Corran Horn/Legends

Corran Horn was a Force-sensitive Human male Corellian pilot who served as a Corellian Security Force investigator, a Rogue Squadron ace and New Republic hero, and later a Jedi Master of the New Jedi Order. Born to Nyche and Valin "Hal" Horn on Corellia, Horn lived his early life unaware that his grandfather was Nejaa Halcyon, a Jedi Master. He followed his father and adoptive grandfather into the Corellian Security Force, where he excelled. However, he came into conflict with his Imperial Intelligence liaison officer, Kirtan Loor, and eventually fled Corellia after the Battle of Endor in order to evade execution. Horn spent a year lying low on Garqi before saving several locals from the Empire and making the decision to join the New Republic.
A highly skilled pilot, Horn joined Rogue Squadron in 6 ABY and became a flight leader. He participated in the captures of Borleias and Coruscant. In the latter battle, he took down the planet's shields, though he was captured by the Empire in the process. He was incarcerated in the infamous Lusankya prison, where he resisted Ysanne Isard's brainwashing and became the first individual ever to directly escape the prison. On his return, he was hailed as a hero, but on learning that the New Republic would not allow the targeting of Isard for political reasons, he led Rogue Squadron in resigning and waging a guerrilla war against Isard's regime on Thyferra. During the course of that campaign, the Bacta War, Horn was married to Mirax Terrik, the love of his life and the daughter of his father's old rival, Booster Terrik. Horn rejoined the New Republic and continued his career in Rogue Squadron, helping defeat Zsinj and Thrawn and free the Lusankya prisoners.
When his wife was kidnapped in 11 ABY, Horn realized he had to tap his Jedi talents to save her, having learned of his family's secret past from Luke Skywalker's investigations several years earlier. He trained at Skywalker's Jedi Praxeum before rescuing Mirax, defeating the Invid pirate gang in the process. Horn balanced his careers as a pilot and Jedi until 19 ABY, when he resigned from the squadron with the rank of colonel after peace was achieved with the Imperial Remnant. Horn served as a Jedi instructor, training his two children, Valin and Jysella, before the Yuuzhan Vong War broke out. Horn served a vital role in the war, defeating Shedao Shai, the killer of Horn's close friend Elegos A'Kla, in a duel to save Ithor; the failure of the Yuuzhan Vong to live up to the terms of the duel shamed Horn and caused him to briefly take a leave of absence from the Jedi. He returned to full service after the Battle of Coruscant, and was crucial to the resolution of the war, helping unlock the mystery of Zonama Sekot.
After the war, Horn was elevated to the rank of Jedi Master and became one of the leading Jedi on the Masters' Council. He argued for strong relations with the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, and during the Dark Nest Crisis in 36 ABY, he was temporarily put in charge of the Jedi Order. When events on Corellia erupted into a war in 40 ABY, Horn helped steer the Jedi through the crisis as a member of the Jedi Council, even when the Jedi were declared enemies of the state, and saw the Jedi to victory over Darth Caedus, Dark Lord of the Sith. In 43 ABY, when Jedi began succumbing to a strange Force madness, Horn's family was stricken with tragedy when his son and daughter both contracted the psychosis and were captured and imprisoned in carbonite by the Galactic Alliance.
==Biography==
===Corellian Security===
====Formative years====
Corran Horn was born in 18 BBY, the son of Valin Horn, known widely as Hal, and Nyche Horn. Valin Horn was actually the biological son of Nejaa Halcyon, a Jedi Master, but when Halcyon was killed, Valin was adopted by Rostek Horn, a Corellian Security Force police officer who was Halcyon's best friend. Rostek married Halcyon's wife Scerra as well and, as the Great Jedi Purge began, hid all evidence of Valin Horn, who now went by Hal, as he was a Force-sensitive. Corran Horn himself was raised in Coronet City, unaware of any of this history or his own Force-sensitivity.X-Wing: Isard's Revenge
As a child, Horn observed his father in some minor meditative exercises and attempted to imitate him. The elder Horn taught him these techniques, telling Horn they were part of a secret game and he must not reveal them to anyone; they were, in fact, Jedi exercises. As he grew, his father and grandfather encouraged him to always follow his hunches and to heed any internal sense of discomfort with a situation, knowing that they were manifestations of his Force abilities.X-Wing: Wedge's Gamble
Horn entered the Corellian Security Force Academy immediately upon graduating secondary school, where he excelled, setting new records—many of them by beating his father's. He was in the Academy when he heard of the destruction of the Death Star and the warrant placed on Han Solo for his part in it. Horn was left feeling that the smuggler Solo was a blot on Corellia's honor, causing the world to be overly associated with smuggling and lawlessness.
Around 1 ABY, Horn was present in the Corellian city of Doaba Guerfel investigating the extremely powerful Black Sun crime syndicate as an undercover officer. During that investigation, he became aware that Chandra Conrad was willing to come forward as a witness. However, at that same time, he had to attend a vital Black Sun meeting. Horn had to recruit a trustworthy individual to escort Conrad to a later meeting with him, at which point he was able to deal with her safely. Upon finding that the individual had performed well and unable to move against Black Sun due to his undercover position, Horn engaged his new operative to bring in Obrio Caldori, a mid-level Black Sun administrator who was willing to turn state's evidence. Caldori quickly turned over major information when he saw how much Horn already knew, and with his evidence, Horn had a major Black Sun figure, Voydd Blancken, arrested.
When Boushh and another bounty hunter kidnapped his father after the Battle of Talus, Horn pursued and confronted them with several Corellian Security agents in tow—exactly as they had planned, hoping to collect a bounty placed on Horn's head. The fierce battle degenerated into a stand-off, leading the pair to offer to let the elder Horn go if Corran Horn would turn himself over to them. Refusing to allow harm to come to his father, he agreed. Rebel agents later rescued him, along with several Rebel-aligned captives, from imprisonment outside Bestine on Tatooine.
Around 2 ABY, Horn graduated from the CorSec Academy and became a full officer of the Corellian Security Force. He frequently worked alongside his father, developing his skills as a bright young prospect, and participated in many undercover missions.The Official Star Wars Fact File 70 At some point, he was part of a security detail for Imperial actress Wynssa Starflare during a visit to Corellia. The Imperial Intelligence liaison with whom Horn's division of Corellian Security had to coordinate was Kirtan Loor, and he and Horn mutually despised each other; Horn regarded Loor as arrogant, incompetent, and intrusive. He always tried to avoid having to actually deal with Loor in person. Loor only aggravated Horn's existing dislike of Imperial interference in Corellian affairs; he wanted the Empire's influence and presence on Corellia to be minimal. To that end, he believed in keeping a minimal Rebel presence on Corellia so that the Empire would not need to intervene strongly. He disliked the Rebellion, regarding them as a band of criminals who cloaked their law-breaking in talk of revolution. Over the course of Horn's CorSec career, his investigations would lead to the capture of Jedi, though he appeared to be unaware of his role in any Imperial Jedi-hunting.
Later in 2 ABY, Horn's mother was badly injured in a landspeeder accident with a drunken driver, and Horn and his father rushed to the hospital to be with her. She spoke with them about their future before passing away, leaving Horn and his father grieving together.
====Capturing Zekka Thyne====
In 2 ABY, Horn was partnered with his father. While surveilling Sajsh's booth on Treasure Ship Row—an outlet for the business of Corellia's top Black Sun lieutenant, Zekka Thyne—he noticed a man speak with Sajsh and ask for Borbor Crisk—a rival of Zekka Thyne. Finding this suspicious, he kept an eye on the man, who joined up with another young man, a woman, and a Tunroth. He returned to report to his father, also present in the marketplace, and while doing so noticed the group meet up with a bounty hunter Hal recognized as Jodo Kast. Realizing that the strangers would likely be investigated by Thyne and brought before him in his private stronghold, Horn suggested that he and his father should attach themselves to the group in hopes of being brought along. Hal thought it was extremely dangerous, but agreed to at least see what the group was doing.
They followed the strangers and, when they became involved in trying to stop a confrontation between the Brommstaad Mercenaries and a shop owner and his daughter, both Horns drew their blasters to keep the Brommstaad leader from drawing on Kast. The mercenaries admitted that they were outmatched and backed off, leaving the suspicious group thanking the Horns. They discussed the situation of the group—Haber Trell, Maranne Darmic, Riij Winward, Rathe Palror, and Kast. The group, a freighter crew, stated that they simply had to deliver a cargo to Crisk. The Horns told them that their cargo, the contents of which they did not know, was almost certainly illegal. They introduced themselves as a pair of small-time criminals looking for a position in Crisk's organization. Horn admitted to having overheard their conversation with Sajsh and asked if they could come along to the meeting that night with the man Sajsh had said was Crisk's contact; the Horns knew it would actually be an ambush by Thyne's men. Kast, the leader of the group, said that only Hal could come along. He assigned Horn, Winward, and Darmic to offload the cargo and prepare it for delivery.
Horn headed to the freighter, the Hopskip, with the others and began subtly probing them for information about themselves. While unloading the boxes, he immediately recognized them as sleight boxes—a smuggling trick box which used small repulsors to neutralize its weight, making its contents difficult to determine. Neither Darmic nor Winward knew the boxes were sleight boxes, or even what sleight boxes were. While unloading the boxes and discussing the morality of the Rebellion with Winward, whom he suspected of harboring Rebel sympathies, Horn was surprised to see Kast return. Kast revealed that he, serving as a rearguard for Hal Horn, Palror, and Trell, had seen them captured by Thyne's thugs and done nothing; he said he had been too badly outnumbered. Kast told them to deliver the cargo to Crisk, having set up a new meeting, while he would free the others from Thyne. Horn angrily insisted on coming along to free his father—though he denied a family connection to Kast and the others. While Kast left, Horn insisted that Darmic and Winward open some of the poorly-sealed boxes to see just what they were delivering. They found glitterstim and Durindfire gems in two different boxes. Horn came up with a plan to take only those two boxes to Crisk, hiding the rest in a storage facility and only giving their location once the others were rescued from Thyne's fortress. If he and Kast failed, they were to leverage Crisk into attempting a rescue. If Crisk refused, they could use their rich cargo to ransom the captives from Thyne.
During the landspeeder ride to Thyne's stronghold, Horn and Kast happened to discuss art, with Horn finding Kast's keen interest in and knowledge of art unusual, and having to make excuses for his assumed criminal identity to be familiar with the works of Venthan Chassu. When they arrived, they were ushered into Thyne's office, where Hal, Trell, and Palror were all restrained and had clearly been beaten. He was shocked when Kast drew a blaster on him, claiming that Trell and Palror were assassins working for Crisk. They were imprisoned in Thyne's wine cellar, and Kast taunted Horn before he left. Hal, imprisoned in the same cell, realized that Kast had left them a molecular stiletto to cut their way out and had warned them, in his taunting, that most of Thyne's forces were being sent after Crisk and the others who were arranging a deal with him, leaving the fortress vulnerable.
The pair ambushed the guard outside the room and allowed Trell and Palror to cut themselves free, telling them to take an airspeeder and leave. They were going after Thyne. They stormed Thyne's office, where Horn stunned one enforcer, and Kast, inside the office, killed the other. Thyne, however, fled down his own private escape route. Kast said that he had more business to handle inside the fortress and left Thyne to the Horns. They pursued him down his escape tunnel. When it widened into a dark cave, the Horns advanced carefully. In the darkness, however, Thyne was able to get the drop on Horn—disarming him and using him as a hostage, blaster pistol to his head—and demanded Hal show himself. Hal did show himself, with a blaster carbine aimed at Thyne. He identified himself as a Corellian Security Force inspector and demanded that Thyne surrender. Thyne instead demanded that Hal drop his weapon. He pretended to remove his finger from the trigger, but actually kept it on, using his Force abilities to fool Thyne. When Thyne relaxed, he struck him with a stun bolt. Hal carried Thyne while the younger Horn led the way out of the tunnel. There, they were surrounded by the Imperial stormtroopers Kast had arranged to raid Thyne's fortress. They identified themselves, and Colonel Maximilian Veers allowed them to pass with Thyne. What they never learned was that "Kast" had in fact been Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo, helping Darth Vader take down Thyne, and in so doing, strike at the Dark Lord's rival, Black Sun leader Prince Xizor.
====Living with loss====
Around a year after Thyne's capture, in 3 ABY, Horn transferred into the Smuggling Interdiction Division of CorSec. There he was partnered with Iella Wessiri, and he worked with an astromech droid he nicknamed Whistler. Horn's supervisor was Gil Bastra, a former partner of his father's. Horn was a relentless investigator, using brute force to push through investigations, while Wessiri preferred subtlety, making them a powerful team. Horn sometimes had to fly escort duty, which he hated. He was, however, an excellent pilot, his skills honed by space missions in his CorSec T-65 X-wing starfighter. Wessiri's husband, Diric Wessiri, often took an interest in their cases. In one, he became convinced that a suspect was innocent and badgered Horn and Iella to look for evidence of her innocence. They eventually found that Diric was in fact right, and arrested those who were truly responsible.
Around six months after joining the Smuggling Interdiction Division, Horn and his father went on a mission in which they anticipated trouble. With Horn watching from a remote as Hal met with two other men, he found little to worry him and so relaxed. However, the bounty hunter Bossk entered the room and sprayed fire across the table at which Hal Horn was sitting, killing him and his companions. Horn rushed out, but could only hold his father's body in his arms. Horn was impressed by his father's wake and the outpouring of respect for Valin Horn at it, so impressed that he hoped his life could be celebrated the same way. However, without his father, he felt adrift emotionally. He made only one new friend during the rest of his time in CorSec, and she left him six months later.
Horn tracked Bossk down and arrested him, but Loor turned him loose without so much as an arraignment, citing the Trandoshan lack of manual dexterity as making Hal Horn collateral damage in a valid Imperial warrant. Horn was furious, absolutely loathing Loor from then onwards and suspecting that Loor had a hand in the death itself. He longed to kill the man, but was talked down by Bastra, who became his primary mentor after his father's death. Morose and constantly reliving the past, Horn's mind was only brought back to the moment when Wessiri and Bastra got him into a cantina brawl, helping him focus himself on living in the present. Horn kept his father's lucky medallion and began wearing it as his own. It was in fact a commemorative medallion marking Halcyon's ascent to the rank of Jedi Master, a secret family heirloom the full meaning of which Horn did not understand, although he valued it highly.
When the Annual CorSec Awards Ball was gearing up in early 4 ABY, around six months after Hal Horn's death, the traditional pool system was changed. Usually, each male CorSec officer bought into a pool, the winner of which was originally given the right to take the Director's daughter to the ball. Over the years, it became a tradition in which a female officer offered herself as the prize, and the proceeds from the lottery system went to the Survivors and Orphans Fund. That year, however, the prize was, unknown to her, Chertyl Ruluwoor. A female Selonian, Ruluwoor was part of a transfer program with CorSec. No one wanted to have to take her to the ball, but Horn, miserable from his father's death, decided that there was no point in making anyone else suffer. He persuaded the significant others of all the other officers in the pool that the lottery was rigged to cause that officer's ticket to win the pool. He let them sell him their tickets, eventually gaining every single ticket in the pool. He gave all the proceeds to the Survivors and Orphans Fund and went all-out to make Ruluwoor's night special, flying across the planet to pick up the proper flowers. Ruluwoor made a stunning impression at the ball, and later she and Horn, who had hit it off, made love. While Horn enjoyed the experience immensely, he proved allergic to her fur and her skin was irritated by his sweat, resulting in an uncomfortable experience for both afterward. Knowing their relationship would not work out, they parted amicably.
During one raid on a glitterstim dealer's warehouse, Horn was nearly shot in the resulting battle. Wessiri shot the man who had Horn in his sights, saving his life. Horn immediately felt grateful to Wessiri and began to think he was in love with her. In the emotional aftermath of the fighting, Wessiri reciprocated his feelings, but they were separated and debriefed before they could act on them. Horn did not see her until two days later, by which time the moment had passed and he realized their feelings were merely the result of the emotional aftereffects of battle.
At some point during his partnership with Wessiri, Horn was assigned to protect heiress Siolle Tinta. They got along very well due to their similar views on art, and during the three days they spent together in a safe house, Horn came to believe he was in love with her. In short order, however, Wessiri caught the potential kidnapper after Tinta and she no longer needed protection. Horn quickly realized that their time together had merely been an infatuation that would not have worked long-term.
====Drifting into danger====
Around ten months after the Battle of Endor, Horn and Wessiri were assigned to investigate the kidnapping of Fyric Fel, the two-year-old nephew of Imperial fighter ace Colonel Baron Soontir Fel. They went to the Fel estate, where Wessiri interviewed Fyric's parents, Todr and Ajai Fel. They gave up little information and were not particularly cooperative. Horn, after examining the crime scene, was convinced that the kidnappers were extremely skilled professionals. When three strangers pulled up to the estate and identified themselves as friends of the family coming for a visit, Horn was immediately suspicious of them. They were actually Wes Janson, Derek Klivian, and Isplourrdacartha Estillo of Rogue Squadron, sent to offer the Fels asylum in the New Republic, to which Soontir Fel had defected. While Horn asked Wessiri about the three, Loor arrived and took control of the investigation. After deflecting Loor's interest, Horn let the three Rogues go but asked them, if they were truly family friends, to convince the Fels to cooperate.
Horn and Wessiri were able to find a source within the kidnapping gang who informed them that the kidnappers would be at an alley, where they waited. The Rogues arrived there for a meeting with the kidnappers, having been enlisted by Ajai Fel to aid them, but were attacked. Horn and Wessiri drew their blasters and entered the fight, but the ringleader of the plot, Ilir Post, fled. Estillo argued that Post was likely working for the Empire, as Loor had seemed keen to pull the pair of investigators off the case. Horn found that unlikely until Estillo suggested that Soontir Fel had defected, leaving Horn strongly suspicious that the group was from the New Republic. Though not happy about working with these agents, Horn was committed to rescuing Fyric and decided that, with the Empire against them, he would have to take what allies he could get.
When they received word from their informant as to where Post was hiding, they raided his estate. They had to shoot their way across an open, guarded lawn, but before they entered the manor, Post appeared on a balcony holding Fyric and a blaster. He ordered them to withdraw, or else he would kill the child. Horn and the others were caught in a bind with no shot at Post, but knowing that if they withdrew, Post would likely open fire on them. Their dilemma was solved when a shot caught Post in the head, killing him. Fyric dropped several stories from the balcony, saved by Estillo in a diving catch. Horn was confused as to the source of the shot, but as they left, they found Todr Fel in the woods with a blaster rifle. He had shot Post knowing that Fyric would be killed if Post lived, and that there was a chance Fyric might live if Post were shot. Horn allowed the Rogue pilots to leave with the Fels and put off filing his reports on the incident as long as possible so that the Imperials would not be tipped off. When the Rogues departed the planet, their transport came under attack by TYE-wing uglies. Horn, having shadowed the ship in his X-wing, destroyed three of the fighters, allowing the ship to escape.
Horn's division wished to focus on spice smugglers and other serious criminals, but around the beginning of 5 ABY, Loor ordered them to pursue Rebel shipping. When they preferred to focus on what they felt were criminals actually hurting Corellia, Loor threatened to bring them up on charges of treason, his ability to do so amplified by the Imperials fleeing to Corellia in the aftermath of the defeat at Endor. Bastra, feeling they were in danger, worked up false identities for himself, Horn, and the Wessiris. In order to be clear of suspicion, Horn and Bastra made up files on a group of dangerous smugglers, which Bastra then accused Horn of murdering. They staged an argument and pretended that their friendship had been destroyed. With Loor convinced they hated each other, they were free to meet outside the office and set up their escape routes. Loor threatened to bring murder charges against him for the smugglers if Horn ever crossed him.
With Horn knowing he was about to escape, he began openly defying Loor more often. Eventually, Loor sent Horn to investigate smuggler activity that was supposedly occurring in the system. Horn took his CorSec X-wing, with Whistler in the astromech socket, to investigate but found two flights of TIE fighters waiting for him, an ambush set up by Loor. He shot down a few of the TIEs and jumped into hyperspace.
===Transitional period===
====On the run====
Whistler had the complete files for the cover identities set up by Bastra, and Horn moved through several of them. Whistler encouraged him to join the fledgling New Republic, but Horn insisted that he simply wanted to lay low. During his time on the run, he always managed to fly once a week. He spent the majority of his time as "Eamon Yzalli" on Garqi—over a year—as the confidential aide to a succession of governors on the Imperial world. As the last governor he worked under was frequently absent, he worked most closely with the military prefect, Mosh Barris. He hid his X-wing with Whistler in an abandoned building but visited the droid and took the fighter for night flights frequently, easily evading the local patrols. When his centrifugal debris extractor was damaged by a rdava-bird striking the intake, Captain Lai Nootka of the freighter Star's Delight brought Horn parts as well as a shipment of proton torpedoes for the fighter. However, the freighter's cargo was found by the Imperial authorities, creating fears of a Rebel presence on Garqi. Minor slicing attacks displaying New Republic crests inflamed those fears, though Horn knew they were only the work of dissatisfied students at Garqi Agricultural University. One of them, Dynba Tesc, had been arrested and was interrogated by Barris. Horn was convinced that when Barris realized she knew nothing, he would let her go, but Barris seemed convinced that Tesc was a genuine Rebel. Feeling guilty over the imprisonment of Nootka and his crew, Horn wanted to free them, but felt unable to without his X-wing in working order.
As Yzalli, Horn spoke with Barris about Tesc's case, suggesting she might know no more than the little she had said. Barris was convinced that she was holding out, and that he could revive his dismal career by rooting out Garqi's Rebel cell. Barris mentioned that Kirtan Loor had been dispatched to Garqi. Already convinced by the Imperial attention to the world that it was time for him to move on, this development only alarmed him more; Horn knew that even despite the fact that he had grown a beard and dyed his hair blond, Loor would recognize him. Further driving him to action was Barris's intent to publicly execute Tesc as an example and in so doing drive her Rebel confederates to reveal themselves as they dispersed. Horn immediately hit upon a solution to his problem, and proposed to Barris that he schedule Tesc's execution for one week later. Horn would tell Tesc that he would arrange her escape, playing on his false identity's Alderaanian origins to convince her that he had decided to oppose the Empire. Gathering her, her Rebel friends, and the crew of the Star's Delight together, he would have them attempt to escape on the restocked freighter. Garqi's TIE complement could destroy the entire Rebel presence in one stroke as they fled, a kill ensured by sabotaging the ship's shields ahead of time. Horn would deliver the parts to the freighter, but in order to keep him from actually being on it, Barris would enter a notation of his execution in the Imperial system. The Rebel slicers, assuming that Yzalli had been found out, would alert their confederates to flee at once. As the slicers could access the Imperial system, neither Horn nor Barris could enter any information on the plan into the computer system. Delighted, Barriss approved the plan. In fact, Horn would use the parts to repair his fighter and use the supposed Rebels' escape to cover his own, allowing him to escape and free those he had brought into danger.
Horn spoke with Tesc and told her of the escape plan, though he did not reveal his true identity or plans. He removed her from prison and had her pass herself off as "Kirtana Loor" in order to take the Delight crew out of custody and to the Delight. Using only the TIE pilots he planned to shoot down as workers, he had the ship's cargo restored to it, minus the debris extractor he needed. He also had a duplex circuit in the shield system replaced with a triplex one—sabotage which could be repaired by giving the freighter's crew the proper codes. Everything was in place for an escape attempt the next day, around the time Loor would be arriving.
The gathering of the crew and Tesc's cell of slicers went smoothly, and the Star's Delight began its escape. Horn's final act as Eamon Yzalli was to send a report to Loor stating that Barris had arranged the escape as part of a plot to turn Garqi over to the New Republic. With Yzalli's vague death report filed by Barris, Loor had Barris arrested. Horn wanted to send a message to the Delight with the shield codes, but Barris had deactivated his message account when he declared him dead. Now forced to intervene actively, he made his way to his freshly-repaired X-wing. There, he was shocked to have Whistler reveal to him that the droid, through HoloNet contact, had been the mysterious leader of Tesc's slicing ring, known as "Xeno" to the students. Horn launched, caught up to the freighter, and gave Nootka the shield code. He then quickly shot down two of the TIEs with proton torpedoes but had to dogfight with the last two. After shooting one down, he still had the best of the pilots on his tail. A trick maneuver using his repulsorlifts to bounce off the Star's Delight was able to put him in position to destroy the final TIE fighter and escape.
Horn followed Nootka to a New Republic base, where the New Republic's Captain Dromath was extremely impressed upon hearing of Horn's performance over Garqi. He urged Horn to join the New Republic, but Horn, wary of becoming involved in the galactic struggle, maintained that he just wanted to be left alone. Dromath and Tesc told him that the New Republic needed him, and that he was better off fighting the Empire with others than on his own. When Dromath told him that the elite Rogue Squadron was being re-formed and was seeking pilots, Horn was intrigued. He realized that he missed having companionship, and that he would never be able to truly escape the Empire without the New Republic. He decided to join the cause.
====Becoming a Rogue====
In 6 ABY, Horn tried out for a position in the elite Rogue Squadron, which was being re-formed under the famous Corellian Commander Wedge Antilles. He trained for several months at Folor, where his roommate was Ooryl Qrygg, a Gand who always spoke in the third person. Used to being on his own, he was relatively distant from the rest of the trainees. Horn strongly disliked Bror Jace, a pilot generally considered his rival for the top position among the trainees, considering him arrogant and egotistical.
Near the end of the training regimen, he flew his final iteration of the Redemption scenario, a classic piloting simulation in which he and three other pilot-candidates were required to protect the frigate Redemption while it was evacuated to the vulnerable corvette Korolev. The Imperial frigate Warspite meanwhile harassed them, deploying fighters and bombers. In an earlier simulation, Horn had flown one of the bombers, successfully destroying the Korolev. Horn, flying with Qrygg, Nawara Ven, and Rhysati Ynr, was now in command of the flight, and decided that he would operate by conventional wisdom, ranging ahead to engage the fighters himself while the other three provided a backstop that prevented Warspite from deploying fighters even closer. Horn was able to shoot down the first three TIE bombers, but as he engaged the last three, he found that one of the TIE fighters from the first wave was killing his companions. He desperately tried to bounce the last TIE bomber, which he suspected was piloted by Jace, off his shields, dealing it crippling damage, before he was able to engage the final TIE fighter. He engaged the fighter, launching a proton torpedo, which it dodged. As the TIE settled in behind Horn, he became convinced that the pilot had to be the legendary Antilles. He was able to break free of the pursuit and came around for a head-to-head pass. The other pilot's fire was able to distract his targeting sensors, keeping him from getting a lock, and Horn was rendered dead in space. He won the scenario, however, as his earlier proton torpedo finally caught up with the TIE and destroyed it. After the mission, he was approached by the other pilot, who was not Antilles at all. He congratulated Horn and departed, leaving Horn impressed by his skill but wondering as to his identity. He was in fact Captain Tycho Celchu, a former Rogue whom Antilles had brought in specifically to defeat Horn, as there was no other trainee significantly above Horn's flying level. Horn's run of the Redemption scenario turned out to be the highest of all the candidates'.
After the simulation, Horn went to perform maintenance on his X-wing, where he was approached by pilot-candidate Lujayne Forge. She confronted him over his separation from the rest of the candidates, accusing him of holding the fact that she was from Kessel against her. He explained that he was merely used to isolation and found it difficult to trust others after his time on Garqi, and she invited him to drinks with the other cadets at the DownTime cantina, which he accepted. She also aided him with his maintenance, leaving him owing her a favor.
In short order, Horn received a message telling him to report to the squadron briefing room. He had been selected for the squadron. At the briefing, he learned that the mystery pilot was Celchu, who would be the unit's executive officer. During the introduction, it was mentioned that two of the pilots had death marks against them. Horn, Qrygg, Ynr, and Ven speculated about who might have them, correctly identifying Riv Shiel as a likely candidate for the Empire's enmity. Horn was amused to learn from "Emtrey," the unit's military protocol droid and quartermaster, that he was the second recipient, Loor having followed through on his threat to use the smuggler incident against him. During Emtrey's search of records to confirm his story, however, the droid came across an Imperial report that Bastra had died. Horn was distraught at the loss of his mentor, but believed it might be a false report by Loor aimed at goading him.
Horn was given the callsign Rogue Nine, and Qrygg served as his wingman. The next day, he and the rest of the Rogues were sent in to fly through a shooting range in the so-called Pig Trough, a Folor canyon. Horn flew it well, hoping to set a high score, but upon returning to the base and waiting as others completed the exercise and returned, he found that all the others had performed better than he had. Horn was puzzled, knowing the others should not be beating him so consistently. Eventually, he realized that Antilles had ordered Whistler to feed his telemetry back to the rest of the squadron, giving them information about the run and allowing them to score better. Horn was furious, feeling that he had been humiliated.
When Antilles and Celchu entered the hangar, Horn angrily confronted his commanding officer. Antilles lectured him in return, telling him that he had learned a lesson about teamwork. His own score in the training exercise was immaterial; what was important was the cohesion of the squadron. He was a more talented pilot, but was no more important than anyone else. Chagrined, Horn accepted the truth of Antilles's argument. Afterward, he was approached by Celchu, who told him that his loner tendencies were keeping him apart from the squadron, and advised him to rectify them. Horn was surprised, however, when a guard escorted Celchu away after the conversation, leaving him wondering if the man was some sort of security risk. With the conversation over, he was approached by Rogue Erisi Dlarit, who told him the rest of the pilots were in DownTime and wanted to apologize. Horn attended, and told them not to feel bad for him; that it had been an important lesson for him to learn.
The Rogues continued training, including an attack on General Horton Salm's training wing of Y-wings, in which the Rogues had an eight-to-one kill ratio. After one month of training as a squadron, the Rogues were assigned an astronavigation exercise. Horn was promoted to the rank of lieutenant and given command of the squadron's Three Flight, including Qrygg, Forge, and Andoorni Hui, and the Rogues were required to pack their gear, all of which made Horn think that their trip was more than an exercise. Their trip would have three legs, with One Flight plotting the first, Two Flight plotting the second, and Three Flight plotting the third. Each had various beginning and ending points with which to work, requiring them to work up multiple courses; however, Horn was able to eliminate most of them by the course of the first and second jumps, leaving him only two routes to refine. He decided to trim some time off the jump to the Morobe system by plotting a course nearer to the center of the Chorax system.
This turned out to be the course they used, but it resulted in the squadron's being pulled out of hyperspace in the Chorax system due to the presence of an Interdictor cruiser, which was in the process of capturing a smuggling ship. Horn was nervous at the prospect of combat but engaged the TIE interceptors escorting the cruiser. He destroyed one fighter before he was struck by an ion cannon blast from the Black Asp, disabling his fighter. He was able to bring up emergency power and stop the spin he had been thrown into but was left floating and vulnerable. When the other Rogues drove off the Black Asp, it fled past Horn, with several interceptors in its wake. Tycho Celchu, flying the squadron's shuttle Forbidden, was able to get a missile lock on two of the interceptors, feeding Horn the targeting data and allowing him to shoot both down with proton torpedoes. The smuggler craft, which was affiliated with the New Republic, clamped Horn's X-wing and carried him on to Talasea in the Morobe system, Rogue Squadron's new base; the squadron had been put on active duty.
Upon reaching Talasea, Horn debarked and found that the ship which had ferried him was the Pulsar Skate, captained by Mirax Terrik, the daughter of his father's old nemesis Booster Terrik, whom Hal Horn had sent to Kessel. Antilles, an old friend of Terrik's, had to defuse the situation. Walking away with Antilles, Horn asked why Celchu was flying an unarmed shuttle, had never had full-power weapons on his training Z-95 Headhunter, and had appeared to be under guard on Folor. Antilles told him that he had complete faith in Celchu, and that the matter was Celchu's business. Horn would have to ask Celchu if he wanted an explanation. However, since airing the matter could damage squadron morale, Antilles asked Horn to keep everything private, to which he agreed.
===Rogue rookie===
====Activation====
Horn's fighter took two weeks to repair, at the end of which he was once more flying fighter missions escorting New Republic ships moving along the edge of the Core. Eventually, they were assigned to cover the repair and extraction of the frigate Battle of Yavin in the Hensara system. The Pulsar Skate and the CR90 corvette Eridain were also present for the mission. Horn was left flying air patrol over Hensara III while the other two flights covered the Battle of Yavin on the ground, where Imperial walkers were searching for it. However, a duty that Horn expected to be monotonous soon turned anything but when the Strike-class cruiser Havoc arrived and began deploying TIEs. Horn led Three Flight against thirty TIEs while the others rushed back up to aid him. He destroyed six fighters in the battle, becoming an ace, and Havoc was forced to withdraw.
The pilots returned to Talasea, where they celebrated their victory. Jace, however, began hazing sixteen-year-old Gavin Darklighter, who had acquired no kills in the engagement. The squadron decided that a joking punishment was in order, and Ven presented the case to Antilles, Celchu, and Captain Afyon of the Eridain for a judgment. Celchu suggested that Darklighter be apprenticed to the best pilot, and the others agreed. It was assumed that Horn, by virtue of having one more kill than Jace at the Rout of Hensara and four more kills overall. Jace, however, argued that he was the best pilot by virtue of shooting down more of the targets he had faced. While Antilles dismissed an argument of percentages as irrelevant, Horn decided to show confidence in Darklighter. He offered to concede the title of best pilot to Jace and average his own kills with Darklighter's, leaving all three tied at five kills overall. Thereafter, he and Jace would compete head-to-head or with Darklighter averaged with Horn, whichever Jace preferred. Jace agreed to continue averaging Darklighter's kills—favorable terms for him—but had both himself and Horn share the title of best pilot. However, in a trick maneuver by Horn, the averaging eliminated Darklighter's position as worst pilot, forcing Ven to serve as Horn's and Jace's errand boy.
One night, Horn was awaken from sleep by a distinct sense of unease. He was sleeping in an outlying, poorly-maintained hut, the result of a windstorm knocking a kaha tree into his and Qrygg's room at the main building. Horn crouched at the doorway, and when a stormtrooper entered, the unarmed Horn tackled him and used the Imperial's sidearm to kill him. He searched the man and found that the Imperials had been setting explosives in the base. With Qrygg returned from a walk in which he had killed another stormtrooper, Horn took the stormtrooper's weapons and set out for the main building with Qrygg. On their way, Qrygg killed another sentry and Horn took that man's breastplate. The pair slipped into the building, where they awoke and armed Darklighter and Shiel. Stormtroopers entered the hall, and Horn emerged from the other pilots' room firing. Darklighter emerged too soon, however, and took a shot. Horn left him to be tended to by the other pilots, who were awakened by the commotion, while he left to secure the hangar. He scattered a knot of troopers with a grenade, then began firing at the numerous troopers in the hangar while Qrygg and Shiel provided support from outside. His luck did not last and Horn was shot in the chest. Though the other Rogues were able to drive the stormtroopers off and disable the explosives, they had to evacuate the base, and Horn required an extensive session in a bacta tank.
When Horn and Darklighter emerged from their bacta tanks, Antilles greeted them and informed them that Lujayne Forge had been killed in the attack. Horn attended Forge's funeral, and was well in time for the retaliatory attack on Vladet, from which the attack force had come. The Rogues escorted Salm's Defender Wing in an assault on the Imperial base there, but as Three Flight had lost Forge and had Hui still recovering, it was assigned to escort Warden Squadron, which would only be performing cleanup. However, while orbiting and waiting to go in, a Carrack-class cruiser and Lancer-class frigate arrived in the New Republic forces' exit vector. The Lancer-class was designed to present an intense challenge to starfighters, meaning that fleeing Vladet would be extremely dangerous. Horn, inspired by his experience at Chorax, suggested he fly against the Lancer, having the Y-wings of Warden Squadron, which would stand off out of the Lancer's range, target his homing beacon. By interposing the frigate between himself and the proton torpedoes at the correct time, they would strike the capital ship. Salm refused to assent to the plan, but Horn proceeded with it anyway. He successfully weaved through the Lancer's heavy fire, but two late-launched torpedoes maneuvered around the explosion which claimed the Lancer. Only Whistler's timely cutout of the homing beacon saved Horn from being killed.
Despite the successful destruction of the Lancer, Salm remained incensed at Horn's defiance of orders. Horn was confined to quarters and was threatened with a court-martial. He was visited in his cabin by squadron-mates and friends. One of them was Erisi Dlarit, who explained that she felt immensely grateful to Horn for destroying the Lancer and saving her life. Horn rebuffed her romantic overtures, telling her that she was merely feeling the emotional aftereffects of combat. Immediately after she left, Mirax Terrik entered. She had heard Horn was in trouble and brought him a small care package of Corellian goods to cheer him up, including the traditional Corellian ryshcate. They shared the ryshcate and some of the Whyren's Reserve whiskey she had brought, and when she left Horn realized that he enjoyed her company and the ability to share their Corellian heritage.
====The Battles of Borleias====
The Rogues' next mission was to assault a planet known by the codename "Blackmoon" in order to secure a stepping-stone to Coruscant. Salm's Defender Wing was to be involved, and both he and Antilles thought that the mission was likely to go wrong and that General Laryn Kre'fey, the mission planner, was far from thorough in his research and overconfident in his planning. As a result, Salm dropped all charges, deciding that it was more important that Horn be flying for the mission.
His flight status restored, Horn participated in the battle. His Three Flight, still missing a replacement for Forge, was assigned to escort Warden Squadron in a bombing run to soften up the defenses after bombardment from Emancipator brought the Imperial base's shields down. However, Kre'fey called off the bombing run when the shield came down, citing the lack of heavy resistance. The Rogues were assigned to escort the assault shuttles in, leaving Horn with an extremely bad feeling. He was proved right when the base began firing its ion cannon, renewed its shields at twice their previous strength, and began launching fighters. Horn flew against the fighters, protecting the shuttles as they withdrew. Hui was killed in the dogfight, though Horn destroyed the interceptor which killed her. Horn and Qrygg saved the shuttle Devonian from a TIE attack, but in the process Qrygg was shot down and forced to eject. Horn and the few other remaining Rogue pilots had to hold off two more squadrons of TIE interceptors which had arrived from a previously unknown base on Blackmoon. They were only saved by the return of Defender Wing, which had been ordered out when the bombing runs were aborted. With all the extravehicular Rogues rescued, they retreated.
The squadron returned to base on Noquivzor, where Lieutenant Judder Page, one of the commandos who had been on the Devonian, bought him a mug of lum in gratitude. While they spoke, Whistler reported that his information-gathering programs had been able to discover the actual location of Blackmoon—Borleias. Horn and Page had already realized that the extra power and reinforcement squadrons likely came from an additional base that the Imperials did not know about—a side operation by the proper base's commander. With Whistler's data, they confirmed that the side operation was likely the abandoned Alderaan Biotics facility, which the base commander, General Evir Derricote, had revived to sell Alderaanian goods on the black market. They also discovered that the power conduit between the two bases was exposed when it crossed a rift valley, giving them the ability to destroy it and cut the power. Horn and Page presented this information to Antilles and Salm, who took it to Admiral Ackbar and received permission for another strike. Rogue Squadron would destroy the conduit, while Page's Katarn Commandos would enter the conduit and capture both facilities. The position of the moon, however, would block any quick escape and, due to the timing of the strike, anyone left behind would run out of life support before reinforcements arrived. With Rogue Squadron depleted, it would be a volunteer mission.
For operational security reasons, all the pilots other than Horn were told that they were striking a different planet. Horn volunteered for the mission, though he insisted that he fly as Antilles's wingman in the first run on the conduit. During the long rounds of simulations, Horn's tension with Jace came to a head, and Jace, who was one behind Horn in kills but winning their competition due to Darklighter's averaging, reverted to a head-to-head competition for the upcoming battle. The evening before they were to depart for Borleias, Dlarit invited him to sleep with her. Though he found her extremely attractive, Horn declined, stating he needed to be rested for the mission. When he returned to his quarters, he found Mirax Terrik sleeping in Qrygg's bunk; Qrygg was in the medical bay due to losing his arm to debris while extravehicular. Terrik expressed relief that Horn was not sleeping with Dlarit, but when Horn pressed her on the issue she denied any feelings for him. Horn was hurt, but suspected she might have denied them so strongly because the accusation was more true than she wanted to admit. They chatted and apologized for hurting each other's feelings, and Terrik, an expert in collectibles, noted that Horn's good-luck medallion was in fact a Jedi Credit, a commemorative medallion struck when a Corellian Jedi reached mastery. When Horn turned in to his own bed, Terrik began hinting that she might like Horn to sleep with her by asking if he was warm enough. Horn, however, said he was warm enough, feeling he would be using Terrik. She, in turn, asked him to hand her his spare blanket.
The next morning, Terrik wore Horn's flight jacket and kissed him goodbye as he entered his fighter, but both maintained that they were only friends. They launched from Noquivzor and headed towards Borleias, approaching through canyons along Borleias's moon before they made their way to the surface under the cover of a meteor shower. During the approach, the fuel pump which would replenish his fuel tank from the auxiliary fuel pod attached to his fighter failed, meaning it would take longer to empty the pod and detach it. He and Antilles began their run through the rift canyon while the other four pilots held off the TIEs. They were pursued by a pair of TIE fighters, and misses by one pursuer led to debris striking his fuel pod and beginning a leak. Horn jettisoned it, with the explosion taking out the fighter. This left him dangerously low on fuel. Horn made his run against the conduit, but missed, as did Antilles. While Antilles returned for another pass, he ordered Horn out, as he had barely enough fuel to head back to base.
Horn began flying back to base, but on his way out of the atmosphere, he noticed two TIEs making a run against the Devonian, which was landing Page's commandos. Horn turned back and destroyed one of the interceptors on his first pass, but had to dogfight with the second one, burning up enough fuel to make it impossible for him to return to Noquivzor. With nearly two more squadrons of TIEs launching, the others had to flee, and Horn was told to land on the moon's surface, where his life support system could concentrate the thin atmosphere, and wait for New Republic forces to arrive. He holed up in an inactive volcanic tube, and when a squadron of interceptors began a search pattern for him, he realized they would find him before reinforcements could arrive. He accepted that he would die, but prepared to take as many enemies as possible with him. When one flight passed over his hole, Horn ambushed them and flew out to begin engaging the other fighters. However, as he prepared to make his last stand, he was caught in a tractor beam. He found that Terrik and Celchu, concerned that operational security had been breached by Emtrey's listing of Alderaanian items on the squadron's sell list, had taken the Pulsar Skate to Borleias in an attempt to warn the squadron. When no ambush seemed forthcoming, they settled in on the moon, and when Horn emerged they flew to his rescue, with Celchu shooting down several of the interceptors around Horn as they fled.
Rescued by the speedy Pulsar Skate, Horn arrived at Noquivzor before the rest of the Rogues. When they did arrive, he decided to play a prank on his squadron-mates, sending a live message to the Rogues as if it were a message pre-recorded in case of his death, but quickly broke the deception. He, Terrik, and Celchu had a small party ready for the others when they touched down. However, Jace had beaten Horn's tally of twenty-one kills by just one. Jace did not have long to enjoy the victory, as he was presumed killed not long after when he disappeared on his way home to Thyferra.
====Readying to strike====
The Rogues were transferred to Borleias, where they spent the next month guarding the world. There, Horn and Qrygg were given a suite of rooms—a private bedroom for each opening onto a small living room which Horn attempted to furnish as best he could. When Horn was patrolling over the world one month after its conquest, he felt deeply unnerved by the arrival of the Vengeance Derra IV over the world, a freighter which appeared to be unremarkable. Flying with Champion Five and Champion Six, Horn let the Y-wings handle the challenge to the ship as he made a pass to inspect the ship. When Champion Five reported that the ship had given the correct code on the second try, Horn was immediately suspicious, recalling a series of burglaries he had investigated in which the thief, who worked for the company which made the ROMs used in the locks, had built in a password which, when sent the first time, would send the actual password back to the thief for use on the second try. Horn thought that a similar capability might have been built into some of the Y-wing comm components by Imperial Intelligence agents. Horn ordered the freighter to stand by for boarding, but the ship would not stop. Instead, it released four TIE fighters and two TIE bombers. Horn let the Y-wings deal with the bombers as he engaged the starfighters, shooting down one. The Y-wings quickly eliminated the bombers, but Horn kept them from joining the dogfight, worried that the inexperienced pilots would only get in the way. However, when the TIEs took his shields down, Horn had to break away. The TIEs began attacking the Y-wings, and Horn had to shoot down one to save Champion Five. He expected to die, given that another TIE was on his tail, but Champion Six shot that fighter down with a proton torpedo. The Vengeance Derra IV fled.
After returning, Horn met with Celchu. Celchu had recruited him to investigate Emtrey's odd functions. When told to shut up three times in succession, he entered a state in which all his memories could be accessed. He also had an odd skill in acquiring parts through the black market. Horn presented Celchu with the results of his inquiries, stating that Emtrey had been rebuilt at Echo Base on Hoth in 3 ABY by an officer of the Quartermaster Corps and given special commodities-brokering software. Due to Losca, the builder, dying at Hoth, no one else had been aware of Emtrey's abilities until Horn accidentally reactivated them by instructing the droid to "scrounge" a part on Talasea. Horn concluded that the droid did not seem to be a security risk. He did mention to Celchu that he had tried to slice the captain's file while having Whistler slice information on Emtrey. Celchu told Horn that if he wanted to know anything, he could have asked him, and explained that he had been captured while on a spy mission to Coruscant in 5 ABY. He was imprisoned in the notorious Lusankya prison, where Director of Imperial Intelligence Ysanne Isard turned prisoners into unknowing agents for the Empire. Not remembering their time in the prison, they were capable of being suddenly reactivated and causing great harm. Celchu, however, actually remembered his time in the prison and was adamant that he had not been broken. After transfer to a prison on Akrit'tar, he escaped and rejoined the New Republic, but few other than Antilles trusted him, leading to the security precautions around him. After considering Celchu's apparent sincerity and his repeated saving of his life, Horn decided to trust the man.
Later, Horn received two bad pieces of news. The first was that the wreckage from Jace's fighter had been found; with an Interdictor operating in the area, it was presumed he had been pulled from hyperspace and destroyed. The second was confirmation of Bastra's death report, with the explanation that he had been killed at Loor's hands in an interrogation mishap. Shortly thereafter, Terrik relayed a report of the Vengeance Derra IV being in the GaTir system. Rogue Squadron departed to investigate. With the unit still short on pilots, Horn flew as the wingman to Captain Aril Nunb, a new transfer and the temporary squadron leader, as Antilles was absent at a conference on Noquivzor. Upon arriving, Horn recognized that the ship Contruum's Pride was moving in tandem with the Vengeance, transferring cargo. Nunb ordered the two ships to surrender, but they responded by launching TIEs. The Rogues shot down all the fighters and disabled both capital ships. The Battle of Mrisst was a clean victory for the New Republic.
The reason for Antilles's presence at Noquivzor was that Rogue Squadron had been assigned to scout Coruscant for conquest, though this was revealed to no one beyond Antilles. First, however, they were assigned to travel to Kessel in order to free several Black Sun prisoners there. They would be inserted onto Coruscant, where they would cause disruption and serve as an auxiliary force for the New Republic. By taking the most dangerous inmates off the hands of warden Moruth Doole, they would be able to trade for the release of various political prisoners. Horn was extremely uncomfortable with the plan, especially when he realized Zekka Thyne would be one of the prisoners they would free. Horn suggested they simply leave Thyne and falsify records to state that he had died, but Antilles pointed out that the most dangerous Black Sunners would be the most effective against Isard's regime on Coruscant.
Horn agreed to the plan, and Rogue Squadron took Kessel's moon base before clearing a landing area on the planet. Horn served as part of Antilles's negotiating team, looking over the list of prisoners and examining them as they were brought out. With him on that team were Kassar and Myda Forge, Lujayne's parents and instructors in a rehabilitation program for the inmates. Thyne was released and brought with him his lover, Inyri Forge, Lujayne's sister. Upon arriving in Rogue Squadron's temporary headquarters, Thyne taunted Horn, attempting to take credit for his father's death. Horn dismissed him. When Thyne left, Horn attempted to convince Forge not to leave with Thyne, but she insisted that she loved him and would go with him. Horn was able to find one prisoner to free who he thought could serve to reign in Thyne: Fliry Vorru, the notoriously corrupt former moff of the Corellian sector.
===New Republic hero===
====Conquering Coruscant====
Horn returned from Kessel and met up with Terrik on Noquivzor, where Rogue Squadron's base had been transferred. However, he was summoned to Antilles's office. There, he and Erisi Dlarit were informed that they had been assigned to infiltrate Coruscant and scout it for a New Republic invasion. Antilles did not know their cover identities and could not confirm if any other squadron members were being sent in, though Horn and Dlarit correctly assumed that that was the case. They were immediately flown away to begin their mission.
Horn and Dlarit trained for some time in their assumed identities before they traveled to Coruscant aboard the starliner Jewel of Churba. Horn posed as the telbun servant to Dlarit's Kuati aristocrat. In her role, Dlarit treated him dismissively and abusively and Horn had to act subservient, wearing layers of uncomfortable clothes. He hated the role and was glad to reach Coruscant safely. There, they were picked up in a shuttle piloted by their New Republic Intelligence contact on Coruscant, Winter, though she went by the name Rima Borealis with Horn and Dlarit.
They spent a week on Coruscant studying the security situation and medical facilities of Coruscant, preparing reports. Horn used his police experience to surveil the local constabulary and stormtrooper garrisons, checking their discipline and tactics. After a week, he, Dlarit, and Winter decided to examine the security in the Imperial Palace itself. He felt it risky, but decided that it was necessary to find information about how well the building was guarded if the New Republic were to capture it. The three spent time in the Grand Corridor, where Horn observed that security, while unobtrusive, was tight. During their conversation in the Grand Corridor, Winter indirectly brought up Celchu, with whom she had had a romantic relationship before his capture. Horn realized he had lost his trust in Celchu, a feeling which conflicted with the fact that he looked up to the man and caused him to be inordinately angry with Celchu. Winter told him some of Celchu's life story, noting that he had seen his entire family die when he was speaking with them by HoloNet when Alderaan was destroyed. At that moment, Horn noted Kirtan Loor walking past. Frightened of discovery and even more overwhelmed by the desire to kill Loor right then, Horn pulled Dlarit into a kiss to cover his face. When Loor had passed, he explained and apologized.
Horn and Dlarit returned to their hotel room, where Dlarit, moved by hearing of Horn's father's death during Horn's outburst in the Grand Corridor, attempted to comfort him physically. Horn was extremely tempted, but realized that the two could never have a genuine relationship and that their attraction was little more than lust. He broke off the encounter and took a walk to attempt to sort out his feelings. He wandered deep into the underlevels of Coruscant, where he decided to focus on the mission and not stress about things that were out of his control. Realizing that he had made his way into a dangerous portion of the undercity, he decided to pause and headed inside a cantina called The Headquarters. There, he noticed Tycho Celchu in a booth. A cloaked figure was leaving the booth, and while Horn could not see him, he recognized his gait as that of Kirtan Loor.
Convinced Celchu was a traitor, Horn rushed to report it, but was intercepted by several of Zekka Thyne's henchmen. Thyne himself appeared, and Horn knew the criminal leader intended to kill him. In desperation, Horn was able to fight his way free and steal a blaster from his captors, taking off on one of the swoops parked outside the cantina. Pursued by Thyne's thugs on more swoops, Horn fled upwards before realizing he made too easy a target. He flew lower, where it was more difficult to target him in the maze of alleys, and set up ambushes occasionally as he outdistances his pursuers. However, one swoop with a sidecar was able to attach a grapple to Horn's swoop. He shot the pilot, but the other swoop remained attached to his, weighing him down. He slammed the trailing swoop into a building, losing the swoop, but the cable and sidecar to which it was anchored remained attached. Horn was able to dismount and rushed into a warehouse, where he found Imperial stormtroopers in the process of a raid on the members of the Alien Combine. With them were almost all the other members of Rogue Squadron. Horn helped them escape and rescued Inyri Forge, one of the swoop riders pursuing him, from an Imperial attack. They withdrew to a place Asyr Sei'lar, one of the Alien Combine leaders, had as a safe house.
Horn left the others there and made contact with Winter. He told her that he needed to speak with Antilles, who he knew had to be on the planet. He had to wait a few days before she took him to The Headquarters, where Antilles met with him. He told the commander that he had seen Celchu meeting with Loor, but Antilles said that Celchu had been at Noquivzor, which had been attacked by Warlord Zsinj. Celchu was presumed dead. In addition, Rogue Squadron had a new assignment: taking down Coruscant's planetary shields in preparation for an invasion. They proceeded to a planning session with Vorru, Thyne, and the Alien Combine leadership. More importantly to Horn, Iella Wessiri was present, now an agent for New Republic Intelligence. He also learned that Terrik was present, having smuggled the other Rogues onto the planet. In the planning session, they sought a way to gain access to Coruscant's central computer system. Horn came up with the idea of inserting falsified code onto one of the subsidiary memory cores used in the main computer. Those cores were manufactured in factories where several members of the anti-Imperial Alien Combine worked, giving them the access to reformat the cores.
Horn and the others continued work growing their underground movement, building stocks of weapons and equipment. During that time, he was approached by Gavin Darklighter. The young man looked up to Horn as a mentor, and thought that Horn might be able to give him guidance on the issue of interspecies relations. Darklighter had become attracted to Sei'lar, a Bothan. Horn explained that while interspecies relationships might not be right for anyone, if there was genuine love, any problems could be worked around. Terrik and Wessiri arrived during the conversation, however, and Wessiri told the story of his relationship with Ruluwoor. Horn was worried that Terrik might look down on him for it, but she was more amused than disturbed.
When the cores were to be picked up, Horn and Terrik worked with some Black Sun enforcers to secure their exit in case things went wrong. Things did indeed go wrong, when the Empire raided the warehouse where the transfer was taking place. Horn's bad feeling about the transfer was vindicated when stormtroopers blew the door into the office where he and Terrik were watching the transfer. Horn and Terrik shot the stormtroopers who raided the office and fled to the garage, where they found the Black Sun members fleeing in airspeeders, pursued by stormtroopers on speeder bikes. One of the stormtroopers tried to attack Horn, but Horn was able to knock him off his speeder bike. When one of the Black Sun airspeeders returned with a speeder bike pursuing, which Horn and Terrik eliminated, Forge, piloting the airspeeder, gave them a ride out. Horn was convinced Thyne had betrayed the group, and when Forge took them back to the Black Sun rendezvous, Thyne was there. He leveled a blaster at Horn and Terrik, but Horn told Forge that Thyne had betrayed them. Thyne admitted it, telling Horn that his Imperial contact was Kirtan Loor. Realizing that Thyne had sold her out and left her to die as well, Forge shot and killed him. As he died, Thyne tried to taunt Horn, telling him that someone else in the unit had already sold them out to Loor before Loor even contacted him. Horn immediately suspected Celchu.
Horn reunited with the others, where he learned that the Rogues had been given only two days to bring down the shields. The New Republic fleet was coming. In addition, Celchu was with the others. Antilles had brought him to Coruscant as secret backup, so he had not been at Noquivzor after all. Horn's suspicions of Celchu were inflamed. Antilles explained that Celchu had been meeting with Lai Nootka at The Headquarters, not Loor. Every single one of their supply caches had been raided by Imperials, except the one that Celchu had set up himself, the one the Rogues were currently using. Antilles told Horn that he was absolutely certain Celchu was not a traitor.
The Rogues, boosted by the presence of Winter, Wessiri, Terrik, Sei'lar, and Forge, began a planning session to determine how they would bring the shields down on such short notice. Darklighter proposed that they create a massive storm to bring down power. They could do so by redirecting an Orbital Solar Energy Transfer Satellite to boil off one of Coruscant's reservoirs. In order to redirect the orbital mirror, however, they had to take control of one of the subsidiary control centers. To that end, Horn suggested they take control of the construction droid operating nearby and send it rampaging towards the center, which would be evacuated. They could then shut down the droid and take the control center unopposed. Antilles approved the plan and assigned Horn to fly cover in one of the Z-95 Headhunters Celchu had procured during his time on the world. After checking out his Headhunter for the mission, he spoke to Terrik, telling her that he found her attractive and wanted to get to know her better. She agreed to make their relationship a romantic one. After she left, Horn was approached by Celchu. Celchu told him that he was not a spy and asked Horn to believe him. Horn did not and told the captain that when he returned from flying, he would make it his mission to track down the spy in their midst. Celchu accepted that, telling Horn that he had nothing to fear from an investigation, and left.
Horn flew solo, serving as the leader to the four other Headhunters providing air cover. Once Antilles took control of the construction droid and reoriented it, a squadron of TIE fighters was sent against them. He shot down several fighters before destroying an E-Web emplacement that had Antilles and his team pinned down inside the construction droid, then protected Antilles as he transferred from the droid to the control facility. The successful redirection of the OSETS begot a massive storm which brought down the inner layer of Coruscant's shields. However, that activated a new, previously hidden power grid that reinforced the outer shields. Antilles, Celchu, and Winter were able to pinpoint a substation for the new power grid, deep in the middle of the colossal storm, and sent Horn to destroy it. He was pursued by two TIE interceptors, one of which struck a walkway. He evaded the second long enough to fire a concussion missile at the substation, but it did not penetrate enough to do damage. Antilles, monitoring, got the idea to use his access to the Imperial system to slave the pursuing interceptor's trajectory to Horn's next missile shot. Horn fired his last concussion missile, which was followed by the slaved interceptor, destroying the substation and bringing down the shields. With the New Republic fleet arriving, the TIEs shifted their focus to the space defense, leaving Horn free to return to base. On his way, he noticed a strange blip on his sensors. Fellow Rogue Pash Cracken saw nothing, but Horn went to investigate it anyway. His controls locked up, however, with Isard's agents using overrides to take control of his fighter, push it into a turn sharp enough to knock him out, and have him captured by waiting Imperial forces. A building was destroyed on his flight path, making it look as if he had struck it and been killed.
====Captivity====
He was assumed dead by the New Republic and posthumously lionized as a hero of the New Republic and the defining figure of the Liberation of Coruscant. A memorial was erected at the presumed site of his death, and a massive, well-attended service was held one week after his "death," in which he was held up both as a hero and as a victim of the Empire, a focal point for New Republic mourning. The green, black, and gray CorSec color scheme used on his flight suit and fighter was adopted for new Rogue Squadron uniforms as well. Celchu, having had the override codes for Horn's Headhunter, was arrested on charges of Horn's murder and treason, creating a highly-publicized trial. While Celchu was vilified as a traitor, and Wessiri served gathering evidence for the prosecution, Whistler determined that Horn had been wrong about Celchu and offered to help the defense to make sure the true culprit did not go unpunished.
Horn awoke on what he thought to be a transport, where he was met by Ysanne Isard herself. He was defiant, but she confidently informed him that she would break him at her Lusankya facility, to which she was taking him. She also told him that she had seeded Coruscant with the Krytos virus before she let the New Republic capture it, causing a horrible plague among several nonhuman species. Horn was taken to Lusankya, where he was heavily drugged. In the first phase of Isard's brainwashing, he was put in a simulator in which he flew a TIE interceptor. Disoriented, amnesiac, and disinclined to question his surroundings, he took pleasure in flying and following orders. He shot down two TIEs, then two Uglies, easing him into the true focus of Isard's brainwashing: orders to shoot down two X-wings. While flying, he noticed that they had the Rogue Squadron crest emblazoned on them. He froze, though in his drugged state he was not conscious why, and his simulated TIE was destroyed. He was rebuked by Isard for his failure, and he apologized, seeking to prove himself worthy.
He was later drugged and put into the simulator again, forgetting his previous experience. From the beginning of this session, however, he was wracked by a sense of unease. He felt manipulated and disliked it. When two X-wings appeared, labeled as piloted by Tycho Celchu and Kirtan Loor, Horn realized that Loor was no pilot and Celchu's performance did not match his flying style at all. Putting together the facts, he realized that he was being brainwashed by Isard and ended the simulation. Isard appeared and told him that his ordeal was far from over, but Horn remained defiant. Even her promise of an intense narco-interrogation did not daunt him, as he knew that he did not possess any serious New Republic secrets. When Horn did not divulge any valuable information, Isard resorted to torture.
Torture yielded no results, and when it became clear Horn would not break as Isard wished, she had him incarcerated with the general population of Lusankya. One of the prisoners, Urlor Sette, took him to see the leader of the Rebel prisoners, a man known only by his first name of Jan. Horn did not realize that he was the legendary General Jan Dodonna of the Clone Wars and Rebellion. He also met the Imperial leader, General Evir Derricote, the former Borleias commander and the architect of the Krytos virus, now imprisoned by Isard. Horn questioned Dodonna on several points about Lusankya's security setup and immediately began planning to escape.
Horn spent one week with the general population, laboring during the day in making gravel. At the end of that week, he made his first escape attempt, intending to ride the conveyor belt on which the gravel was taken out of the quarry in which they worked. Knowing that the guards had their blasters set to stun, he expected that even a failed attempt would provide him with knowledge with which to make a second attempt. However, he was singled out by a guard before he even reached the conveyor belt. The guard struck Horn with his blaster, and Horn retaliated by reflexively throwing his bucket of gravel into the guard. He refused to take the guard's weapon as he fell, knowing that would only get the other prisoners killed in a failed attempt to fight their way out of the prison. He was stunned by the other guards, and remained paralyzed but awake.
Horn was taken to a medical facility, where he lay on the floor while the guard was treated. With his ear pressed to the floor, he clearly heard feet marching on the other side of it. While Horn was kept under observation in the medical ward, he realized that the likeliest explanation for what he had heard was that the gravity on the prison floors was reversed. Artificial gravity had the prisoners walking on what would otherwise be the ceiling, and so any attempts to escape upwards would only lead them deeper into Lusankya. It was by going down, from their perspective, that prisoners could actually escape aboveground. When he returned to his living quarters, he shared his discovery with Dodonna and Sette. He spent a week persuading them to allow him to make an attempt to prove his theory. They eventually agreed and had the other prisoners stage a fight to provide a distraction while Horn threw a rock at the ceiling. It did not come down, the artificial gravity being outweighed by natural gravity at that distance from the floor. Horn's theory was correct.
Horn offered Sette and Dodonna the chance to escape with him, but they both declined. He made some preparations and tested his ability to fit through the gate before he finally made his actual escape effort. He made his escape at night, going with Sette to the latrines. There, he soaked his tunic in water to reduce his infrared signature and Sette walked back to their quarters to make those monitoring the sensors that one person had gone to the latrines and returned. Horn squeezed through the loosely-secured gate into the quarry. There, he was attacked by Derricote, who had noticed his experimental stone-throw and resolved to keep an eye on Horn and foil his escape in order to redeem himself to Isard. Dodonna, however, followed Derricote and attacked him, giving Horn enough time to kill the Imperial. Horn offered Dodonna another chance to escape, but Dodonna felt he had a duty to the other Rebel prisoners. Dodonna returned, and Horn dragged Derricote's body with him under the conveyor belt, where he crawled out into a room with access to maintain the belt machinery.
Horn traveled into the properly-oriented portion of the prison, which he found to be far more well-appointed than he expected. He dumped Derricote's body into a garbage chute, and upon exploring the facility in which he found himself, could find no way out other than a turbolift that required a code to operate. He was trapped in the opulent area, when stormtroopers arrived and began searching it methodically. Horn was forced to hide in a cabinet, but he knew a look inside would reveal his presence. As he heard the stormtroopers searching the other cabinets next to his, he willed them to grow frustrated and give up, as Derricote, whom Dodonna had reported missing, would not fit inside. The stormtrooper checking his cabinet gave it only a cursory look, stopping before his gaze reached Horn. With that area cleared, the stormtroopers departed.
He emerged into the library, where he searched the datacards to find the trigger to the escape tunnel he was certain had to be built into the area. He found only a hold-out blaster hidden inside a false box of datacards. With that avenue failed, he tried accessing the computer terminal there. He was able to call up his own record from Lusankya, which declared him "unsuitable for conversion." He accessed Celchu's record, and found the same designation. Celchu had not been converted in Lusankya; he was not the spy. Horn considered the issue carefully, and came to the conclusion that only one person could have given Jace's course to Thyferra to the Imperials and known Horn's Headhunter override codes: Dlarit, who was from Thyferra and had checked out Horn's Headhunter with him before they flew.
Annoyed by the hologram of Emperor Palpatine, which appeared when a certain spot on the library floor was stepped on, Horn realized that the hologram kept people off the spot. Horn stood on it, inside the hologram, long enough for the lift built into the floor to activate and carry him down to a tunnel-shuttle system. Horn boarded the shuttle, which took him to another lift. That lift brought him to an abandoned room full of Jedi relics, which he explored. He cast off his ratty tunic, donning Jedi robes from a mannequin. His attention was caught by a display which held a Jedi credit identical to his lucky medallion. He got the hologram associated with the exhibit to play, showing Jedi Master Nejaa Halcyon with his apprentice—a boy who looked extraordinarily like Valin "Hal" Horn. Shocked, Horn appropriated the items from that exhibit, including his grandfather's lightsaber. While there, however, three soldiers entered the room. Horn was able to kill all three, two of them with the lightsaber.
After doing so, Horn realized that the Jedi memorabilia and the Coruscant time he heard on the standard time channel that he could pick up on one of the dead men's comlinks signaled that he was, in fact, on Coruscant. He used the comlink to contact Whistler, who guided him to the courthouse where Celchu's trial was ongoing. His entrance to the courtroom proved extremely shocking. Horn apologized to Celchu for suspecting him and was sworn in as a witness. Horn testified that Celchu was not the traitor, as proven by the files in Lusankya, but the trial was interrupted by horrible news. The Lusankya prison had been inside an Executor-class Star Dreadnought of the same name, and with Horn escaped, Lusankya erupted from where it had been buried within the Coruscant cityscape, killing untold civilians as it escaped from Coruscant with Isard aboard. With it went Dlarit, who was exposed as Isard's spy within the squadron.
====The Bacta War====
Horn rejoined Rogue Squadron and spent the next ten days hunting down the last remnants of the Palpatine Counter-Insurgency Front, an Imperial terrorist group that had been headed by Kirtan Loor after the New Republic's capture of Coruscant. Loor, having failed Isard, had actually defected to the New Republic. He was shot, however, by Diric Wessiri, a Lusankya agent who had reemerged during Horn's captivity. Iella Wessiri, protecting Loor, shot and killed her husband before she knew who was attacking. Horn had to comfort her, helping her through her grief as she had helped him deal with his in the wake of his father's death. Horn, having known the encryption key Loor used in his CorSec days, was able to decode the disk of data Loor had left behind, leading to the exposure of the PCF cells. Isard, meanwhile, took Lusankya to Thyferra, where she was installed as its leader in a coup. Horn was also told initially that Terrik had been killed in an ambush of a convoy and was devastated. He was quickly informed that she had in fact survived, as she had been secretly diverted to another destination. Horn and Terrik began a serious romantic relationship and quickly began cohabiting.
Ten days after Horn's reemergence, a ceremony was held celebrating his return and announcing Celchu's innocence, rehabilitating his reputation by claiming he had been aware that his trial was a deception to draw out the true spy. At the reception following the ceremony, Horn was approached by Luke Skywalker. Horn had returned Halcyon's memorabilia to the museum after his escape, but Skywalker gave him the lightsaber back, telling Horn that his researches had revealed that Nejaa Halcyon was Horn's grandfather, explaining Horn's family history. He offered Horn the chance to train as a Jedi. Horn was extremely honored, but he refused, saying he had to deal with his obligation to free the other Lusankya prisoners first. Councilor Borsk Fey'lya, who was present, informed him that there would be no action against Thyferra; as Isard's installation was an internal political matter, the New Republic would not interfere for fear of frightening off potential members. Horn was outraged, and resigned in protest to take action himself. Almost all the rest of Rogue Squadron followed suit.
It was only then, planning to rescue the prisoners, that Horn realized Jan had been Jan Dodonna while watching a HoloNet special on heroes of the Rebellion. While Horn had begun the movement to unseat Isard, he let Antilles run it. Antilles and Celchu began planning their campaign against Isard, marshaling resources for use in their war against Isard. Horn recruited Wessiri into the cause, gaining one more ally, along with Winter and Terrik, for the Rogues. At their first operational meeting, Horn was assigned to travel to Tatooine with Terrik and Darklighter in order to buy up Huff Darklighter's remaining inventory from the Eidolon Imperial supply cache, which Rogue Squadron had encountered on Tatooine years earlier.
They traveled to Mos Eisley aboard the Pulsar Skate and from there proceeded to the Darklighter estate near Anchorhead. At the home of Gavin's uncle, they waited in a library while Huff dealt with another client. Huff came out to tell them he would speak with them presently, and Horn mentioned that he knew of Huff's smuggling activities, bringing pressure against the Tatooinian water magnate. He also told Huff why they were there, at which point Huff mentioned that his other visitor was looking to buy the same items. Horn attempted to intimidate the other bidder by playing on Terrik's father's reputation, but was confused when the other man just laughed. Terrik informed him that the other man was Booster Terrik. Mirax calmed her father down, and upon learning that Antilles, whom Booster Terrik treated like a son, wanted the cache, Booster insisted that Huff let them have it. Later, they spent time at an impromptu Darklighter family reunion as the Darklighters gathered to see Gavin. Among the family members, Horn was overwhelmed by sorrow for the loss of his own family, but Jula Darklighter, Gavin's father, was able to speak with him and help him set aside his grief.
With Booster Terrik joining them, they returned to the Yag-prime space station in orbit over Yag'Dhul, where their guerrilla force was now based. While Horn owned his own fighter, the other eleven had been owned by the New Republic—until they were listed as surplus and sold to Celchu, along with their astromechs and Emtrey, in an act of quiet support. When the maintenance crew also resigned and joined the Rogues, they finally had a viable strike force. They used it against Isard, striking one of her bacta convoys in a pirate raid. Horn, with his CorSec background, was uneasy at the idea of pirating a convoy, but accepted that it was a necessary action to bring down Isard. Horn's flight eliminated the convoy's fighter defenses, convincing the freighters to surrender and deliver their bacta to New Republic and unaligned worlds in need of it. Horn and Qrygg led a pair of freighters to Halanit, where the bacta relieved the small colony from a virus sweeping through it.
Luke Skywalker, hoping that Horn would reconsider his decision, sent him some basic Jedi training material, information about lightsaber techniques, and stories of the Jedi Knights' law-enforcing tradition. Horn studied the material and found himself frequently wondering about his instincts. Any feeling of discomfort could be an omen of disaster, a fact which had him second-guessing himself. Horn's next assignment was to infiltrate Thyferra. Taking the captured freighter Mimban Cloudrider to Thyferra, he and Mirax Terrik were to help insert Wessiri and Elscol Loro's team of anti-Imperial resistance fighters to organize the native Vratix against Isard.
During the trip in the Mimban Cloudrider, Horn used Skywalker's material to practice with his grandfather's lightsaber, which he had been carrying with him. They arrived at Thyferra and took a shuttle down to the surface, where Horn, in the spaceport, attracted the attention of a suspicious stormtrooper who thought he recognized him. The stormtrooper tried to take Horn in for questioning, and Horn tried to use a mind trick to obtain his freedom. It failed, forcing Horn to draw his lightsaber and kill the stormtrooper. When more stormtroopers arrived, Horn cut his way through the ceiling of a refresher to attack the troopers on the balcony above. There, he killed two before another tackled him. Horn went over the balcony railing and lost consciousness after hitting the floor, breaking his back and gaining multiple other internal injuries.
Their Thyferran contacts were able to fight off the Imperials, and Horn was evacuated to one of the Vratix Ashern resistance facilities. There, he was put in a bacta tank and healed. Upon emerging, he was shocked to see Bror Jace. The X-wing destroyed by the Black Asp had been a decoy, designed to simulate his death so he could aid the Ashern, with which his own faction of the bacta cartel, Zaltin Corporation, had allied. With the team inserted, Horn and Terrik returned to Yag'Dhul with Jace. Jace was able to use his Ashern resistance contacts to slice the navigation computers of some of the bacta freighters in another convoy and lead them into an ambush. As Isard had started using her three Star Destroyers to guard the convoys, keeping Lusankya at Thyferra, the convoys were now too well-protected to strike directly. The Rogues, supplemented by a squadron of Twi'lek warriors under the command of Tal'dira, whom the Rogues had met during Horn's imprisonment, waited in ambush for the three diverted freighters. The first ship to surrender was the Xucphra Rose, which Horn and Qrygg escorted to Halanit. Horn also collected the names of the crew's family members on Thyferra in order for them to be taken to safety; Isard had threatened to kill the dependents of anyone who cooperated with the Rogues.
After Horn, Qrygg, and the two Twi'lek pilots working with them returned, the Corrupter struck Halanit in retribution for their accepting stolen bacta. Horn participated in the retaliatory attack on Qretu 5, a bacta-producing Thyferran colony. Horn made one run against the factories before dealing with several TIEs which had launched and then securing the spaceport from which they had deployed. After that mission, the Rogues continued flying a relentless schedule of missions harassing Isard's convoys. The harsh pace of missions left Horn exhausted, and his mood was only worsened by the fourth anniversary of his father's death, a date which always depressed him.
The Terriks arranged for shipments of various supplies from smuggling king Talon Karrde, the first of which was to be transferred to the small fleet of freighters the Rogues operated at the Graveyard—the ruins of Alderaan. Before the transfer could be started, however, they were ambushed by the Corrupter and the Interdictor Aggregator, pinning them in place. Horn, like the rest of the Rogues, stood off to release a proton torpedo barrage using telemetry from Antilles. Celchu made a second run, and Antilles ordered Horn to prepare to make a third if the Corrupter survived. Antilles made a run against the bridge and the long-lost droid-operated Alderaanian War Cruiser Valiant, responding to Celchu's Alderaanian identify friend/foe beacon, emerged from the Graveyard and targeted the Corrupter, destroying it. Another torpedo run by Celchu against the Aggregator drove the Interdictor off. Returning to base, Horn helped analyze their security situation in order to make sure whoever had betrayed the meeting point was one of Karrde's personnel.
====Defeating Isard====
On Elshandruu Pica, Horn served as a spotter for the team assigned to target Captain Sair Yonka of the Avarice, one of Isard's three remaining captains. Horn, Antilles, and several other Rogues raided the cottage where Yonka was having a romantic rendezvous, and Antilles bribed Yonka to defect, bringing the Avarice, renamed Freedom, with him. Following that, Horn made a circuit through the Polith system to confirm rumors that Isard was rounding up Vratix to execute within two weeks. After he reported back to Antilles, the commander ordered him to escort Karrde's final shipment in to the station directly. Horn protested that this would reveal their location, but Antilles told him that that was part of his plan. For security reasons, Horn would not be told the entirety. After delivering his report, he got into an argument with Booster Terrik, which Antilles had to defuse by pointing out that Mirax loved them both. Horn put aside his sense of enmity towards Terrik and accepted that he did not need to consider seeing him as his father's foe. During the escort mission, Horn spoke with Mirax Terrik about his wish that he could have learned about his Jedi heritage from his father, at which point Whistler revealed that Hal Horn had recorded a holographic message to him and stored it in Whistler. Horn declined to play it at that time, feeling he was not ready for it.
Returning to the station, they knew Isard's spy would give them away. They expected her forces to arrive within two days, at which the Rogues would flee. Antilles, Celchu, and Booster Terrik had set up a special situation at the base to deal with Isard's ships. Though Horn was not told, a gravity well projector and tractor beams would pin the ships in place while hundreds of missile targeting units painted the ships with missile locks, forcing them to stand down. They had one night before Isard's capital ships would arrive, and Horn, realizing that he loved Terrik and would never find a woman he loved more, asked her to marry him. To his great joy, she agreed.
When the Lusankya and Virulence arrived, the starfighters and freighters departed on a vector for Thyferra. They did not travel all the way there, however, instead rendezvousing with Yonka's Freedom, which carried them to Thyferra, fully supplied and rested. By the time they arrived there, the Lusankya had already returned, the Virulence having interposed itself between the station and Lusankya, allowing the Star Dreadnought to escape. The Rogues engaged the Thyferran Home Defense Corps TIEs launching from the surface, then made a torpedo run against the Lusankya. Each X-wing fed its missile telemetry to the freighters standing off, which had been equipped with the actual missile launchers to which the sensor systems on the Yag-prime station belonged; the threat to the Lusankya there had been nothing more than a bluff.
During the battle, Horn, Qrygg, Celchu, and Ven were assigned to destroy a Lambda-class shuttle that was fleeing Thyferra, one which appeared to be carrying Isard. Horn targeted the TIE interceptors guarding the shuttle first. Dlarit was one of those pilots, and Horn targeted her after she shot down Ven, forcing him extravehicular. He killed Dlarit, then pursued the shuttle. He hailed it and Isard replied, but when he tried to attack it she explained that it was an upgraded model. His lasers would not penetrate its shields in time for him to prevent it from escaping to hyperspace. While he was out of proton torpedoes, he targeted her with his torpedo systems to activate her lock-avoidance software and force her to juke. Thus distracted, she could not proceed as swiftly outside Thyferra's gravity well. She realized he was bluffing and made to flee, to which Horn responded by planning to ram the shuttle. This proved unnecessary, as he had accidentally struck the button to broadcast his telemetry, and Celchu was able to use it to launch torpedoes that destroyed the shuttle.
Meanwhile, the Virulence, having surrendered to Terrik and Pash Cracken's intervening A-wing flight group, returned to Thyferra under Terrik's command and carrying Cracken's fighters. With their assistance, the Lusankya was crippled to the point that it surrendered. Thyferra's government fell to Wessiri and Loro, resulting in a near-complete success for the group. The sole, but to Horn deeply painful, failure was the inability to recover the prisoners, which Isard had taken off the Lusankya and scattered. Horn intended to continue seeking them. During the cleanup phase following the Battle of Thyferra, Horn learned that his friend Qrygg had been declared janwuine, or worthy to speak of himself in the first person. It was a high honor among Gands, and Horn and the other Rogues were invited to and later attended Qrygg's celebratory janwuine-jika. Also during the cleanup phase, Horn was recruited by General Airen Cracken, the head of New Republic Intelligence, to help him convince Terrik to turn the Virulence over to the New Republic. Between himself, Cracken, Terrik, and Karrde, they were able to work out an agreement which let Terrik keep the Virulence, renamed the Errant Venture, as a traveling casino and place of business while selling most of its weaponry to the New Republic. During the negotiations, it came out that Horn and Mirax Terrik were engaged. Hoping to head off Booster's grumbling about their engagement, they cut straight to marriage, having Antilles, as the captain of the Lusankya, marry them in a small ceremony with Celchu and Wessiri as witnesses; they planned a public ceremony later on Coruscant. They then attended Antilles's victory celebration, where Antilles announced that, due to creative misfiling, their resignations had never taken effect and they remained New Republic officers if they wished to be. Horn and all the others accepted.
The Rogues were assigned to train Thyferra's new starfighter defense force. They were recalled early from this duty, and at Coruscant were met by a New Republic squadron, led by former Rogue Klivian, doubling for Rogue Squadron for morale reasons. Both squadrons engaged in a crowd-pleasing display of precision flying before landing for a heroic reception ceremony. However, Antilles departed the squadron in order to form a new pilot-commando unit, Wraith Squadron. Celchu became Rogue Leader, and Klivian transferred back into the unit.X-Wing: Wraith Squadron
===Veteran campaigns===
====Battling Zsinj====
While Antilles trained the Wraiths, Horn and the Rogues were assigned to join General Han Solo's Solo Fleet in its campaign against Warlord Zsinj, seeking to hunt down the elusive warlord and destroy his military capacity. They followed up any report of his activity, keeping them busy investigating his strikes.X-Wing: Iron Fist Within the fleet, it became a running joke that Horn and Solo were in fact the same person, as they were never seen together and, on occasion, one would arrive shortly after the other left. The Rogues were present and ready for the Battle of Talasea, a trap for the forces of Zsinj's subordinate Admiral Apwar Trigit, but the Wraiths eliminated Trigit's forces on their own before the other forces were needed. The Rogues were also deployed with Wraith Squadron at the Battle of Ession, decimating Trigit's fighter complement before his Star Destroyer, Implacable, was destroyed. When the Wraiths transferred aboard the Mon Remonda, General Han Solo's flagship and the Rogues' base of operations, they began working with the Rogues in striking at Zsinj's facilities, such as when the Rogues supported the feint at Lavisar.
When it was determined that Zsinj would attempt to hijack the Super Star Destroyer Razor's Kiss, being completed at Kuat, the Rogues were part of the force that intercepted his flight from the planet. A Wraith pilot had been able to sabotage the shields on the Razor's Kiss, causing Antilles to order all squadrons to focus their attack on it; the ship was destroyed in a barrage of torpedo strikes. Horn then engaged Iron Fist's fighter screen, coming up against the dangerous fighters of Zsinj's impostor 181st Imperial Fighter Group. The battle was hard-fought, but eventually the Imperial fighters fled as Iron Fist blasted its way through Solo's blockade.
The Mon Remonda returned to Coruscant for repairs, and Antilles returned to Rogue Squadron, as both the Rogues and Wraiths were now operating closely together. When the fleet was back in full fighting form, it returned to action. At Levian Two, investigating a Zsinj raid, the Solo Fleet fell into an ambush by a much-superior Zsinj force. The Rogues made an attack on Iron Fist stern, reducing its maneuverability, before eliminating one of the Carracks in Zsinj's flotilla, allowing the Solo Fleet enough room to escape. Afterward, Horn became involved in a planning session in which several pilots brainstormed a plot to lure Zsinj out by using a false Millennium Falcon to make him strike against his archenemy, Solo.
When Wraith Squadron infiltrated Saffalore in order to find out more about a scientific endeavor with links to Zsinj, Rogue Squadron infiltrated as well to provide backup. They landed under cover of a meteor shower and set up a base camp outside Lurark. When the Wraiths struck the Binring Biomedical Product facility, they were trapped by Zsinj's forces, having been expected. The Rogues received their signal requesting air support and immediately departed their base camp. TIE fighters had been called out to suppress the Wraiths, which the Rogues engaged and eliminated. They then attacked the local military base in order to divert attention from the Wraiths' escape.
The Mon Remonda next responded to a Zsinj strike in the Jussafet system. While deploying from the cruiser, however, Horn noticed Tal'dira, who had joined the Rogues after the Bacta War, was targeting Antilles. He warned the commander, who was still hit when Tal'dira opened fire. While Celchu shielded Antilles, Horn moved out of formation and told Tal'dira that his actions were dishonorable, a grave concern for the Twi'lek warrior. When Tal'dira still refused to surrender, however, Celchu and Antilles led him in a head-to-head pass against Horn, who destroyed his fighter and killed Tal'dira when the pilot opened fire on Celchu. Though he was shocked and dismayed at having killed a fellow Rogue, Horn continued on the mission, flying against Zsinj's TIEs and a corvette in the system's asteroid belt.
Later investigation showed that Tal'dira, in his last moments, had committed suicide, lowering his forward shields so that Horn would kill him easily; Horn's words on honor had stung him. In the aftermath, Antilles called one of the Wraiths' infamously free-wheeling brainstorming sessions, which Horn and some other Rogues attended. They were able to determine that assassination attempts and terrorist attacks being carried out by nonhumans across the New Republic were linked to Zsinj, and Horn suspected them to be an attempt to drive a wedge of species-based dissension into the New Republic. It was correctly theorized that the agents, including Tal'dira, were being forcibly brainwashed, and the group attempted to predict where Zsinj's brainwashed agents would strike next. They were successful in predicting that the next attacks would be a Sullustan-created ship accident and a Bothan-created slicing accident, and by passing their theories on to New Republic Intelligence, were able to avert the attacks and restore faith that there was not an alien conspiracy ongoing.
When Solo decided to implement the plan to create a decoy of the Millennium Falcon to lure Zsinj into a trap, Horn and several other Corellians retrieved an old YT-1300 light freighter from a Corellian scrapyard, which was refurbished as the Millennium Falsehood. In order to relieve the stress being felt by the highly-active pilots and crew, Antilles organized a day of recreation in which the officers' mess was turned into a zone in which the use of rank was forbidden and everyone was able to join in card games, astromech races, and other relaxation. The next day, Antilles and Chewbacca flew the Millennium Falsehood to Kidriff 5. When they were detected, they left. Horn and the other Rogues and Wraiths provided cover as the Falsehood fled, establishing what Zsinj would interpret as a sighting of Solo on a covert mission. As Celchu was escorting Antilles, Horn was left leading the group of Rogues waiting around Kidriff 5's moon to cover the escape. Near the end of the mission, Wraith Lara Notsil was revealed as Gara Petothel, a former agent for Zsinj. While she insisted she was loyal to the Wraiths, she fled when fired on by Wraith Myn Donos. Horn later reviewed material about her and came to the conclusion that she was a situational conformist, and he was not convinced that she was truly loyal to the New Republic. He was worried that she would defect to Zsinj and expose the Millennium Falsehood ploy, but Antilles believed her and carried on with the operation.
The Rogues continued a relentless mission schedule, harassing Zsinj-controlled sites and escorting the Millennium Falsehood on missions to build up a pattern of activity. When Solo was able to arrange an ambush of Zsinj at Vahaba by using an Interdictor cruiser to pin Zsinj in place, the Solo Fleet's entire starfighter complement was deployed against Zsinj's small flotilla. With Zsinj not having deployed his fighters due to his hope to run, Horn and all the others were able to line up and bombard Iron Fist before splitting up by squadron for further attack runs. The Star Destroyer Serpent's Smile was able to force the Interdictor off-course, however, allowing Iron Fist to escape. Just as they had accepted the failure of the ambush, the Solo Fleet received a message from Notsil, who had gained a position in Zsinj's fleet; she had orchestrated a sabotage of the Iron Fist hyperdrive and stranded it in the Selaggis system.
The task force followed, with the Rogues and other squadrons searching for the Iron Fist in the system's asteroid belt. When it was spotted, they attacked. Antilles observed several squadrons departing Iron Fist and heading towards the location of a colony Zsinj had previously bombarded. Suspicious, he took the Rogues and Wraiths in pursuit. When Zsinj's impostor 181st Imperial Fighter Group, which had faced the Rogues in previous battles, began strafing the ruins, Horn and the others engaged the TIEs. While flying against the fighters, Horn's Force senses told him that the fighter he was targeting was not piloted by a living being. Voort saBinring of the Wraiths was able to determine that half the fighters were droid-piloted bombs designed to detonate in combat, a trap for Antilles and the Rogues. With Celchu shot down and Antilles landed, busy exposing the "Soontir Fel" leading the unit as an impostor, Horn and Wraith One Garik Loran agreed to jam the area, cutting off the fighters' remote coordination and making them easy prey. The fighters and their TIE Raptor reinforcements were destroyed, and Iron Fist was believed destroyed in the battle.
As the campaign against Zsinj was over, Rogue Squadron was rotated into a less stressful assignment to let them recover. Eventually, on Coruscant, Horn and Terrik had a more formal wedding ceremony to which family and friends were invited, following it up with a short honeymoon to Alakatha, a resort world which offered them a free honeymoon due to Horn's fame as a New Republic hero in the liberation of Coruscant and subsequent campaigns. The pair rented a small apartment on Coruscant where they lived with Whistler, with Mirax continuing her business as an importer-exporter.
====The Thrawn campaign====
In 9 ABY, the Empire began escalating its strikes against the New Republic. When Bpfassh was struck, Han and Leia Organa Solo were sent there to view the damage and reassure the population. Rogue Squadron was assigned to their guard detail. When the Solos were threatened by an Imperial kidnap attempt, Solo was able to signal the Rogues with a plume of korfaise gas from the mockup Millennium Falcon used by the would-be kidnappers, and the attempt was foiled.Heir to the Empire
The Rogues were later assigned to protect the escort frigate Larkhess, converted to cargo-hauling duty due to a sharp lack of transport in the New Republic, from Coruscant to Sluis Van, and then from Sluis Van to Bpfassh. While waiting to depart at Sluis Van, Antilles noticed a suspicious freighter, one which claimed to be empty but handled as if loaded. Antilles scrambled the squadron and set out to investigate it, but as soon as Horn and the others launched, it exploded, spewing TIE Fighters and mole miners from its cloaked cargo bay. Immediately thereafter, a fleet of five Star Destroyers under the resurgent Empire's new leader, Grand Admiral Thrawn, arrived at the edge of the shipyards and began attacking. With the assistance of Solo and Skywalker, present at the shipyard in the Millennium Falcon, Antilles was able to determine that the mole miners were being used to burn through the hulls of the understaffed cargo-transporting capital ships and hijack them. The mole miners had been stolen from Lando Calrissian, also aboard the Falcon, and he used his command signals to have the mole miners burn entirely through the bridges of the craft they had attached to, foiling Thrawn's scheme. The Rogues continued harassing the TIEs as Thrawn withdrew.
When the New Republic received information on the location of the legendary lost Katana fleet, Borsk Fey'lya blocked it from taking action swiftly. Leia Organa Solo and Talon Karrde, the source of the information, were convinced that any delay could put the fleet in the hands of the Empire, which had also found the location. Organa Solo dispatched a task force in the middle of the night under the command of Solo, Calrissian, and Skywalker to investigate the Katana fleet; Rogue Squadron was part of it. Fey'lya's task force, having set off the next morning, arrived with orders to arrest the prior group. Solo, aboard the Katana, refused to give in but ordered the Rogues to comply with Fey'lya rather than risk a court-martial. As they did so, however, an Imperial Star Destroyer arrived. The Rogues immediately turned to fly cover for Solo's team as they attempted to leave the vulnerable Katana. Fey'lya made to withdraw, but Organa Solo and Karrde were present aboard his ship and were able to expose his views on the military as being pawns to be disposed of for his purposes. The task force deserted him and moved to support the Rogues, who tried to hold off the drop ships attempting to board the Katana fleet Dreadnaughts. One got through, however, boarding the Katana and trapping Solo's group aboard. A group of ships from Karrde's smuggler organization also arrived, helping even the odds, as did a task force under Garm Bel Iblis. Though another Star Destroyer arrived, Solo was able to ram it with one of the Katana Dreadnaughts under slave rig, leading the other Star Destroyer to withdraw. In the aftermath, however, it was found that the Empire had already taken off all but fifteen of the Dreadnaughts.Dark Force Rising
Horn continued battling Thrawn's encroaching campaign with the Rogues, fighting at the Battle of Filve and covering the retreat there, as well as serving as the front-runner in Bel Iblis's invention of the A-wing Slash at the Battle of Qat Chrystac, a battle which was also lost.The Last Command Horn had hoped that the Empire was largely defeated, but the grueling campaign against Thrawn sapped that hope, as he grew increasingly impressed by Thrawn's tactical and strategic savvy. When Thrawn deployed several cloaked asteroids in orbit over Coruscant, the planet was closed to traffic due to fears of collisions and asteroid strikes on the planet itself if the shields were opened. The New Republic leadership decided it was vital to acquire a crystal gravfield trap to detect the asteroids by their gravitic signature and decided to strike at the shipyards of Bilbringi to do so. However, they attempted to mislead the Imperials into thinking they would strike at Tangrene, resulting in the Rogues being deployed nearby to draw Imperial attention.
When the time came for the attack, however, the Rogues were pulled out to participate in the Battle of Bilbringi. Upon arriving, they were pulled from hyperspace early, and Horn immediately realized that Thrawn had anticipated their strike at Bilbringi and was waiting with a large fleet. Celchu suggested the Rogues strike at the shipyards to force the Empire to split its forces, and Antilles was contacted by employees of Karrde who were hoping to stage a simultaneous attempt at the crystal gravfield trap, having thought the New Republic would be at Tangrene. Antilles arranged to cover their insertion into the shipyards while he and the Rogues attacked one of the Golan II defense stations ringing the shipyards. The Rogues attacked the station, with Horn leading multiple torpedo bombardments by Three Flight, softening it up for two Assault Frigates to destroy. As they penetrated the shipyards, however, Horn became aware that Thrawn's fleet was breaking up and retreating. It was only after the battle that he learned that Thrawn was dead, assassinated by his bodyguard Rukh.
====The return of Isard====
The Rogues returned to base on Coruscant, where Horn was met by his wife. They caught up and reveled in the defeat of Thrawn before attending a welcome-back party for the Rogues. There, Horn was utterly shocked to see Urlor Sette, the prisoner from Lusankya. Sette was suffering from amnesia, but as soon as Horn told him his name, Sette collapsed, the victim of a fatal hemorrhage. Horn was immensely distraught when an autopsy revealed that a capsule of poison had been triggered when he said Sette's name. Wessiri promised to investigate and find whoever was behind the gesture, and Horn headed home from the morgue. On his way, he was assaulted by a group of street urchins. He took a few hits before his Force abilities allowed him to enter a state in which time slowed, and he easily evaded the gang.
Investigation was able to trace the components in the capsule to Commenor. The Rogues were covertly inserted on Commenor to provide air support for a raid on the Xenovet facility where it was believed Sette had been implanted with the capsule. When the fighters launched from Munto on Commenor, Forge detected pursuit. She and Horn dealt with the four TIE interceptors shadowing them while the other Rogues helped the commandos secure the Xenovet facility. There, they found several former Lusankya inmates, nearly dead. They attested that Ysanne Isard was still alive and active.
While the new lead was investigated, the Rogues were assigned to the war effort against Prince-Admiral Delak Krennel of the Ciutric Hegemony, an Imperial warlord. Antilles accepted a promotion to general, freeing up the other Rogues for promotions. Horn was elevated to the rank of captain. During the preparation for the strike at Liinade III in the Ciutric Hegemony, he was approached by Gavin Darklighter, who asked him for advice about being a father. Darklighter and his lover, Sei'lar, had decided to get married and adopt children. Horn told the younger man, only nineteen, he would make an excellent father and agreed to Darklighter's request to use himself and Mirax as references in the adoption process.
When the time came for the assault on Liinade III, Horn led his flight in an attack on the interceptor cover for Liinade III's space forces, then began clearing the ground defenses to prepare for invasion. Securing a hydroelectric dam, his fighter was badly damaged when a ground-launched missile struck him in the rear while he had his shields directed fully to the front. He was forced to put down and sent Qrygg back for help. He left his fighter and made his way to the dam, where he found a new, well-guarded facility next to it. He raided the site alone, killing several guards and capturing the security office. From there, he locked the facility down and checked on one of the areas where technicians were working. There, he found them analyzing plans for a new Death Star.
Based on the importance of that information, Horn was recalled to Coruscant with Antilles to present his report to the Provisional Council after they completed three weeks of pacification missions on Liinade III. Analysis, meanwhile, had shown that Krennel was designing a miniaturized Death Star with multiple less powerful superlasers that could target capital ships. The New Republic analysts dubbed it Pulsar Station. It was decided to have the Rogues escort a reconnaissance X-wing through Krennel's systems searching for the Pulsar Station's construction site. They ran many simulations to be ready for the possibility of stumbling upon a well-guarded Pulsar Station.
With former Rogue Nrin Vakil piloting the reconnaissance fighter, the Rogues scanned the Corvis Minor system. While Vakil moved in closer to Distna for a scan, Horn and Three Flight guaranteed their exit vector. He detected six squadrons of Krennel's fighters ambushing them; the Pulsar Station designs were bait for a trap. He had his flight target the interceptors with proton torpedoes at range, intending to quickly take them out of the fight. Missile warning systems, however, meant that only two interceptors were destroyed. He shot down several of the interceptors, but while dogfighting with them was struck by a missile from a TIE bomber. His fighter crippled, he could do little more than watch as several Rogues were shot down. However, two squadrons of TIE Defenders arrived and annihilated Krennel's forces. The Defenders escorted the Rogues away, with one towing Horn's damaged ship. Lyyr Zatoq, Khe-Jeen Slee, Wes Janson, and Asyr Sei'lar were all presumed dead.
The surviving Rogues were taken to a small Imperial base commanded by Ysanne Isard. She explained that she had assigned a clone of herself to scatter the Lusankya prisoners, and it was that clone which was working with Krennel and had gathered the prisoners on Ciutric. Having survived Thyferra by having her supposed escape shuttle relay her messages by holocomm to convince the Rogues she was aboard, she had retreated to the base and marshaled her forces. She claimed to want to be left alone by the New Republic, and offered them Ciutric in exchange for that. The Rogues were to be infiltrated among Krennel's forces as mercenaries flying TIE Defenders, from which position they could undermine his defenses for the New Republic strike Antilles would call in. Before Horn learned this, however, he attempted to counsel Darklighter on the death of Sei'lar, telling him of his own experience with his mother's death and assuring him that while his grief would never truly leave, it would become bearable. At the conclusion of that conversation, technicians approached him to put a restraining bolt on Whistler, which Horn strongly resisted. When Antilles ordered him to allow the Imperials to restrain Whistler, Horn affixed the bolt himself, knowing that Whistler was modified due to his time as police property not to respond to restraining bolts.
In order to perform the deception, the Rogues trained heavily on TIE Defender simulators, in which Horn performed well. Intensely suspicious of Isard's motives, he constantly checked his equipment and tested the security attempting to get messages out to Mirax, who he knew would believe him dead. Many of these ventures were undertaken simply to keep Isard's security minders busy as he put into place his real plan, activating Whistler to escape from storage and carry a message back to his wife. He was confronted by Isard and told to stop, but he refused, remaining hostile to her.
The Rogues, posing as Requiem Squadron, arrived on Ciutric and were personally greeted by Krennel. Horn had grown a mustache and dyed his hair black; he went by the alias Pyr "Klick" Hand. They planned to wait a week on Krennel's capital, then provide cover for a strike by Isard's commandos to liberate the prisoners while the New Republic fleet struck at Krennel in orbit. During his time there, Horn played sabacc with many of the pilots, winning a great deal of money. A few hours before Ackbar was due to attack, the squadron was scrambled. Krennel was planning a strike against Coruscant. They held back from deploying, and once all Krennel's other squadrons had reached orbit, they launched and headed to the prison, around which time Ackbar's fleet arrived. While Antilles's One Flight knocked out the shield generator for Daplona, the capital, Celchu's Two Flight, in which Horn flew, stripped the prison of its defenses.
While aerial reinforcements were incoming and would be difficult to deal with, Horn landed to secure the prison himself when it became clear that Isard's forces would not show. With Qrygg and Vakil, he entered the building and proceeded to the top floor, where the Lusankya prisoners were most likely housed. There, the sole guard to survive their assault on the floor led him to Dodonna. Horn was immensely pleased to finally follow through on his promise to free the prisoners. While he got them all out of their cells, more of Krennel's men assaulted them from the stairwell. This became a secondary concern when a concussion missile struck the top floor. Most of the cells were between the prisoners and the missile's impact site, protecting them. The troops were dealt with by Colonel Kapp Dendo's Commando Team One, and they were able to exit safely. Meanwhile, Antilles was able to kill Isard's clone, and Krennel died in combat in orbit, with the Hegemony forces surrendering. Across the galaxy, Wessiri shot the genuine Isard as she attempted to steal the refurbished Lusankya from the New Republic. The campaign was a solid success. The Rogues returned to the New Republic, where their survival was hailed, and they were pleased to learn Janson had survived. After spending some time in isolation on the Lusankya in case Isard had infected the prisoners, the Rogues and prisoners were celebrated at a reception aboard the Star Dreadnought.
====Losing Mirax====
When the reborn Emperor emerged from the Deep Core, Coruscant was retaken by the Empire, and Horn had his home destroyed in the attack; luckily for him, neither he nor Mirax were home at the time. Horn and the Rogues battled the resurgent Empire, flying V-wing airspeeders against the World Devastators and TIE/D droid fighters in the Battle of Mon Calamari.Star Wars: Rogue Squadron Eventually, Palpatine was defeated and Coruscant retaken.The New Essential Chronology The Horns were given a former New Republic Intelligence safehouse to live in, courtesy of Wessiri's intervention.
The Rogues were expanded vastly, turned into a multi-fighter unit based around E-wings and B-wings, and based on Lusankya, which Antilles departed the squadron to command, leaving Celchu as Rogue Leader. This unit first saw combat conquering Phaeda.Star Wars Handbook 2: Crimson Empire Shortly after that campaign, the last leaders of the unified Empire were defeated, and the former galactic power dissolved into warlordism. Horn stayed and weathered these changes, which were only temporary, as the squadron was back in X-wings and at regular strength within the year.
In 11 ABY, the Rogues were assigned to hunt the Invids, pirates under the command of ex-moff Leonia Tavira. Tavira's flagship, Invidious, was extremely elusive, and she seemed to have warning of any ambush attempt. The campaign was frustrating, with the New Republic scoring few victories. During the downtime between missions, Horn worked with his wife to rebuild their home. Mirax began seriously pushing for the couple to have children, but Horn did not particularly care for children and was vocally unenthusiastic about the idea. Mirax insisted that Horn would make an excellent father, and while he continued resisting, outwardly, he began warming to the idea of becoming a father. When he could resist no longer, he urged Mirax to give him until after the defeat of the Invids to make a decision; she agreed.
Eventually, the Rogues set up an ambush over Alakatha based on a tip that some of the Invid gang would strike at the luxury liner Glitterstar over the world. Waiting, Horn's mind was still occupied by the prospect of fatherhood, and he decided that as soon as he returned, he would stop putting off the decision and reach an agreement with his wife. When the pirate ship Booty Full made its attack, Horn helped defeat its Invid-specific Tri-fighter TIE-variant fighters. One Flight disabled the Booty Full and captured the pirates, making the mission a rare success against the Invids.
By the time he returned to Coruscant, Horn was highly enthusiastic about the idea of having a child. However, in their apartment, he found only a message from Mirax telling him she had departed on an unexpected trip and would be gone for a few days. Horn had been delayed himself in his trip home, however, and as a result Mirax should have been home already. He was slightly unsettled, but was confident she would soon be home. He fell asleep, but was awoken by Mirax screaming his name. Frightened and disoriented, he stumbled around the apartment, convinced something had happened to his wife. He was shocked to realize that he could remember no emotional details of Mirax or his time with her and lacked any connection to her.
Terrified that he was going insane, he called Rogue Squadron headquarters and had Emtrey reassure him that he was awake, sane, and married to Mirax Terrik Horn. He rushed to headquarters, where he went to speak to Celchu. There, he found that Celchu had invited General Airen Cracken of New Republic Intelligence to the meeting. Cracken explained that he had been using Mirax to investigate the Invids, and she was currently on such a mission for him. She was slightly overdue to report back to Cracken, but otherwise the intelligence head had no sign of foul play. Horn blamed himself and his deadline for the decision on having children for Mirax's involvement, and demanded that Cracken tell him where Mirax was. The general refused, citing security concerns; Cracken would deal with any problems himself. While Horn accepted Cracken's logic, he refused to stand by when he was convinced Mirax was in trouble.
He made up his mind to petition the New Republic Advisory Council to order Cracken to release the information on Mirax's assignment to him. To that end, he knew he had to call in political favors and get some councilors on his side. He set off almost immediately to see Antilles, who was overseeing reconstruction on Coruscant. Realizing as he said it that he had no chance of success but feeling obligated to try, he asked Antilles to persuade Organa Solo to help him. During their meeting, Han Solo barged in, and while he too agreed that the request was unlikely to go through, he offered to use his underworld contacts to see if anyone had seen the Pulsar Skate lately.
Antilles suggested that they see Skywalker about the problem, and the pair proceeded to his apartment. He explained his situation to Skywalker, who probed his mind and found that Horn was suffering from an unconscious reflex to the pain of Mirax's loss, walling off all his emotional connections to her. It was the Jedi Master's belief that the response was only short-term and would ease over time. Skywalker also suggested that Horn might have felt Mirax's separation so strongly because a Force-sensitive was attempting to lure him to her, as Darth Vader had once done to Skywalker. Mirax's possession of his Jedi credit could have linked her to the Jedi. Skywalker urged Horn to train in the ways of the Force with him so that he could seek out Mirax's Force presence and find her. Horn was resistant, feeling to do so would take too long. He decided to go home and think about it. There, Whistler played his father's holomessage, in which the elder Horn expressed his pride in his son, explained the family history, and urged Horn to take up his Jedi heritage. Horn accepted the idea that he would need his Jedi powers better developed to truly stand a chance of rescuing his wife, and acknowledged his father's desire for him to train.
===Trials of a Jedi===
====Becoming a Jedi====
Seeking to avoid it becoming public knowledge that he was training as a Jedi, Horn grew a goatee and dyed his hair blond. He would attend Skywalker's newly-established Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4 as Keiran Halcyon, a name Skywalker had unearthed as belonging to a distant ancestor. It was about two weeks before either he or Skywalker was ready, but he avoided speaking to Wessiri, one of his best friends on Coruscant, because he did not want to have her risk her job to get him information about Mirax nor resent it if she would not do so. It was only after some time that he spoke with her, and she mentioned that intelligence reports had suggested that Tavira was traveling with enforcers that were possibly Force-sensitive. He asked her about the possibility of getting onto Corellia to see his grandfather. While he was able to communicate with Rostek Horn, the messages were heavily censored by the Imperialist Diktat's regime. Wessiri suggested she might be able to get him a secure connection.
Leaving Whistler behind, Horn finally set out for Yavin 4 with Skywalker, the fellow Jedi students Kam Solusar and Brakiss, and Qrygg, who would pilot the shuttle back. Upon landing, Skywalker explained that he wanted Horn—now operating under the alias Halcyon—Solusar, and Brakiss there before the other nine students because they already had some experience with the Force and would serve as the senior core of his student body; Horn's police experience would also prove valuable. Skywalker allowed them to choose their own quarters in the Great Temple, and many of Horn's assumptions about the nature of his training, based on his time in the CorSec Academy, were shattered by Skywalker's laid-back attitude and emphasis on individual preferences and trust in the Force. When Horn brought up the topic of combat training beyond lightsaber instruction, Skywalker tasked him and Solusar with coming up with a training regimen. Looking for his quarters, Horn was led to a room on the bottom floor, which Skywalker informed him had been that of Antilles, Biggs Darklighter, and Jek Porkins before the Battle of Yavin. Skywalker also urged Horn to be less suspicious, to break down barriers between himself and others rather than erect them.
In short order the other trainees arrived, and training began. Horn struck up a friendship with Kyle Katarn, another student with New Republic military experience. Horn built himself a personal routine of early-morning runs through the jungle, as he was unwilling to give up his pre-academy notion that physical conditioning would be a part of the instruction; he also found them to be relaxing time for himself. He and Solusar began combat instruction with the others, guiding them through unarmed fighting techniques. Solusar, a former Dark Jedi, began lightsaber training as well using padded wooden swords. Horn developed the ability to anticipate his opponent's moves, but never fully trusted the Force sensations. While he fought defensively and was generally victorious, he was not always so, and fellow student Gantoris was able to defeat Horn soundly at times. Gantoris had been a leader in his former community, and felt something of a rivalry with Horn; the man rubbed Horn the wrong way as well. It was only in one sparring session against Gantoris, in which Horn was being roundly beaten, that his self-image as a superior student collapsed and, freed of his need to play a role, he became more in tune with the Force, receiving precognitive warnings of Gantoris's attacks that allowed him to fight well. He realized that by simply being himself, he was better able to channel the Force; he also realized that arrogance and self-confidence hindered his connection to it. He had to be calm and centered as a Jedi.
Combat was not the only training Horn received; Skywalker also taught the students to control and enhance their senses. During one such exercise, Horn was shocked when Skywalker confessed that he was the son of the galactic symbol of evil, Darth Vader, and had in fact redeemed him before his death. During the exercise, Horn also realized that he feared vulnerability, opening himself to others emotionally; he also decided that it was standing in the way of his reaching his full potential. That same sensory exercise became their first attempt at active use of the Force, as Skywalker urged the students to use telekinesis to move the pebbles they were using. Horn was frustrated to find that he could not move it no matter how hard he tried. That night, Horn felt overwhelmed by the demands of becoming a Jedi. He felt that he was not really tapping into the Force, and to be a good Jedi, to tap into the Force fully, he would have to sacrifice so much of what he was—his ways of thinking, central aspects of his personality. He was not sure he was ready to do so. He went to the roof of the temple to think, where he met Streen. He discussed the Force and the dark side with the older, shy student.
Over the next days, Horn consistently failed to utilize telekinesis. He came to believe that while he was capable of using the Force flowing through himself for passive techniques like precognition, he lacked the connection necessary to tap into the Force as a whole and put it to work. In one exercise, Horn volunteered to be the first to move a massive plinth which was mostly buried in the ground. He concentrated on succeeding and finally made himself fully receptive to the Force. He focused on moving the rock, envisioning it rising from the earth. He succeeded beautifully, until he opened his eyes and saw the rock still embedded. He noticed, however, that every other person in the circle was looking at where Horn had thought the plinth floated in the air. Skywalker was the first to see through the illusion.
The next day, Skywalker brought the Tedryn Holocron, through which he had searched for information about Horn's feat, to Horn. The holocron's gatekeeper, Bodo Baas, explained the Jedi ability to project illusions and perform mind tricks. Skywalker suggested that this might be a special talent of Horn's, and Horn connected it with his earlier success in evading the stormtroopers searching for him during his escape from Lusankya. Skywalker urged him to be cautious in the use of that talent, as altering another's perceptions could bring him close to the dark side. He counseled Horn to explore the power safely with another student. Skywalker also told Horn to avoid developing a rivalry with Gantoris and to try to help the other man, rather than continue having each measuring himself against the other.
Horn continued training, becoming more comfortable with the Force, though he found he did not channel it as well merely practicing as when he was put in a situation in which he genuinely had to use it. One night, Skywalker took all the students down to a hot spring underneath the Great Temple. There, they slipped into the water and contemplated the cosmos meditatively. Skywalker guided them on a Force-vision of the galaxy, during which Horn felt Mirax, but he was unable to find her precise location. The meditation was interrupted by the sensation of danger as hot gases began bubbling up from the bottom of the pool, threatening to roast the students alive. Horn tapped into the Force to protect himself and Tionne, who was floundering near the edge of the pool. He absorbed the heat and converted it to energy, easily using telekinesis to lift Tionne to safety.
Horn fell asleep to nightmares about Mirax, and the next day returned from his run to find Gantoris dueling Skywalker. Horn was shocked, but, unarmed, could make no difference in the fight. Skywalker eventually won the hard-fought duel, disarming Gantoris. He returned the apprentice's lightsaber and told him to beware his anger, baffling Horn. While the other students left, Horn stayed to speak with Skywalker. Skywalker seemed convinced that Gantoris would now see the error of his ways, but Horn urged him to discipline the other man and make sure the lesson was learned. He reluctantly accepted Skywalker's argument that punishment would not serve any purpose. Skywalker also mentioned that Gantoris had claimed to have gotten the knowledge to build his lightsaber from another teacher, immediately making Horn suspicious; there were no other likely teachers on Yavin 4.
====Murder at the Jedi Praxeum====
The next morning, Horn sensed the distress of the other students and rushed to Gantoris's room. There, the other student's body had been found, burnt. Horn remained there last, investigating the body and asking questions of Skywalker. He found that Gantoris had burned, strangely, from the inside out. Skywalker was convinced that Gantoris had unleashed dark side power beyond his control and been consumed. With Skywalker's sense of the students all being innocent and reports of Gantoris having mentioned a "dark man" to him, Horn became convinced that the mysterious dark man was the killer and the one who had taught Gantoris to make his lightsaber. Not even Skywalker could sense his presence, suggesting he was a powerful darksider. Horn began a police-style investigation of the murder, seeking evidence, building a profile on the dark man, and having Tionne research possible clues in the holocron. Meanwhile, he suggested that Skywalker help the other students resist the temptation of the dark side if the dark man should appeal to them. His first step was to find Tionne, who was studying from the holocron. She was extremely distraught by Gantoris's death, and Horn comforted her. She began researching the Massassi and Yavin 4's past.
Gantoris's death helped bring the students together. Tionne's researches uncovered information that an inability to perform telekinesis was a hallmark of the Halcyon line of Jedi, somewhat reassuring Horn about his failure to do so. Meanwhile, Horn organized scouting expeditions to survey the area around the Great Temple. On one, he, Solusar, and Brakiss investigated the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster, which had been sealed by the Rebels when they occupied the planet; it housed a blue stone of some malevolence. The survey team entered the temple and found the blue crystal column, from which Horn felt negative emotions radiating. In it, he saw dead faces, including that of Gantoris. Unsettled, the three left the temple quickly, having seen no sign that Gantoris had ever been there. On the way back, however, Brakiss seemed intrigued by the crystal and suggested that the dark side could be used to good ends. Horn rebuked him, and Brakiss seemed to back away from the idea.
Soon afterward, Antilles arrived on Yavin 4, bringing supplies and a new trainee, Kyp Durron. Horn visited with Antilles, who had brought Qwi Xux with him. Antilles was serving as the bodyguard to the naïve former Imperial superweapon scientist, whom Horn did not care for. Horn could see that Antilles was falling for her and warned him against it. As the days passed, Skywalker devoted much of his time to training the incredibly powerful and fast-developing Durron, while Solusar led the other trainees. As Horn was the only other student with a lightsaber, Solusar began actual lightsaber training with Horn, pitting him against a remote. Horn worked to block its shots. Solusar also had Horn expand his situational awareness to be mindful of a wider area around him via the Force during combat. Eventually, he was able to expand his Force senses long distances.
One evening, listening to one of Tionne's ballads about Nomi Sunrider, who had battled Exar Kun, the Sith Lord who had once ruled Yavin 4, Durron objected to the story, offering a pro-Kun version of the history. Horn immediately suspected that Durron had been in contact with the dark man, who Horn was beginning to suspect might be Kun's spirit. The scene was interrupted by the arrival of Mara Jade. Skywalker assigned Horn to help the new student, a former assassin for Palpatine, find quarters. Horn resented her involvement in the Empire, but she confronted him about it, and he realized he should not hold her past against her. As a sign of trust, he told her of his true identity, and shared Mirax's predicament. He then went to prepare dinner for the evening, during which Durron angrily stormed through the kitchen. Horn followed him, asking what was wrong, and Durron attacked him with the Force. Horn told him that he was making a mistake but sensed Durron's presence joined by that of the dark man, who attacked with enough strength to overwhelm Horn and knock him out. Horn was now sure it was the spirit of Exar Kun. Skywalker urged him to leave Durron alone and, rather than antagonizing him with confrontation, simply allow him to sort out his issues. That night, however, Durron stole Jade's Z-95 Headhunter and flew off.
Horn began sharing his morning runs with Jade, with whom Skywalker was now spending most of his time. He also participated in lightsaber training with her, becoming better and better at deflecting shots from the remotes. Solusar continued to deal with the other students, who now included the Mon Calamari Cilghal. One day, Horn was summoned to see Skywalker. The holocron had been destroyed by Kun's spirit while Skywalker had sought out information about Kun. Horn suggested that they analyze the survey logs to see where Durron, who traveled with Dorsk 81, had not reported going and Dorsk had. That might make identification of a headquarters or training area for the spirit possible.
Within a week Jade left, dissatisfied with Skywalker's instruction. As dissatisfied with Skywalker's leadership as Jade was, Horn challenged Skywalker to a duel that day. He hoped to help Skywalker concentrate on the students he had, rather than his failures with Gantoris, Durron, and Jade. He also wanted lightsaber training against a living opponent, and only Skywalker had the control to keep both of them safe in a duel with live lightsabers. Horn made the fight brutally physical, forcing Skywalker to invest himself in it and work his hardest. In a conversation after the duel, he urged Skywalker to treat the students less like children, to entrust them with more responsibility and work to build their character as well as their skills.
====Facing Exar Kun====
The next morning, he awoke feeling disoriented and groggy. Going outside, he found Jade's Headhunter returned, with the controls destroyed. Realizing Durron had returned, he followed the younger man's trace through the Force to the top of the Great Temple. There he found the other students gathered around Skywalker's body, which was breathing but held no trace of his Force presence. They were able to determine that Durron had likely drawn the Sun Crusher superweapon from the heart of the gas giant Yavin Prime, where it had been sunk to prevent its use. Horn began taking charge, urging the others to take Skywalker in and watch over him. Horn contacted Coruscant, getting hold of Celchu. He asked for a medical team and explosives in order to destroy the temple that, through his research of the survey logs, he thought was the nexus of Kun's power. Celchu then put him through to Cracken, whom Horn warned of the threat posed by Durron and the Sun Crusher. He also asked Cracken about Mirax, but the general had no leads.
When Celchu arrived, Horn declined his offer to lead a proton torpedo run on Kun's temple, as he was worried about putting others in danger and only planned to destroy it in an emergency. He did, however, give Celchu its coordinates in case of emergency. The medics found nothing physically wrong with Skywalker, leaving the students adrift. Horn was disturbed that there was no further sign of Kun, as he anticipated a sociopath, which he considered Kun to be, to accelerate his schedule of attacks as he had previously. After a week, the Solo family arrived to see Skywalker, which helped revive the students' spirits. During a meal with them, Horn and all the Force-sensitives present were struck by a wave of anguish. He stumbled away, realizing that Durron had used the Sun Crusher to destroy an inhabited star system, which he was able to determine through the Force was Carida. He spoke with Han Solo, revealing his true identity and offering to go along as Solo made it clear he intended to track down Durron and try to talk him down. Before Solo left, he lent Horn some tools to repair the Headhunter's controls.
The night after Solo left, Horn was awoken to the distress of the others. He quickly realized that Streen, who had been guarding Skywalker's body, was being influenced by Kun. Rushing to the Grand Audience Chamber, he projected an image into Streen's mind in which the chamber was empty and there was no danger. Streen ended the windstorm with which he was sweeping Skywalker's body away and, upon coming to his senses, said that he had been under the impression he was fighting the dark man. Horn returned to his quarters, where the spirit of Exar Kun appeared. Horn was defiant, but Kun offered him the ability to destroy the Invids and showed him a vision of Mirax, promising he could tell Horn where she was. When Horn still rejected Kun's invitations, the spirit left angrily.
When Organa Solo was planning to leave, having been contacted by the former traitor Terpfen about a kidnap attempt on her son Anakin, Horn spoke to her, telling her that because of Kun's attempts to get inside Horn's mind, he was now familiar enough with Kun to be able to fool him with illusions. However, he could not genuinely trust any of the other students not to be under Kun's influence. While he could not dissuade Organa Solo from leaving, she expressed her faith in his ability to hold Kun off long enough. Believing that Kun would still be attempting to influence Streen, he had the other student work with him on the Headhunter, giving Kun a possible weapon in the ship. What he did not tell Streen was that a code was needed to use its weapons. However, Kun declined the opportunity, instead attacking at night through flying beasts he influenced. Horn took the Headhunter up and was able to triangulate the location where he felt Kun's influence to be emanating from. When the initial attacking beasts were dealt with by the other students, four more began approaching the Great Temple. Horn killed all of them, and when he returned, Solusar told him that the Solo twins had been able to hear Skywalker's spirit through the Force. Skywalker had identified Kun as the dark man, and Solusar planned a war council for the students. Horn urged him to put it off until the next day, as they needed sleep and Kun had been too exhausted by the attack to strike soon.
During the planning session, Horn monitored the area through the Force. He managed to detect that Kun was spying on them through Streen and used his mental powers to tweak the information flowing to Kun, though the war council already seemed hopeless enough. As they floated a series of unlikely plans, Kun lost interest, dismissed them, and withdrew his connection to Streen. With that done, Horn proposed his plan: Streen would guard Skywalker's body, and Horn would provoke Kun to attack. The other students would repel Kun using the light side. Horn would not tell the others how he planned to force Kun's hand, and set off for Kun's temple in the Headhunter. He closed his mind with the Force, trying to prevent Kun from detecting him, and landed near the small temple serving as the focus for Kun's power. He placed several Nergon-14 charges to bring down the temple, then revealed his presence. Kun appeared, and Horn mocked him, believing that Kun's spirit could not directly affect the material world. Kun proved him wrong, destroying the detonators and slamming Horn back and forth into the stones of the temple, breaking multiple bones. He then presented Horn with an illusion of Mirax and his father rebuking him, devastating Horn and nearly driving him to use his despair, rage, and self-doubt against Kun. He resisted, however, and Jade arrived, antagonizing Kun. Annoyed by their confidence, Kun left for the Great Temple, convinced he could overcome the students. There, he was finally defeated, and Skywalker awoke.
====Charting a new course====
Horn spent much of the next days in a bacta tank, as Durron, freed of Kun's influence, returned to the academy and received Skywalker's forgiveness. Jade had left a datacard with a lead on Mirax, an appointment she had made on Nal Hutta. As many Invid pirates were based on Nal Hutta and had been leaving since Mirax was captured, Horn saw a firm link to them in the information. When Horn was once again hale, he spoke with Skywalker. He had decided to leave the academy and told Skywalker why: he felt insufficiently challenged by Skywalker's training regimen and could not stay with Durron, whom he regarded as a criminal in need of punishment. Their discussion became an argument, as Horn accused Skywalker of exercising poor judgment and claimed that he saw the dark side too broadly, ignoring minor evils and day-to-day temptations. Eventually, they were able to part amicably, Horn pointing out that Skywalker's methods of instruction simply weren't working for him but he still respected the Jedi Master, and Skywalker accepting that there were elements he could change.
Horn left on the Errant Venture, which he had already summoned. There, Booster Terrik was furious that Horn had not informed him of Mirax's capture and pushed Horn about the issue. Horn quickly realized that Terrik had known from the beginning and was testing Horn's character. He got Terrik to agree to help him, finding as much information on the Invids as he could. He also used Terrik's network to enter Corellia in order to see his grandfather. He was smuggled onto the world, where he was disappointed to see it Imperialized and somewhat decrepit.
He traveled to Rostek Horn's home, which he was surprised to see had become an impressive estate. A servant escorted him to the garden, where he hugged his grandfather for the first time since leaving Corellia six years before. Touring the garden, Rostek explained that his massive private files, full of potentially damaging information, kept him protected from—and indeed by—the Diktat. He kept these files, and his vast stores of information on the Jedi, encoded in the genetic sequences of the flowers he grew. Rostek expressed his pride in Horn and joy in being able to turn over to him information about his Jedi heritage, as well as Nejaa's effects, brought back after his death by his Jedi friend Ylenic It'kla. Struck by the weight of a past he had never known of, he took Nejaa's Jedi robes and spent the rest of the day with his adoptive grandfather, basking in his approval as a peer.
That night, he had a dream in which he was Nejaa Halcyon, experiencing the mission on which Halcyon died. Waking, he came to realize he had made a mistake in his Jedi training; he had tried to become his grandfather rather than being himself. He made up his mind to tackle the Invids as he would have done in CorSec: infiltrate and investigate them. Leaving Nejaa's lightsaber with Rostek, he left Corellia under the false identity of Jenos Idanian, with documents obtained by Rostek. His grandfather also secured him passage on the Tinta Lines liner Tinta Palette. While Horn was waiting aboard a shuttle to transfer from the Tinta Palette to the Tinta Rainbow, he was mildly annoyed by the man sitting next to him, a young and highly enthusiastic navigator named Keevy Spart with a fanatic passion for Rogue Squadron and piloting. However, he soon had larger concerns as the Invidious appeared, and a pair of pirates boarded the shuttle. He planned to let them take what they wanted and leave rather than endangering the other passengers, but when he noticed Spart preparing to attack one of the pirates, he took them on himself, using an illusion to cause one to shoot himself in the leg and outfighting the other. Knowing more pirates would be on the way, he piloted the shuttle away himself, using Spart as his navigator. They escaped and made their way to Elshandruu Pica, where the Errant Venture was docked.
Terrik was able to analyze the sensor records of Horn's escape and found that one of the ships present was the corvette Backstab, belonging to the Khuiumin Survivors pirate gang, which was a major part of the Invid organization. The Survivors had recently returned to Courkrus in the Khuiumin system, and it was there that Horn headed in the shuttle, Tinta Blue Seven. He landed in the city of Vlarnya, where he was seized by several wary Survivors. He was brought before Jacob Nive, their leader, and still posing as Idanian, he explained that he had been in a hurry to flee others when the shuttle had originally been boarded and so had to leave. He was impressed by their operation, however, and having safely escaped, he wished to join them. During the interview, he made an enemy of Remart Sasyru, a pilot in Bolt who acted hostile towards Horn and in return was mercilessly heckled. Nive agreed to place Horn in Rock Squadron, one of the Survivors' less-impressive units.
====Undercover====
Rock Leader, Nakk Kech, began training Horn on the Tri-fighter. Almost immediately, he was put on a mission, flying as Rock Nine with Caet Shrovl, a Shistavanen, as his wingmate. Horn's flight flew cover as the other Rocks raided the Galaxy Chance, capturing Zlece Oonaar, the captain of one of the Star Destroyers that had originally ravaged the Eyttyrmin Batiiv pirate gang, the remnants of which became the Survivors. However, a private yacht appeared during the raid, and its Headhunter escort engaged Horn's flight. Horn drove them off using his ion cannon, which attracted Nive's attention. Horn explained to him that while he was not squeamish, he had no desire to kill if not necessary, and felt that letting enemies live was a way to engender less resistance in the future.
During the battle, Horn had ordered Shrovl to keep from killing a pilot whose fighter was already disabled. When they returned, she angrily attacked him for denying her what she saw as her right to a kill, but Horn was able to talk her down. She moved into One Flight, and Horn was voted leader of Three Flight by the other Rocks. In that position, he had to recruit three new pilots to fill out the flight. The new pilots were generally overconfident in their own skills and hostile to Horn's attempts to improve them, but Timmser proved the best of the group.
During the month he spent training them, Horn gained a feel for Vlarnya, which was inhabited by seven different pirate crews. The Survivors tended to prefer the Crash cantina as a hangout, and it was there that Horn had a run-in with Sasyru. The other pilot entered and began insulting Shrovl, and rather than have her start a fight, Horn began making fun of Sasyru, culminating in the Bolt pilot attacking. Horn was able to dodge him and punch back, incapacitating the larger man. He then ordered Sasyru to avoid bothering any Rock pilots in the future. Afterward, Shrovl confided in him that Sasyru had once befriended and abused her. When she perceived that Horn was separated from the one he loved, he told her a false tale about desiring to use the Invids to destroy the one standing between himself and his love. She replied that he would have to become a True Invid, part of the ship's crew, and to do so must become a Bolt.
While he and Shrovl put a plan in place to have him promoted to Bolt Squadron, there were few missions assigned to the Rocks on which he could stand out. During one mission, Kech was killed and Horn elected captain of the Rocks in his place. He put Shrovl and Timmser in command of Two and Three Flights, respectively. He worked hard to build the unit's competence and largely succeeded; he also urged them to use their ion cannons, avoiding needless killing, reducing future resistance, and preserving salvage. When he found Sasyru attacking civilian speeders for sheer pleasure on one raid, he disabled his ship and ordered him recalled, then sent his portion of the booty to the families of the dead. Eventually, the Rocks were picked to fly with Invidious in a massive raid on the industrial world of Xa Fel. However, they ran into a New Republic fleet there, raiding the world themselves. Rogue Squadron and several Y-wings were sent against them, and Horn advocated concentrating on disabling the Y-wings and leaving the Rogues alone. He used the Force to project an image of his ship becoming an X-wing into Celchu's mind, but it was not enough, as Horn was sought out by several Rogues. He was able to evade Darklighter, then Qrygg. It was then that Celchu dropped onto Horn's tail, and Horn had to push himself to his limits to evade the colonel and return to the Invidious, which fled.
Aboard the Invidious, Tavira arrived and commended Tyresi Gurtt, captain of the Bolts, on the battle strategy and promoted her to command of the Invidious fighters. Gurtt confessed that the strategy had been Horn's and she merely relayed it; Tavira responded by putting Horn in command of the Bolts. Sasyru was furious. Three other pilots joined him in disliking Horn's command, and in response Horn assigned them to Three Flight on their own. He was interviewed about the Battle of Xa Fel by Tavira and Nive, who asked him about the fact that her advisors, the mysterious Force-users, had detected a Force presence in the battle. He knew it was his, but suggested that Skywalker had been flying with the Rogues, shunting away a mind probe performed by one of the advisors from nearby. Tavira was impressed by his answer and seemed to imply the possibility of a romantic relationship; she was known for taking many lovers from among her subordinates. Horn preemptively answered that he was only interested in "challenges" that dealt with his piloting ability, which infuriated the admiral. In response, she took Sasyru as her lover.
Their next mission was to Kerilt, home to a minor Caamasi refugee colony they planned to rob. Upon arriving, they found the Thalassian slavers already raiding the colony. They drove the slavers off, then Horn had Three Flight land and secure the spaceport while he surveyed the area. When Three Flight did not answer his comm inquiries, however, he put down to find them. He found them harassing the local Caamasi, beating one for trying to prevent them from taking his goods and raping his daughter. Sasyru was hostile and insubordinate, and Horn rebuked him for trying to take plunder for himself rather than sharing it with the others. When Sasyru asserted a right to shoot the Caamasi for resisting him, Horn declared that he was taking the alien as his personal servant. The other pilot threatened to shoot Horn, but instead Horn goaded him into a fistfight, in which he beat Sasyru badly. The Caamasi, who introduced himself as Elegos A'Kla, a local leader, stunned the other three pilots, who were about to open fire, and offered himself as Horn's servant in order to provide backing to his story; only by doing so did he feel he could protect his people. Horn gave the jewelry his pilots had tried to steal back to the Caamasi as well.
Horn was taken back aboard the Invidious and interrogated, where his story satisfied the investigators. Tavira arrived after the investigation was done, informing him she had had Sasyru executed for insubordination and striking a superior officer. She suggested that he had truly wanted her to have to kill Sasyru, and told him that he would now become her lover. She would give him a month to decide to come to her willingly. Horn knew that he was extremely attracted to Tavira physically but had no desire to cheat on Mirax. He was troubled by his attraction and did not want to give in to the idea that sleeping with her would help him find Mirax—he realized that it was no more than a justification to allow him to do what he wanted to do but knew was wrong. He was also worried by Tavira's assessment of his motivations in fighting Sasyru and realized that he had given in to anger and a desire to harm Sasyru, and that his time with the Invids had brought out many of his flaws. A'Kla, who was tending to the hand Horn had broken in beating Sasyru, helped him find his place with the help of the renowned philosophy of the Caamasi.
Horn realized that, while he had made a mistake in trying to be someone else in his Jedi training, he had made an equal mistake in ignoring what he had learned there; he had to integrate both parts of his heritage, both approaches into something that worked for him and made him a whole person. Upon returning to Courkrus, Horn found his hotel suite filled with extravagant gifts from Tavira, which he dismissed. He had decided to trust A'Kla in his plan to bring down Tavira and was shocked when A'Kla confessed that he already knew Horn—as Nejaa Halcyon's grandson. Caamasi had the ability to share memnis, an intense and complete memory, and A'Kla had done so with his uncle, Ylenic It'kla—Halcyon's close friend. A'Kla was completely trustworthy and eager to cooperate with Horn to bring down Tavira and the Invids.
====Reign of terror====
While Horn recovered from the injuries to his hands, he began touring Vlarnya and getting a better sense of the other pirate gangs operating there; he intended to disrupt Tavira's operations by driving the pirates off the world. After a week of planning his campaign to terrorize the pirates, he began building his own lightsaber based on the notes Rostek Horn had given him. Using scavenged parts, such as a speeder bike handlebar for the hilt and gemstones from Tavira's gifts for the focusing crystals, he was able to build it in two days of intense meditation. It was a dual-phase model, capable of doubling in length when twisted to bring a different set of crystals into alignment. When he was done, he began posing as affably but constantly drunk, getting people to largely treat him as harmless. He finally began his reign of terror one night as he spoke with Nive in The Crash. After Nive had had a bit to drink, Horn began projecting to him a mental illusion of the dead Oonaar coming up to their table and warning Nive that "Doom is coming to Courkrus." The rumor of the ghostly visitation soon spread through Vlarnya, causing widespread worry.
Not long thereafter, Horn put on a set of green Jedi robes A'Kla had made him to match Halcyon's and went prowling through the streets, looking for a wrong to right. He found two members of the LazerLords pirate gang attempting to rape a woman and fought them off. In extremely short order, word had spread across Vlarnya that a lightsaber-equipped Jedi was on the loose. The next several nights he performed similar feats, incapacitating small groups of pirates. One night, he warned some Fastblasters that he would kill the next member of that gang he saw. Three days later, the Fastblast left Courkrus. Another night, he struck at the Blackstar Pirates, who spent their time in a secret stronghold in the back of the Mynock Hole cantina. Entering the rear area, he found a spice den, brothel, bar, and gambling house in operation. He lit his lightsaber, stalked through the facility, damaging the bar and jubilee wheel, and warned the pirates that doom was coming before leaving.
While Horn had cracked the pirates' sense of invincibility, they had caught on to the fact that he had not yet killed any and were feeling bolder again. Shala, the Hutt leader of one of the gangs, fortified his warehouse base and began having his minions terrorize the local population, challenging the mysterious Jedi to attack him. Horn was convinced he had to do something and went to face Shala against A'Kla's protestations that he should not give up the element of surprise. Horn entered the warehouse den and faced Shala on his dais, who revealed that he held the trigger to a set of laser-flechette mines surrounding Horn, and if Horn did not surrender, he would trigger them. Horn tried to cut the trigger apart with the longer blade of his dual-phase lightsaber, but the blade failed. Shala dropped the dead-man trigger in surprise, however, setting off the series of mines. Horn channeled the Force to protect him, absorbing the massive input of laser energy and flame, using its power to channel the explosive power upward through the ceiling to protect neighboring areas. He burnt off the last of his absorbed energy in a massive illusion of the column of flame becoming a Jedi with a lightsaber of fire which he projected for all Vlarnya to see.
With the rush of power gone, he realized he had taken many minor wounds, and his clothing had been burnt away. Exhausted by his heavy use of the Force, he had to slink back to his home, but on his way back, he was seen by a pair of women leaving their workplace. He lacked the energy to project an illusion protecting himself, but A'Kla arrived on the scene and began chastising him for being drunk and having crashed his speeder bike, thereby explaining the lightsaber hilt. Relieved, Horn allowed A'Kla to take him home. There, he removed the crystal that had failed—not a diamond, but a cheap substitute—and was able to get his lightsaber functioning again, though with only a single length setting. A'Kla was able to learn that the Invids were terrified that Shala—the one gang leader who had promised to resist the Jedi and rallied morale—had been so utterly defeated, some groups of Vlarnya's citizens had risen and attacked small groups of pirates, and Timmser and Shrovl had fled in the hyperdrive-equipped Tri-fighters Horn had trained them on, hoping they would take the opportunity to leave. He had supplemented that hope by planting rumors that he was sleeping with them, making them realize Tavira would take vengeance on them.
The next night, Horn drove off the last of Shala's group and let the populace loot the storehouse they had been using as headquarters. The Fastblasters and Shala's gang were completely gone, and the LazerLords, Blackstar Pirates, and Red Nova pirates had suffered from extreme desertion. When one of Tavira's courier ships showed up, the admiral was anything but pleased. She found Horn and told him that she believed Skywalker was the "ghost Jedi" that had the pirates running scared. She demanded that he take charge of the situation and rally the others against the Jedi, not spend his days in dissipation. She also demanded that he kill Nive and take control of the Survivors, as Nive was terrified and broken. Horn immediately began making the rounds of the other groups, boosting morale, issuing security orders, and relaying the fact that Tavira was promising a successful trap for the Jedi, though he did not kill Nive.
====Rescue====
He planned to fake his own death at the hands of the Jedi, utterly shattering morale. To that end, he appeared as the Jedi inside the Crash, using illusions to hide his face and challenging Idanian. On leaving, a group of five beings followed him from across the street into an alley. Horn planned to deal with them, but soon realized they were Force-users armed with lightsabers. One more arrived, but he proved to be Skywalker himself. With his aid, he disabled all the attackers and revealed that he had arrived with Qrygg as well. Qrygg brought Force-nullifying ysalamiri to keep the prisoners, which they had brought back to Horn's hotel room, restrained, and began interrogating them. Skywalker acted as the angry, impatient master as Horn played the good cop, pretending to receive messages from Skywalker through the Force. He learned that they belonged to a Force-using sect calling themselves the Jensaarai, located on Susevfi. Tavira had found them and, threatening the population of the world if they did not cooperate, forced them to serve as her advisors. They had detected and captured Mirax, and she was being kept on Susevfi.
Horn, Skywalker, A'Kla, and Qrygg departed for Susevfi after entrusting Nive with the secret of Horn's identity and offering him a pardon and a chance for the Survivors to start over, if they kept the captured Jensaarai guarded with an ysalamir. The other ysalamir kept the Jensaarai from sensing the Jedi's presence when they landed on Susevfi. On the way, Horn apologized for having placed too many expectations on Skywalker's training, and Skywalker acknowledged that they did not have to do things the same way to be great Jedi. On landing, the four proceeded to the governor's palace, where they knew Mirax was being held. They attacked it, powering through the stormtrooper guards, and Horn was able to use the Force to locate Mirax's cell. Skywalker pulled her out of the Force-induced trance she had been put in, and Horn was overjoyed to be reunited with his wife.
As there were too many stormtroopers alerted for them to fight their way back to the spaceport, the group decided to fight their way up the tallest tower of the palace to the landing pad and try to find a ship to flee in. Tavira fled from the top of the tower, but on their way up, Horn's group encountered the Jensaarai, led by their Saarai-kaar. The Saarai-kaar seemed convinced that she was meant to confront Horn, and the two dueled. Horn's lightsaber failed on contact with her cortosis armor, and as she stood over him, he projected into her head the image of Nikkos Tyris, the Anzat whom he had seen kill his grandfather in his earlier dream and whose distinctive lightsaber style the Saarai-kaar shared. Mirax was able to stun her, and with Skywalker having defeated the other Jensaarai, the last threat remaining was Tavira. She planned to bombard the world with the Invidious, but Horn was able to use the Force to stoke her paranoia and project an image of Lusankya coming for her. She fled.
The Errant Venture, Rogue Squadron, and the Survivors helped secure Susevfi and an agreement was reached that allowed the Survivors to become the word's security force. Horn and the others confronted the gathered Jensaarai prisoners and learned their history; they had been the students of a Sith cult led by Tyris and some others, but when Halcyon and the other Jedi defeated their leadership, they fled. They had not learned enough of the Sith ways to become devotees of the dark side and believed themselves to be heirs to the true Jedi tradition. They had stayed hidden before Tavira found them. A'Kla shared the memnis of Halcyon's death and the deaths of the Jensaarai leaders near the end of the Clone Wars with Horn, who projected it to Skywalker and the Jensaarai. With it, Horn and Skywalker were able to get through to the Saarai-kaar and convince her that the Jensaarai were not wholly correct in their outlook on the Force. Skywalker invited them to train with him.
===Relative peace===
====Jedi, pilot, father and husband====
Horn, however, decided not to become a full-time Jedi. He felt that he could do the most good using his Jedi abilities as part of Rogue Squadron. Skywalker accepted this, feeling that Horn was making the right decision. While Tavira had fled, her pirate network was broken and she lacked the Jensaarai to warn her of ambushes. Horn planned to rejoin Rogue Squadron and help them end her career. First, however, he took his X-wing and torpedoed Kun's temple on Yavin 4, demolishing it and keeping its dark side aura from ever corrupting another student. While A'Kla turned to the task of aiding his Caamasi community, Horn kept in touch with him, and the pair remained good friends. Horn also eventually wrote an account of his training as a Jedi and his rescue of his wife, which would later be quoted by Tionne Solusar in her scholarly work.Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force
In 12 ABY, the Rogues, contacted by Skywalker, helped drive Desann, a fallen Jedi, from the powerful Force nexus known as the Valley of the Jedi. Desann then proceeded to attack the Praxeum at Yavin 4 with the troop ship Doomgiver and ground forces that included the Reborn Dark Jedi. Summoned by Horn's friend Kyle Katarn, the Rogues destroyed Doomgiver and provided cover for New Republic ground troops as they fought off Desann's assault.Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast During the year, Horn returned to the Jedi Praxeum; he had indicated to Skywalker that he would be available when called upon. In 13 ABY, Horn and his wife had their first child, Valin, named for Horn's father. In the same year, Horn's friend Wessiri finally married Antilles; Horn had long urged the two to get together.
In 14 ABY, he was assigned a Jedi apprentice of his own, Raltharan. He began training him in the midst of the Disciples of Ragnos crisis, which resulted in Skywalker sending Horn to Wayland, where he attempted to make sure that the Disciples of Ragnos, a Sith cult, had not used the scepter of Ragnos to tap into the Force energy present at Mount Tantiss. Horn likely participated in the Battle of Korriban, which saw much of the New Jedi Order mobilized to defeat the cultists on the Sith tomb world of Korriban before they could revive the long-dead Sith Lord Marka Ragnos. Horn went on to successfully complete Raltharan's training after the crisis concluded. In 16 ABY, he and Mirax welcomed a daughter, Jysella, into their life.Fate of the Jedi: Omen
Despite those adventures with the Jedi, Horn devoted most of his time to the squadron; he also kept his status as a Jedi secret to all but his closest friends among the Rogues. In 18 ABY, the Rogues helped evacuate Thanta Zilbra ahead of Centerpoint Station's use of the starbuster superweapon against that system's sun, a crisis that was resolved without further destruction of worlds.Assault at Selonia Around that year, Antilles returned to the squadron, taking command.
====The Caamas Document Crisis====
In 19 ABY, Horn—by then promoted to the rank of commander—and the rest of the Rogues were attached to General Bel Iblis. They were on Morishim when an Imperial corvette, followed by an Imperial Star Destroyer, entered the system. The Rogues were scrambled, but the Star Destroyer captured the corvette and departed before they could get near. The odd incident was chalked up as an attempted defection, and audio records of the fragmentary transmission that came through the Star Destroyer's jamming were forwarded for analysis. At around that same time, news broke that a partial copy of the Caamas Document had been discovered, implicating several Bothans in the sabotage that allowed the Empire to destroy Caamas. Without a full copy, the names of the culprits were not known, but that revelation stirred up animosity against the Bothans as a people and created a public outcry. The crisis was exacerbated by the actions of a shadowy group calling itself Vengeance, which was rumored to be behind various acts of mob violence.
Horn was sent to the Errant Venture to see if Terrik's intelligence network could turn up any information on the group, as well as asking him about the "Hand of Thrawn," a term that had been found on a datacard in the ruins of Palpatine's storehouse at Mount Tantiss. He took Mirax and Valin with him, and while speaking with Terrik, Talon Karrde arrived. Horn was suspicious of Karrde and did not want to trust him with details of his mission, but when Karrde produced a gift for Valin, who had developed a love for music, Horn realized that Karrde's information sources were incredibly good. Very few New Republic officials, and only at the highest levels, had known of the mission, so for Karrde's knowing that Valin would be aboard convinced Horn there was no point in trying to keep the purpose of his visit from Karrde. Karrde promised to look into Vengeance and see if it had any connections with Imperial Intelligence. Karrde in turn mentioned that he had heard of clone soldiers being found aboard ships used by the Cavrilhu Pirates, and he wished to know if they had their own cloning technology or were using soldiers left over from Thrawn's campaign. While on the bridge, their conversation was interrupted by a small ship buzzing them. It jumped to hyperspace after transmitting a message, in which Jade detected Thrawn's full name, Mitth'raw'nuruodo. Horn considered the ship a possible link to the Hand of Thrawn, whatever or whoever that might be. Jade departed to track the ship to the Nirauan system, as the New Republic had its hands full with the Caamas Document Crisis.
Having returned to the Rogues, Horn scrambled one day during dessert to respond to a panicked call from Sif'kric. Bel Iblis took his task force to the world, where the annual pommwomm shipment, central to the Sif'kries' economy and highly time-sensitive, was being held up by a Frezhlix force blockading the system. The Sif'kries' traditional rivals, the Frezhlix clearly desired to destroy Sif'kric's economy, but had not made any actual hostile moves. As the call had not come from anyone actually in the Sif'krie government, Bel Iblis had no legal basis for interceding. Bel Iblis was too creative to let that stop him, contacting Horn and asking him if he recognized any of the pommwomm-shipping freighters present as belonging to Terrik. Horn searched, found one, and Bel Iblis decided to investigate it for suspicion of smuggling. The Rogues cut through the Frezhlix fleet to reach it, causing the Frezhlix to believe they were under attack. When they opened fire, the New Republic task force easily defeated the Frezhlix and allowed the pommwomm shipment to continue.
When the Mengjini comm relay went down nearby due to capture by dissident elements, Bel Iblis took his force to investigate and retake the relay. They did so, and then moved on to Di'tai'ni by request. There, Bel Iblis anticipated trouble and had the pilots sleep in their cockpits. He was proven right when a call came from Bothawui in the middle of the night requesting assistance. The Leresai had sent an attack force. The Rogues were sent ahead of the rest of the fleet, and arrived to find a major Leresen force. When Antilles contacted them, they explained that they wished to take vengeance for the death of two Leresai in a riot on Bothawui earlier. Leresen concepts of justice demanded the lives of the guilty in return, or ten innocent for each victim. They intended to destroy a space station with a crew of twenty, and so the Rogues moved to oppose them. Horn's danger sense, however, kept them from deploying their S-foils in attack position, and visual examination showed that their fighters had been sabotaged so that their weapons would fail. They could do nothing and looked on in anger as the space station was destroyed, killing twenty-one innocent Bothans.
Shortly afterward, Ackbar assigned Bel Iblis to prepare for an attack at the Imperial Remnant's Ubiqtorate base at Yaga Minor in order to seek a complete copy of the Caamas Document, the one thing that could end the crisis. Bel Iblis believed that someone had to be present to ensure Bothawui's security, however, as twelve separate fleets had arrived in orbit to show their support for an opposition of the Bothan government. It was a flashpoint that could erupt into violence at any time, and Bel Iblis worried that Vengeance might attempt sabotage of the shields over the capital of Drev'starn. Due to a technicality concerning the composition of his task force, the general was able to leave Antilles and Horn on Drev'starn to protect the shield generator and attempt to ferret out any Vengeance activity.Vision of the Future
In Drev'starn, the pair began surveilling the shield facility, which was reputedly impregnable. While doing so, their pockets were picked by a pair of passersby who disappeared before the pilots realized they had been robbed. However, they were quickly returned by an older woman named Moranda Savich. A pickpocket herself, she worked for Karrde and had seen the theft; she stole their wallets back and went to speak to Horn and Antilles. She introduced herself and explained that she was doing the same job as they were, for Karrde. They agreed to work together, and their brainstorming determined that the most likely route for an attack was the power conduits coming into the building. When a check on incoming craft to see if they could spot any Vengeance links proved fruitless, they tried pulling the list of outgoing messages from Drev'starn and searching them for possible Vengeance transmissions. That proved a dead end, as all the suspicious transmissions were directed to relay stations. Instead, they turned to finding if any businesses had been set up near the shield generator recently, reasoning that Vengeance would need somewhere to work out of that could provide sufficient cover for their activities.
They found several suspicious shops and investigated them. While inside the Exoticalia Pet Emporium, the owner got a call from someplace they could tell was highly secure about a possible metalmite infestation and was asked to help exterminate them. Horn concluded it was likely the Drev'starn shield generator. They were left more suspicious of that stop than any other, though Horn also had a bad feeling about one restaurant directly on top of the shield generator's incoming power conduit that had recently hired new help. However, they got no further in their investigation before Bel Iblis recalled them to prepare for the Yaga Minor attack. Savich promised to stay on the case, however.
At Yaga Minor, the Rogues were part of the New Republic task force that pretended to chase the Errant Venture, disguised as the Tyrannic, into the base and then engaged the perimeter defenses. They kept up the distraction, but the Errant Venture was captured, pinned by tractor beams within the base's perimeter by Grand Admiral Thrawn himself, who had returned in the last weeks to much New Republic consternation. The New Republic fleet plunged into the perimeter, hoping to free Bel Iblis. As the Rogues prepared to attack, they were contacted by Talon Karrde, who claimed he could resolve the situation if they escorted him to the base. Horn felt through the Force that Karrde really did have a chance to end the battle, and the Rogues escorted him in. Karrde delivered Imperial Supreme Commander Gilad Pellaeon to the station, where he exposed "Thrawn" as a con man involved in a power play by Moff Vilim Disra. Pellaeon ended the battle and announced his intention to open peace negotiations with the New Republic, resulting in the end of the Galactic Civil War.
Meanwhile, Savich failed to keep the Imperial Intelligence agents behind "Vengeance" from destroying the shield generator, which began a massive space battle over Bothawui. That threat was ended when the cloaked Imperial Star Destroyers waiting to finish off the survivors of the battle were revealed, uniting the fleets against them. Skywalker and Jade returned from Nirauan with a copy of the Caamas Document, putting the Caamas Document Crisis to a final end.
====Peacetime====
With the peace between the New Republic and Imperial Remnant, Horn retired from Rogue Squadron, though not before gaining a promotion to the rank of colonel. Deciding it was time to dedicate himself to the Jedi full-time, he traveled to the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4. It was there that he heard that Skywalker and Jade had gotten engaged while on Nirauan. He traveled to Coruscant with Mirax and the Solusars—Kam and Tionne—to be part of the wedding party. There, he and Kam Solusar talked with Skywalker about the possibility of a Jedi wedding. Horn suggested having a private Jedi ceremony first; he felt that having the public event as a Jedi one would confuse the public and make them feel excluded from what was supposed to be a uniting event. Skywalker agreed.Star Wars: Union
Solusar conducted the Jedi ceremony, which Horn attended. That evening, Solo and Antilles arranged a bachelor party for Skywalker at the Red Rancor cantina, which was attended by a plethora of old Rogues and smugglers. The celebration was quickly broken up by a belligerent swoop gang, but they were just as quickly defeated by the bachelor party. The next day, they were fitted for suits, and in short order it was time for the wedding. Horn served as an usher but was called away when Banner Sumptor approached Karrde and alerted him that a small group of Imperials under Moff Derran Takkar were planning an attack on the wedding. Horn and Solusar defended the wedding hall from a diversionary attack by the same swoop gang from the Red Rancor. They held off the first pass before Horn projected an illusion to them that they were being sucked into a black hole. Gunning their engines, all the riders crashed their swoops. While Takkar still made it inside to the ceremony, Skywalker was able to talk him down, and the wedding went on peacefully.
Horn spent the next several years as an instructor at the Jedi Praxeum, teaching the students skills with illusions as well as providing lightsaber and piloting training. Both Valin and Jysella were Force-sensitive, and so spent their time at the academy as well. During these years there began to arise a divide between Skywalker and Durron, as Durron urged a more proactive role for the Jedi, one which aggressively pursued criminals, sought respect for the Jedi, and saw the Force as a tool to be used to the Jedi's advantage. Skywalker saw this philosophy as too aggressive and prideful and urged more circumspection and humility in the Jedi. Horn sided solidly with Skywalker as Durron drew some of the brasher young Jedi to his side, beginning a minor split in the Jedi Order.The New Jedi Order Sourcebook He despised Durron and disliked his faction, finding their manner arrogant and their methods questionable.The New Jedi Order: Dark Tide II: Ruin When Mara Jade Skywalker fell ill in 25 ABY, Horn stepped up his time at the academy.
===The Yuuzhan Vong War===
====Encounter on Bimmiel====
When the Yuuzhan Vong invaded the galaxy later in 25 ABY, using biologically-based weapons and ships and unable to be sensed in the Force, Skywalker was called away to battle them, leaving Horn temporarily in charge of the Praxeum.The Official Star Wars Fact File 90 Afterward, Skywalker called a convocation of the Jedi on Yavin 4. Horn opposed Durron's suggestion that they take the fight to the Yuuzhan Vong, pointing out that they did not know enough about the threat and the New Republic, under Borsk Fey'lya's administration, was hostile towards the Jedi. Skywalker decided that the Jedi would gather information about their strange new enemies before taking action against them. Skywalker assigned Horn to travel to Bimmiel, where a xenoarchaeological team from the University of Agamar had fallen out of contact. The world was in the Yuuzhan Vong invasion corridor, and Skywalker felt it necessary to make sure it had not been conquered. Much to Horn's displeasure, he was partnered with Ganner Rhysode, a younger, showy Jedi Knight who was one of Durron's stronger supporters. Skywalker insisted that Horn would be needed to control Rhysode's impulsiveness, and he hoped that Horn could provide an example for Rhysode that might lead him away from Durron's philosophy. Before leaving, Horn went to see Valin outside, where he found him practicing his Force skills. Rhysode approached and told Horn that he intended to do whatever he felt necessary on the mission, ignoring Horn's role as mission leader. Horn criticized him for putting his philosophy above the mission and urged him to adopt a style of dealing with others that would set them at ease rather than seeming harsh and critical.
Arriving over Bimmiel in the freighter Dalliance, Horn saw that the comm relay satellite in orbit had been damaged, explaining why no messages had left the planet. They landed near the students' camp, but on investigating, they found it abandoned. The pair of Jedi guessed the team had holed up in the nearby caves, and made for them. While walking, they were attacked by slashrats, native predators that tunneled through the sand and leaped to attack. They fled, making it safely to the caves, where they were met by Doctor Anki Pace, the expedition leader. She was suspicious of them, as recent Jedi-related archaeological finds had begun to go missing, and she suspected the Jedi of stealing them. Horn knew nothing of this and was able to gain Pace's trust. She showed him their find: a mummified humanoid corpse, approximately fifty years dead, that Horn was able to identify as that of a Yuuzhan Vong, presumably an advance scout.
They spent the next week trapped in the caves by sandstorms. Horn and Rhysode took the night watch for slashrat attacks, and during the day he examined the corpse and confirmed it was one of the extragalactic aliens. When the storms died down, he and Rhysode began scouting the area to see if the Yuuzhan Vong might be present. Following the Force, they found a Yuuzhan Vong camp, where they sensed inhabitants with something wrong about them; their sense in the Force was fuzzy, as if they were slowly dying. They moved to the edge of the encampment, where they took samples of the sand, which was repelling the slashrats from the site. There, they watched as one of the slaves, covered in coral growths, tried to escape and was beaten to death by two Yuuzhan Vong. Rhysode wanted to free the slave, but Horn stopped him, not knowing if there might be more Yuuzhan Vong and not wanting to risk everyone else. The pair retreated, and Rhysode expressed his anger with Horn, but the older Jedi explained his reasoning.
Back at the students' camp, analysis showed that Yuuzhan Vong beetles in the soil were producing synthetic stink, the compound dead slashrats gave off which drove other slashrats away. Horn suggested that the students engineer a virus that would have the beetles produce killscent instead, which slashrats exuded while making a kill, attracting others into a feeding frenzy. Pace objected on the grounds that the virus could have unanticipated effects, destroying Bimmiel's ecosystem. Rhysode urged that the Jedi simply battle the Yuuzhan Vong. While discussing, however, the Jedi realized that two people were missing from the caves. They had left to repair a meteorological station, but when contacted by comm, they did not respond. It was assumed they were in the hands of the Yuuzhan Vong.
Horn and Rhysode checked the meteorological station, and found four tracks leading back to the Yuuzhan Vong camp. They began loading equipment and the remains onto the Dalliance and prepared to evacuate the team while scouting the Yuuzhan Vong camp daily, where they found that the two Yuuzhan Vong were using the slaves to search for something, presumably the body the archaeologists had found. Horn decided that he and Rhysode would free the two captured students, then escape as the students aboard the Dalliance sprayed the site with the virus and synthetic killscent; Horn and Rhysode felt that the slaves were irreversibly dying and could not be saved.
When they were ready, one of the students buzzed the Yuuzhan Vong camp with a remote probe, drawing off the two aliens. The two Jedi entered the grashal building where the two prisoners were kept and found them suspended from the Embrace of Pain, a Yuuzhan Vong torture device. When Rhysode made to free them, Horn noted that the device kept the two in a constant state of pain. Incompletely freeing them could result in compensation by the device that could maim the prisoners. He decided that he would have to project pain into them in order to loosen the restraints. To that end, he had Rhysode hold his lightsaber against his outstretched arm. Horn fed the pain of his burn to the students, slackening the restraints enough to cut them free. However, as they were freed and the Dalliance began dropping the killscent, the two Yuuzhan Vong warriors returned. Horn told Rhysode to cut his way out of the back and levitate the two students away while he stayed and held off the two warriors, sacrificing himself. Horn dueled the younger warrior first and was able to use the surprise of his dual-phase blade to kill his opponent with the lengthening of the blade. Battling the older alien, Horn received a wound to the leg before cutting off the other's leg. While doing so, however, he was bitten by the Yuuzhan Vong's amphistaff weapon. Its venom numbed Horn and left him helpless on the floor. Horn cut out the floor of the grashal, then used the Force to convince the nearby slashrats to attack the warrior. With his opponent dead, Horn prepared to die himself and was briefly convinced that he had done so before Rhysode returned, levitated him from the grashal, and brought him aboard the Dalliance, where bacta saved his life.
====Discovery on Garqi====
After some time of bacta therapy, Horn was healthy in time to participate in another Jedi gathering to determine their role in the war. Skywalker decided that they would not strike aggressively, only responding defensively to known threats. He also announced that the New Republic had decided not to support any Jedi operations in the war zone; however, as Horn was still in the military reserve, he was reactivated by Admiral Traest Kre'fey, who was operating with Antilles and Rogue Squadron, which was now commanded by Darklighter. As an officer, Horn was assigned to lead a commando team onto Garqi, a conquered world, and see if he could support a resistance movement and evacuate civilians. He had six Noghri commandos under his command and was allowed two civilian observers; he chose Rhysode and young Jacen Solo.
They prepared for the mission aboard Kre'fey's flagship, Ralroost. Horn advised Solo, who had a habit of impulsive action, to follow orders, and spoke with his sister Jaina about her new position in Rogue Squadron. When the time came for the insertion, the Ralroost arrived in the system and deployed the freighter Lost Hope. It was merely a shell for the true vehicle in which Horn's team was deployed, Best Chance. With all but Kre'fey believing the destruction genuine, the Lost Hope experienced an engine failure over Garqi and broke apart. Masquerading as part of the debris, Horn was able to bring the Best Chance to a safe landing undetected.
On the planet, Horn kept the commando team secret, scouting the terrain and living off the land. They found that the technophobic Yuuzhan Vong had destroyed much of the local machinery and saw few people. Eventually they received a comm message from the local resistance suggesting a meeting time. He met the resistance leader, Rade Dromath—the son of the New Republic officer who had recommended Horn join Rogue Squadron—and Dynba Tesc, the student he had freed at the end of his first stay on Garqi. The next day, Dromath showed them the Yuuzhan Vong activity in the city of Pesktda: they were building an army of slaves. Using the same surge coral implants Horn had seen at Bimmiel, they controlled the slave army and took the slaves on training exercises through the city. Horn decided to capture a few slave soldiers so that the New Republic could test the implants and hopefully find a way to counter them, and to do so without the Yuuzhan Vong knowing they had even been there. To that end, he decided to make the capture during one of the war games.
They waited under the Wlesc neighborhood streets in utility conduits, using their holovision goggles to view the area while the resistance fighters provided sniper cover from above. When the fighting above them was at its worst, they erupted from the conduits. When Rhysode killed the first of the three Yuuzhan Vong overseeing the battle between the Human Thralls and the Chazrach soldiers against which they trained the slaves, the exercise ended and both groups turned on the Jedi and Noghri. Horn killed the Yuuzhan Vong leader, and the third was killed by snipers. Some of the resistance fighters dragged away a few captive slaves, but the arrival of a coralskipper—a Yuuzhan Vong fighter—made him realize that they would be pursued, and the Ralroost was not returning to pick them up for another two hours. He ordered the others to create a distraction while the prisoners were taken away and stayed behind himself to hold off the coralskipper. Against his orders, Solo stayed and used telekinesis to block the fighter's plasma cannon with a hatch cover, destroying it when the weapon misfired and likely saving Horn's life.
Horn and Solo provided a rearguard as the main body of fighters retreated to the Pesktda Xenobotanical Garden. Constantly harried by Yuuzhan Vong warriors, they made a stand in the bafforr tree grove, where Horn hoped they could use the semi-sentient trees to gain a sense of where the Yuuzhan Vong harassing them were. They planned to make a last stand, sacrificing themselves, in order to allow the Best Chance to escape. Seven Yuuzhan Vong warriors entered the grove, and their leader, Krag Val, challenged the Jedi to combat. They charged, but Rhysode was badly wounded by Val. Solo killed the leader while Horn protected Rhysode. He held off a few warriors before noticing that their vonduun crab armor had swollen up, suffocating the warriors inside. As they died, Horn realized the vonduun crabs were allergic to the bafforr pollen coating the grove.
Realizing this knowledge could be crucial to winning the war, Horn had pollen samples taken and ordered the grove burned down in order to conceal the evidence and keep the Yuuzhan Vong from realizing their weakness. In order to make it less obvious that the grove was important, he had the resistance fighters burn down the whole Garden. It pained Horn to kill the semi-sentient bafforrs, but he felt it necessary for the greater good of the war effort. They did so before escaping to the Best Chance. Dromath and his people declined Horn's offer to flee with them, preferring to continue the fight on their homeworld. Horn piloted the shuttle out, but the extraction was opposed by a large Yuuzhan Vong fleet. However, Imperial Remnant reinforcements under Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon arrived and were sufficient to allow Horn to escape.
====Showdown at Ithor====
Kre'fey and Pellaeon took their fleets to Ithor, homeworld of the bafforr tree, to protect this vital asset. Horn, Skywalker, Pellaeon, and Kre'fey participated in a council of war to plan the world's defense. They accepted that there would be political limitations on their actions, but set out to do the best job they could of holding Ithor. One bright spot for Horn was that, due to his injuries on Garqi, Rhysode had decided he had been too arrogant previously, and joined Horn's and Skywalker's school of thought. In order to be allowed to operate on the surface of Ithor, which was traditionally forbidden ground, the Jedi and troops had to undergo a ritual blessing. The Jedi summoned for the world's defense were gathered together for one ceremony in which they were asked to reject some part of themselves that was holding them back from personal peace. Horn denounced his fear of failure.
Horn saw Mirax off, as she was transporting Ithorians and biological samples away from the world. Evacuation was ongoing as the New Republic and Remnant waited for the Yuuzhan Vong to strike. When the first enemy ship did arrive, it deployed Elegos A'Kla's shuttle. A'Kla, by then a senator, had gone to the Yuuzhan Vong and spent time among them, hoping to learn their ways and find a peaceful solution. The New Republic recovered the shuttle, which was broadcasting a message to Horn. He and Antilles went to investigate the ship. He allowed the Yuuzhan Vong growths on the hull to take a sample of his blood, and entering found a message from A'Kla telling him briefly of his time with Commander Shedao Shai and of the fact that the two warriors Horn had killed on Bimmiel were Shai's relatives. Opening the case which came with the message, he found A'Kla's gilded bones and a message from Shai. The bones taken from Bimmiel belonged to Shai's ancestor, and Shai demanded them back.
Horn was devastated by the loss of his peaceful friend and devised a plan to use Shai's fixation on the remains to his advantage. In order to buy more time to complete the evacuation, he suggested they offer Shai a deal: a truce which would end in a duel between himself and Shai. If he won, Ithor would be left unmolested. If Shai won, the bones of his ancestor would be returned to him. Reluctantly, Skywalker and the admirals agreed. Skywalker and Jacen Solo both felt that Horn was skirting the dark side and out for revenge, but Horn maintained that he did not seek vengeance, merely to manipulate Shai and protect the Ithorian refugees.
When Shai's forces attacked Ithor, Horn was waiting with the ground troops, leading a squad of Jedi. When the Yuuzhan Vong forces landed and began engaging the false command center the New Republic had set up as a trap, Horn led his speeder-bike-mounted Jedi to the landing craft the Yuuzhan Vong had been using as a command center. It was lightly defended, and Horn was able to take it with ease. There, he contacted Shai by villip and offered him the deal; if Shai did not agree, he would destroy the remains. Shai agreed, and allowed a week's truce before they would duel.
Shai withdrew his forces and the evacuation of the Ithorians continued unimpeded for another week. Chief of State Fey'lya objected strenuously to Horn's bargain, but Horn resigned once more from the military in order to end Fey'lya's influence over him and insisted on going ahead with the duel, supported by Skywalker.
After a week, Horn traveled to a tabletop mountain on Ithor with Skywalker as his second. There he met Shai and began a fierce duel. Horn was stabbed through the abdomen, but continued fighting, taunting Shai on. Horn turned his lightsaber off when Shai attacked, overbalancing the warrior when he met no resistance and allowing Horn to press the hilt of his lightsaber against Shai's torso and activate it. Shai was dead, and Horn had won. However, upon returning to his ship, Shai's second-in-command, Deign Lian, unleashed a plague on Ithor that completely destroyed all organic matter on the world. Horn was floating in a bacta tank as he felt the world die.
====Scapegoat====
The deal had not been respected, and that failure caused Horn to be vilified in the media as the man who lost Ithor. Horn himself was agonized by the fact that, in the moment he had killed Shai, he had enjoyed it, had indulged his desire for revenge. He felt that he had touched the dark side. To sort his feelings out and to keep the Jedi from being any further entangled in the bad publicity surrounding him, he left the Jedi Order and urged Skywalker to denounce his actions as taken independently. He would take the blame himself and keep it from landing on the Jedi. Reluctantly, Skywalker agreed.
Horn and Mirax traveled to Corellia, where Rostek Horn's political pull was able to gain them asylum. There, he urged the Corellian government to take action to help the refugees displaced by the Yuuzhan Vong.The New Jedi Order: Balance Point After Thrackan Sal-Solo became the Corellian governor-general, he left that system and began shipping aboard the Errant Venture.The New Jedi Order: Edge of Victory I: Conquest During that time, a tenuous truce developed between the Yuuzhan Vong and New Republic, as Yuuzhan Vong Warmaster Tsavong Lah issued a declaration that he would cease prosecution of the war if the Jedi were handed over. Collaborators in the Peace Brigade began attacking the Jedi, and Fey'lya allowed it in order to gain time for the military to recover.
In 26 ABY, while Horn was aboard the Venture, which was helping arm the Hutt resistance against the Yuuzhan Vong, the Peace Brigade quietly attacked the academy at Yavin 4. Fey'lya refused to allow the Jedi New Republic support, fearing an end to the truce, and forbade the Jedi to take action themselves to defend the children at the Praxeum, Horn's children among them. Skywalker sent Karrde to evacuate the students, which he did with the exception of Anakin Solo, Tahiri Veila, Sannah, and Valin Horn. Karrde and the Solusars, who had been minding the academy, remained at Yavin 4, facing a Yuuzhan Vong fleet, and sent the rest of the students and a request for aid. In response, Skywalker sent the Solo twins to find the Errant Venture. As soon as they did, Terrik barreled into the Yavin system to rescue his grandchild. Horn and the Solos flew cover, peeling the coralskipper pursuit off the ship the young Jedi were escaping Yavin in. The Yuuzhan Vong were defeated, and after the battle, Horn was able to use his Force abilities to find Shada D'ukal, Karrde's beloved second-in-command, aboard an escape pod. Karrde had thought her dead, and returning her helped lessen the debt Horn felt towards Karrde for rescuing his children.
====Supply run gone wrong====
Terrik kept the students aboard the Errant Venture, keeping them safe by constantly jumping. Horn stayed aboard with his children, helping guard the youths. When the ship began to run low on supplies again, he selected Anakin Solo to make a supply run with him; the young man had become restless aboard the ship and was looking for a chance to get out. Tahiri Veila, Solo's friend, appealed to him to let her have a chance to step out as well. She had been imprisoned and experimented on by the Yuuzhan Vong on Yavin 4, planting a Yuuzhan Vong identity in her mind. Solo had been able to bring her back, but few others were comfortable with her. Horn agreed to take her along, and the three set out for Eriadu in the transport Lucre.
Upon arriving at Eriadu, Horn left the two young Jedi to guard the ship while he obtained what they needed. When he returned, he found the pair flying a stolen police speeder into the cargo bay under hot pursuit. Furious, he managed to get the Lucre into space, escape the authorities, and flee into hyperspace. There, Solo explained that he and Veila had felt a Jedi in distress and left to help him. Finding Kelbis Nu under attack by the Peace Brigade, they had unsuccessfully tried to save his life. They were arrested by the local authorities, who were collaborating with the Peace Brigade, and had to break out. He chastised the pair for their impulsiveness and made them swear to actually follow his orders.
Before dying, Nu had conveyed that Yag'Dhul was in danger, and Solo's hyperspace jump placed them not far from the system. When they reverted to realspace, they were in the midst of a Yuuzhan Vong invasion fleet. Realizing they could not escape, the three Jedi put on vacuum suits and abandoned the ship, which was set off on a pre-programmed course and quickly destroyed. They landed on what appeared to be an asteroid and resolved to wait until the fleet left. Meanwhile, Horn again lectured Solo for his impulsiveness, predicting that his reckless behavior would eventually push his luck too far. After about a day, their hiding place began to accelerate; it was not an asteroid, but a Yuuzhan Vong ship covered in stone for camouflage. They cut their way into the ship and, when a group of Yuuzhan Vong came to investigate the hull breach, they battled them. Horn was endangered when his vacuum suit helmet was cracked in the fight, but he moved through an airlock into the pressurized part of the ship quickly enough to avoid death. Within an hour, they had killed the other five warriors on the ship and captured the crew.
They were in control of the ship when it decanted from hyperspace in the Yag'Dhul system. Veila, who understood the Yuuzhan Vong language and so was able to interact with it, piloted the living ship and was able to determine that the ship had been sent to scout the system ahead of the invasion fleet. Horn interrogated their prisoners and found a member of the Shamed Ones caste who was willing to work with them due to legends circulating among the Shamed Ones that the Jedi would redeem them from their low social status. He had the Shamed One, Taan, communicate back to the fleet and claim a failure in its artificial gravity had killed all the crew members but her, allaying the fleet's suspicion. Solo was able to rig up communications with Yag'Dhul, but the Givin who answered proved to be a Yuuzhan Vong collaborator. Posing as a Yuuzhan Vong commander, Horn was able to learn from him that the Given collaborators planned a failure in the defense grid in fifteen hours that would allow the fleet to take the planet.
Realizing that they did not know who to trust among the Givin government, they decided to buzz the Givin and deal with whatever defense officer was willing to take action against them. As soon as they approached the space station from which Horn had once fought against Isard, they came under attack by Givin starfighters. Hailed by military commander Dodecian Illiet, Horn surrendered and was taken to the station. He warned Illiet of the plot, and Illiet found and repaired the sabotage to the defenses. The three Jedi were kept under house arrest while the Givin decided on a course of action.
When the station came under attack, Illiet had them brought to the command center. He explained that the defense would almost certainly fail and offered them vacuum suits and the use of a craft to escape. On their way there, they were attacked by several Yuuzhan Vong warriors and their guide, who turned out to be a disguised Yuuzhan Vong spy, Nom Anor. They were surrounded, and Horn challenged Anor to single combat. However, the commander of the warriors accepted the challenge instead, and Solo insisted on filling Horn's spot. Solo killed the warrior, and as he did so, Horn finished the hole Solo's supposedly wild parries had begun cutting in the wall, and the three fled though it.
They found that the station was depressurizing as the vacuum-resistant Givin prepared to battle the Yuuzhan Vong aboard it. Searching a storage room, Horn found only one vacuum suit. He donned it himself and put the younger Jedi in a locker with an air pack while he searched the next room for vacuum suits. He found a pair, and remembered the existence of a backup system that he used to pressurize the room. They were able to sneak to the ship, a fast Givin craft. Horn outflew the pursuit but found it unnecessary to flee as the fleet itself was recalled due to an attack on the Yuuzhan Vong's Sernpidal shipyards. The three Jedi were able to safely return to the Errant Venture, though without the supplies they had set out for.
====Return to the Jedi====
Horn spent the next several months aboard the Errant Venture as he had, though one diversion to a refugee ship which became attacked by the Yuuzhan Vong led to Horn's confronting voxyn, fierce Yuuzhan Vong Jedi-hunting beasts. Horn made a narrow getaway to one of the ship's escape pods, but only the fortuitous intervention of Mara Jade Skywalker and Jaina Solo, nearby in the Jade Shadow, recovered the escape pod and prevented the escape pod from being crushed in the gravity of a neighboring gas giant. In early 27 ABY Horn was again attacked by voxyn, this time with Mirax, while on a supply run on Corellia for the Errant Venture. They managed to escape using a hovertaxi and returned to the Star Destroyer. The Errant Venture was recalled to Eclipse Station, the hidden Jedi base in the Deep Core. The Yuuzhan Vong had gathered many captives over Talfaglio and threatened to kill them all if they were not given Eclipse's location. There, he watched Fey'lya receive Anor in the Senate to discuss Talfaglio and make a strong stand for the Jedi. Anor revealed that the Yuuzhan Vong had captured seventeen Jedi, including all three Solo children. Horn was shocked, but Skywalker quickly revealed to him that it was a ploy to get them behind enemy lines so they could destroy the voxyn queen. Moreover, the Jedi were preparing a strike to free the Talfaglio hostages. Skywalker asked Horn to rejoin the Jedi in their time of need and help him train their fighter pilots. He agreed.
The Jedi maintained four squadrons consisting of both Jedi and non-Jedi pilots: Durron's Kyp's Dozen, Jedi Saba Sebatyne's Wild Knights, Skywalker's Saber Squadron, and Shocker Squadron under non-Jedi veteran Rigard Matl. During their training, Horn had to hold Durron back from going after the captured Jedi, as he had not been let in on the plan. When they were ready, the Jedi struck at Talfaglio. Horn served as flight control for the operation, based on the freighter Jolly Man. They received unexpected support when Generals Antilles and Bel Iblis arrived in brand-new Star Destroyers. With their aid, the Jedi wing savaged the enemy fleet and set the Talfaglio hostages free.
After Borleias and Reecee fell to the Yuuzhan Vong, the Errant Venture, which had been at Reecee, returned to Eclipse pursued by a Yuuzhan Vong task force. Sensing his children were in danger, Horn fired up his X-wing to fly to their rescue but was held back by Skywalker. After calming down, Horn realized that Terrik had some trick to play, and was shown right when the Errant Venture launched escape pods with the students aboard, disguised as battle debris, at Eclipse as his ship and the task force moved past. Horn helped recover the escape pods as Terrik used his shields to superheat several asteroids, blowing them apart and ripping though the enemy fleet. The Jedi fighters cleaned up the survivors with help from the remnant of Reecee's fighter force, carried aboard the Venture.
In the Battle of the Black Bantha, the Jedi and New Republic were called in to ambush a Yuuzhan Vong fleet, which they did, capturing one of the Yuuzhan Vong's yammosk war coordinators. When the Yuuzhan Vong began to stage from Borleias and unrecorded asteroids were found far out in the Yuuzhan Vong system, Horn was among the Jedi analysts who found it likely that the enemy was finally moving on Coruscant itself. He was studying tactical displays when Skywalker felt Anakin Solo die. Still grieving, the Jedi departed to defend the galactic capital. Horn once more served aboard Jolly Man as battle control for the Jedi squadrons as they penetrated the advancing enemy fleet, targeting ships that they were able to detect as carrying yammosks. They made multiple runs, resupplying and going out again as they hunted down the various yammosks in the massive fleet. The New Republic's defense was crippled by Supreme Commander Sien Sovv's refusal to fire through the shield of refugee ships the Yuuzhan Vong sent before their own fleet. While Fey'lya later countermanded those orders and Bel Iblis ignored them from the beginning, the New Republic was unable to prevent the Yuuzhan Vong's suicidal tactics from overwhelming Coruscant's shields. The world fell.
Horn and the Jedi retreated with Antilles's forces. Skywalker reorganized the Jedi squadron survivors into Twin Suns Squadron. Flying in a shield trio with Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker, he helped retake Borleias from the Yuuzhan Vong, blasting through its fighter defenses and flying cover as ground troops retook its surface. Antilles planned to briefly use the world as a fortified post securing an exit from Coruscant for refugees. They moved into the former Alderaan Biotics facility, and Horn requested to transfer to Rogue Squadron, which had been plagued by losses. Antilles, however, needed Horn to take command of base security and so he did.The New Jedi Order: Enemy Lines I: Rebel Dream
The next day, Horn was summoned to a meeting of Antilles and his general staff with the remnants of the New Republic Advisory Council. Senator Pwoe had declared himself chief of state after Fey'lya's death on Coruscant, a move of dubious legality at best. He ordered Antilles to hold Borleias as a staging post for a reconquest of Coruscant, but it was obvious that Pwoe simply wanted to buy time with their lives to allow him to build up his position. Antilles only accepted the orders after extracting significant guarantees of supplies and forces, including Lusankya. After the Advisory Council reluctantly accepted Antilles's terms and departed, Horn remained behind with Antilles's other closest advisors. None of them held any confidence in the New Republic's leadership any longer, and together they formed the Insiders, a cell of trusted leaders who could form the core of a resistance to the Yuuzhan Vong outside the New Republic hierarchy and carry on a guerrilla war against the Yuuzhan Vong.
When a Yuuzhan Vong fleet arrived to contest their hold on Borleias, Horn and the other Twin Suns scrambled, with new pilot Zindra Daine replacing Jade Skywalker in their shield trio. They held off the Yuuzhan Vong fleet, but Antilles intended the battle to be a minor loss to draw the enemy commander into a false sense of confidence. Instead, Lusankya arrived in the middle of the enemy fleet, savaging it. The Twin Suns were among the forces summoned to protect Lusankya and escort it from the middle of the fleet.
====Rogue Leader====
When discussing the problem of refugee ships being preyed upon by the Yuuzhan Vong, Horn suggested they send out a ship of their own as bait and use one of scientist Danni Quee's gravitic sensors to determine if the Yuuzhan Vong were using tracking creatures. Rigged as a trap, it could also discourage attacks on refugee convoys by fighting back. Lando Calrissian volunteered to direct that operation. Shortly thereafter, Horn transferred back to Rogue Squadron, flying as Rogue Nine once more. The Rogues and other elite squadrons were assigned to guard the pipefighters engaged in the Starlancer Project. The four pipefighters focused energy into a large turbolaser blast, which Antilles set up so that Yuuzhan Vong spies would believe it to be a superweapon in the making. In fact, it was a fraud, designed to give Antilles something with which to force the newly arrived enemy commander's hand.The New Jedi Order: Enemy Lines II: Rebel Stand
When Han and Leia Solo evacuated the children on Borleias, Valin and Jysella among them, to Shelter, the Jedi base in the Maw, Horn and Rogue Two, Captain Kral Nevil, were assigned to fly cover for the Millennium Falcon. They returned, and several days later the enemy commander, Czulkang Lah, made his first major assault on the New Republic position. The Rogues defended the southern approach to the base from the oncoming Yuuzhan Vong ground forces. However, they continually fell back as part of Antilles's plan, until they were flying in the cleared area near the base itself. At that point, Lusankya opened fire from orbit, annihilating the enemy troops.
The Yuuzhan Vong maintained continual harassing attacks on the Borleias garrison, wearing down the defenders. The Rogues were reduced to nine pilots, with Horn flying a shield trio with Dakorse Teep and Leth Liav, two under-qualified pilots. Defending against one enemy probe, Teep went down, much to Horn's disgust; he had been only a teenager, and Horn was weary of the losses caused by the war. After that, the enemy raiding only increased, until the base was under constant attack.
Finally, Antilles revealed that he was ready for the final battle. Calling a conference of his top officers, he revealed the true nature of the Starlancer project and ordered an evacuation of the base. He was sending up the pipefighters, believed by the Yuuzhan Vong to be a fully operational superweapon, to provoke one last all-out battle. The Rogues guarded one of the pipefighters, as they customarily did, then helped escort Lusankya as the massive ship, worn down by constant attacks, rammed the enemy flagship in Antilles's final trick. When Blackmoon Squadron detected one of their own fighting over Borleias, the Rogues went with them to save the pilot, who turned out to be Antilles, escaping the base and escorting one last evacuation craft out.
After the evacuation, the New Republic began recovering, establishing headquarters on Mon Calamari. The Rogues joined General Keyan Farlander's task force, and Horn continued flying, becoming Rogue Leader himself when the Rogues became involved in experiments with Jedi battle coordination. With Horn at the head of the Rogues, Jaina Solo commanding the captured enemy frigate Trickster, and Durron leading his Dozen, coordinated by Madurrin on the bridge with Farlander, the technique was used over Obroa-skai to strike at what was believed to be Yuuzhan Vong Supreme Overlord Shimrra Jamaane's arriving flagship. Farlander's task force ambushed the fleet, but found their yammosk jammer to be useless, with the enemy responding with full battle coordination. Realizing there were two enemy yammosks, the second was jammed as well, and the battle quickly turned in favor of the New Republic. The arrival of Hapan reinforcements sealed the victory, though it was later learned that it had not been the Supreme Overlord at all, but merely a high-ranking fleet commander.
Farlander's fleet shifted its base of operations to Kashyyyk, where they reunited with Kre'fey, Farlander's commanding officer. Meanwhile, the New Republic elected a new chief of state, Cal Omas, and put into place Ackbar's plan to defeat the Yuuzhan Vong, seasoning the troops with attacks on Yuuzhan Vong weak spots for the next three months. Horn and the Rogues flew cover for Kre'fey's strike at the Peace Brigade's headquarters on Ylesia, then flew in another raid on Duro.The New Jedi Order: Ylesia Further work with battle coordination only enhanced their abilities, which were supplemented by the arrival of more Jedi in Kre'fey's forces. After three months, Horn and the others participated in the Battle of Ebaq 9, Ackbar's great trap for the Yuuzhan Vong. Their fleet was savaged, and Warmaster Tsavong Lah was killed. In the aftermath, Omas reorganized the government into the new Galactic Federation of Free Alliances.
====Discovering Zonama Sekot====
Later in 28 ABY, Horn was summoned by Jedi Master Kenth Hamner to a meeting. Hamner was the acting head of the Jedi Order, as Skywalker had gone on a mission to the Unknown Regions to find Zonama Sekot, a living planet that he hoped could aid the war effort, which was already strengthening. Hamner showed Horn a message from a Yuuzhan Vong known as Yu'shaa, the Prophet. The leader of a sect of Shamed One heretics who revered Jedi, he requested that the Jedi take him to Zonama Sekot, which he held to be a promised land for the Shamed Ones. Horn was detached by the military for the mission, on which he hoped to be advised by Veila, who had recently undergone the full fusion of her personality and the Yuuzhan Vong personality implanted within her during her time on Yavin 4. When Veila was brought in, however, she insisted on going along and putting her knowledge to use. Horn was willing to risk his own life, but adamantly opposed bringing the young girl along on the extremely dangerous mission to infiltrate the enemy capital and extract Yu'shaa. Not only was she young, but Horn was not sure he could trust her new, integrated personality. However, when Hamner and the Solos agreed that she should come along, he backed down.
Taking a captured enemy vessel, Horn and Veila traveled to Coruscant, where they slipped through weak points in the defense network provided by Yu'shaa's message. They landed in the Great Western Sea, barely avoiding detection, and proceeded underwater on Horn's recommendation, hoping they would be less likely to be detected that way. However, once they entered one of the tubes leading out of the sea, they discovered that it had been replaced with a type of Yuuzhan Vong digestive creature. They came under attack, and fired the plasma cannon to fight off the creature. Doing so, however, boiled the water and disabled their dovin basal, the creature that provided propulsion to the craft. They were sucked into the drain system, and tumbled through it, barely under control, until they were able to stop and surface. While they traveled through the crumbling underlevels of Coruscant on foot, Horn tested Veila, probing her about the nature of her new personality; he remained unconvinced that she was trustworthy.
They met with the heretics, where Horn learned that he figured into their mythology as the slayer of Shedao Shai. Yu'shaa also revealed that they had another member to add to their party, a Master Shaper named Nen Yim. She had a ship with which they could escape. Veila detected that the Prophet was wearing a masquer, a disguise. Neither Veila nor Horn trusted him, but they did not believe that they were walking into a trap and agreed to the plan. They entered the Supreme Overlord's palace by a secret tunnel, then raided Yim's damutek to free her while several of Yu'shaa's cultists provided a distraction; an additional element, devised by Horn, of dressing up some of the heretics as mock Jedi and having them flee to draw off the guards worked well. The Jedi battled through the damutek until they found Yim, whom Veila recognized as one of the shapers who had experimented on her on Yavin 4. She overcame her anger, however, but took an amphistaff wound holding off several warriors while Horn cut an exit for Yim's escape ship. Horn rescued her and the three escaped, picking up Yu'shaa and Harrar, a Yuuzhan Vong priest. Horn was furious at the unannounced addition to their party, and even more furious when he realized that Yim, flying the ship, was a completely inexperienced and incompetent pilot. She told him that the ship had normal controls, however, not just the Yuuzhan Vong interface she used. Sending Yim back to heal Veila, Horn took them and was able to outfly the planet's defenses using an old orbital training drone to distract the pursuit, and they escaped.
The ship was in fact one of those built by Zonama Sekot, a living ship fused with standard technology. Horn laid in a course for Zonama Sekot, having gotten its location through previous communication with Skywalker. However, returning to the three Yuuzhan Vong, none of whom he trusted, he told them that he was taking them to Mon Calamari instead, unwilling to deal with so many unknown factors. He wanted to see their reactions. Seeing nothing to make him mistrust them over the next four days, he was ready to reveal the truth when they were pulled from hyperspace by an Imperial Interdictor. Believing their organic craft to be a Yuuzhan Vong ship, it opened fire. Yim activated a new Yuuzhan Vong technology she had added to the ship, which allowed them to break the Interdictor's gravity well and flee into hyperspace again. However, the dovin basals with which Yim had replaced the engines were damaged, and the series of hyperspace jumps through the Unknown Regions put a great strain on them. Upon consulting with Yim, Horn decided to try one last jump to Sekot's position before the hyperdrive gave out. They emerged from hyperspace out of control, and it took all the dying dovin basals could muster to escape the pull of the gas giant Zonama Sekot orbited and make a crash landing on the living, sentient world.
Yim, Yu'shaa, and Veila went out to collect samples of the local life while Horn and Harrar searched for shelter. They found a cave, and the pair discussed the war and the differences between their peoples, wondering if they could ever make peace. While exploring the area around their cave, Horn saw three massive hyperdrive field guides rising from the landscape on the other side of the hill, part of the hyperdrive built into Zonama Sekot. He did not divulge what the vanes were, fearing it could cause the Yuuzhan Vong to abhor the world's use of technology. Over the next several days, Horn went on expeditions to find any of the colonists living on the world, but found no trace of civilization. Finally, after a week, he decided to check the field guides. When he told his plan to Veila, she objected; bored, she wished to go along. Annoyed at her petulance, Horn urged her to follow orders for once, and she confessed that she was still sorting out her issues with her new personality, but that she looked up to Horn greatly and needed his help. She wanted him to be her Jedi Master. Taken aback by her tears and the feelings he had had no idea she was struggling with, he agreed on a provisional basis, if she would promise to cease being so headstrong.
He set off for the vanes and took Harrar with him, as the priest was intensely curious about the structures. Arriving there, he explained the truth to Harrar, who took the revelation well. They entered a maintenance access to the engine system, and there Horn found equipment which he believed he could rig to transmit a signal across the world. On leaving, the pair found Veila, who warned them that Yim had discovered the secret of Zonama Sekot, but was killed by Yu'shaa, who was in truth none other than the infamous Yuuzhan Vong spy Nom Anor. Anor was planning to kill Sekot. Reentering the maintenance access, they found the lifts jammed; Anor was below. Leaving Veila to guard the lifts, Horn slid down the vast distance on a cable running along the wall, landing safely through use of the Force and pursuing Anor. The Yuuzhan Vong spy heard him coming and fled up a turbolift; Horn followed in another lift. On the way up, Anor cut the lift's power, delaying Horn until he realized how to work the backup system. At the top, he found that Veila had been knocked over the edge and Anor escaped, with Harrar pursuing him. Horn pulled Veila up and ran after Anor, catching up with him as the spy reached his extraction craft. They captured him, and he told them that Harrar was dead and he had already poisoned Sekot irreversibly. A groundquake knocked them off their feet and allowed Anor to escape to the ship, which debarked warriors who surrounded the two Jedi. They were saved by the Jade Shadow, carrying the Skywalkers, Jacen Solo, and Saba Sebatyne. Anor escaped aboard the ship, but Zonama Sekot itself jumped into hyperspace involuntarily as a result of Anor's sabotage.The New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force The planet healed itself of Anor's poisons, but the hyperspace jump itself strained the planet.
====Victory====
The planet spent days lurching in and out of hyperspace, causing widespread devastation followed by torrential rain lasting for days. Solo and Sebatyne went to reconnoiter the southern hemisphere, which was far more devastated. When they returned, Danni Quee reported that Tekli and Veila had found Harrar alive. Horn and the others went to visit him, where they found that he had survived Anor's attack and wished to promote peace between their species. Shortly, the planet regained control of itself and began to recover, at which point Horn helped bring the Ferroan natives out of hiding. After a series of test jumps, Zonama Sekot emerged into the Coruscant system itself. The Yuuzhan Vong were shocked but, fearing the world, held off from attacking it.
A delegation of most of the Jedi and the members of the Smugglers' Alliance, among them Horn's wife, aboard the Millennium Falcon and Errant Venture, traveled to the world to meet with Skywalker and come to understand the living world. Skywalker and many of the others returned to the Galactic Alliance to share what they had learned and help plan the final stages of the war, but Horn stayed on Zonama Sekot with several other Jedi. The planet grew for them its famed living starships, with Horn bonding with four seed-partners. After a ceremony that left Horn awed, the four seed-partners were manufactured into his craft. When Skywalker returned, he shared the news that the Galactic Alliance High Command was preparing to retake Coruscant.
Their Sekotan ships were ready just in time to fly against the Yuuzhan Vong force that sneaked past the Galactic Alliance's assault and attacked Zonama Sekot. Horn flew in defense of the world, preventing most of the enemy coralskippers from threatening the planet; what few made it through, Sekot itself repulsed. However, his ship generally avoided landing killing shots; Horn felt that the planet and its living ships were still getting a feel for the pilots before they allowed them to abandon the world's pacifistic philosophy. Eventually, they became able to fire, but in the midst of the battle, Horn's ship suddenly became completely unresponsive, as did the others'. They put down, and the Jedi gathered, fearing that Zonama Sekot had been struck by Alpha Red, a plague that had been engineered to destroy the Yuuzhan Vong but could be fatal to Zonama Sekot as well, similar as it was to the ancient homeworld of the Yuuzhan Vong. It had not, and when the sky filled with coralskippers, Sekotan drone ships began launching, grappling the enemy fighters and bringing them to the surface, where the Yuuzhan Vong creatures reunited with the facsimile of their homeworld, turning from war. The warriors themselves, helpless and bewildered, surrendered.
Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker and Jacen Solo killed the Supreme Overlord, and Warmaster Nas Choka surrendered. The war was over. In the next weeks, a settlement was reached, and rebuilding began. Skywalker called a Conclave on Zonama Sekot which all the Jedi attended. Horn listened as Skywalker announced the reestablishment of the Jedi Academy on Ossus, and propounded a new theory of the Force based on the teachings Vergere had given to Jacen Solo. The Yuuzhan Vong were settled on Zonama Sekot, which disappeared to the Unknown Regions, there to rebuild their society as one of peace. With peace, Horn retired from the military for the fourth time and took his family to Corellia for vacation and recuperation.
The Order devoted itself to helping rebuild the galaxy, causing it to verge on overstretch as its membership attempted to deal with lawlessness across the Galactic Alliance.Dark Nest I: The Joiner King Horn led the way in breaking up several pirate rings, helping calm the turbulent times. Based on that performance and his prior deeds, Horn was elevated to the rank of Jedi Master. As a Jedi Master, Horn served on the Masters' Council, which Skywalker had created as a new Jedi Council. While he was technically the most junior member on the Council, Horn took a leading role on it, commanding respect and arguing forcefully for his positions. Horn was among those who argued for the Masters' Council to exercise more control over the Order's Jedi Knights, ordering rather than advising, but that was not Skywalker's policy. In that, he agreed with fellow Master Kyp Durron, but the two led opposing factions on another issue, that of cooperation with the Galactic Alliance. While Durron had reconciled with Skywalker during the Yuuzhan Vong War, he remained an agitator for the Jedi Order to follow its own conscience and be beholden to no government. Horn, however, argued that the Jedi served peace, stability, and the greater galaxy best as supporters of the Galactic Alliance, and needed to be accountable to an outside authority.
===Jedi Master===
====Killik conflict====
In 35 ABY, several young Jedi disappeared from their assignments, all of them veterans of the Myrkr strike team, creating a problem in a Jedi Order already suffering from overwork. Horn was directing a presentation to the rest of the Council on the issue when Chief of State Omas and a Chiss dignitary entered the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. The Chiss emissary, Aristocra Mitt'swe'kleoni, demanded an explanation for the missing Jedi's operations in the Unknown Regions near Chiss territory. Upon learning that the Council had not sanctioned the activity and did not even know what the seven missing Jedi were doing, Mitt'swe'kleoni departed, and Omas stayed to fill the Jedi in on his complaint: the Jedi were involved in a border dispute with the Chiss. Omas wanted a swift resolution to the issue and calm relations with the Chiss Ascendancy, and so the Skywalkers and Sebatyne set out to speak with the rogue Jedi. In their absence, Horn was left in charge of Jedi operations, and was persuaded by the Solos to tell them where the other Jedi had gone, as the Solo twins were among the Jedi in the Unknown Regions.
The Skywalkers and Solos returned from their mission with four of the rogue Jedi. They had joined the Killik Colony, a collection of Killik hives operating under a series of hive minds controlled by Raynar Thul, a former Jedi who had gone missing during the Yuuzhan Vong War. The Chiss considered their rapidly expanding nests, which absorbed outsiders into the group mind, to be a major threat and were attempting to starve out the Killik colonies on their borders. The Masters studied the returning Jedi at the Jedi Academy on Ossus to determine how the Killiks had begun absorbing them into the hive mind, and found that the melding operated through pheromones and auras. Horn was greatly displeased when the rogue Jedi Knights argued that the Jedi should go to war supporting the Killiks, and would not obey the Council if it suggested otherwise. The Masters turned to a debate on the issue, with Horn urging the others to support the Galactic Alliance's line on the issue, and Durron suggesting they keep their own counsel.
When Tenel Ka Djo, the Jedi Queen Mother of Hapes, sent a Hapan fleet to safeguard the Killiks at the urging of Jacen Solo, Omas was outraged, and came to the Jedi Council to demand an explanation. An argument about Jedi compliance with the Galactic Alliance again emerged, with Horn arguing that the Jedi needed an authority outside themselves to check their power. Thoroughly annoyed, Omas threatened to cut off Galactic Alliance funding to the Jedi if they did not comply. Thanks to the Solos, they were able to reach a compromise in which the Killiks would be moved to uninhabited worlds the Solos had discovered in the Utegetu Nebula. However, the Gorog nest of Killiks, nicknamed the Dark Nest by the Jedi, still had to be dealt with. The Gorog nest was unknown to the other Killiks, unconsciously exercising its will over the others, and likely led by Welk or Lomi Plo, two Dark Jedi who had abducted Thul during the war and disappeared. The Skywalkers and several other Masters proceeded to follow Alema Rar, the Jedi who had become a Gorog Joiner, to Kr, from which they uprooted the Gorog nest, killing Welk. They then persuaded Thul to accept the move to the Utegetu Nebula.
Plo and Rar escaped, however, and within a year the Galactic Alliance was beset by smugglers operating from the Utegetu Nebula and black membrosia produced by the Dark Nest that intoxicated sentients across the Alliance. When a ship piloted by a membrosia-drunk Vratix collided with Supreme Commander Sovv's transport, killing the Galactic Alliance's military commander, Horn was assigned to lead an investigation. He strongly suspected that the collision was a Killik assassination, but could find no evidence to support that conclusion. Meanwhile, the Skywalkers and Solos traveled to Woteba, the new Killik capital, to speak with Thul. While they were away, the Killiks began landing on worlds along the Chiss border, reigniting the conflict and putting Omas in a panic. Horn was at Ossus when Leia Organa Solo and Saba Sebatyne returned, and they explained to him that the Woteban colony was being devoured by a corrosive plague known as the Fizz. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo remained behind as a guarantee to the Killiks, who feared that the Galactic Alliance and Jedi had known of the Fizz before moving the Killiks there. Horn, realizing that the pair could be used as hostages in the unfolding diplomatic crisis, wished to report that fact to Omas, but Organa Solo persuaded him that Omas would use it to push more aggressively, possibly worsening the situation.
Instead, the Jedi held a council, determining that Gorog was pushing the Killiks into war and needed to be neutralized once and for all. Horn objected to simply assassinating Plo and Thul, but a consensus was reached to extract Skywalker and Solo and take out the Dark Nest; if Thul could not be reasoned with, he would have to be stopped with force if necessary. Meanwhile, Cilghal, the most scientifically-minded of the Masters, was able to confirm that the Fizz was a nanotechnology-based ecological defense system for the worlds, attempting to keep their environments in balance. Mara Jade Skywalker, Organa Solo, and Sebatyne left at the head of a Jedi team to accomplish that task. However, they were captured by the Galactic Alliance fleet blockading the Utegetu Nebula.
When Omas learned of this and realized that Skywalker was incommunicado, he called a session with the Jedi of the advisory High Council; as Skywalker and Sebatyne were out of contact, he substituted Horn and Kyle Katarn in their place. They presented a united front, however, bluntly telling Omas they would not allow him to take control of the Jedi Order. Omas simply suggested that the Jedi needed some sort of leadership with Skywalker out of contact, someone to take the lead in resolving the situation and dealing with the Chiss ultimatum to stop the Killik migration to the frontier within ten days. Durron and Cilghal objected and left, and the remainder elected Horn their leader, at Omas's suggestion, in order to work with the Galactic Alliance.
That election proved highly controversial. Horn did not really consider himself the Jedi leader, and knew that Omas had selected him because of the controversy it would engender, splitting the Jedi. Durron was enraged, and attempted to lead a force to rescue the captured Jedi without any authorization. Horn came to the hangar to speak with him, but Durron refused to listen. Horn had to physically disable Durron's StealthX to keep the other Master from leaving, and a heated argument broke out when Horn argued that the Jedi had to cooperate with the Galactic Alliance rather than antagonize it. The rescue mission did go forward, stumbling into a brawl between the Killiks and the Galactic Alliance as the insectoid nests tried to run the blockade. The Jedi escaped, but the engagement was only the beginning of a renewed war between the Chiss and Killiks.
Disappointed with the disunity in the Order, Skywalker summoned all Jedi to Ossus for a conclave. In his address, he rebuked the Jedi for allowing themselves to be divided, and held that the dissension must end. The Jedi must know harmony to be effective as an Order. If anyone could not put the good of the Jedi Order above all else, he would be asked to leave it. Profoundly chastened by Skywalker's admonition and his own leading role in the crisis, Horn came to the conclusion that, for the good of the Order, he would have to leave it, ending his divisive role. He announced this to the rest of the Jedi before speaking to Skywalker. Skywalker, however, refused his resignation, telling Horn that he was not responsible and his presence was needed to heal the schism among the Jedi. The Masters went on to discuss the Killik situation, considering attempting to remove Thul, Plo, and Rar from the Killiks, who would then revert to their natural, relatively harmless state without any of those personalities to guide them. Horn objected once more to the possibility of assassination, and another argument erupted. Sick of the infighting, Skywalker took sole personal control of the Order, declaring himself Grand Master.Dark Nest III: The Swarm War
After the Solos went on a spy mission into the Killik colony, they sent the Jedi a message warning that the Killiks were preparing coups within several of the Galactic Alliance's insect societies. Jedi were assigned to each world to attempt to prevent the attacks, with Horn leading a Jedi team to Thyferra. However, the Galactic Alliance garrison there intercepted and detained him. While he explained his mission, the delay was too late; the Vratix and Killiks successfully pulled off their coup, taking control of Thyferra and the galaxy's bacta supply with it.
In response, Skywalker moved to strike at the head of the problem. He took a wing of Jedi StealthX fighters to Sarm, where the Killik nest ships were recovering from their failed challenge of the Fifth Fleet's blockade. Horn led a squadron of fighters in the attack on the Gorog nest ship's bow while the others targeted different areas. Skywalker penetrated the ship and dueled Plo as the other Jedi held off Gorog reinforcements, but after taking a wound, Plo disappeared. The Jedi were able to destroy the nest ship, but Plo escaped it. Skywalker decided to go on with the next phase of the mission anyway, assigning Horn and the other master to collect samples of the nanotechnology that produced the Fizz and seed the colony worlds with them to keep the Killiks in check throughout the future. Skywalker succeeded in killing Plo and capturing Thul while Organa Solo defeated Rar, ending the threat.
While committed to cooperation with the Galactic Alliance, Skywalker pulled the Jedi out of government entirely, forming a new Jedi Council, on which Horn served.Legacy of the Force: Bloodlines The tension between conscience and stability eased after the Swarm War, with the Jedi coming to support the Galactic Alliance more firmly, and the rift between Horn and Durron healed. Horn established a teaching center in Coronet, where classes of young Jedi from the Corellian area were trained under Horn's supervision.Legacy of the Force: Betrayal Mirax retired, living peacefully in Coronet with Horn.Legacy of the Force: Exile
====Corellian crisis====
In 40 ABY, a new crisis emerged. The Corellian government was resisting Galactic Alliance demands to pay full taxes and contribute military forces, while also secretly building up an assault fleet and working to reactivate the Centerpoint Station superweapon. The Galactic Alliance decided this situation could not be allowed to continue and made a show of force in the Corellian system. Elements of the Galactic Alliance Second Fleet arrived in orbit while Jedi strike teams attempted to kidnap high-level Corellian government figures and force negotiations. However, that only served to distract attention from the most vital part of the mission—the sabotage of Centerpoint Station, carried out by Jacen Solo and Ben Skywalker. Despite being Corellian, Horn fully supported the Jedi and the Galactic Alliance. He commanded Team Slashrat, consisting of himself and a partner, which observed Coronet's spaceport for starfighter launches while the other teams acted. It so happened that the Corellians had already pulled most of their starfighters offworld, which they used to ambush the Galactic Alliance fleet, while the Jedi teams were betrayed and ambushed. The younger Skywalker was successful in disabling Centerpoint, but all the other teams failed in their objectives, while the fleet, under the command of the increasingly unstable Admiral Matric Klauskin, retreated and instead occupied Tralus before Klauskin suffered a complete mental breakdown.
Due to Jedi involvement in the attacks, public backlash on Corellia was fierce. Mirax was put under house arrest by the government, but Horn moved the five young Jedi students to safety; Valin and Jysella were already active as Jedi offworld. Horn stayed in hiding living in a secret chamber in the Jedi enclave and guarding the apparently-abandoned facility from looters. The other Corellian Jedi Horn had trained remained in hiding with the students. Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker arrived on an intelligence-gathering mission after the assassination of Five World Prime Minister Aidel Saxan during negotiations, and Luke Skywalker spoke with Horn. Horn asked the Grand Master to evacuate the students, to which he agreed.
The Second Fleet was driven off Tralus, and the situation remained a tense standoff. Jacen Solo accepted a position in the Galactic Alliance military, taking command of the newly-created Galactic Alliance Guard to combat terrorism on Coruscant sparked by Corellian nationals, causing Pellaeon's resignation and the promotion of Admiral Cha Niathal to Supreme Commander to replace him. While the Jedi Council urged caution, Solo began rounding up and interning Corellians on Coruscant. This outraged the Council members, Horn foremost among them. With the other Jedi safely offworld, he had departed Corellia and was serving safely on Coruscant. When the Council began debating Niathal's proposal to blockade Corellia to bring it into line, Horn objected, feeling it would only serve to rally support for the contrarian world. The conversation quickly turned to the GAG, however, and the participation of Solo and Ben Skywalker in it. The Masters urged Skywalker to withdraw the two Jedi from the group, though he ultimately did not; as Solo was not formally a Jedi, he lacked authority over him, and he wanted to let his son make his own decisions. The Council decided to go ahead and support the blockade, feeling it would be a better step than waging war. As the blockade took hold and Dur Gejjen became the new Five Worlds Prime Minister, the Council urged negotiations, which Omas attempted to initiate; he was, however, rebuffed.
The Council was additionally disturbed by the revelation that the Sith Lady Lumiya, Darth Vader's former apprentice, had reemerged after a thirty-year absence from the galactic scene, killing Council member Tresina Lobi and seemingly targeting Skywalker's family. Alema Rar, too, thought dead on Tenupe, had returned with a vendetta against Leia Organa Solo.Legacy of the Force: Tempest As the Corellian government grew more ruthless, Antilles, who had accepted a position as Supreme Commander of the system's forces, retired due to differences with Gejjen's administration. A public ceremony celebrated his retirement, but it was clear to him that he would be a possible target for assassination. Iella Wessiri Antilles contacted the Horn family and Horn was able to aid Antilles's escape just in time. Horn and Antilles' intelligence-trained daughter Myri shadowed him, and immediately after the ceremony, Antilles did indeed come under attack by assassins disguised as Jedi. Horn eliminated them and helped Antilles escape. They took refuge in a hangar at Elmas Spaceport, laying low and performing maintenance on their fighters and the Pulsar Skate in preparation for eventually fleeing the world.
That night, Horn sensed Leia Organa Solo at the spaceport. While surveilling her arrival and waiting to make contact, he and the others noticed the approach of Corellian Security forces. They raided the hangar in which the Solos and Calrissian, opponents of Gejjen, were berthed, but the Horn-Antilles party launched. Horn shot the TIE Crawler menacing the others' yacht from his X-wing. Horn and Antilles shot down the corvette blocking their escape vector, clearing the way for the Pulsar Skate and Calrissian's Love Commander to escape to orbit with them, using Calrissian's codes to evade the Galactic Alliance blockade.
They traveled to the Kuat system, where they docked aboard the Errant Venture. In order to gather information, the Solos suggested Terrik move the flying casino to the Corellian system, and got the ship approved to operate in the exclusion zone of the blockade, where it proved a popular form of recreation for the Galactic Alliance military members. While most of the others gathered information at the tables, Horn, Antilles, and Organa Solo remained sequestered, working on analyzing the data the others brought in. They looked for information suggesting that someone was pulling the strings of the growing war, with several manipulations seeming to indicate it. However, they could find no evidence that the war was manufactured; only that certain events were influenced. During a group session, Myri Antilles suggested that the events had split up the Skywalker-Solo clan, seriously harming their effectiveness. Horn commended the analysis, and the Solos decided to attempt to address that point. In short order, the Skywalkers arrived on a mission to contact Jacen Solo, and brought with them knowledge of techniques useful against Rar's memory-manipulating abilities, which they shared.
Immediately thereafter, the Galactic Alliance forces came under attack by a fleet made up of supporters of Corellia's stance, members of the freshly-formed Confederation. Horn and Antilles scrambled to defend the Star Destroyer and were quickly joined by Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker in their StealthXs. Forming the impromptu Ganner Squadron—named for Horn's old partner, who had died during the Yuuzhan Vong war holding back an incredible amount of warriors—they flew to protect the Errant Venture until it could withdraw. Horn flew as Antilles's wingman, engaging a full squadron of I-7 Howlrunners as they came at the Venture, drawing attention as the Skywalkers used their stealth fighters to sneak astern of the frigate advancing on the Venture and cripple it. Horn and Antilles shot down seven of the opposing fighters before they withdrew to protect the frigate. While Antilles continued to protect the Star Destroyer, Horn peeled off with the Skywalkers to help make a difference in the main battle. The battle, however, was a loss, and the blockading forces had to retreat.
====War with the Confederation====
Horn returned to Coruscant with the Skywalkers, where a Jedi Council session was held. They discussed issues related to Ben Skywalker, who had gone missing, information which had emerged about Lumiya suggesting that Ben Skywalker had killed her daughter in a duel at the very beginning of the war, and the fact that the Galactic Alliance was pressuring the Jedi to expel Leia Organa Solo, who was suspected of cooperating with the Corellians. Horn argued against expelling her, and his position was supported by the rest. Meanwhile, Fondor, Bespin, and Adumar joined Commenor, Bothawui, and Corellia in the Confederation, increasing the threat it posed.
Horn continued to cooperate with the Solo-Antilles group, now with Antilles's nephew and Yuuzhan Vong War veteran Jagged Fel, Jaina Solo, and Zekk, all tasked with eliminating Rar, added. Still based on the Errant Venture, which had moved to the Coruscant system, they shared information the Solos had come across stating that the Confederation planned a major conference at Gilatter VIII to elect a supreme commander. They also had information that Rar was aboard the Errant Venture, tracking the Solos. They set up a trap for Rar, with Zekk distracting Rar while Horn moved into position to capture her. She shot a poisonous dart at him when he revealed himself, but he caught it and saved it for analysis before engaging her in a lightsaber duel. Rar quickly pulled down a chandelier and fled, and Horn stayed behind to pull passengers to safety; Rar had been flushed into the next stage of the trap. The Twi'lek, however, escaped due to a Galactic Alliance military program that kept the hangar from being able to be sealed with military personnel aboard.
With the Gilatter VIII data falling into the hands of the Galactic Alliance, the Jedi were requested to provide a StealthX presence for the ambush they planned. Horn was one of the pilots who scouted the system and helped position ships for the ambush. However, the situation proved to be an elaborate trap. They received warning from Jacen Solo just before it was sprung, allowing the Galactic Alliance fleet to battle its way out with minimal losses. As the war accelerated, Horn and the Jedi Council increasingly felt that the Skywalkers should act to reign in Jacen Solo. When Dur Gejjen was assassinated, the Council held an emergency session, debating the ramifications of that and of Mandalore's rearmament. Only a few days later, Omas was arrested by Solo and Niathal on charges of conspiring with the enemy, and using a newly-introduced provision in the law, the two succeeded him as interim co-chiefs of state. Another emergency session was called for. The Council debated just what they could do in the situation; they decided to speak with Niathal and continue trying to remove Lumiya, whom they suspected of influencing the issues.
When Jade Skywalker, who was tracking Lumiya, went missing, there was concern; when Luke Skywalker sensed her death in the Force, there was an outpouring of grief. Skywalker was in the Hapes Cluster tracking her; distraught, he handed over control of the Council to Horn. Horn contacted Skywalker, expressing his sympathies at the loss of a woman who was his friend as well, and offered his and the other Jedi's aid in tracking down the culprit. Skywalker, however, assured him that he would handle it, and that he was closing in on Lumiya. Horn was concerned that it was a trap, but Skywalker pressed on, and succeeded in killing Lumiya. On later information from Ben Skywalker, however, it was determined that Lumiya could not have been Jade Skywalker's killer.
Skywalker was shaken by having killed the wrong person and became withdrawn and morose, worrying Horn and the other Jedi Masters. Just before the funeral, Horn and the other Masters sensed a disturbance nearby, which Horn, receiving a security feed through an earpiece, was able to confirm was the result of a GAG squad's attempt to arrest the Solos on their way to the funeral. Organa Solo had been intended to deliver the eulogy, and Horn and the others asked Sebatyne to do so instead. The eulogy was interrupted by the late arrival of Jacen Solo and by Jade Skywalker's body dissipating, becoming one with the Force. Afterward, Skywalker, realizing he had been neglecting his duties in his grief, spoke with the other Masters, was told what had occurred, and stepped back to a full leadership role.
Skywalker took a wing of Jedi StealthXs to Balmorra, where the Confederation was preparing an attack and Jacen Solo was leading the defense. Skywalker allowed the battle to begin before contacting Solo, offering his assistance; the ploy was designed to make an impression on the increasingly dark Solo while still trying to show Solo that cooperation would be better than competition. Horn was one of the pilots who targeted the ships of the Commenorian fleet, crippling the enemy vessels. Solo was performing some intimidation himself, having had his GAG troops take control of the academy on Ossus, ostensibly to provide security but clearly holding the children as hostages to compel Jedi cooperation. From that battle, the Jedi proceeded to Kuat, its vital shipyards the target of a Confederation offensive. They planned to cut through the Confederation fleet, disabling its ships for the multiple Galactic Alliance fleets gathered for the defense. Horn did not like supporting the Galactic Alliance with Solo at the head, but the Jedi leadership decided that it was better than allowing the Confederation to win. However, when news came that Omas had been assassinated while under house arrest and Ben Skywalker was present, Grand Master Skywalker was outraged and withdrew Jedi cooperation from the Galactic Alliance, convinced Solo had gotten his son involved and was betraying the trust the Jedi had tried to extend to him.
====Jedi resistance====
The Jedi departed Kuat, moving on to Kashyyyk, where, declared enemies of the state by Solo, they sought refuge with the Wookiees. They had decided it was time to begin resisting Solo's regime. Solo, however, learned of this and brought the Fifth Fleet to attack. When the Wookiees would not surrender the Jedi, he began bombarding the world. The Jedi prepared a counterattack on the fleet, with their StealthXs providing openings for the Wookiee fleet to drive off the Fifth. It also served as a diversion to allow Skywalker to infiltrate the Anakin Solo, Solo's flagship, and disable the long-range turbolasers he was using to bombard Kashyyyk. The Jedi believed that Skywalker had perished in the attack, but this was the result of a powerful trick played by the Grand Master to allow him to infiltrate the Star Destroyer, and within a day he emerged triumphant, having disabled the turbolasers, dueled and wounded Solo, and rescued his son from Solo's clutches. With the aid of a Confederation fleet and a Hapan one under Tenel Ka Djo, formerly one of Solo's greatest supporters, the Fifth was driven away and action began to put out the massive forest fires started by Solo's bombardment.
The Jedi moved to hiding on Endor, setting up a secret base at the abandoned Imperial base there. At Skywalker's orders, Durron put together a plan to target Solo, and the Council members on Endor discussed it over one of their customary melee sessions, in which the Jedi Masters practiced combat in a free-for-all brawl that kept them all sharp. Seha Dorvald, a Jedi trainee, was to be the mission's guide. A former denizen of the Coruscant undercity, she had until recently been a secret agent for Solo, who had taken her from the undercity and brought her to the Jedi. Horn, not quite trusting her, tested her in an interview until he was satisfied with her loyalty. Horn volunteered to lead the team, but Katarn was selected instead. While Horn did not participate, his son Valin was a member of the team that confronted Solo, escaping safely after planting a tracking device on him.
Skywalker brought Antilles, Terrik, and Karrde into the resistance movement, and with their resources was able to plant a more powerful tracking device on the Anakin Solo and raid its computer for information. In a complementary attack at the same time, Horn flew in the Jedi Red Sword Flight to cover an attempt by Skywalker and Durron to attack Solo. However, Solo proved to be out in a fighter himself, and Skywalker targeted him, with Horn helping herd him away from the Anakin Solo. However, when additional Galactic Alliance fighters arrived, Horn had to help hold them off, and when Skywalker sensed a young girl in the cockpit with Solo, he broke off the attack. They had attacked in the midst of a battle between the Galactic Alliance and Confederation, but that engagement was cut short by a blast from Centerpoint Station, reactivated and used in an ambush.
They returned to Endor, where Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo of Hapes arrived seeking Jedi help. Solo had kidnapped her daughter, Allana, in order to pressure the Hapans into supporting him, and Skywalker volunteered to retrieve her. Meanwhile, Fel, Zekk, and Jaina Solo succeeded in killing Rar. When Celchu, who remained a general with the Galactic Alliance, arrived, Horn was part of the summit Skywalker held, declaring that he planned a simultaneous strike to disable Centerpoint Station and rescue Allana as Solo made an attack on the station. To cover the strike team's insertion aboard Celchu's shuttle, Horn flew in Rakehell Squadron, a mixed squadron under Antilles's command that would chase the shuttle aboard Anakin Solo. Horn flew as Rakehell Five, leading the second flight with the Jedi Twool as his wingmate. As the battle began, the Rakehells began harassing the Reveille, following it to the Anakin Solo before peeling away. They then moved on to harassing the troop shuttle on which the Jedi strike team for Centerpoint, disguised as GAG troopers, traveled to Centerpoint and docked, after which they were pounced on by Rogue Squadron. Horn was able to handle battling his own unit, but his wingmate Twool was killed. When the Anakin Solo strike team had seized Allana and was ready for extraction, the Rakehells flew cover for the Millennium Falcon as they escaped and Centerpoint was destroyed.
The Jedi continued battling Solo, who had taken Horn's own former student, Tahiri Veila, as his Sith apprentice. Finding his co-chief of state, Niathal, more sympathetic, they aided her at the Second Battle of Fondor, in which she finally separated herself from Solo—who the Jedi learned was a Sith Lord and the killer of Jade Skywalker—forming a Galactic Alliance government-in-exile at Fondor.Legacy of the Force: Revelation The Jedi established their new secret base on Shedu Maad, deep in the Transitory Mists of the Hapes Cluster. There they came to the conclusion that the Jedi needed to strike at Darth Caedus, as Solo was now calling himself. In the midst of a war council on the Imperial Remnant's attack on the independent Verpine, in which Horn argued that the Imperial Remnant may have been acting on its own, not yet fully under the control of Caedus, Jaina Solo returned from her training at the hands of Boba Fett. After the Jedi agreed to target the Galactic Alliance supply convoys out of the Roche system, Solo argued that she ought to be the one to go after Caedus, which Horn felt was too risky, preferring that Skywalker be the one to confront the Sith. When Skywalker revealed that he would not go after his nephew due to his visions of the future suggesting that such a course would end in darkness, Solo was chosen to target her brother instead.Legacy of the Force: Invincible
When Skywalker learned that Caedus was on Nickel One in the Roche system, he prepared a plan of attack. He had Horn stand down the Wookiee forces that would have escorted the Jedi strike, instead relying on the Mandalorians, allies of the Verpine, to provide fighter cover. The Jedi attacked the Roche system, with Jedi blastboats escorted by Mandalorian Bes'uliik fighters making runs against the Imperial fleet in the system while Jedi StealthXs used the distraction to attack the command post. In the midst of the assault, Solo would be inserted onto Nickel One to engage Caedus. The plan went off smoothly, but Solo was only able to wound Caedus before being forced to withdraw.
Caedus, however, was able to trace Solo through a Nightsister blood trail technique and thereby discover the base's rough location. The Jedi arranged an ambush in the narrow safe approach through the Transitory Mists to Shedu Maad, and Horn served as the battle controller for the Jedi force, which was working with the Queen Mother's Hapan fleet. Working from Uroro Station, Horn saw to the launch of the Jedi fighters against the Anakin Solo and the Super Star Destroyer Megador. Solo boarded the Anakin Solo and killed Caedus while Skywalker led the Jedi in torpedo attacks on the Star Destroyer. Horn and the other Jedi Masters led fifty Jedi in boarding the Anakin Solo and taking control of it, at which point they were able to dictate peace terms to the Moff Council aboard the ship and install Jagged Fel as the new Imperial Head of State. With Ben Skywalker having redeemed Veila, the Sith threat was over. The Jedi then were able to bring all parties into negotiations and bring about a resolution to the war.
====Family crisis====
In 43 ABY, Horn was scheduled to make a presentation at a major reunification summit involving the Galactic Alliance, Imperial Remnant, and Confederation, as was Mirax. Taking the rare opportunity to gather the family together, all the Horns booked a suite at the Kallad's Dream Vacation Hostel on Coruscant. The morning before the summit commenced, Horn returned from a briefing by the other Jedi for his deposition later that day on government relations to find his son threatening Mirax in the kitchen, convinced she had been replaced with an impostor. When Horn ordered Valin to put his lightsaber down, Valin instead attacked, equally sure that Horn was another impostor. Horn was able to defend himself, and when Valin fled through another room, off a balcony, and onto a docked speeder. The elder Horn followed him and again had to defend himself, until Mirax arrived and stunned Valin.Fate of the Jedi: Outcast
The Horns covertly rushed Valin to the Jedi Temple to attempt to figure out the source of his sudden mental condition. They missed the opening ceremonies of the Unification Summit, after which Grand Master Skywalker was arrested on charges of dereliction of duty in failing to prevent Jacen Solo's fall to the dark side, all as part of Chief of State Daala's political ploy to exercise control over the Jedi. Jysella arrived to be with her family, who waited in anguish as Cilghal examined Valin. Skywalker arrived after being released on his recognizance, and recognized Valin's manipulation of the electroencephaloscan to prevent a brain scan as a demonstration of a Force technique Jacen Solo had used.
That night, Valin escaped the Jedi Temple, though Skywalker did not have the Horns alerted until after he was recaptured. With the Galactic Alliance now alerted to his condition, a compromise was worked out in which Valin was kept in the neutral Mon Mothma Memorial Medical Center under a mixed guard. The Horns were constantly at his bedside, but doctors remained clueless as to the nature of his condition. Meanwhile, Skywalker accepted a plea bargain for his charges, seeking to set an example that the Jedi were not above the law. He was stripped of his position in the Order and exiled for ten years, commutable or pardonable if he could find the cause of Jacen Solo's fall to the dark side and present a way to avoid its recurrence. Horn was among many tearful friends who saw Skywalker off from Coruscant. In Skywalker's absence, Kenth Hamner was made the Master of the Order.
With the political situation somewhat defused, Valin was returned to Jedi custody. Meanwhile, as Hamner attempted to improve the Jedi's image, Horn and all the other Jedi were assigned individual observers, to whom they had to report at random intervals and who would follow them whenever they left the Jedi Temple. When Horn's former student Tahiri Veila, having left the Jedi Order after the Second Galactic Civil War, won her legal battle to avoid having an observer, Daala retaliated by having Galactic Alliance Security seize Valin. Horn was aghast when the Galactic Alliance sentenced Valin Horn to imprisonment in carbonite until he could be treated. He immediately began calling in favors from old friends, many of whom held senior ranks in the Galactic Alliance armed forces, but they could do little to advance Horn's case. The burden on the Jedi lightened when the Galactic Alliance High Court struck down most of Daala's restrictions on them, including the observers, on the appeal of Horn's old friend Nawara Ven.
Not long afterward, Jysella Horn succumbed to the same madness while in the Jedi Temple. Escaping outside, she was seized by Galactic Alliance forces and immediately committed to imprisonment in carbonite. The familial connection led to implications from the press and Chief of State Daala that the Horns' parenting was to blame, or that a genetic abnormality was present. Horn, devastated by the loss of his second child to the inexplicable insanity, considered the possibility that there might actually be a genetic element in play, and was willing to give DNA samples to Cilghal for analysis. First he tried to see his daughter, but the Galactic Alliance denied access to the Horns. He was swiftly summoned to a Council meeting, in which he vented his frustrations and offered his cooperation with Cilghal—but rejected Hamner's request to report immediately for an examination, instead insisting on continuing his efforts to see Jysella.
When Natua Wan also exhibited the same madness and was captured by the Jedi, journalist Javis Tyrr released a sensational report on the incident she caused, and exposed the fact that Seff Hellin, another mad Jedi, was being held secretly within the Temple and studied, with only Cilghal and a handful of other Jedi knowing of it. At an emergency meeting of the High Council, Horn supported keeping Hellin and Wan under observation, even though it would lead to a clash with Daala, who was increasingly determined to control the Jedi. Horn's faction, determined to stand up against Daala's power plays, lost the debate. While the Jedi were allowed to retain Hellin and Wan, they were publicly humiliated and forced to admit wrongdoing.
When Jedi Knights Bazel Warv and Yaqeel Saav'etu exhibited the same psychosis and were quickly captured by the Jedi, the Galactic Alliance obtained a warrant for the pair and demanded that they be surrendered into government custody. The Council had to convene to discuss whether or not to accept the validity of the warrant. After much debate, they came to the conclusion that all the insane Jedi should be covertly transferred to the Jedi training facility still on Shedu Maad, outside of Daala's jurisdiction. They then turned to the issue of Tahiri Veila's arrest by the Galactic Alliance on charges of assassinating Gilad Pellaeon during the Second Galactic Civil War. Horn supported their conclusion of hiring Nawara Ven to represent her and beginning a public opposition of the arrest as politically motivated, pointing out the unequal treatment given to other facilitators of Caedus's rise. During the meeting, Han and Leia Solo arrived and warned the Council that they had learned Daala was preparing to hire Mandalorians for use against the Jedi.Fate of the Jedi: Abyss
When Jaina Solo proposed a plan to strike back against Daala in the battle over public opinion, Horn agreed to participate even though his grief would be made public. He and his wife, along with several senior Jedi, gained a writ from Judge Arabelle Lorteli, Daala's appointed judge for the Court of Jedi Affairs, granting them visitation rights for Valin and Jysella, then arrived at Daala's secret prison, a Galactic Alliance Security blockhouse near Palem Graser Office Tower, with the media in tow. They demanded that they be granted the right to see the two carbonite-frozen Jedi, exposing the secret prison. They were taken not to cells but the executive offices, where Horn's children had been put on display as trophies. Outraged and saddened, Horn and his wife were subjected to the press's questioning until the prison commandant, Colonel Wruq Retk, arrived. Mirax punched the large Yaka, knocking him unconscious and leading the other security personnel to insist on arresting her. Horn and the other Masters protected her, but the standoff was only ended when the media made the threat of arrest seem ridiculous and Daala, newly arrived, agreed that there would be no prosecution. She questioned the competency of the judge who had issues the writ, implying he or she had been a weak-minded fool under Jedi mental influence, completing the Jedi public relations coup when it was revealed that her handpicked appointee, Lorteli, had been the judge in question. The display of his children was ended, much to Horn's relief.
====New threats emerge====
After that sequence of events, Cilghal received a message from Ben Skywalker informing her that he and Luke Skywalker had encountered a group of Sith in the Maw and slain all of them but one, whom they were pursuing to find whatever secret base from which this new, more numerous breed of Sith was operating. In addition, there was a powerful dark side presence within the Maw which they were attempting to keep the Sith from accessing. She spread this news to the other Masters, who met and decided to prepare a strike against the Sith in secret, unwilling to bring the hostile Galactic Alliance into the loop. They prepared a StealthX wing to slip out undetected, but after Jedi Knight Sothais Saar succumbed to the mysterious psychosis and was taken back to the Jedi Temple, it engendered a standoff with Galactic Alliance forces that came to a head in an attack on the Temple carried out by Mandalorian mercenaries. The commandos were repelled, but with the Temple under scrutiny, there was no way the fighters could depart stealthily. Still besieged by the Galactic Alliance, the Jedi were offered the hope of a peaceful conclusion when Daala authorized Han and Leia Solo to conduct negotiations between the two parties aimed at rebuilding trust and finding a peaceful solution. They proposed turning Saar over to the Galactic Alliance on the condition that they maintain access to him and Daala unfreeze Horn's children. Daala proposed in return that they turn over Saar and, if cooperation continued and Saar did not escape, she would thaw one Horn out after a month, then the next a month after that.Fate of the Jedi: Backlash
Daala's deal did not pan out, and Daala soon commed Hamner to demand that Saar and the latest mad Jedi, Turi Altamik, be turned over, issuing vague threats if they were not. Hamner refused to bow to her threats, instead immediately summoning the Council. They found that all the exits, even the secret ones, had been blocked by Mandalorian forces and communications were being jammed, while Mandalorian leader Belok Rhal demanded the release of Saar and Altamik within thirty-six hours. Horn was furious at the situation, demanding action from Hamner. Kani Asari, a young apprentice working as Hamner's assistant, volunteered to go out and negotiate with Rhal for more time. Horn and the other Masters watched from the doorway, horrified, as Rhal shot Asari dead on the steps of the Jedi Temple, insisting he would accept nothing other than the release of the insane Jedi and reducing the deadline to one day.Fate of the Jedi: Allies
With this affront, Horn maintained that Daala and the Galactic Alliance could no longer be trusted whatsoever. Under siege, they were in danger of running out of medication to sedate the mad Jedi held inside the Temple, but Horn was the first to notice the arrival of rodents with vials of sedative and message strapped to them. The Council soon realized Leia Organa Solo was using the Force to guide the vermin into the building through cracks the Mandalorians were not monitoring. Their hope increased yet further when the sedatives no longer seemed necessary: suddenly, the delusional Jedi seemed to regain their sanity, as if Skywalker had found and eliminated the source of their illness.
The Jedi were able to confirm to Daala that the mad Jedi had been cured in a Fellowship Plaza negotiation broadcast on the HoloNet, forcing her to end the siege. Horn, increasingly tortured over the imprisonment of his children, was outraged when Daala refused to turn over Valin and Jysella, saying she was not convinced that the cure was effective. In a Council meeting afterward, many of the Jedi demanded action, with Octa Ramis suggesting an immediate raid, but Hamner counseled patience and forbade an attack on the Galactic Alliance. Horn challenged Hamner to present an alternative, but the meeting was interrupted by the arrival of Han and Leia Solo, who showed the Council a broadcast of a freedom march on Blaudu Sextus, where Octusi slaves were demonstrating against their condition and Mandalorian mercenaries were preparing to oppose the protests. Hamner noticed that the protests seemed contrived, and theorized that the anti-slavery group Freedom Flight had provoked them and tipped off reporter Madhi Vaandt in order to trap Daala, the suspected backer of the Mandalorians, with bad publicity when the Mandalorians slaughtered the pacifist, semi-sentient, but stubborn Octusi. To prevent a massacre, the Council dispatched a pair of Jedi to defuse the situation. Returning to the topic of Daala, Hamner revealed that he had a private solution in the works, but had promised to keep the matter stricly confidential. The rest of the Council was concerned that Hamner was holding information back, and Horn accused him of making up the claim to stall for time. The others, anxious at their inability to aid the Skywalkers against the Sith Lost Tribe, demanded that the StealthXs launch. Hamner, upset that his calls for restraint were being ignored, demanded that if the others wished to reject his leadership, one of them challenge him in a traditional duel rather than simply disregard him. The other Masters looked to Horn, but Horn was unwilling to push matters that far.
When Jaina Solo, along with Lando Calrissian, returned from an unauthorized excursion to aid the Skywalkers, she reported to the Council that Luke Skywalker had killed Abeloth, the dark presence within the Maw that had been the source of the outbreak, and remained in an uneasy truce with the Lost Tribe Sith in an attempt to understand Abeloth's nature. Yet as Solo and Calrissian returned from the Maw, they had been attacked by a Sith pirate force. Realizing that the Lost Tribe were operating as pirates, the pair had plotted pirate attacks with the same modus operandi and found a spate of seizures, frequently of warships. Horn analyzed the data and came to the shocked conclusion that the Sith were building a war fleet of significant size.
As the Jedi Council gathered to welcome those recovered Jedi who were returning from Shedu Maad, their attention was riveted by a broadcast of a massacre of Octusi by Mandalorian forces commanded by Belok Rhal. When Rhal realized he was being recorded, he killed Vaandt in front of the holocams. The Jedi dispatched to the scene arrived and captured Rhal, making it appear as if they had been sent to stop the Mandalorians, not to convince the protesters to desist. Saba Sebatyne proclaimed it a sign of the will of the Force and insisted that the Jedi move to support the increasing galactic movement against slavery. Hamner was unconvinced, believing the Jedi could not afford to incite a wave of violence by appearing to back slave revolts, especially with their other concerns at the moment. He refused to do so, provoking Han Solo, who had learned of Hamner's secret plan for a resolution through a leak in the Senate, to challenge him to reveal it. Hamner admitted that during the siege he had been contacted by Chief of Naval Operations Nek Bwua'tu, who had learned of the planned SteathX launch. Bwua'tu, Daala's lover, had offered to put his influence to use in swaying Daala to take a more moderate tack if the Jedi would only hold off on launching the fighters and thereby avoid provoking Daala into a battle. Soon afterward, however, Bwua'tu had been felled in an attempted assassination and remained in a coma; Hamner was hoping that the Bothan admiral would awake soon. Sebatyne, upset with the proposed solution and Hamner's secrecy, called on him to resign, but he refused. In response, the rest of the Jedi Council, uniformly frustrated with Hamner's reluctance to confront Daala and convinced that the matter could not be solved without a fight, deposed the acting Grand Master in an informal motion of no confidence, removing him from the Council.
With Hamner removed, the Jedi Council instituted a plan of action. They agreed to launch the StealthX wing to support the Skywalkers, who were able to reveal that Abeloth had in fact survived and was on Pydyr exercising control over the Fallanassi sect, at the same time as Han Solo led a mission to free Horn's children. To cover the events, Booster Terrik agreed to host a celebrity charity sabacc tournament aboard the Errant Venture, and with the celebrities aboard as hostages, fire on orbital mirrors and demand his grandchildren's release as a distraction before escaping to hyperspace. Prior to the raid, Corran and Mirax Horn made their usual visit to check on their frozen children with Cilghal and, undetected, planted tracing beacons on both carbon-freeze units to allow Solo's team to track them. Horn wished to be part of the team himself, but both Horns were under Galactic Alliance observation and the team could not afford detection.
Prompted by information passed by Jagged Fel that Daala had obtained evidence of Jedi cooperation with the Sith and would soon be releasing it, the Jedi immediately moved to act. Horn was not present in the hangar when Hamner, realizing what was occurring, confronted the rest of the Council members save the Solusars, who were on Ossus as usual. Believing that their aggressive actions would spark a war with the government and were in fact treasonous, Hamner insisted on stopping the launch and attempted to disable the hangar doors. He and Sebatyne dueled, and he fell from an overhanging catwalk. Sebatyne caught him in the Force, but when Hamner threw his lightsaber toward the door control relay, she let him go to stop the lightsaber. Hamner plummeted to his death.
Horn and Cilghal approached Sebatyne afterward, as she took a call from Daala demanding an explanation. They supported her refusal to give in to Daala, and when the Chief of State threatened action against the Jedi, Horn suggested that her belief that the Jedi had joined with the Sith revealed only her ignorance of the situation and of the Jedi. Cilghal reminded Daala that Terrik's hostages would be released in three days, and Daala broke off the call with the prospect of conflict looming. Horn was pleased, believing that they had taken the initiative from Daala, forced her to rethink her position, and achieved their goals of launching the fighters and recovering Valin and Jysella. Contemplating the future, Horn and Cilghal agreed that Sebatyne was the most suitable leader for the moment, reassuring her they did not hold her role in Hamner's death against her. Horn did not feel that he could take the reins of leadership, as he believed that his anger toward Daala would threaten to steer him toward the dark side if he were in control. Sebatyne, as the Jedi Master left on Coruscant with the strongest will and warrior nature, and who most unsettled Daala, was their choice to lead. She agreed, on the condition that she face judgment for her actions when Luke Skywalker returned.
Once the Solos' team returned with Valin and Jysella, several other Jedi joined the Horns in witnessing the thawing of the imprisoned Jedi from carbonite. They were briefly frightened when Valin's medical readout displayed no vital signs, but Cilghal confirmed that he was alive; the equipment appeared to have malfunctioned. The Horns were able to reunite for the first time in months, and neither child displayed any sign of madness, much to Horn's relief.Fate of the Jedi: Conviction
==Personality and traits==
Though he strongly believed in his instincts, Horn believed in using his brain and thinking through problems rather than working by feelings; this analytic tendency remained even as a Jedi. Horn was an extremely tenacious and relentless individual. He was extremely competitive, and strongly disliked being beaten in anything. A hard worker, he always strove to be the best at anything he attempted. Part of the reason he drove himself so hard was that he feared failing others. Horn was able to admit to himself that he had a strong ego, and did not like being wrong. He had to put this aside during his Jedi training, simply being himself and avoiding arrogance in order to channel the Force effectively. In his time as a Jedi, Horn was able to do so, moving beyond his former pridefulness to accept the Jedi philosophies of humility and self-control.
While Horn was proud of his Jedi heritage, he was initially wary of taking it up, feeling unready to sacrifice his normal life for the way of the Jedi. He avoided playing his father's message in order to keep from feeling even more conflicted. When Mirax was kidnapped, he played the message and realized that he had to train as a Jedi, not only because it was his father's wish but because he knew it was the right thing to do with his gifts. When Horn made his own lightsaber, he went through a crucible of his own, realizing that he could no longer act without thinking things through, he had to accept responsibility for doing as much good as possible, and always strive to be a better person and protector of the innocent. He made a complete commitment, a dedication of his life to the Jedi way.
While Horn was determined to protect civilians during his time in Corellian Security and the New Republic, he was more interested in looking out for himself during the dangerous period when he was on the run from the Empire. He felt it too risky to put himself in danger to aid others unless they were in extremely serious or if he had brought their predicaments upon them. Outside that difficult period, however, Horn was extremely willing to give his life to protect others as a security officer, a soldier, and a Jedi, and when facing lethal situations he was able to comfort himself with the idea that his death would save others, leaving him calm and focused.
Horn had a tendency to blame himself for any negative situation he was in, though he was willing to reconsider his initial instincts to blame himself when confronted by another person or by new information. Skywalker urged him to end this practice, considering it a manifestation of Horn's ego that he took responsibility for situations that frequently were not of his making.
After his time on Garqi, Horn was left something of a loner, distant from others and with difficulty trusting them. It took Lujayne Forge to help him integrate into the squadron. However, he remained wary of being vulnerable and opened himself only to a few friends. By nature and his time with CorSec, Horn was highly suspicious of others, a tendency Luke Skywalker urged him to reduce. While he did become more trusting of his allies, he was constantly wary and cautious in dangerous situations.
Horn remained extremely defiant in the face of capture, mocking Ysanne Isard even during his time in Lusankya. He was also flippant, dismissive, and confident toward the spirit of Exar Kun when it spoke to him, though this was based on a mistaken assumption that Kun's spirit could not act to harm him in the material world.
While he had many romances as a young man, Horn believed in having stable relationships and not basing his romantic encounters on simple lust. Horn also believed in strong family relationships, and he himself had an extremely positive relationship with his father, whom he considered a friend as much as a parent. He looked up to him and felt that he could share his problems with Hal, to whom he looked for moral guidance. They made an excellent team, and were drawn even closer by the death of Horn's mother. The death of Hal Horn left the younger Horn feeling lost, without his mentor. He felt emotionally adrift and without his moral compass. Leaving Bastra and Wessiri when he escaped from Corellia made him feel even more alone. Only with his joining Rogue Squadron did he find companionship again, and Wedge Antilles and Tycho Celchu provided role models to fill the roles Hal Horn and Gil Bastra could no longer fill. However, Horn's uncertainty over whether he could trust Celchu led him to feel betrayed and angry with him, though he acknowledged that this was not a logical feeling.
On Corellia, Horn regarded the Empire as an intrusive, unneeded presence, and wanted to limit its interference as much as possible. In general, he felt that the Empire was evil and oppressive, yet he regarded the Rebellion as a criminal group and had no problem imprisoning its members, especially as a Rebel presence gave the Empire more justification to intervene in Corellian affairs. However, he was willing to work alongside Rebels and against the interests of the Empire if he felt that he was achieving a greater good. He eventually joined the New Republic in order to protect galactic citizens against what he saw as Imperial tyranny, though he was still not entirely comfortable with the New Republic's criminal roots and accepted association with smugglers in its early days.
Horn believed that the Jedi Order best served the Force through serving the New Republic and then the Galactic Alliance. That, in his opinion, was the best path to a stable, peaceful galaxy, and he also believed it was vital that the Jedi answer to some outside authority so they could not abuse their power. He also believed that the Jedi should serve the greater good foremost, not succumbing to sectional or personal attachments. He believed strongly in love and in family, but knew they had to be put second, behind a Jedi's commitment to the Order.
Horn loved to fly, and was irritable when he was unable to. Even when operating with his cover identities between leaving Corellian Security and joining the New Republic, Horn managed to fly at least once a week. Another enjoyment, less significant, was art. Horn's mother volunteered with the Museum of Fine Art, giving Horn a chance to take in a great deal of art as a young man, and he developed a taste for art and ability to analyze it.
==Powers and abilities==
Horn was able to enter a state in which he was calm and centered, giving him better reflexes and helping him avoid being shot even before he realized he was Force-sensitive. Sometimes in combat, he was able to enter an even more advanced state in which time seemed to slow, giving him incredible reflexes and foreknowledge of others' actions. This ability was further developed by his Jedi training under Skywalker. Another ability he had while still untrained was the capacity to implant thoughts in individuals, though he did not even realize he was doing so, an artifact of his strong talent with the mind trick power.
Horn learned many basic Force abilities at Skywalker's Praxeum. His precognition was refined, and he learned to sense through the Force, expanding his senses and using the Force as a new sense entirely. He also gained the capacity to erect a shield through the Force, and the ability to protect his mind from mental probes by other Force users, as well as masking his Force presence almost entirely. Healing was another of the skills he mastered, as was speeding his movements through the Force. During the Yuuzhan Vong War, Horn participated in Jedi Battle melds, linking several Jedi mentally for greater battle coordination.
Like all Halcyon Jedi, Horn lacked significant telekinetic abilities, and it took great strain to make a stone so much as wobble. He made up for them with a powerful affinity for mind tricks, implanting thoughts, sensations, and images in others, and a great skill in the absorption of energy, also Halcyon traits. When absorbing energy—electric, heat, Force, and otherwise—Horn was able to redirect it into telekinetic feats, but it took such an infusion of power to do so.
Horn was quite skilled with a lightsaber, and many Jedi students regarded him as an elite combatant and was considered one of the Order's best duelists on par with Kyle Katarn and Saba Sebatyne."Emissary of the Void" His Force abilities also aided his already considerable talent as a pilot.
==Lightsaber==
Around 11 ABY, Horn constructed his silver-bladed lightsaber on Courkrus, using scrap materials parts from The Crash. Created using a Durindfire, along with an emerald and diamond (initially a Kubaz xirkonia, which rapidly failed and was soon replaced) for the focusing crystals, from jeweled furniture in Corran's room, it was based on designs hidden in Rostek Horn's columns for the Corellian Horticultural Digest, using a method for emergencies that took an average of two days to finish. It was a dual-phase lightsaber, capable of increasing its length to three meters when twisted to bring its second set of crystals into alignment.
==Relationships==
===Chertyl Ruluwoor===
Around six months after his father's death, the Annual CorSec Awards Ball took place. Usually, each male CorSec officer bought into a pool, the winner of which was originally given the right to take the Director's daughter to the ball. Over the years, it became a tradition in which a female officer offered herself as the prize, and the proceeds from the lottery system went to the Survivors and Orphans Fund. That year, however, the prize was, unknown to her, Chertyl Ruluwoor. A female Selonian, Ruluwoor was part of a transfer program with CorSec. No one wanted to have to take her to the ball, but Horn, miserable from his father's death, decided that there was no point in making anyone else be separated from loved ones.
He persuaded the significant others of all the other officers in the pool that the pool was rigged to cause that officer's ticket to win the pool. He let them sell him their tickets, eventually gaining every single ticket in the pool. He gave all the proceeds to the Survivors and Orphans Fund and went all-out to make Ruluwoor's night special, flying across the planet to pick up the proper flowers and renting a repulsorlimo. Ruluwoor made a stunning impression at the ball, and later she and Horn, who had hit it off, made love. While Horn enjoyed the experience immensely, he proved allergic to her fur and her skin was irritated by his sweat, resulting in an uncomfortable experience for both afterward. Knowing their relationship would not work out, they parted amicably.
===Iella Wessiri===
Horn had a close friendship with Iella Wessiri, his Corellian Security Force partner. They were merely friends until one incident in which Wessiri saved his life in a battle at a glitterstim dealer's warehouse. Horn felt extremely grateful, and began to feel that he was in love with Wessiri, a married woman. She responded similarly, but before they could do anything, they were separated and debriefed. Horn did not see her for another two days, at which point he had realized his attraction had been the result of the emotional comedown from combat. Neither ever again considered a physical or romantic relationship, and Horn was glad that they had not taken a step he felt would have ruined Wessiri's marriage and their friendship.
===Siolle Tinta===
At some point during his partnership with Wessiri, Horn was assigned to protect heiress Siolle Tinta. They got along very well due to their similar views on art, and during the three days they spent together in a safehouse, they had a brief but fiery romance. In short order, however, Wessiri caught the potential kidnapper threatening Tinta and she no longer needed protection. Horn quickly realized that their time together had merely been an infatuation that would not have worked long-term. They parted as friends.
===Erisi Dlarit===
Horn and Erisi Dlarit were both pilots in Rogue Squadron during its rebuilding. While they socialized, Horn was first approached romantically by Dlarit in the aftermath of the Battle of Vladet. She told him that she had feared for her life when the Lancer-class frigate arrived, and suggested that she was feeling physically grateful. Horn told her that what she was feeling was merely the aftereffect of combat, citing his experience with Wessiri. He let her down gently, as even though he was physically attracted to her, he was uncomfortable with her attentions. Horn did entertain some ideas of a relationship with her, however, and found her extremely appealing. Yet, he declined a fairly direct invitation to sleep with her before the Second Battle of Borleias due to his need to sleep, though even he considered himself a fool for doing so.
During their mission to Coruscant, Horn and Dlarit posed as a telbun and his mistress, sexual partners. However, Horn held back from becoming intimate with her, justifying his decision as for mission security and confused by his feelings for Mirax Terrik. He ultimately realized that she came from an entirely different society—she was accustomed to wealth and opulence and Horn simply was not. He did not feel he could be a part of her world, as it did not fit him. When she attempted to seduce him in their hotel room, however, Horn nearly gave in to his desire to be with her before he decided that it would be a mistake to begin a physical relationship when he knew their emotional one would not work out. He stopped their encounter and explained his feelings to Dlarit, who accepted them. With separation from her during the later stages of their mission planning, Horn decided that any possible relationship between the two would be a disaster. They simply were not compatible.
Horn ultimately decided to pursue a relationship with Mirax Terrik, and his realization that Dlarit was a traitor to the New Republic destroyed any remaining interest he might have had in her. They found themselves on opposite sides of the Bacta War, Corran ended up killing her in the Battle of Thyferra.
===Mirax Terrik Horn===
Horn first met Mirax Terrik when she ferried him from the Chorax system to Talasea when his fighter was disabled. They originally did not get along well, each blaming the other for his or her father's activities; Hal Horn had tracked down the notorious smuggler Booster Terrik and had him imprisoned on Kessel. However, Wedge Antilles quickly intervened to tell each of them that the other deserved respect. When Horn was restricted to quarters after the Battle of Vladet, Terrik brought him a care package, and they talked, sharing a ryshcate and whiskey, during which time Horn realized that he greatly enjoyed her company. The night before the Second Battle of Borleias, Terrik was sleeping in Horn's quarters due to Qrygg offering her his bunk. She and Horn spoke, with Horn feeling cut by her denial of feelings for him when she acted jealous of Dlarit's attentions to Horn. She subtly invited Horn to sleep with her that night, looking for cause to hate him in the morning, but Horn, feeling that he would be using her to avoid his own feelings of loneliness and nervousness, declined.
Horn enjoyed spending time with Mirax and enjoyed their shared Corellian heritage. While he considered her merely a good friend, he was willing to admit that he could fall in love with her if he let himself. After working alongside her during their infiltration of Coruscant, Horn realized that he wanted a romantic relationship with her, and asked her out just before he flew to bring down the shields. She agreed, but their courtship was disrupted by the fact that he was shot down and captured. Horn's escape from Lusankya allowed them to reunite, and their relationship swiftly turned serious. They began cohabiting almost immediately. When Horn met her father, he and Booster Terrik did not get along, but that did not deter him from his relationship with Mirax. Before the Battle of Thyferra, he decided to propose to her. He was overjoyed when she accepted. They were married quietly by Wedge Antilles aboard the Lusankya when news of the engagement broke, but followed it up with a more formal ceremony on Coruscant.
They enjoyed a comfortable married life on Coruscant, though first Zsinj, then Thrawn, and then Palpatine kept them from spending too much time together as Horn was called away to fight. They had some thoughts of having children, but were kept from seriously discussing the issue until after the reborn Palpatine's defeat. At that point, Mirax brought up the issue, and Horn, who disliked children, was resistant. However, continued thinking on the subject resulted in his looking forward to becoming a father. Mirax's kidnapping by Tavira's forces interrupted any plans and forced him to take up his Jedi heritage when he rescued her. After that ordeal, Horn was ready to have children. He and Mirax did so two years later, naming their son Valin, after Horn's father. Valin was followed three years later by a daughter, Jysella. Horn's love for Mirax stayed strong throughout their marriage even though their careers forced them to spend much time apart, and with the passage of time, he and her father even managed to get along.
===Leonia Tavira===
When Horn infiltrated Leonia Tavira's Invid pirate gang, he learned that she had an extremely strong taste for men, frequently taking sexual partners from among her subordinates. When Tavira began flirting with him during his debriefing after the Battle of Xa Fel, Horn moved preemptively to cut off any thoughts of a relationship, outraging the warlord. In response, she took as her lover Remart Sasyru, Horn's rival among the Survivor pilots. Horn himself acted to cut off the possibility of a sexual liaison precisely because he knew that, despite his love for Mirax and belief in remaining faithful to her, he was physically very attracted to Tavira and did not trust himself not to give in.
After Horn beat Sasyru senseless during an incident in which Horn protected several Caamasi, Tavira executed Sasyru, Horn's subordinate, for his behavior in provoking the fight and refusing orders. She then came to Horn and strongly attempted to seduce him, telling him that he would become her lover willingly. She kissed him, exciting Horn against his better judgment, and ordered him to make his decision regarding becoming her partner in a month. Horn felt guilty about his attraction to her, and did not want to consider the tempting logic that said sleeping with Tavira would help him find Mirax more quickly. Horn was able to reject that idea, and instead devoted himself to destroying the pirate sanctuary on Courkrus. He rescued Mirax and forced Tavira to flee without the Jensaarai that made her so formidable, breaking her power.
==Behind the scenes==
The character of Corran Horn was created by author Michael A. Stackpole as one of the two main protagonists in the X-wing series of novels, though Horn actually first appeared in the short story Missed Chance, also by Stackpole, which served as a sort of prequel to X-Wing: Rogue Squadron. Stackpole created Horn's background as a Corellian Security agent in order to provide a counterpoint to common depictions of Corellian smugglers and to create tension with smuggler characters. He decided to have Horn become a Jedi because he felt that Star Wars stories required some Jedi presence."The Secrets" podcast on Stormwolf.com Horn has appeared in every novel written by Stackpole. Stackpole himself posed as the model for Horn's card in the Star Wars Customizable Card Game, and later said Chris Pratt "could do a hell of a job" in a hypothetical adaptation of the character by Disney. Due to pronounced popular desire to see Horn in the Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Squadron comic series, set before Horn was in the squadron, Stackpole included a storyline involving Horn as a Corellian Security officer in the comic.Star Wars Handbook 1: X-Wing Rogue Squadron
Horn has also appeared, though in a less featured role, in every novel by Aaron Allston, the author who succeeded Stackpole in writing the X-wing series, with the exception of X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar, in which he was only mentioned.X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar
In I, Jedi, Horn became the first and only character to narrate an entire Star Wars novel in the first person, until the 2015 novel Heir to the Jedi, in which Luke Skywalker narrated his own adventures. Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force, presented as an in-universe document, has retconned I, Jedi into itself having the status of an in-universe document by including selections from the novel.
In Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Squadron: Family Ties, Horn's hair is colored black and his eyes are colored blue, both in conflict with his canonical hair and eye colors of brown and green, respectively.
The Official Star Wars Fact File 70 claims that Horn hunted down Jedi as a Corellian Security agent. However, passages in X-Wing: The Krytos Trap and X-Wing: The Bacta War make it clear that Horn had no experience with Jedi, suggesting that Horn's role was indirect at best and he had no knowledge of the effects of his actions and investigations.
Horn's name was mentioned as a Jedi Master assigned an apprentice in Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. In the cutscene in question, five Jedi Masters appear at the head of the crowd of students: two are distinct individuals, and three are generic stand-in models. Horn, Streen, and Tionne are all mentioned in the dialogue, strongly suggesting that the three generic models stand in for those three Jedi and that Horn does in fact appear in Jedi Academy.
Horn became among the few Expanded Universe characters to have an action figure when Hasbro produced a "Droid Factory" pack featuring Horn and Whistler. This figure depicted Horn with a standard orange New Republic pilot suit, instead of his usual green CorSec suit. The pack also includes a blue-bladed lightsaber with a hilt resembling Anakin Skywalker's, rather than Horn's silver-bladed weapon.
==Appearances==
===Non-canon appearances===
*"An Apology" 
==Sources==
==Notes and references==
==External links==
*
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