Star Wars: Sanctuary (A Bad Batch Novel)

Star Wars: Sanctuary (A Bad Batch Novel)

Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, and Omega gamble on a mission to help rebuild Pabu in this thrilling adventure for The Bad Batch. A good soldier knows that life is all about change—whether it’s on or off the battlefield. Surviving, living, means adaptation. Hunter is well acquainted with this lesson. He’s on the run from the Empire, Echo’s off on a mission with Captain Rex, and Crosshair is . . . still Crosshair, but amidst all the change, Hunter still has Tech, Wrecker, and Omega. And it seems that his small family might have finally found a safe place to land, far from the increasingly vigilant eyes of the Empire: Pabu. But their potential new island home is in desperate need of resources if there is any hope for the fledgling community to recover from a devastating sea wave. That’s where Phee Goena, self-proclaimed liberator of treasures, comes in, with a couple of jobs she swears will get them the funds they need. Despite Hunter’s concern with Phee’s precarious plans, the rest of the crew is fine following her lead. Things go wrong almost immediately, as Phee’s droid blows the crew’s cover at a high-stakes auction, and they barely make it out with the relic they’d been paid to acquire. Hunter insists they finish their first mission and deliver the relic before taking on more work, but Phee and the others push forward with a second job: ferrying a couple on the run, one of whom is due to give birth at any moment. Hunter worries that they’re risking too much, especially when their mysterious new passengers cling to lies and secrets that trace back to an Imperial Security Bureau officer hot on their trail. As Hunter tries to get the crew back on a stable, safe path far, far away from anything to do with the Empire’s watchdogs, their overlapping missions only invite more danger and chaos. On the verge of failing both their desperate passengers and their community on Pabu, the Batch must remember that the only way they succeed, the only way they survive to fight another day, is by trusting each other. Lamar Giles is the acclaimed author of the novels Ruin Road , The Getaway, The Last Last-Day-of-Summer, Not So Pure and Simple, SPIN, and Fake ID . He is a three-time Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award nominee, a recipient of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s Youth Literary Award, and a founding member of the non-profit We Need Diverse Books. He resides in Virginia with his family. Chapter One Piproo Auction House, Hosnian Prime Clone Force 99 knew all about challenging missions. Tackling and overcoming arduous tasks was what they were made for. However, even after all these years of fighting through muck and mire and beating unbeatable odds, Hunter could not recall a set of parameters he loathed more than what lay before him now. The mission was the mission, though. Each of them had a role to play. Failure was not an option. “These jogan fruit are not peeled properly,” a looming multilimbed culinary droid said. Hunter faced his “superior” and used a poorly maintained paring knife to strip the last bit of rind off a seeping orb that stained his hands purple. He dropped the fruit into the bin with the dozen others he’d worked on since slipping into his cover as a lowly caterer. “You wanted them not to have peels. They don’t. What’s improper about it?” The droid’s posture went rigid in the face of mild insubordination. Hunter felt that his defiance followed Phee Genoa’s advice on this kind of laborious subterfuge—“Put a little bit of yourself into the ruse to make it more believable!”—as much as he cared to. He never took a dressing-down well, even when deserved. And this was not deserved. He’d peeled the blasted jogan fruit! The task assigned to him—or rather assigned to the laborer he had subdued and now impersonated—was one of many in the sweltering, bustling auction house kitchen. While the droid took issue with Hunter’s blade work—something no one else had ever questioned and lived to tell—it somehow missed more serious offenses throughout the evening that should’ve drawn its ire. Like the Volpai dishwasher who seemed incapable of keeping the stubby digits of his lower left hand out of his ear—disgusting. Or the Ikkrukkian pastry chef who’d snuck nibbles from several sweet tarts and covered the trespass with fresh frosting. Yet this droid, a COO cook model with multiple arms and as many annoyances, had the nerve to treat Hunter as if he were the problem. “A correct peeling,” the droid said, “would not exceed a width of 4.5 millimeters and is ideally done in a single coiled strip to preserve the rind as an aesthetically pleasing garnish . . .” The tedious spiel continued, but Hunter’s attention shifted to the crackling audio from the microcomlink in his ear. Through the device, Tech said, “Do not dismantle him. He is correct about the proper technique for crafting a jogan garnish.” A second voice crackled through the comlink, instantly dulling the sharp edge of Hun