Random House Worlds is gearing up to release its latest Star Wars novel, author Mike Chen’s Star Wars Outlaws: Low Red Moon. You might assume the book showcases an earlier adventure in the life of goldhearted smuggler Kay Vess, but you’d be wrong. Instead, the book focuses on one of the most surprising figures in the game, Jaylen Vrax. The book explores how Jaylen met the fearsome bodyguard droid ND-5 and made his way through the ranks of the criminal underworld.
Ahead of its February 3 release, IGN can exclusively debut a preview of Star Wars Outlaws: Low Red Moon. This excerpt is set early in the book, just after Jaylen is rescued by ND-5 following an attack on his family’s compound. Check it out below:
“You killed them,” Jaylen said, adrenaline surging in him, helping him upward. He staggered to his feet, stiff pain in every muscle. “You killed them,” he repeated.
“I have already acknowledged that.”
Jaylen’s plan had worked. Which meant that it would have worked had Roisem and Nnytyl stopped arguing, stopped causing chaos so he could give the restraining bolt to A1-A1. He could have passed the hardware over, then come up with some distraction for the protocol droid to mount the restraining bolt.
But now, everyone was dead—because they just wouldn’t listen. And that notion burned Jaylen in a different way than when he thought about Sliro.
“No, you don’t understand. You killed them. They didn’t have to die. The Empire took everything from us. And now you’ve taken everything from me. Why? Why would you do this?”
ND-5 looked at Jaylen like he was asking for directions into town. “I executed orders according to my programming.”
“Oh, so that’s it? You’re just an assassin that kills whoever you tar get?” Jaylen threw a pointed finger at the droid, though doing so caused him to wince.
“Yes. That is how droids operate.”
Jaylen wanted to scream. If his body could support it, he probably would have. Some sort of primal release felt necessary at this point. In stead, he swayed on his feet, nausea rolling in his stomach. “What hap pens now?” he asked quietly. “I can barely move.”
“The shock wave struck you. I was able to protect you from only the shrapnel. The noise and pressure have likely given you a concussion. You have soft tissue damage from the impact as well.” ND-5 walked over and put out a long thin arm to support him. “You will need some time to heal. We will use this guest’s shuttle. They do not need it anymore.”
Even as Jaylen moved with ND-5’s help, he couldn’t stifle the laugh ter coming through. “This is madness. How do I know you’re not just going to kill me next?”
“This restraining bolt is telling me to serve you. That has the highest priority in my directive sequence.”
“It’s as simple as that, huh?” Jaylen replied in a dry voice. “You droids. You’re so binary.”
“It does not need to be any more complex than that.” In the distance, sirens clashed with the sound of oncoming thunder. “For now, I await further instructions from you.”
That was exactly what Jaylen meant by binary. “So I could just tell you to leap off a cliff and you would?”
“Yes.”
Jaylen believed the droid. He had no reason not to. He could tell ND-5 to do anything, including shutting himself down—hell, he’d blasted his own chest to follow Jaylen’s directive.
“Well,” Jaylen said slowly, “why shouldn’t I do just that?” He was only musing, but the thought soon rolled into a real, grounded question. He could choose to give the order. Or he could choose to stay quiet. “How would you assess the current situation?” he asked, as if he were chatting with A1-A1 in the garden cottage.
“Emergency vehicles will be here shortly. I can commandeer this shuttle. You will likely need seven to ten days for physical recovery. In addition, they will think you are dead.”
Jaylen paused, feeling the ground beneath his feet. In the distance, he saw that ND-5 was right: The lights of emergency shuttles finally hov ered above the compound. “Who is ‘they’?” he asked with a laugh.
ND-5 stood silent, though his head tilted ever so slightly. From the exposed innards of the droid’s upper body, Jaylen heard mechanisms and electronics struggling to work. “I do not know. That information must have resided in the part of my memory core that is now damaged.”
Part of Jaylen wanted ND-5 to dismantle himself in the most violent way possible. But he let that impulse pass for one simple reason:
A BX commando droid was valuable as a protector. And a servant.
Jaylen needed both right now. Someday, he might scrap him. But not now. Because everything about Jaylen’s personal galaxy had just reset. This thing, this droid, had taken everything from Jaylen. And now ND-5 would help give him a new life.
Reprinted from Star Wars Outlaws: Low Red Moon by Mike Chen. © 2026 by Lucasfilm Ltd. Published by Random House Worlds, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
For more on the future of the Star Wars franchise, find out what to expect from Star Wars in 2026 and see the one thing we need from Lucasfilm’s new Presidents.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
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