Exclusive Preview: Star Wars Insider Explains ‘The Rishi Maze’

Since it first appeared in Star Wars lore, fans have long wondered about the secret nature of The Rishi Maze. But one of the strangest mysteries of the Star Wars universe will finally be given some explanation, thanks to our exclusive preview of Star Wars Insider: Fiction Collection Vol. 1., coming soon from Titan Comics.

The lore is just one of many short stories contained within the collection of Star Wars Insider‘s best, written by renowned best-selling Star Wars authors including Jason Fry, Matthew Stover, John Ostrander, and Paul S. Kemp, stunning art from some of the saga’s best-loved interpreters, including Joe Corroney, Brian Rood, Jan Duursema, and Magali Villeneuve, and starring iconic characters such as Han Solo, Princess Leia, Lando Calrissian, and Darth Vader. And if you thought the Kessel Run was Han and Chewie’s most dangerous mission, you’re in for a surprise.

Ahead of the full collection’s arrival on Star Wars Day (May 4th, 2021), Screen Rant is pleased to present an advance look at “Maze Run” by authors David J. Williams and Mark S. Williams, a thrilling story starring the series’ smuggler heroes Han Solo and Chewbacca. As fans well know, The Rishi Maze has never been given a clear explanation in canon, since it first appeared in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. But the meaning of the name can and should be appreciated, with this story following the Millennium Falcon directly into the Maze. Enjoy the exclusive excerpt along with artwork by Brian Rood, embedded below.

It was the mother of all lightning storms.

Huge jets of relativistic plasma surged from the polar regions of the black hole, lighting up the dark with tendrils of shimmering fire. There was only one direction for a sane pilot to go: far away, as quickly as possible.

The Millennium Falcon gunned its engines and headed in.

Nor was this black hole an ordinary specimen. Every galaxy rotates around a supermassive vortex, but this particular one was the hub of the dwarf galaxy known as the Rishi Maze. Vast fields of gravitation, energy, and debris stretched out on all sides. Perhaps that labyrinth of death was the reason the galaxy was called the Maze in the first place. Perhaps.

Han Solo didn’t care.

What he cared about was angles and vectors and flight paths. As well as the fact that he’d been presented with a challenge of the first magnitude, for only the very best pilots stood a chance of getting through the Maze. That was what Solo cared about.

And payment. That, too.

The truly annoying part was that so far this undertaking had already cost him the highest price of all: a girl. While carousing at his favorite space bar back at Mos Eisley, he’d been that close to getting with that minx Jenny. They’d flirted and flitted around one another for months and he’d finally managed to peel her off from her throng of admirers, when the broker approached him. Norund Tac—fixture at the Merchants Guild and a longtime glitterstim smuggler—said he had a run that required a cool hand on the stick… somebody who could handle not just the Imperial Blockade of Hutt space but who could get through to the very center of the Rishi Maze. Tac was fronting for a group of spacers running an illegal energy farm deep in that maelstrom and who badly needed supplies of every kind: phase-loop generators, ramscoop coils, reserve shielding, the works. The Empire had the vertical space trade lane shut down, so the only way to reach the customers was via a run through the radiation fields dangerously close to the galaxy’s black hole. Which was all the more reason to drive a hard bargain—or else walk away entirely.

As it was, Han balked right up until the moment Tac laid half the payment on the table and promised a tidy little bonus at the delivery point. By the time they’d sealed the deal, Jenny had wandered off with Tork the Bouncer and another night of potential bliss went up in smoke. By the morning, Han and Chewie were aboard the Falcon and running from an Imperial cruiser hell-bent on preventing them from jumping out of Hutt space. But giving the Imperials the slip was the Falcon’s speciality and in the chase that followed, she more than lived up to her reputation… albeit with a few hits to the aft shielding.

Of course, that was the easy part. Now they had to thread the maze. Han watched while the Falcon’s computer spat out the initial parameters of the run, calibrating a whole host of variables to plot the optimal way through the legion of obstacles. Han spread his gloved fingers over the holo-deck and began to shift the various indicators around for the tasks ahead. He’d learned his lesson long ago: reconfigure the deck as needed and never get locked into anything. Flexibility was the key, and Han had made sure that the Falcon was the most flexible ship he’d ever piloted. To most, she was just another beat-up old freighter, barely capable of carrying a load big enough to support her operations—but to Han she was better than having your own personal Star Destroyer. He’d put enough special tweaks and one-of- a-kind modifications into her to make the Falcon the match of any smuggling vessel on the Outer Rim.

On the screen, the radiation levels were climbing, and on the speakers so was the volume of Chewie’s growls.

“Nothing to worry about,” drawled Han.

Chewie’s barbed retort resonated through the cockpit. He was down in the access corridors, still running the post-hyperflight checks. They’d hoped to have some time between exiting hyperspace and entering the Maze, but with Imperial ships in the vicinity, they’d had to forgo that luxury. But what Chewie wasn’t forgoing was conducting the checks manually. He was a stickler for caution.

This was fine by Han. Given that he liked taking extra risks, he and the Wookiee balanced each other out. Great partnerships had been built on far less. Han grasped the stick and throttled the Falcon in, dodging past the photospheres of some of the stars caught in the black hole’s outermost orbits. A few of those stars even had planets that the black hole had yet to tug loose from their grip: chunks of rock hewing close to their suns, any atmosphere long since swallowed by the maw that filled half the sky. Chewie’s face appeared on the screen— he tossed back his head and growled to indicate that everything was checking out from the hyperspace jump and they could proceed as planned.

“Good,” said Han, “because we already have.” The Wookiee protested, but Han just kept talking over him: “I’m taking us in now; we can’t waste any more time if we want to catch that directional beacon when it goes off.” That had been its own argument, of course—Chewie wasn’t too happy with the fact that they didn’t even know the precise location of the rogue energy-farm, and that instead, the station would signal to them once they’d navigated enough of the Maze to be reachable on the comlinks. Even though Solo had replaced the Falcon’s stock sensors with a military grade package years ago, finding the beacon amongst all the energy distortions would be no easy feat. He throttled the Falcon up to half speed and eased the ship into the gaps between the radiation fields. Those fields were shifting quickly enough that the Falcon’s computer was working hard to plot the optimal flight vectors—and working overtime to factor out interference on the instrument readings. Han gazed out of the cockpit as he eased between gigantic lakes of high-energy clouds. The ship shook as the gravitational forces increased—and then suddenly the radiation levels were spiking. Chewie’s questioning growl reverberated through the com system. All Han could do was shrug agreement.

“Getting a little hot up here,” he said, and put the Falcon into a slow roll, flipping the craft belly up to where her shields were at maximum. For a moment, the rad-readings held steady—and then they kept on climbing, reaching steadily toward the red, becoming intense enough that the cockpit was in growing jeopardy. Han let out a curse. Given the damage to the aft-shields, he’d expected this kind of development, just not so soon. If he stayed where he was, the radiation would boil him from the inside out.

Before fans can begin the debate of Star Wars Canon vs Legends, they will have to read the full “Maze Run” along with countless other short stories, when Star Wars Insider: Fiction Collection Vol. 1 hits shelves on May 4th 2021, and is currently available to preorder through Amazon.

About The Author

Andrew Dyce
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Screen Rant Editor Andrew Dyce was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Despite calling the vast nothingness of the Canadian prairies home (or perhaps because of it) film and television have been a passion since birth. As a graduate of the University of Manitoba with a degree in English Literature, Andrew has grown to appreciate the story and writing behind everything from blockbuster comic book movies to schlocky B-movie action.

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