The Desert Jewel was a luxury yacht owned by Fayet Kelen, the owner of Kelen Biolabs. It was mainly used by his daughter, Nakari Kelen, for scouting planets for her father. For that purpose it was loaded with supplies and survival gear and held a lot of additional technology like big sublight engines, jammers, sensor arrays and shield generators. This power was completely invisible from the front or the sides, making the ship ideal for speed, spying and surviving and escaping firefights while looking slow, weak and innocent.
Shortly after the destruction of the first Death Star, the Desert Jewel was loaned to Luke Skywalker for use on a secret mission to the Betu continent of the planet Rodia. Afterwards, Luke and Nakari used the yacht for the extraction mission of Drusil Bephorin. For this mission, they upgraded the yachts's weapons from a single laser cannon to three of them, six concussion missiles, flares for defending against missiles and an Utheel Rockcrusher Compact Seismic Charge. These later came into use when the ship was pulled out of hyperspace by an Imperial interdictor cruiser while bringing Drusil to Omereth. Using the hidden weapons, especially the seismic charge, Luke was able to destroy the cruiser's gravity well, but one of the ship's sublight engines was destroyed in the process. The engine was then replaced on Kupoh by a weaker but functional one.
When arriving on the water planet Omereth, the ship experienced a heavy starboard drag, possibly because of aerodynamic problems caused by replacing the engine, so the engine was turned off to increase the yacht's mobility at the expense of speed. This became problematic when the ship was attacked by multiple bounty hunters shortly afterwards. Due to the large amount of fire, the ship's shields were quickly depleted, and the port engine was hit. The yacht landed in the water, and the crew escaped through manual release and mechanical ejection of the viewport. The ship, however, sank in the water.[1]
Appearances[]
- Heir to the Jedi (and audiobook) (First appearance)