Star Wars / Star Wars: Brotherhood

Chapter 1

Ruug Quarnom

Cato Neimoidia was a world of mist.

High above that mist, cliffs and branches poked through, carved at all angles into immense mountainous spires. The thick stone of the planet s largest rock arches and peaks loomed, casting shadows in a seemingly infinite stretch before being absorbed into the dense vapor below. Between, over, and on top of these natural wonders hung gilded cities with ornate towers and reflective sidings, structures suspended as bridges between massive colossal ridges.

But Cato Neimoidia did have something beneath all of that, a foundational layer at the base of the thick fog. On normal days, taking the journey from Cato Neimoidia s bridge cities to the surface meant a gradual descent into an ever-thickening blanket of white.

Today, however, was not a normal day.

Because today, something had gone terribly wrong. And the lower the shuttle flew, the more the milky hue of the mist darkened as harsh streams of blackened ash mixed in.

Ruug Quarnom had seen destruction all her life. As an elite commando of the Neimoidian Defense Legion, she d dealt with explosives and blasterfire, rockets and shrapnel. And death so much death, most of it by her own doing courtesy of the custom sniper rifle that felt like an extension of her own limbs.

Murder and destruction. That was her life for so many years, doing the will of her government to carve out a better place for Neimoidians in the galaxy. Even now, in her new assignment as a royal guard for Cato Neimoidia s capital city of Zarra, her goal remained the same: the protection of her people.

Ruug had taken the assignment in good faith, even though she knew it had been for questioning the judgment of the Trade Federation, a perspective considered dissent by those who held much more sway than a military grunt. Such good faith was being challenged right now, in a time when the galaxy dared to rip itself in two.

Look at that, said the voice of her young

Mike Chen