Star Wars: Outbound Flight

On an epic voyage far beyond the Republic, the Jedi will confront their most extraordinary enemy--and test the limits of honor and sacrifice against their most devastating challenge.

The Clone Wars have yet to erupt when Jedi Master Jorus C’baoth petitions the Senate for support of a singularly ambitious undertaking: the dream of Outbound Flight. Six Jedi Masters, twelve Jedi Knights, and fifty thousand men, women, and children will embark--aboard a gargantuan vessel, equipped for years of travel--on a mission to contact intelligent life and colonize undiscovered worlds beyond the known galaxy.

Unknown to the famed Jedi Master, the launch of the mission is secretly being orchestrated by an unlikely ally: the evil Sith Lord Darth Sidious, who has his own reasons for wanting Outbound Flight to move forward.

Yet Darth Sidious is not the mission’s most dangerous challenge. Once underway, the starship crosses paths at the edge of Unknown Space with the forces of the alien Chiss Ascendancy and a brilliant mastermind named Thrawn. Even Jedi knight Obi-Wan Kenobi, aboard Outbound Flight with his young Padawan student Anakin Skywalker, cannot help to avert disaster. What begins as a peaceful Jedi mission is violently transformed into an all-out war for survival against staggering odds--and the most diabolical of adversaries.

Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars novels have more than four million copies in print. Since 1978 he has written nearly seventy short stories and novelettes, nineteen novels, and three short fiction collections, and won the 1984 Hugo Award for best novella. He is best known for his six Star Wars books (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command, Specter of the Past, Vision of the Future, and Survivor’s Quest). He lives with his family on the Oregon coast.