Soldier For The Empire – Part I
On Sullun, one of the moons of Sullust, a Rebel uprising is violently put down by Captain Thrawn’s Imperial platoons. But Thrawn’s superior, a dark Jedi named Lord Jerec, has a mission of a more personal nature as he searches for a Rebel named Morgan Katarn. Katarn’s latent ability with the Force – and his steadfast refusal to use it for fear of misusing the power – has earned him the label of a coward in Jerec’s eyes, and when Katarn refuses to give up any information about the Rebellion, Jerec murders him in cold blood.
Ironically, Morgan Katarn’s son Kyle is enrolled in the Imperial Academy, on the fast track through officer training. But Kyle’s disastrous cadet leader mission reveals two things which could be his downfall in the Empire: he too has a latent ability to use the Force, and his distaste for meaningless killing has no place in the take-no-prisoners war the Empire is waging against the Rebels. Despite the high rate of casualties among Kyle’s own Imperial platoon, he’s decorated as a war hero for seizing a Rebel communications outpost and graduates from the Academy with honors – just before his commandant informs him of his father’s death, supposedly at the hands of Rebels. Kyle books a cruise in what little leave time he has between his graduation and reporting for duty, and on the cruise ship he spots a woman who he remembers as being among the Rebels from the outpost against which he led the assault. He’s eager to speak to her again, but he’s caught off guard when he discovers that she’s just as eager to speak to him – and to reveal the true nature of his father’s fate.
written by John Whitman
based on the book by William C. Dietz and Dean Williams
inspired by the video game Star Wars: Dark Forces
directed by Peter Moore
music by John WilliamsCast: Randal Berger (Kyle Katarn), Mo Collins (Jan Ors), Bob Davis (Skorg Jameson / Lando Calrissian), Chris Forth (Mon Mothma), Christopher Bloch (Rosco Ross), Virginia Burke (Courier), James Cada (Sergeant Major Hong), David Chase (Morgan Katarn), Patrick Coyle (Nathan Donar), Gary Groomes (Governor Donar / Major Horst), Allen Hamilton (Jerec), Peter Moore (Meck Odom / Slyder), Tim Russell (Captain Thrawn, A-Cee / General Mohc), Ken Hiller (Narrator)
Notes: Recorded at Tom Voegli Productions (run by the producer of the original NPR Star Wars radio dramas), the Dark Empire audiobooks are full-cast adaptations – in a similar style to the radio dramas – of a series of novellas based on the popular first-person shooter video game Star Wars: Dark Forces. The game’s popularity was such that it even added a few action figures to the Star Wars toy line. The adaptation scripts were written by John Whitman, who generated “additional material” added onto the late Brian Daley’s scripts for the Return Of The Jedi radio series. Narrator Ken Hiller is the only voice common to the cast of the original NPR radio dramas and the Dark Forces audio plays.
LogBook entry by Earl Green
Five years after the fall of the Empire at Endor, Kyle Katarn slips away on an unauthorized personal mission to Nar Shadaa, and quickly draws the wrong kind of attention – bounty hunters have been hired by Lord Jerec to literally bring Kyle’s head to the dark Jedi. In this case, they’re hired by a droid dispatched by Jerec to ensure that the job gets done. The droid has tried to enlist the best of the best, including Boba Fett himself, but when he turns the job down, less experienced mercenaries try to take Kyle out. Jerec’s droid taunts Kyle with a disc containing an encoded message from his father. Kyle takes reckless, death-defying risks to shake off or dispose of his attackers and reach the disc, but at a high cost. Fortunately, Jan Ors has taken on an equally unauthorized mission to follow Kyle in case he winds up in trouble. Remnants of the Empire quickly converge to capture Kyle, and even when Jan rescues him, he has suffered critical injuries.
Lord Jerec, the Dark Jedi following Morgan Katarn’s map to find the lost Valley of the Jedi, sends an Imperial probe droid to the planet where the Valley is located – and it is promptly destroyed by one of the Rebels who was evacuated from Sulon by Morgan. Jerec dispatches his Dark Jedi to survey the nearest settlement to the probe droid’s final location – and then to lead an attack to flatten it. But Rebel help is already on the way, in the form of an Alliance capital ship, the Millennium Falcon, and eventually Luke’s X-wing and Kyle Katarn’s ship, the Moldy Crow. After a pitched battle in orbit, Kyle and Jan Ors go to the planet so Kyle can continue his own search for the Valley – and an inevitable meeting with the man who killed his father. But first, Kyle encounters his father’s fellow settlers, whose allegiances lie firmly with the Rebel Alliance – and the last time any of them saw Kyle, he was on the fast track through the Imperial Academy.