Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (18 page)

“I don’t have one anymore. Is that a problem?”

“That depends. Do you vouch for him. General?”

“I do. “

“He part of your new squad? A spy, perhaps?”

“Not exactly. “

“So how does he know the fleet’s about to be attacked?”

“It’s a long story, ” Starkiller said.

“I’m all ears. “

“I had a vision, ” he said, directing his words to Kota. It didn’t matter what Shyre thought. “The fleet was near a nebula, one I’ve never seen before. It was taken by surprise. Several fighters got through the defenses. Juno’s ship was hit. She was hurt. Then I saw her die. “

“Juno?” asked Shyre, lowering his weapon.

Starkiller glanced at him. “I don’t know whether I was seeing something that happened in the past or the future, but every second you hold me up makes it more likely I won’t be able to fix it. “

“She was here yesterday, ” Shyre said. “I told her where to find the fleet. It’s stationed just off Itani Nebula. “

“Thank you, ” Starkiller said, deactivating his lightsaber. “That’s all I need to know. “

He turned to leave, but Kota stood in his way. The general’s armor was still bartered and bloodstained, but he had regained his strength and confidence.

“Just slow down, boy. How do you know this isn’t a trap?”

“It might well be, ” he said. “Vader is hunting me. I saw that, too. “

“What if the vision was a fake? You should at least think it through before charging off on your own. “

Starkiller saw the sense in that. There were inconsistencies in what he had seen that had bothered him ever since Dagobah. Painful though the events of the vision were, he forced himself to remember them, searching for incriminating details. If it was a fake, then maybe the other visions were, too.

“She was the captain of a frigate, ” he said, “but you told me that. I only got a glimpse of the instruments. It looked like a Nebulon-B. It was called the Salvation. “

Kota nodded. “That’s her ship, all right. “

“Her second in command was an alien of some kind. “

“Bothan. “

“But I saw PROXY, ” he said, “and that can’t be correct, can it?”

“She and Bail Organa found your droid on Corellia. She must have gotten him working again. “

Kota and Shyre exchanged glances.

“Sounds real to me, ” said Shyre. “So what are we going to do about it?”

“You’re not doing anything, ” Starkiller said. “I’ll handle this. “

“You won’t get within a parsec of the fleet without me, ” said Kota. “You don’t have the authorization codes. “

“So give them to me. “

“Are you ready to expose yourself like this? Have you thought through what’ll happen when you turn up in the middle of the fleet as though you’ve never been away?”

Starkiller hadn’t, but he was beginning to now. If the Rebellion was as riven by arguments as Kota had said-and if Kota had told anyone else about the Jedi Starkiller had murdered-then his arrival would be like an anti-matter bomb going off among them. It might take months for the pieces to come back together, if they ever did. Rushing in might end up placing Juno in more peril, in the long run.

“All right, ” he said. “You’re coming with me. “

“And if I’m coming, so’s my squad. I’ll call them and they’ll be ready to lift off within the hour. “

“I don’t know…”

“How many ships did you see in your vision?”

“Seven, maybe eight. “

“Let my crew handle them while you look after Juno. Besides, they need to bond. Fighting Imperials is just the thing for that. “

Kota held out his hand, and Starkiller, resigned to the sense the general was making, shook it.

“You move fast, old man. “

“Stand still too long and you’re dead. “

Kota left the workshop to call his squad, leaving Starkiller momentarily alone with the repairman.

Shyre was staring at him with an odd expression on his face.

“You’re him, ” he said.

A crawling sensation went up Starkiller’s spine. “Him who?”

“Juno told me about you. You flew together. She told me she…” A pained expression flashed across Shyre’s face. “She told me you died. “

Starkiller didn’t hesitate. He didn’t need people talking about him behind his back, not when Darth Vader was sending bounty hunters across the galaxy in search of him. The wrong word in the wrong ear could bring about a much greater disaster than the one he was trying to prevent.

He rook three steps closer to Shyre and raised his left hand.

“You don’t know me, ” he said.

The repairman stiffened and his voice took on a distant tone. “I don’t know you. “

“I was never here. “

“You were never here. “

“Neither were Kota and Juno. “

“Neither was Kota. “

“Or Juno. “

Shyre’s jaw muscles worked. “Or Juno. “

“Good. You’ve got a lot to clean up and you’d better get on with it. “

“Okay, well, I’ve got a huge mess to clean up here. Guess I’d better get on with it. “

Starkiller released his hold over him. Shyre turned and went looking for a broom. Starkiller left him to it.

Kota’s squad had a ship, a modified Ghtroc 630 freighter that had seen extensive action, judging by the carbon scoring on the hull and the slightly cockeyed look to its drives. Kota arranged for them to assemble at the ship, a dozen berths up from the Rogue Shadow. Starkiller didn’t want to meet them, but Kota insisted.

“The medic, at least. There’s something you need to hear. “

Starkiller grudgingly consented to listen. They found a quiet corner in a smoky cantina where the three of them could talk in private.

“Ni-Ke-Vanz. ” The medic was a fast-talking Cerean with a high domed skull and amazingly elaborate eyebrows. They rose up and down rapidly as he talked, providing a visual counterpoint to his words. “Kota tells me you want to make a clone. “

That was news to him, but he could guess where it was going. “Do you know how it’s done?”

“I ought to. For five years I worked with a Khommite. They’re the galaxy’s experts at this kind of thing. “

“Where was this?”

“On Kessel. “

“I didn’t know they had cloning facilities there. “

“They didn’t, ” said Ni-Ke-Vanz. “We were slaves. “

Of course. Starkiller indicated that he should continue.

“The Khommites have been cloning themselves for a thousand years and they’ve got it down to a fine art. It defines their entire culture. They have certain lines they reproduce over and over again-lines that are good at reaching, good at art, good at politics, and so on. Each line is basically the same person made multiple times over. On the whole planet, there might be only a few dozen true individuals. The rest are just repeats, passed on down the generations. “

“That’s not the kind of thing I’m after, ” said Starkiller.

“I know, I know. You’re after immortality. Everyone is when it comes to clones. Either that or an army, and even the Emperor’s worked out that this doesn’t work in the long run. It’s too expensive and dangerous. An army made up of the same soldier is either one hundred percent loyal or one hundred percent against you. When your enemy has to convince only one mind to turn, you’re walking on thin ice. “

“I don’t want an army, ” Starkiller assured him. “Tell me what I need to know. “

“You need to know that cloning won’t make you immortal, either. “

“Why not?”

“They’ve never managed to fix the memory problem. Nor even the Khommites. Each clone they make is a new person-one based to a very large degree on the original, but still one that has its own identity, its own memories, its own weird quirks. They don’t think they’re the same people, just different versions of the same template. And that’s not immortality. Sorry. “

“I’ve often wondered, ” said Kota, leaning into the conversation, “why the Jedi didn’t just clone ourselves after Order Sixty-six. I mean, there weren’t many of us left. Why not take the ones we did have and create some more? It wouldn’t matter if we didn’t think we were the same person. We wouldn’t have to, as long as we could fight. “

“Ah, well now, that’s an entirely different problem. ” Ni-Ke-Vanz leaned forward, too. His eyebrows attained a whole new level of animation. “You see, the other thing no one has ever managed to copy is Force sensitivity. Worse than that, it actually gets in the way of the cloning process. We don’t know how. It just does. The Khommites are aware of the problem and they do everything they can to stamp it out. “

Starkiller’s surprise must have shown on his face, for the medic nodded emphatically at him.

“That’s right: They weed out Force sensitivity. Can you imagine? That’s how big a problem it is. “

“What would happen if you tried to clone someone Force-sensitive anyway?”

Ni-Ke-Vanz sank back into his seat with a dire look on his long face. “Terrible things. Insanity. Psychosis. Suicidal tendencies. Who wants a crazy Force-sensitive running amok in your lab? No one. “

“No one, ” agreed Starkiller, thinking of Kamino and the damage he’d left in his wake.

“Sorry, ” said Ni-Ke-Vanz, misreading his grim mood for disappointment. “Looks like you’re going to have to ride out the war with the rest of us. “

“That’s not…” he started to object. Then thought better of it. “Right. No pain, no gain. Guess I’d better get used to it. “

THEY LEFT THE CANTINA and headed back to the ships. Starkiller left Kota to organize his squad, not particularly caring about the band of mercenaries and wannabe heroes he’d assembled in little more than a day. They would perhaps be useful in preventing any kind of harm coming to Juno-and Starkiller was more than happy to employ them in that regard-but he doubted their involvement together would extend far beyond the end of the mission, whichever way it went.

Juno’s voice spoke to him from his memory.

“We can help each other. “

“Nobody can help me. “

“I don’t think yon really mean that. I just think you’re afraid to let me try. “

“Is that really what you think?” he had asked. “I’m afraid of you?”

The very suggestion had seemed preposterous then, but it didn’t anymore. Just the thought of Juno had a profound effect on him. He would slash his way through a hundred Emperors to save her, if he had to. There was nothing he wouldn’t sacrifice. Nor even the very Rebellion that the original Starkiller had created.

That truly was a frightening thought, one he kept carefully hidden from Kota.

The engines were warm and ready by the time the general walked up the ramp and into the bridge.

“You don’t look terribly reassured, ” Kota said, taking the copilot’s seat.

“Should I be?”

The Rogue Shadow lifted off with a louder roar than usual as the repulsors fought the intense gravity of the world. Turning the ship nose-upward, Starkiller aimed for the sky. Over the screaming of the drives, conversation was temporarily impossible.

Blue turned to black, and the first stars appeared. Dodging heavy orbital traffic, Starkiller didn’t wait for the squad’s disreputable freighter. He would meet them at the other end.

Space stretched and tore. The Rogue Shadow leapt into hyperspace and began the flight for the Itani Nebula.

“Of course you should feel reassured, ” said Kota, with a persistence that shouldn’t have surprised him. For more than fifteen years the Emperor and all his minions had been hunting the Jedi. It took a mammoth kind of stubbornness to have survived so long against such odds. “You’re on your way to see Juno. You’ve got reinforcements. And best of all you know you can’t be a clone. “

“So why haven’t you told anyone I’m back?”

“How do you know that?”

“Because the repairman didn’t know. And the way he was talking, Juno didn’t know, either. “

“Well, I figure that’s your business, who you tell and who you don’t. “

“Back in Athega system, you said it was entirely the Alliance’s business. “

“Maybe you convinced me to stay out of it until you’re ready. There are already too many confused people running this Rebellion. Are you saying you’re ready now?”

He searched his feelings. “No. Not until Juno is safe. “

“And she’ll probably need to see you with her own eyes, otherwise she won’t believe that you’re really back. “

“I keep telling you: I’m not him. “

The general’s blind stare was full of disbelief. “Even now you think that, after everything Ni-Ke-Vanz said?”

“He didn’t really tell us anything. “

“Only that cloned Jedi can’t exist. “

“Have never existed in the past. That’s an entirely different thing. “

“The Khommites have been grappling with the problem for a thousand years! Do you think Vader solved it overnight?”

“With the help of the Kaminoans, maybe. Or they didn’t solve it and I am as crazy as I feel sometimes. “

“You act no crazier than you originally did. ” Kota wasn’t joking. “A bit more obsessive, perhaps, but who can blame you? You love her. It’s only natural to want to save her. “

You love her.

Starkiller could say nothing to that for a moment. Those three words hit him harder than he could have anticipated. Nor just because it was Kota saying them-Kota, the gruff career soldier who had never displayed the slightest amount of emotional awareness in Starkiller’s presence. Because it was the present tense, not the past, and because it was about him.

There was a world of difference between Juno, the woman he loved, and Juno, the woman Starkiller had loved.

Perversely, that only deepened the blackness of his mood. Did he have the right to love anyone, if he was only a clone? She had loved the original, not him. What if she rejected him? What if she had put the original behind her and had no room in her life for him now? She was a captain in the Rebel Alliance; she had duties, responsibilities, staff, timetables. She couldn’t drop everything and run off with him-and there was no guarantee that the rest of the Rebellion would accept him if he wanted to stay.

“Who wants a crazy Force-sensitive running amok in your lab? “

Acknowledging that he was a psychotic clone who would never be worthy of either Juno or the Rebellion was somehow more acceptable than believing that he was the real Starkiller, who, beyond all kinds of understanding, had managed to return from the dead.