Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (19 page)

To kill again.

Kota got out of his seat and opened a small wall compartment. He rummaged inside for a moment, then his right fist emerged, tightly holding something in its grip. He returned to Starkiller’s side and opened his hand to reveal what he had found. There lay two bright crystals, as blue as Juno’s eyes.

“Where did you get these?” Starkiller asked.

“Relics of the Clone War. It doesn’t matter. The point is, they’re yours if you want them. “

Kota pushed his hand toward Starkiller, who made no move to take them.

“Does this mean you believe I’m not a clone?” he asked.

The general exhaled heavily. “Honestly? I don’t know. But I’m beginning to think it doesn’t matter. “

Again the blind eyes pinned him, but for once they revealed more about Kota than the person he was looking at. Starkiller could feel the hatred churning inside the general as powerfully as it ever had. It was part of him that he had learned to live with, like his blindness. Sometimes it gave him strength; sometimes it worked against him. Starkiller couldn’t imagine what it must have been like after Order 66, balancing the need to survive against the absolute requirement of all true Jedi Knights-that they never succumb to the dark side.

Kota’s hatred was directed at the Emperor, but its focus was Darth Vader. Starkiller didn’t know why; there were probably a thousand reasons, reasons Kota himself would never reveal or dwell upon, most likely. The general wasn’t one for living in the past, or for worrying about the means as long as the end was in sight. To him, the return of Starkiller was an opportunity to strike at Darth Vader, just as, to Starkiller, Kota was a means of finding and saving Juno.

You love her.

Some obsessions were worth it. Starkiller took the crystals and made his way back to the meditation chamber, seeking a peace he suspected the general would never find.

They were met at Nordra by outliers of the fleer and given the coordinates they needed. Kota quizzed them about recent traffic. There had been some, but nothing suspicious. Juno herself had come through less than a day earlier.

Starkiller felt all his hopes and fears magnify at that simple confirmation of fact. She was close, so very close. Soon he would be with her. What happened after that, only time and fate would tell.

The squad’s freighter wasn’t far behind the Rogue Shadow. For all its lopsided engines, it could clearly hold its own. The convoy of two headed off toward the nebula, scanners peeled for anything out of the ordinary. Slowly, slowly, the kaleidoscopic view shifted ahead of them.

“This is taking too long, ” Starkiller said through grinding teeth. “I’m using the hyperdrive. “

“The mass shadow of the nebula…”

“I don’t care. ” His hands flew across the controls. “The others can come the long way if you want. “

“They’d better. None of them is as good a pilot as you. “

Starkiller acknowledged the compliment with a brisk nod. When the navicomp was ready, he sat for a moment with his hands on the controls.

“I’ve been thinking, ” he said slowly, “about the Alliance. “

“About your place in it?”

He shook his head. “About what it should do next. If I give you the nav coordinates and schematics for a secret cloning facility on Kamino-everything needed to launch a successful assault-will that go some way toward helping them believe in me again?”

Kota chewed this over. “The facility where Vader claims you were made?”

“If his claims are true, then Kamino is much more of a threat than any ordinary stormtrooper factory. “

“Maybe. But the Alliance couldn’t pull off an attack like this without your help. “

“They’ll have to, ” he said. He activated the drives. Realspace smeared and stretched, vanished into the paradoxical light of hyperspace. “They wouldn’t trust me to lead anything yet, anyway. “

“I would. “

“The Alliance is more than just you and your militia, Kota. “

Instead of being offended, the general grinned. “If what you saw comes to pass, you’ll be glad you picked us up. “

Starkiller acknowledged that, but his mind was unchanged. Judging by everything he’d learned from Kota, the Alliance didn’t need someone to lead them into battle. It needed to find strong leadership among the leaders it already had.

The ship shook, disturbed by the widely distributed mass of the nebula. He gripped the console, urging it to fly straight by the force of his will. This had to work. He had to arrive on time. There was simply no other option.

The Rogue Shadow exploded our of hyperspace, rumbling wildly. He corrected its trim automatically, firing retros even as he searched the scopes for the fleet. The sky was a mess of glowing gas and light. The scanners picked up two minor asteroid fields, a distant protostar with a single gas giant, and, finally, a small scattering of starships.

He brought the ship about, ion engines blazing.

“No sign of attack, ” he said.

“Stay on guard, ” said Kota. “A powerful glimpse of the future like you experienced is rarely wrong. “

The fleet grew larger and more derailed through the cockpit viewport. Starkiller searched the ships for the one he was after. He recognized the Salvation more by instinct than knowledge. Like all Nebulon-B frigates, it was heavy at fore and aft, with a relatively thin spine connecting each end. Engines and reactor were confined to the rear; command and crew quarters were up front, near primary communications and sensor arrays. This example looked old but well maintained, a reliable worker that had found a good home with the Rebel Alliance.

The Salvation wasn’t the biggest or the newest ship in the fleet. But Juno was inside it. He was sure of it. Finally he had found her.

“Rogue Shadow, ” came a voice over the cumin, “please transmit landing codes. “

Starkiller froze at the sight of something on the side of the approaching frigate.

“What is it, boy?”

He could only point at the crest adorning the Salvation-adorning every ship in the fleet, he saw as they grew nearer. He remembered seeing it only once before, on Kashyyyk, but he knew what it was. It had been an integral part of the life Darth Vader had stolen from him, when he was a child.

“My family’s crest, ” he said. “It’s… everywhere. “

“Yes, ” said Kota, tapping the chest plate of his armor-where, Starkiller belatedly realized, the same symbol lay buried under a thick layer of muck. “I suppose I should’ve told you about that. “

“What does it mean?”

“That you’re part of the Rebel Alliance whether you want to be or not. “

“Rogue Shadow, ” came the voice from the fleet a second time, “landing codes immediately. “

Four Y-wings were nosing in their direction-to either escort or intercept, Starkiller thought through the fog of surprise.

Kota leaned over and punched the comlink.

“This is General Rahm Kota, ” he said, “requesting permission to board the Salvation. Authorization Talus Haroon Ten Eleven Thirty-eight. “

The voice didn’t respond immediately. When it did, there was no mistaking the surprise. “Code checks our. Good to have you back, General. You’re cleared for docking. “

The Y-wings peeled away.

“If you give me the data on Kamino, ” said Kota, “I’ll do what needs to be done. “

Starkiller leaned forward and peered through the canopy at the Salvation. The crest painted on the hull loomed over him like a shadow.

His father’s voice came to him from the deepest refuges of his memory.

“I never wanted this for you. “

He sensed the final pieces falling into place, the last of the gaps closing up. He was here, on the brink of seeing Juno again, and his mind was whole. Whoever he was, wherever he had come from, he was complete.

He only hoped, against hope, that he would be enough.

Juno stood on the bridge of the Salvation, feeling the smooth operation of the ship and crew around her as though they were parts of her physical body. With a change of uniform and a decent meal in the recent past, she felt entirely transformed. Being restored to command had felt like being returned to life. There was indeed something in what Leia had said about having a frigate at her disposal: It was truly nothing to be sniffed at.

At the back of her mind, though, was something her flight instructor had drummed into her all the way through her training. Getting too comfortable was just asking for the universe to provide a kick in the pants. She went through everything that had happened in recent days, searching for the one thing that had gone wrong, for the boot that might already be on its way to shake her out of her complacency.

“Uh, Captain, ” said Nitram with surprising hesitancy, “we have the Rogue Shadow in view. “

“Impossible, ” Juno said automatically, assuming someone had made a mistake. “It was destroyed on Cato Neimoidia. “

But even as she said the words, she saw it in the scopes, accelerating smoothly toward her.

“It can’t be him, ” she said to herself through a stab of surprise and guilt in equal measures.

Then a more likely possibility occurred to her: “The Imperials must have captured it and are using it as a disguise. Target it-all weapons!”

The bridge crew jumped into life around her. Alert sirens wailed.

Then Kota’s voice boomed out of the comm.

“This is General Rahm Kota, requesting permission to board the Salvation. “

“He can’t be, ” she repeated, barely hearing the authorization code he gave. “It can’t be him. “

“Captain?”

She blinked. “If it’s a trick, there’s only one way to find out. Let him board. We’ll greet him with every soldier available. “

“Yes, sir. “

She stood straighter and kept her hands behind her back. They were clenched into fists.

You abandoned him, she told herself. You gave up on him. You left him behind.

Any relief she felt at the possibility of his survival was buried under the crushing weight of remorse.

“Blackguard to Blackout, ” came Kota’s voice over the comm.

“I’ll take it, ” she said, reaching for her comlink.

Nitram patched the transmission directly through to her.

“This is Blackout, ” she said, raking a deep breath. “What’s your status, Blackguard?”

“Back in the game, ” he said with obvious relish. “I have intel on a major target that I can’t take out on my own. Do you think the Alliance will be interested?”

The meeting with Mon Mothma, Garm Bel Iblis, and Bail Organa was still fresh in her mind. “I think they’ll be very interested, Kota. “

“Good. Here it comes. “

A second later the intel arrived on the bridge. She picked up a datapad and scrolled through the files, seeing floor plans, security systems, troop deployments-everything the fleet needed to ensure a victory over what appeared at first to be some kind of Imperial medical base. No, she realized: a cloning operation. It was way past the Outer Rim, too far for reinforcements to come in time, but obviously important, or else it wouldn’t be hidden so far off the usual hyperroutes. One of many such super-secret facilities supplying stormtroopers for the Emperor’s ever-expanding army, she assumed.

“Looks good, ” she said, hiding a rising excitement. There was only one problem: Without knowing the provenance of the data, she couldn’t be entirely sure it wasn’t misinformation, even a trap. “Where did you get this intel, Kota?”

There was a pause. She thought she heard movement on the other end of the open line.

“It’s best you see for yourself, ” he finally said. “We’ll be aboard in a few minutes. Meet us then. “

“Will you also tell me how you killed Baron Tarko and got off Cato Neimoidia?”

There was another pause, shorter than the last.

“You did the right thing, Juno. I would’ve done the same. “

The line disconnected with a click.

She looked down at the comlink in her hand, feeling simultaneously drained and buoyed. Kota’s return, with or without the data, was a momentous turnaround for the Alliance. The mission to Cato Neimoidia really could be considered a success now. They had lost nothing and succeeded on every front. Mon Mothma would find it much harder to argue against such missions in the future.

If Kota was the boot, it was suspiciously wrapped in velvet.

Nitram was staring at her with an expression that mirrored her own feelings-and she understood, suddenly, that he was the one who had informed the Alliance leadership of her activities with Kota. He, her loyal second in command, was also a loyal Alliance soldier, wanting to do the right thing for the cause. It was only natural that he would experience the same internal conflict she had over helping Kota in his unsanctioned activities: he wasn’t an automaton, after all.

Instead of feeling betrayed, Juno felt nothing but sympathy. How long had he agonized over what to do? Why hadn’t he come to talk to her first? What was he feeling now that the right thing he thought he had done turned out to be utterly baseless?

He opened his mouth as though to say something, but an alarm cut him off. He turned and checked the console in front of him.

“I’m having trouble with the forward sensor array, Captain. “

She studied the display screens around her.

“Interference from the nebula?” They had been having the occasional blackout ever since the fleet took up its current station, the result of nothing more sinister than natural forces.

PROXY was examining the problem, too. He looked up with bright yellow eyes. “Perhaps. I’ll try to pin it down. “

She considered numerous factors at once: the arrival of Kota, the promise of a target, this strange glitch in the sensor array…

It added up to something, but she didn’t know what it was.

“Let’s not rake any chances, ” she said, punching the all-stations button on the console in front of her.

“This is Captain Eclipse, ” she said. Her voice echoed back at her from throughout the frigate. “Set defensive protocols throughout all ships. Prime your shields and check your scanners for anything that’s not one of ours. “

Nitram nodded, still checking the screens. “All clear, Captain. “

“Keep looking, Nitram. We can’t be too careful. “