As the Clone Wars rage, victory or defeat lies in the hands of elite squads that take on the toughest assignments in the galaxy. These stone-cold soldiers go where no one else would, and succeed where all others fail. The novel Star Wars Republic Commando: Hard Contact, scheduled for release on October 26, does more than tell the tale of four specialized clone troopers on an impossible mission to sabotage a nanovirus research facility deep behind enemy lines on a Separatist-held planet.

Thanks to British author and former armed forces reservist Karen Traviss, the official tie-in novel to next year's exciting new video game also portrays the clone troopers' more human side, shedding light on the misconception that all clone troopers are exactly the same in their fears and their wonder with the new environment they're expected to survive.

Raised in Portsmouth, England, the home of the Royal Navy and birthplace of Charles Dickens, Traviss often refers to her hometown as the "Bermuda Triangle of fiction," thanks to the iconic authors H.G. Wells, Nevil Shute and Conan Doyle who once lived there as well. In fact, Doyle, the creator of the legendary Sherlock Holmes, lived only a matter of yards from her home. Currently, Traviss lives in Devizes, Wiltshire -- "a lovely market town 20 miles north of Stonehenge, and right in the center of crop circle and UFO-sighting territory."

A journalist by profession, Traviss also worked in advertising and in political public relations. In addition to her communications career, Traviss also led somewhat of a double life with her other vocation in the military. She was a rarity as a female defense correspondent. She also served in the reserve forces, first in the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service, and then the Territorial Army. But she wanted to give writing fiction a serious effort, so in 1998 she began taking a stab at it.

"Being a defense correspondent was a fantastic job," Traviss says. "Most people have never dived in a submarine or have been winched off ships by helicopter or have been out with the army in Northern Ireland. One of the most memorable days for me was standing on the deck of HMS Victory early one frosty morning on October 21 -- on Trafalgar Day -- to cover the annual commemoration of Admiral Lord Nelson's death. And interviewing servicemen and women about their experiences has been one of the most formative things in my entire life. I've heard first-hand accounts of war -- from WWI to the Gulf -- that have made me laugh, amazed me, moved me and even reduced me to tears in private. Service personnel have my utmost respect, all of them."

Once Traviss decided to give writing her full attention she began to tackle her first novel, City of Pearl, which was published in March this year by HarperCollins. But before the book had even been published, word of her writing skills traveled quickly to LucasBooks.

"Apparently, someone put my name forward as a potential author and I got an email late last year asking if I was interested in writing Star Wars books," Traviss recalls. "I said yes, and Del Rey asked to see the manuscript of City of Pearl, which hadn't yet been published. I forgot all about it until I received another email earlier this year asking if I wanted to do Republic Commando: Hard Contact, and if I could do it pronto. It took me eight weeks. My own titles usually take 12 weeks."

Traviss was given an initial briefing of the key elements the book needed to convey. The story line had to feature a clone commando squad, one of whose number is stranded behind enemy lines. She was also given information regarding weaponry, basic armor types and other information from the video game, Star Wars: Republic Commando -- which is expected to hit shelves in February 2005.

Even though to topic of Republic Commandos were somewhat unexplored territory, Traviss was still required to keep her writing references within the Star Wars canon. The book was to be written for an adult audience, and yet suitable for younger readers, which meant many of the soldier's expressions of pain and frustration that she used in her first novel, City of Pearl had to be excluded.

"I had to somehow convey the same urgency and jargon without cussin'," Traviss laughs. "But I did make up some Mandalorian curses which was fun. I had sight of the lyrics for the background music in the game and I just borrowed some of the phonemes and extended the language a bit. I want to go down in history as the woman who made di'kut a household word."

As a relative novice to the world of droids, alien bounty hunters and the arsenal of Star Wars weaponry and vehicles, Traviss began researching various sources and soon found herself with more questions than answers.

"I knew nothing about Star Wars before I started, other than what I'd seen in the movies, so LucasArts Content Supervisor Ryan Kaufman -- who worked closely with me -- had to answer my unending stream of questions and he never ran out of patience, not once. I'd email him and say, 'Ryan, I need a weapon that will do X and Y,' and he'd say, 'Hey, try a Verpine shatter gun. Here's a diagram of one.' He was just wonderful."

However, even with the plethora of information, Traviss still attempted to push the boundaries of what could be altered or altogether changed to suit the needs of her commando comrades in the novel.

"I kept asking Ryan if the armor really had to be light silver," Traviss continues. "That's suicide on a covert mission -- you need camouflage. 'Yes,' he said. 'Watch the movies. It's white.' So I fretted over this, but then it made perfect sense -- the Republic doesn't care if anyone sees its army coming, rather like the vivid uniforms of 18th century armies, and the very sight of white armor becomes a deterrent in itself. And that gave me some great ideas and plot lines about the ethos of the Grand Army and how the commandos cope with it."

Traviss also had a rapid introduction to proper Star Wars terminology usage such as saying gear instead of kit. However, even though she was utilizing an already overly-abundant lexicon of Star Wars information to choose from, Traviss was able to create and introduce to fans brand new planets and creatures for the Star Wars saga.

"I spent some time with Ryan working out where the planet would be, and nothing that existed fitted the bill, so I invented Qiilura," Traviss says. "The whole Qiiluran ecology is new. The Gurlinans, the new shape-shifters, needed the okay from Lucasfilm because they're an intelligent species. On the animal front, there are gdans (psycho, pack-hunting ferrets with attitude), merlies (a food and wool animal that's also pretty intelligent), insects, birdlife, land-eels, trees, fruit -- you name the niche, there's a lifeform in it. The area that the operation covers -- which I had mapped out on a table like an ops room, I confess -- is a pleasant temperate arable area with the topography of Salisbury Plain, which is one of the British Army's exercise areas and pretty challenging terrain if you're trying not to be noticed."