Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (23 page)

“No!”

His cry disappeared into the vacuum. He had lost her again, and for all his frustration and fury, there was nothing he could do about it now. The Force couldn’t accomplish miracles, even in his hands.

It could, however, help him get revenge.

The dark side rose up in him, seductively powerful. Darth Vader had sent the bounty hunter to capture Juno, knowing that Starkiller would try to save her from him. There was only one place, then, that she could be headed: back to where it had all starred. Kamino. He would go there, but he would not succumb to the trap Darth Vader had undoubtedly prepared. His wrath would know no bounds. All who stood in his way would suffer.

A new vision came to him, rushing out of the void to fill his mind.

Lightning. The Dark Lord on one knee before hint, helmet slick and shining in the rain, disarmed. Starkiller’s lightsabers formed an X between them, and Vader’s neck lay just millimeters from their intersection. With a flick of his wrists, Starkiller could behead the galaxy’s greatest monster, and gain revenge for everything he had done.

But what would revenge get him? It couldn’t turn back time. It couldn’t tell him who the real Starkiller was. It couldn’t bring Juno back.

None of those things, he decided, but better than nothing.

His face formed a determined expression. He tensed to execute the man who had made him into what he was: a killing machine, with no hope for anything better.

Before he could complete the move, a red blade erupted from his chest, exactly as it had in a former life, on the Empirical. Only this time his former Master couldn’t have wielded it. He still knelt before him, awaiting the death blow.

The pain and shock were too great. Starkiller arched backward, lightsabers falling from his hands. With an agonized cry, he crumpled to the ground, and stared up at the man who had killed him.

It was himself.

Darth Vader rose to his feet. Blasterfire erupted around them. Starkiller heard screams and cries and the sound of people falling. The battle was intense but short-lived, and he had eyes only for the pair in black looming over him.

“I lied when I told you that the cloning process had not been perfected. “

His former Master’s words fell like blows upon his stricken form. The version of himself sanding at the Dark Lord’s side was upright and whole in even way. The Sith training uniform he wore was immaculate and lethally adorned. The two red lightsabers held crossed over his chest didn’t waver a millimeter as their eyes locked.

Starkiller’s breath was growing shallow. The fire that had burned in him was dying, as it always died in the end. The dark side consumed everything. Hatred was never a substitute for love, and the price of pursuing it was life itself.

In the corner of his view, lying drenched in the rain, lay a limp, shattered form. He could not bear to look at it. Instead he clutched the burning hole in his chest and watched the Dark Lord give his new apprentice his first orders.

” You have faced your final test. “

The reborn Starkiller knelt at the Dark Lord’s feet. “What is thy bidding, my Master? “

“Take the Rogue Shadow. Scour the far reaches of the galaxy. Find the last of the Rebels and destroy them. “

“As you wish. “

“Then, and only then, will you achieve your destiny. “

The new apprentice rose and walked away, stepping over Juno’s body as be went. Kota’s body lay nearby, and PROXY’S, sliced neatly in two. Darth Vader looked down at Starkiller’s body and, with a contemptuous flick of his wrist, sent it skidding over the edge of the platform and into the sea.

The last thing Starkiller saw was storm clouds and lightning far above, as he had on the first day of his freedom, just days ago.

Thunder boomed, and Starkiller came back to himself with a gasp. The sound echoed around him, disorienting him. It couldn’t be real. He had been seeing the future, not something happening in the present.

The deck beneath him shook. The sound came again. Not thunder, he realized, but the giant droid fighting its way back up to him, intending to finish their battle.

He felt weary, then. Weary of hatred and pain and loss and despair. He would fight on, but nor by giving in to the dark side. He would find his own way, even as he ran headlong into a trap and put everything at risk.

He reactivated the cargo bay’s force fields, and air rushed back in once more. Staring our at the nebula, he pulled the comlink from his belt and switched it on.

“Kota? Come in, Kota. “

“I’m here, boy. “

“Where’s here, exactly?”

“On the bridge. We’ve regained control of the Salvation and repaired the hyperdrive. The hostile ships are retreating. What’s your status?”

“That doesn’t matter. Juno has been captured, and I know exactly where she’s going. It has to be Kamino, where it all starred. Which means that Darth Vader is there, too. I think he’s set another trap. “

“For you or the rest of us?”

“Just me, I think. “

“Then he won’t be ready for the entire Rebel fleet when it arrives on his doorstep. I told the Alliance about this chance to strike. The fleet is converging exactly as you wanted it to. “

“Good, ” said Starkiller with a faint smile, “because if you hadn’t sent the order I was going to go without you. “

“Prepare for lightspeed, boy, ” said Kota from the bridge. “Let’s hope you know what you’re doing. “

The booming from below grew louder. Behind it came a new scuttling sound that Starkiller hadn’t heard before, as of giant metal insects crawling across a hollow deck.

Outside, the stars stretched and snapped. The angular impossibility of hyperspace filled the cargo bay doors.

Starkiller activated his lightsabers and stood facing the hole in the floor. The dark vision he had just received ate at his confidence. Thus far, three of his visions had come true: The bounty hunter had been sent after him, resulting in Juno being injured and deprived of her command, and his lightsabers had turned blue. That left two visions, the grimmest of them all. Was there any way he could avoid both their deaths? Was the other Starkiller, perfect and deadly in every way, something that already existed, or could he be a mere possibility, or even nothing more than a manifestation of his deepest fears?

“What happens if you do clone someone Force-sensitive?”

“Terrible things. Insanity. Psychosis. Suicidal tendencies. “

The list of symptoms Ni-Ke-Vanz had rattled off was frighteningly close to what Starkiller himself was experiencing-but he had begun, perversely, to take hope from that. Perhaps Kota was right, and he had always been this way, even in his first life. Maybe learning to hate the way one felt was part of growing up. Maybe-The rattling of tiny feet reached a crescendo. Five miniature versions of the huge droid rushed out of the hole on four sharp-tipped feet. He snapped out of his thoughts and ran forward to meet them, wearily grateful for the opportunity to act rather than think. The first two leapt at him, and he sliced them in pieces right out of the air. The other two split up and came for him from opposite sides. He met both advances with a lightsaber outstretched in each hand, using the Force to guide his blows. The droids shot piercing darts of energy in streams at him, trying to get through his guard. They, too, were immune to their own reflected fire, so instead of pursuing that tactic he danced closer to one and sliced its domed midsection in two, then brought his free hand around to blast the other with lightning. The miniature droid went wild, spinning in circles and sending energy darts about the cargo bay. Its green eyes glowed blue, then purple, and then its head exploded. Tiny bits of metal rained all over the hold with an almost musical sound.

More rattling came from the hole. Starkiller approached the lip and peered cautiously over the edge.

No less than a dozen droids were climbing toward him, hopping from deck to deck through the gaps the larger version had created. He reached out for the crates remaining in the cargo hold and sent them rumbling down on the droid’s heads. They fell with legs spinning and were crushed far below.

Barely had they been dealt with than more appeared, leaping upward to attack him.

He pulled out his comlink again. “Kota, we have a problem. “

“You might be right, ” came the gruff reply. “PROXY’s picking up red lights all through the lower decks. Something you did?”

“We have a droid loose. I think it’s headed for the secondary reactor. “

“If it takes that our, we could lose the navicomp-and we don’t want that to happen out here. “

Starkiller glanced at the swirling madness of hyperspace. “Send as many troops as you can spare to defend it. “

“That won’t be many. The ship took heavy losses, so we’re on a skeleton crew. “

“All right, all right. I’ll be there in a minute. “

Starkiller ended the call and leapt feetfirst into the shaft. He lashed out with his lightsabers as he fell, taking out all of the miniature droids, one at a time. When he landed lightly at the bottom, a rain of droid parts fell around him, red-limned and bleeding sparks.

More were waiting for him in the path of the larger version. He glimpsed it far ahead, cutting through bulkheads and beams that lay in its path. The smaller droids seemed to be dropping from its underbelly, unfolding with a snap and hurrying back to confront him. The “parent” droid was definitely heading for the secondary reactor-but why now? The question occupied his mind as he fought his way past the smaller droids. Why not earlier, before the ship entered hyperspace?

The answer lay in the very question, he decided. Losing navicomp midjump would be disastrous. They might be blown to atoms, or never return to realspace. Should the droid even get close to damaging the reactor, then, they would have no choice but to drop out of hyperspace rather than take the risk.

It was a delaying tactic. Just like everything else had been, ever since Starkiller had engaged with the Imperials. Their leader, the bounty hunter, had wanted to grab Juno only in order to lure him elsewhere. He had never intended to engage directly with Starkiller. And that was a good call, for Starkiller would have blown him to atoms had he stood between him and her. Instead, the bounty hunter was forcing him to come face-to-face with the only man in the galaxy who had ever killed him.

Starkiller would face his creator and make the choice: live as a monster or die as himself, whoever that was.

Starkiller thought it unlikely that Darth Vader saw the irony in the situation. It was doubtful he saw anything in his plan other than objective methodology. Like Starkiller, Vader had been trained in the art of betrayal by a Sith who somehow expected nothing but absolute servitude in return. The finer points of existence-not just irony, but humor, sarcasm, regret, and many more-were completely lost on him. Darth Vader was, for all intents and purposes, the machine he looked like.

He fought like a machine, too, with relentless blows and single-minded aggression. The first time they had dueled, in Starkiller’s first life, Vader had displayed no anger at all-just determination, not to kill his apprentice, but to wear him into submission. The fight had raged across the training deck of the Executor for hours, with Starkiller never landing a single blow, no matter how he tried. He had gone from excitement at thinking that he had graduated to a new level of mastery to realizing just how much he had left to learn. More fuel had been added to the hatred he had felt for his Master and tormentor, along with a twisted kind of love for the man who made him stronger by showing him how weak he was. The fight had only stopped when Starkiller collapsed unconscious from exhaustion and was dragged by PROXY to his meditation chamber.

And maybe there, Starkiller thought, in that single-mindedness and determination that Darth Vader had handed down to his apprentice, lay his own weakness. Machines were exemplary at certain things. They were monomaniacal and focused, as PROXY had been in Starkiller’s early life, when his mission had been to protect his charge-while at the same time training him by trying to kill him. Contradictions existed in their worlds, but they caused no conflict. They were simply assimilated and worked around, like the droids Starkiller had fought during his training on Kamino.

The galaxy wasn’t a machine, and neither was the Rebellion. It would confound Darth Vader, perhaps even surprise him.

” You can teach me nothing. ” Darth Vader had told him on the Death Star.

Starkiller vowed to prove him very wrong on that score.

Juno woke with a start. She was lying on her side in complete darkness. Her hands were unbound, and her right shoulder was numb all the way down to her elbow. There was a sickening throb between her eyes that spoke of another stunning at the hands of her captor. The last thing she remembered was being dragged into his ship and the air lock sliding closed behind them. The Salvation had loomed over her like a mountain, glowing red and yellow by the light of the nearby nebula. The remaining TIE fighters had broken off their arrack and were retreating back into the asteroid clouds. A smattering of turbolaser fire chased them as they went.

Then, nothing. And now, blackness, with nothing connecting the two periods. Juno wondered when, if ever, she would see her ship again.

That day wouldn’t come any sooner by just lying there, she told herself. Reaching out with her left hand, she felt around her and slowly sat up. There was nothing above her head she might bang into, and nothing but empty flatness on the floor in any direction. The surface she had been lying on felt like unadorned plastoid, but there was a distinct smell of duralloy in the air, and a complex whine in the background that spoke of a ship under power. They were under way, wherever they were going. It was probably for the best, she told herself, that they hadn’t yet arrived.

The shoulder of her uniform had been cut away and new bandages placed over her blaster wound. It seemed to her questing fingers like a capable job. She supposed bounty hunters would have to learn at least basic medical skills, if they were to keep their prisoners alive long enough to earn a reward. For that she was grateful, if nothing else.