply, and eat more. They don't digest most of the seeds, so they excrete them, sheathing the seeds with organic fertiliser.
"Certain other animals cannot tolerate the heat, so they retreat toward the polar regions while the shwpi population explodes. Then, as the planet begins to move away from the sun, the planet cools, which frees these creatures from their ranges to sweep into the equatorial areas. The shwpi have overgrazed the world, allowing the storms to pick up and redistribute a lot of soil through wind erosion. Moisture collects in ice caps at the poles as the world cools, which is why it is so dry now. The predators, most notably the slashrats, are adept at moving through the resulting dunes. They hunt the shwpi that have not found burrows in which to hibernate."

character: Trista Orlanis, a graduate student of the University of Agamar.
location: Bimmiel is stated to have a noticeably elliptical orbit (presumably more elliptical than that of Earth). Orlanis outlines her understanding of the ecological cycle of the planet. The prevailing patterns of wind circulation must operate in a way that prevents the deposition of the dust and sand on the polar caps. If the polar caps accumulated dark sediments, they would be warmed, causing melting. There would be a risk of runaway reduction in the size of the polar caps. If there isn't a special arrangement of winds, then there must be some other climatic effect to counterbalance this predisposition. The ecological/climatic cycle must have another component that Orlanis has neglected to mention.

107
"We discovered something that we think has been here for forty years, maybe fifty. .... Jens, call up scan AR-312."
As the young woman punched up a request for data, Dr Pace faced Corran. "We've recovered a body, the mummified remains of some creature. As nearly as we can make out, it retreated here and was felled by slashrats. The teeth marks on the long bones and ragged edges of dried flesh were consistent with . . ."
Corran stopped listening as the holographic image of a skull appeared above the holoprojector plate. It had a low cranial ridge, but was longer than a human skull. The features appeared sharper, and the computer enhanced the fracture lines and deformities on the face. The cheekbones had been broken and set oddly, so the face had a slope from right to left, and the nose bones had clearly been shattered.
"Emperor's black bones!"
Dr Pace nodded. "Not very pretty. Bony, with hooks and claws on the hands, elbows, shoulders, toes, heels and knees. It killed at least two slashrats. It also had some artifacts that we recovered — armour, some weapons. It's a major find. I've never seen anything like it."

character: AR-312, a specimen from the remains of a Yuuzhan Vong warrior who was on Bimmiel four or five decades before this novel: in the period of the prequel movies. The presence of Yuuzhan Vong at that time overturns the hypothesis that intergalactic travel is only transiently possible. Furthermore it proves that the Yuuzhan Vong are not recent arrivals. They have had scouts observing the galaxy for decades. Their decision to invade at the present moment may be a deliberate response to the temporary weakness of galactic civilisation, while it lacks both the numerous Jedi of the Old Republic and the strong government and military of the Empire.

119
Unconsciously he twisted the silver ring on his right ring finger, even though it and his fingers that moved it were sheathed in heavy flight gloves. The ring had the Rogue Squadron crest on it — a crest he'd designed when he first joined the squadron. It also sported the quadruple-dot rank insignia of a colonel on the other side.

Gavin Darklighter wears a ring bearing insignia of his unit and his rank. The rank of Colonel is the army equivalent of an air force Group Captain. If that is his true rank, Darklighter ought to have formal command over a group consisting of several wings of starfighters, with each wing consisting of several squadrons. A squadron is approximately a dozen fighters, so Darklighter's command should be several hundred fighters. In that case, it seems peculiar that his home squadron, Rogue Squadron, consumes such a great share of his attention.

Dark Tide: Onslaught
PAGE	QUOTATION	COMMENTS
1-2	Standing there, on the bridge of his Nebulon-B frigate, the pirate Urias Xhaxin clasped his cybernetic left hand to the small of his back with his right hand. He stared straight ahead at the tunnel of light into which his ship, the Free Lance, flew. Given the nature of the frigate's design, with the bridge so far forward, he felt as if he were flying there alone, making his way deep into the territory of the Outer Rim where no one in his right mind would be found. ... the Twi'lek working the navigation station. "Time to reversion, Khwir?" .... A dark-haired woman stepped up beside Xhaxin. "You really think his haul will earn us enough to retire?" "It depends upon the quality of retirement you desire, Dr Karl." The white-haired, white-bearded man turned and smiled at her. ... Anet Karl frowned.	characters: Urias Xhaxin, Dr Anet Karl, Khwir - pirates preying on shipping to the Imperial Remnant. starship: Free Lance, pirate frigate.
2	"Ever since the peace between the Imperial Remnant and the New Republic six years ago, we've been forced to go after smaller and smaller targets. The New Republic never condoned what we did, but they turned a blind eye to it while the Imperials were still a threat. Pickings were good as unreconstructed Imperials fled out here to the Remnant, but that trade has been trickling off...." .... "... They gathered at Garqi, have headed out, and the last of them should be hitting the rendezvous point in ten minutes."	chronology: This novel takes place approximately six years after Vision of the Future. loctions: The Imperial Remnant - apparently a remote part of the galaxy where surviving active Imperial forces regrouped. This must be different from the Deep Core regions, which were the Imperial holdouts in tales such as Dark Empire, Darksaber and Tyrant's Test. Is this just a continuity error, or did a great disaster occur to expel the Imperial warlords from the Deep Core in the eight years between The Black Fleet Crisis and The New Jedi Order? location: Garqi, a planet within a double-jump reach of the Imperial Remnant.
3-4	A Duros looked up through holographic displays of data, his long face wearing an expression that was even more morose than usual. "Gravitic anomalies, sir, everywhere." "Tractor beams? Gravity-well generators?" "Different, sir." The Duros frowned as a wash of data filled his holograph with overlapping spheres of colour. "Focused, tighter beams, more powerful." .... The shots looked to be on target, then deviated sharply in their flight. The bolts sharpened their angle of attack, coming together nearly half a kilometre before they hit the asteroid. Xhaxin expected the beams to flash through that new focal point and still hit the target, but instead they vanished. ... His gunner, an Iotran named Mirip Pag, shook his head in disbelief. "We had firing solutions, Captain. We were on target." The Duros, Lun Deverin, stabbed a quivering finger at a small sphere in a holograph. "A gravitic anomaly pulled the shots in. It's as if they're using a black hold to shield themselves." .... Pen Grasha, the Free Lance's starfighter control officer, shouted above the warning sirens.	technology: An interesting quotation for two reasons: (1) it confirms that tractor beams and gravity-well generators are gravitic devices, something which wasn't explicitly stated in previous references; (2) it gives a qualitative picture of the capabilities of the Yuuzhan Vong gravitic devices, relative to galactic standard gravitics. characters: Lun Deverin, Mirip Pag, Pen Grasha. Bridge officers and crew on Free Lance.
7	She looked around at the massive chamber and across the sea of senators filling it. It didn't have the grandeur of the old chamber, the one in which she had first served, but she felt a rich sense of tradition in it from the New Republic's days. Back in the Imperial era — after Palpatine had seized full power — there were no more than a handful of non-humans in the chamber, and then they were just aides to human senators. Now the humans were in the minority, much as they had been in the Old Republic. She could see Senator Viqi Shesh of Kuat and one of her telbuns, and Senator Cal Omas from Alderaan, but beyond them she had a hard time seeing more humans.	location: Galactic Senate chamber on Coruscant, a replacement for a different Senate chamber damaged in The New Rebellion. Princess Leia clearly believes the rebel accusations of systematic anti-nonhuman bias in Palpatine's regime (despite the canonical counter-evidence, eg. Palpatine's mentoring and association with Darth Maul and the Neimoidians in TPM). Whatever the intentions may have been, the numerical outcome in senatorial representation is noteworthy. What changes took place so that senatorial elections/appointments were weighted against humans during some decades, but weighted in favour of humans in other decades? Were sector boundaries shifted or enlarged in ways that provided most sectors with a majority of human-dominanted worlds? Or did the basis of senatorial representation change from equal weighting of star systems to population-based weighting? Were some systems given full franchise under one government but reclassified as dependent territories under another regime? With a majority human population in the galaxy (judging by the movies) the senatorial system in the Old/New Republic seems likely to have been structured to favour minorities; Imperial sectorial representation may have followed a more majoritarian pattern. Perhaps Palpatine made the voting system more majoritarian to make victory easier for his endorsed candidates, with the side-effect of making election harder for minorities. Some countries on Earth have different legislative houses which produce very different patterns of representation, simply because of differences in the way votes are counted.
8	Danni Quee, the young woman who barely two months ago had survived an attack and capture by an aggressive alien group that had assaulted several worlds on the galaxy's Outer Rim. Danni had been working at a research site used to monitor space beyond the edge of the galaxy and had collected some evidence to suggest the invaders had actually come from another galaxy. Their ruthless tactics, coupled with the sheer ecnomics of mounting an invasion from a distant galaxy, suggested to Leia that the aliens had to be intent on taking a great portion of this galaxy for their own. .... Beside the petite, brunette woman stood Bolphur, Leia's Noghri bodyguard.	characters: Danni Quee, Bulphur [introduced in Vector Prime]. Princess Leia's assessment of the practicality of intergalactic aggression. The inhabitants of her galaxy have had a static, self-enclosed civilisation for at least tens of thousands of years; this may affect their subjective responses to the notion of extragalactic travel. It may actually be not so much harder than long intra-galactic journeys, except that it entails loss of the security and known resources of the home galaxy.
9	"... A previously unknown species has launched a series of attacks in the Rim. They wiped out the ExGal-4 station on Belkadan, attacked the world of Dubrillion, destroyed the New Republic ship Rejuvenator at Helska, and annihilated the world Sernpidal by crashing its moon into it. We managed to locate the alien base at Helska 4 and destroy it, but this does not end the threat."	Summary of the battles and disasters of Vector Prime. starship: Rejuvenator.
10	Before she could continue, a hunchbacked, saurian senator representing the various Baragwin communities stood slowly. .... "Senator Wynl ...."	character: Senator Wynl, a Baragwin (the species of which Hermi Odle was a member).
11	Niuk Niuv, the senator from Sullust, rose to his feet... The Quarren, Pwoe, rose and brushed finger tips over his pointed chin. ....	characters: Niuk Niuv, Sullustan senator; Pwoe another senator (presumably for the Mon Calamari sector).
11	A human senator Leia failed to recognise rose to speak. "Forgive me, but it is a well-known and long-established fact that a hyperspace disturbance on the edge of the galaxy makes travel into or out of the galaxy impossible. This supposed invasion could not have taken place." Leia shook her head. "If that barrier does exist, they found a way around it. They were here, and there is ample evidence of their invasion in the Outer Rim."	Colourful folklore about a barrier surrounding the galaxy. (Since hyperspace is not really a medium — it is merely a supralight way of experiencing the usual universe — it isn't obvious how it could be "disturbed.") This myth was probably invented by some inhabitants of the galaxy as a rationalisation for their societal reluctance to enquire beyond the galaxy's bounds. Those eccentric, enquiring minds who did study the possiblities of other galaxies (eg. Danni Quee and the ExGal Society) did not believe that there was a fundamental obstacle to intergalactic travel. In medieval times on Earth, the Europeans invented tales of dangerous barriers at the ends of the world. They were technically capable of cross-oceanic sailing but they lacked the incentive of a known destination, and civilisation at home was comfortingly self-sufficient and self-enclosed. The same is almost certainly true of the STAR WARS civilisation.
21	"We need more research to be certain, but it appears that they have creatures called dovin basals that are part of the fighter itself. They manipulate gravity, which is how they were able to soak off your shots and rip down your shields. We think that boosting the sphere of the inertial compensator can actually prevent shields being taken down...."	technology: An assessment of the capabilities of Yuuzhan Vong gravitic propulsion and weaponry. It also confirms the potential to project the field of an inertial compensator beyond the hull of a starship. This extension should also be possible for a ship's artificial gravity effect. (That may be how the crew of the Millennium Falcon were able to stand and walk on the ground of the asteroid cave in The Empire Strikes Back.)
25-26	The Corellian hesistated, then bowed his head. "Valin was certainly among those who were impressed, but I'm more worried about the cadre of young Jedi Knights who are looking at Miko as a martyr. Too many seem to want to take his place. Ganner Rhysode and Wurth Skidder were right there with Kyp,..."	characters: Ganner Rhysode, Wurth Skidder young Jedi Knights of the proactive school of thought. Skidder was introduced in Vector Prime. Rhysode appears on p.49.
49-50	The man stood a full head taller than Corran. His broad shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist and hips, but the man's body fairly rippled with muscle. Jet-black hair had been combed back to emphasise a widow's peak. The mustache and goatee he wore combined with his handsome features and piercing blue eyes to give him the sort of rakish good looks that easily made the man the object of admiring glances. The midnight blue and black Jedi robes he wore set him apart from the jungle and gave him the bearing of a government official.	character: Ganner Rhysode, physical description.
52	+Though some are taking refuge in the idea that the hyperspace disturbance around the gaalxy will keep out all but the few Yuuzhan Vong who squirted through, I think the analogy that it's like a storm, a storm that may be abating, is more likely true. If so, we will likely fnd Yuuzhan Vong on that world and many others. I'll be ready."	Ganner, a Jedi, appears to adhere to the quaint (and undemonstrated) superstition about a difference in the characteristics of hyperspace outside the galaxy.
59-60	The Bothan Assault Cruiser was one of the latest additions to the New Republic fleet. While slightly smaller than a Victory-class Star Destroyer, and possessed of leaner and less angular lines, the Ralroost boasted 20 percent more firepower than a Vic and almost half again as much in terms of shielding and armour. the ship had been designed to take a severe pounding and still hammer an enemy. .... The fighter hangars were amidships and had launch apertures that would let the fighters head up or down, as needed, to get into battle. The dual launch paths also meant recovering fighters after a battle was faster, ....	starship: Ralroost, an example of a new class of Bothan warship.
60	His two subordinate commanders, Major Inyri Forge and Major Alinn Varth, acknowledged his command, and not for the first time did the incongruity of having female voices linked to those flight designators strike him. For almost the whole of Gavin's time in the squadron, Nine had been Corran Horn, and Five had been Hobbie or Janson or Tycho Celchu.	characters: Inyri Forge, Alinn Varth. Unless Varth is a common name, we are probably supposed to assume that this Varth is a relative of the Commander Varth described in early roleplaying game references.
60	... an asteroid belt separating two small, very hot planets from three larger gas giants. None of the planets themselves supported life, though the largest gas giant did have some moons that were almost hospitable — if one could tolerate a low-oxygen, high-nitrogen mix for breathing. If not for some mining done in the asteroids, and the fact that traffic from Bastion uses this as a nav point to the Corporate Sector, this would be another dull spot on star charts. The system didn't even have a name....	location: nameless system somewhere between the Imperial Remnant and the Corporate Sector.
67	"... Keyan Farlander was but one of their sons and daughters that flew from here to wage war against the Empire." .... "... I have no doubtv that if not for the courage of Keyan Farlander, I certainly would not be standing here before you."	character: Keyan Farlander, from Agamar, a rebel pilot who is the player-character in the X-Wing computer game. What does his implicit incorporation in the official timeline imply about the Battle of Yavin? There is not necessarily any discontinuity here, but which contingent history from the computer game is considered the true history of the novel and comic book literature?
70	“Please forgive me, I don't often address important people. I think that if I took to this sort of thing, I would not have become a scientist. In my work at ExGal, I was involved in looking outside the galaxy, where it was supposed nothing existed. Maybe I looked outside because looking back meant I would face crowds, and that scares me more than a little. ... What scares me more, now, is a combination of two things. One is the fact that there is something from beyond the galaxy. I know the stories you've all heard, the theories that have been taught, that a disturbance in hyperspace makes travel outside the galaxy impossible. That's a wonderful theory, but those who advanced it didn't think scientifically about it. A storm that lasts an hour would have been a lifetime of storm for an insect. Just because the disturbance has existed for as long as we've been able to measure it doesn't mean that it always did, or always will.”	Danni Quee discusses the possible nature of the "hyperspace disturbance" of popular galactic folklore.
74	He stared intently at a trio of overlapping holographically projected data windows. One showed Bimmiel as a khaki ball with slender stripes of blue radiating out from a large ocean in the southern hemisphere. ice caps covered either pole, with the one in the south extending out into the ocean. Atmospheric readings and other data filled the space around the world. A second window showed a group of images of flora and fauna native to the world. Third and final — and the window Ganner was studying hardest — was the image of a communications relay satellite that appeared, to Corran, to have lost its antenna array.	location: Bimmiel, destination of Rhysode and Horn; site of the marooned scholars.
75	The freighter, which was a modified Corellian YT-1210, had a flat disk shape that enabled Corran to slide it into the Bimmiel atmosphere without a lot of difficulty.	starship: Dalliance [named on p.76] a YT-1210 freighter. By its number and manufacturer, it should be a relative of vessels like the Millennium Falcon and Outrider.
79-81	Corran searched for life beneath the sand. Again he found insects and the small mammals — with many of the latter huddled together deep in a crevasse in the rocks. Others were moving through the sand, into one of the tents and back out again. Their course was so regular that Corran assumed they were moving along a tunnel and raiding a food store of some sort. ".... The small creatures are called shwpi. The Imp survey team found them fairly common. The report says they're herbivores and indicates they grazed on abundant vegetation." .... He sensed a life-form speeding within the lighter, dusty layer of sand near the surface. .... The thing burst from the dune. Nothing more than a grey and white blur, it shot past Corran and dived into the next dune. It's powerful flat tail snapped back and forth, then disappeared within the sand. The beast shot off to the south, and both men watched the sand shift in its wake. .... The sizzling silver blade caught the creature behind the jaw and right in front of its shoulders, at what should have been a neck. Grey fur combusted into acrid smoke, and black blood splashed over the sand. .... The creature's snout was long an tapered back into a wedge-shaped skull that was entirely covered in chitin or keratin, like fingernails, but much thicker and polished smooth by moving through the sand. Short but powerful limbs sprouted long claws, clearly designed for digging. The creature's grey fur was little more than down except for a fringe at the back of the skull, and the long flat tail was covered with keratin scales. Its side-to-side undulation obviously helped propel the supple body through the sand. As striking as the creature's physical presence was the horrid stink it gave off. It smelled to Corran like vapour from rotting ronto meat mixed with the sourest ale and harshest cigarra he'd ever tasted.	creatures: shwpi, herbiovres; slashrat, predator.
80	Ganner pulled a lightsabre from his belt and ignited a sulfurous-yellow blade.	technology: Ganner Rhysode's lightsabre has a yellow beam.
84-85	Part of Jacen understood exactly what had happened to Belkadan. The Yuuzhan Vong had released some sort of biological agent that had radically altered the planet's ecology, and apparently had something else in place to restore it again to near normal. Jacen was well aware of other examples of a population managing to alter a world's climate and ecology to suit them, so the Yuuzhan Vong's action wasn't unprecedented. What was stunning was the speed with which they had accomplished the changes. Just two months had passed since Yomin Carr had destroyed the ExGal facility here, and already Belkadan was back to normal.	technology: Jacen Solo reflects on the process of terraforming a world, and the unusual speed of the Yuuzhan Vong technologies.
88	A littlerudder and a gentle easing of the yoke forward brought the Skipray blastboat, Courage, into the atmosphere.	starship: Courage, the ship carrying Luke Skywalker and Jacen Solo to Belkadan.
102	"Koyi Komad? I've met her." Corran kept his voice even. ... "She got married, must have been fourteen or fifteen years ago. She married a Quarren from the squadron, as a matter of fact." .... "I'm Anki Pace. I'm running this archeological survey of Bimmiel for the University of Agamar. .... Various sites, archeologically significant sites, have suffered thefts. The items, though they've not been studied enough for us to be certain, have been suggested to be related to the Jedi Knights, before the purge. They're priceless, of course, since the Empire tried to destroy as much of that material as they could. More importantly, though, they can tell us much of how the Jedi used to be."	character: Koyi Komad, Twi'lek first introduced as a university student in The Phantom Affair comic. Personnel from Rogue Squadron seem to have an unusually high incidence of interspecies romance and marriage. Perhaps it is associated with their ideology, or an extreme reaction to their perception of their Imperial enemies. But if their tendencies were typical of galactic society then their species' populations would be shrinking terminally. character: Dr Anki Pace of the University of Agamar. The university is involved in research into pre-Imperial Jedi archeology.
104	Dr Pace patted the youth on the shoulder. "Vil, you and Denna go back to your posts. I think the slashrats are all tied up in a killball, but they might come for us, so you'll discourage them."	characters: Vil; Denna. Vil [p.103] had parents on Carida, a planet destroyed by Kyp Durron.
105-106	A slender, black-haired woman that Corran judged to be half his age came walking over. She had a pert nose and just a touch of dirt that somehow enhanced her beauty rather than detracted from it. "Yes, Dr Pace?" "These ... Jedi are interested in your theories about the ecology of Bimmiel." Pace waved her forward. +This is Trista Orlanis, one of my graduate students. .... "... the Imperial team came here as Bimmiel was inbound in its elliptical orbit. As the planet nears the sun, it warms up, naturally, and the ice caps begin to melt. The resulting moisture triggers an abundance of plant growth. The heat also brings the shwpi out of hibernation. They are herbivores, so they eat, multiply, and eat more. They don't digest most of the seeds, so they excrete them, sheathing the seeds with organic fertiliser. "Certain other animals cannot tolerate the heat, so they retreat toward the polar regions while the shwpi population explodes. Then, as the planet begins to move away from the sun, the planet cools, which frees these creatures from their ranges to sweep into the equatorial areas. The shwpi have overgrazed the world, allowing the storms to pick up and redistribute a lot of soil through wind erosion. Moisture collects in ice caps at the poles as the world cools, which is why it is so dry now. The predators, most notably the slashrats, are adept at moving through the resulting dunes. They hunt the shwpi that have not found burrows in which to hibernate."	character: Trista Orlanis, a graduate student of the University of Agamar. location: Bimmiel is stated to have a noticeably elliptical orbit (presumably more elliptical than that of Earth). Orlanis outlines her understanding of the ecological cycle of the planet. The prevailing patterns of wind circulation must operate in a way that prevents the deposition of the dust and sand on the polar caps. If the polar caps accumulated dark sediments, they would be warmed, causing melting. There would be a risk of runaway reduction in the size of the polar caps. If there isn't a special arrangement of winds, then there must be some other climatic effect to counterbalance this predisposition. The ecological/climatic cycle must have another component that Orlanis has neglected to mention.
107	"We discovered something that we think has been here for forty years, maybe fifty. .... Jens, call up scan AR-312." As the young woman punched up a request for data, Dr Pace faced Corran. "We've recovered a body, the mummified remains of some creature. As nearly as we can make out, it retreated here and was felled by slashrats. The teeth marks on the long bones and ragged edges of dried flesh were consistent with . . ." Corran stopped listening as the holographic image of a skull appeared above the holoprojector plate. It had a low cranial ridge, but was longer than a human skull. The features appeared sharper, and the computer enhanced the fracture lines and deformities on the face. The cheekbones had been broken and set oddly, so the face had a slope from right to left, and the nose bones had clearly been shattered. "Emperor's black bones!" Dr Pace nodded. "Not very pretty. Bony, with hooks and claws on the hands, elbows, shoulders, toes, heels and knees. It killed at least two slashrats. It also had some artifacts that we recovered — armour, some weapons. It's a major find. I've never seen anything like it."	character: AR-312, a specimen from the remains of a Yuuzhan Vong warrior who was on Bimmiel four or five decades before this novel: in the period of the prequel movies. The presence of Yuuzhan Vong at that time overturns the hypothesis that intergalactic travel is only transiently possible. Furthermore it proves that the Yuuzhan Vong are not recent arrivals. They have had scouts observing the galaxy for decades. Their decision to invade at the present moment may be a deliberate response to the temporary weakness of galactic civilisation, while it lacks both the numerous Jedi of the Old Republic and the strong government and military of the Empire.
119	Unconsciously he twisted the silver ring on his right ring finger, even though it and his fingers that moved it were sheathed in heavy flight gloves. The ring had the Rogue Squadron crest on it — a crest he'd designed when he first joined the squadron. It also sported the quadruple-dot rank insignia of a colonel on the other side.	Gavin Darklighter wears a ring bearing insignia of his unit and his rank. The rank of Colonel is the army equivalent of an air force Group Captain. If that is his true rank, Darklighter ought to have formal command over a group consisting of several wings of starfighters, with each wing consisting of several squadrons. A squadron is approximately a dozen fighters, so Darklighter's command should be several hundred fighters. In that case, it seems peculiar that his home squadron, Rogue Squadron, consumes such a great share of his attention.

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