Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (14 page)

“Don’t, ” she said, backing away.

“Hear me out, ” he said. “I have to say this now. You left too quickly before, and you never responded to my messages. “

“I don’t want to hear it. I can’t hear it. “

“But maybe you need to hear it, ” he said with much more than simple entreaty in his voice. “You’ve been in a funk ever since that friend of yours was killed. I don’t know who he was or what happened to him, but I can tell what he meant to you. I can read you, and I know you needed to grieve for him, for what you lost; believe me, I understand that all too well. ” He rapped the knuckles of his left hand against the metal of his mechanical stool. “But it’s been over a year now. Don’t you think it’s time to move on?”

She turned away to hide the pricking of tears in her eyes. Was it time? Yes, probably. Was she able to? No, it didn’t seem that way. Starkiller came so readily to mind. It was like he was still with her, even in death. She couldn’t move on until he was gone.

But when would that be? Maybe never, and she didn’t want to give Shyre false hope. He was a good man-handsome, smart, loyal, brave, and good-humored. He deserved better than her. She couldn’t even speak to him now, let alone give him what he wanted.

“I’m sorry, ” she said. “I think it might be better if you stopped worrying about me, and moved on yourself. “

He was silent for a long time. When he finally spoke, his tone was subdued, but not resentful.

“All right, ” he said. “I hope you don’t think less of me for trying. “

“No, ” she said, turning hack to face him. “And I hope you don’t think less of me for saying no. “

“That wouldn’t be possible, ” he said with a brave smile.

She squeezed his broad shoulder, marveled briefly at the rock-hard muscles, and then hurried away.

After the close dimness of the workshop, the light outside seemed very bright and the noise was deafening. Instead of going straight back to the landing bay, she scoured the streets until she found a food seller she remembered from her previous visits, a wise old Cantrosian who made the best pashi noodles she’d ever tasted. The hit of familiar and very powerful spices cleared her head almost immediately. She was able to push the stricken look in Shyre’s eyes out of her mind for long enough to start thinking about the safest route to the Inner Rim. There were so many interdictors stationed on the Hydian Way, pirates and Imperials alike. It wouldn’t do to get caught by one of them.

“It’s been over a year now. Don’t you think it’s time to move on?”

As she threaded through the crowd back to the landing bay, she thought she glimpsed Kota’s silver topknot standing high above the heads, in a crowd of haggling mercenaries. That was impossible, of course. He had fallen on Cato Neimoidia over a week earlier.

Shaking her head and walking on, she admonished herself severely. When she started hallucinating dead friends, she knew she really was stuck in the past.

Dagobah was a small green-brown world with no moons. It seemed utterly uninhabited, and further examination didn’t prove that impression wrong. Starkiller checked the rest of the system, wondering if he’d come to the wrong planet, but there was no doubt. Its sibling worlds were boiling, airless, frozen, or gaseous. There was nowhere else to go but here, assuming he wanted to survive longer than a minute outside.

For the hundredth time, he asked himself what he was doing.

There was no ready answer.

Mon Calamari had been an utter dead end. With an Imperial administration boiling over from recent resistance activity, he had only barely managed to slice into records deeply enough to find our that no one called Juno Eclipse had ever officially come to the planet, let alone in the last week. With no other way to search for her open to him, he had been forced to retreat and think of something else. Unfortunately, another search through the Force had been fruitless. She was either dead, in hyperspace, or hiding somehow. The second was the most likely, of course, but a long wait and then another search had still given him nothing. If she was going somewhere, it was taking her a long time to get there.

Studying a map of the galaxy in frustration, he had stumbled across a name that Kota had used. Dagobah. Starkiller had never heard of it before, and the ship’s records had nothing to add, beyond its location. All he had to go on was Kota’s brief mention of it.

“Co to the forests of Kashyyyk or the caves of Dagobah or wherever you think you’ll find what you need, and let the galaxy die. “

The forests of Kashyyyk brought back memories of wood smoke and the face of a man who must have been his father. The original Starkiller’s father. He had found his birth name there, but that wasn’t where his quest was leading him now. He was going forward, not backward. His gut told him that there was nothing on Kashyyyk for him now.

What Kota’s gut was telling him was the issue. Had he mentioned Dagobah for a reason or entirely at random? Was the Force moving him in ways even he didn’t understand?

Either way, Starkiller had no other leads to follow. Kota had jumped ship to Commenor long ago, so Starkiller plotted a course to the Sluis sector and raced to the distant world as fast as the Rogue Shadow was able.

Now that he was here, he didn’t know if he’d found something or gotten more lost than ever.

Skimming over the planer’s atmosphere, carefully cloaked in case there was someone watching, he detected no hint of Juno, but he could feel a pervasive aura radiating from the planet. Like Felucia, where the original Starkiller had fought Shaak Ti and her young Zabrak apprentice, this world was rich with the Force. A multitude of life-forms thrived in its rich biosphere, which only made it stranger to him that no one had settled there.

Life was in principle a good thing, he reasoned, but living things weren’t always good to one another. Perhaps Dagobah was infested with giant predators, or its vegetable life ate anything that moved, or something he hadn’t come close to imagining.

He would have to be careful if he were to land there.

Was he going to do that?

He weighed up the pros and cons as thoroughly as he could. On the one hand, he had no reason to think that anything useful to his quest lay on the planet below. On the other hand, Kota was no fool, and he had deep connections to the Force of his own, connections that might become apparent if explored more deeply.

It was his own original instinct that convinced him. His first thought on leaving Vader had been to seek out Kota. On finding Kota, he had been disappointed that he couldn’t tell him anything about Juno’s whereabouts, but maybe this was why Kota had been important. Turning away now might leave him more lost than ever, even if he couldn’t see where this path might lead him. At the very least, he might find a place to meditate, as he had told Kota he was going in search of.

Operating the Rogue Shadow’s controls by feel, he followed his instincts down into the atmosphere and sought a safe landing spot.

It wasn’t easy. The tree canopy was dense and hid marshy, treacherous soil. Thick clouds clung to promontories and low mountain ranges, making them visible only to radar. He imagined a thousand hungry eyes peering up at him as he circled. Eventually he decided on a narrow strip of isolated land, just visible through a gap in the clouds. The Rogue Shadow swooped down with repulsors whining and serried onto the green-furred soil. Nothing lumbered out of the undergrowth to taste it. No huge vegetable jaws closed shut around it. Nothing happened at all, which only made him more nervous.

At least the ground was stable. He shut down the engines and waited as the ship grew quiet around him. A patter of rain rippled across the hull, sounding like asteroid fragments against shields. Streamers of mist blew through the trees.

When he got up and opened the hatch, a powerful smell hit his nostrils. The mixture of pollen, pheromones, and decay originated from all around him, from every living thing on the tiny world. He had never encountered anything like it before. Felucia was more cloying, with a thick fungal edge; Raxus Prime was just rot, all the way through; Kashyyyk’s distinctive odor came from wood and its by-products. Dagobah was something else entirely.

Maybe, he thought, that stink was why no one had settled here.

He jumped lightly from the ramp onto the mossy ground. Water dripped from trees and leaves all around him, maintaining a steady patter. There was no wind to raise a sudden tattoo. The air was thick and motionless, as though it never moved, ever.

Juno wasn’t there. He was sure of that. But what was there? Where were the caves of Dagobah?

He closed his eyes and let the Force tell him what it could. Life roiled around him, tugging his mind in a dozen directions at once. He let himself be buffeted, tilting his head from one side to the other, testing the flows. There was a hint of something unusual to the east, a knot in the Force unlike any he had felt before. It drew him and repelled him at the same time. The longer he studied it, the more he felt as though it was studying him right back.

He opened his eyes. A large reptilian bird was staring at him from the trees. Its black eyes blinked, but otherwise it didn’t move. With a flutter of leathery wings, another of its kind swooped in to join it.

Starkiller reached behind him to seal the Rogue Shadow’s hatch. Then he ignited one lightsaber as a precautionary measure. Still the reptavians didn’t move.

With every sense alert for danger, he loped off into the swampy forest.

The giant slug had twenty-four legs and a mouth full of teeth. Eight meters from snout to tail, it loomed over him, roaring. Its breath was vile.

Starkiller hacked a double line down its belly with both his lightsabers and jumped to avoid the rush of foulness that released. Among the body parts expelled from the creature’s stomach was the head of one of the giant reptiles he had encountered farther back. The slug writhed and whined in pain. He left it to die on its own time. His destination was close.

He forced his way through a tangle of long, leg-like roots, scattering a clutch of big, white spiders as he went. The knot he had felt lay dead ahead, at the base of the largest tree he had seen so far. Despite its size, the tree looked sick with a malevolence that surprised him. If Dagobah as a whole was alive with the Force, then this tree had been poisoned by the dark side.

His searching gaze found a deep hole choked with roots and vines at its base. This was undoubtedly the source of the poison that had ruined the tree. A lingering evil lurked here, wedded to the place as firmly as the tree itself. Its roots dug deep and stretched far.

He approached more cautiously, no longer worrying about the planer’s more obvious predators. Was this the cave Kota had alluded to? Part of him hoped it wasn’t, even as he yearned for this particular part of his mission to be over. Juno wasn’t here, and he didn’t want to be, either, any longer than he had to.

There was a clearing in front of the cave. He ran to it, and braced himself to enter the cave. His head was thick with foreboding. He felt as though black tendrils were reaching into his mind, stirring up memories that had been mercifully dormant until now. The voices of Darth Vader and Jedi Master Shaak Ti warred within his mind as though fighting over who controlled him.

“The dark side is always with you. “

“You are Vader’s slave…”

” Your hatred gives you strength…”

“You could he so much more. “

“You are at last a master of the dark side. “

“Are you prepared to meet your fate?”

A gentle tapping brought him out of his mental deadlock.

He spun around with both lightsabers upraised. Something was watching him-a tiny green creature dressed in swamp-colored rags with green skin, long, pointed ears, and a heavily lined face. It stood on a log with the help of a short cane that it held in both hands, and it was this that made the rapping noise.

The creature didn’t flinch at the sight of the lightsabers. Its brown eyes were alive with amusement, if anything. It nodded once at him-in acknowledgment or recognition, Starkiller couldn’t tell-and the cane ceased its gentle tap-tap.

He lowered his blades and, after a moment, deactivated them as well. He sensed no threat from this unexpected being. Quite the opposite, in fact. The yawning void of the cave seemed to retreat for a moment, clearing his mind of confusion. The being before him might be small in stature, but he was much greater than he looked.

“You guard this place?” Starkiller asked him, gesturing at the cave with the hilt of one of his lightsabers.

The creature chuckled as though pleased by the question. “Oh ho. Only a watcher am I now. “

“Then you’ll let me pass?”

That earned him a shrug. “Brought you here, the galaxy has. Your path, clearly this is. “

Starkiller turned and looked behind him, into the cave mouth. The swamp jungle had fallen utterly silent around them. The air was as thick as glass.

“You know what I’m looking for?”

Something poked the back of his knee. He jumped. The little creature had hopped off the log and approached close enough to test him with his cane-so lightly and silently that Starkiller hadn’t noticed.

“Hey!”

The creature persisted, poking his flight suit and lightsabers and gloves, and dissecting him with intense eyes.

“Something lost, ” he said. “A part of yourself, perhaps?”

Starkiller brushed him away, profoundly unnerved by the accurate and unasked-for reading of his situation.

“Maybe. “

“Whatever you seek, only inside you will find. “

The creature settled back with his hands on his cane, staring up at Starkiller with so powerful a gaze that for a moment he felt as though he were being looked at from a great height. All trace of humor was gone.

“Inside?” he repeated.

The tip of the cane lifted, pointed at the cave.

Starkiller hesitated. The insidious pressure of the hole in the tree roots grew stronger, and his mind clouded again.

“Be careful, boy, ” said Kota from the past. “I hear the long shadow of the dark side reaching out to you. “