Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (26 page)

Kamino loomed large ahead. Already he felt the faint fringes of atmosphere.

Starkiller clung tightly to the edge of the main display and held an image of Juno’s face steady in his mind.

Juno felt the pitch of the prison ship’s engines change beneath her, and she was on her feet in an instant. The hyperdrives had cut out. A second later, ion engines kicked in-three of them, mounted at the base of the craft. That was an unusual configuration, one that would make it easier to identify the ship later. There were no portholes to peer through, and no visits from her captor, either, so she had no way of knowing what, exactly, was happening outside. But she could guess. They had reached their destination and were accelerating into an equatorial insertion trajectory, preparatory to landing.

That guess was confirmed when she heard repulsors kick in. The ship rocked a couple of rimes and shook from nose to stern. Wherever they were, it was bumpy.

She stayed where she was, riding out the short trip to the surface with an uneasy sensation in her stomach that wasn’t motion sickness. She hadn’t been face-to-face with Darth Vader since her arrest, the first time Starkiller had “died. ” His opinion of her was unlikely to have improved since then.

The ship’s flight steadied. She imagined it hovering over a pad, preparatory to landing. Gravity shifted minutely as the ship’s artificial field gave over to local ambient levels. She lightly jumped twice into the air. There wasn’t much change, which didn’t help her refine the possibilities at all.

The ship serried with hardly a bump as it touched solid ground. The repulsors eased off, and all the other noises of flight gradually ceased. The hull allowed very little sound from outside into her tiny cell. She heard a faint hiss that wasn’t life support, and an incessant, threading whine that might have been wind.

A door she hadn’t noticed before slid open to her right, allowing a shaft of natural light into the caged areas. She blinked and raised a hand to shield her eyes. Through the unaccustomed glare she saw straight into the cockpit and out the visor on the far side. The skies were heavily overcast. As she watched, a ribbon of lightning ran from left to right. Thunder followed, muffled to the point of inaudibility.

The ship’s pilot-and only crew member, she could now confirm-walked through the hatch and approached her cage. His rifle was slung over his shoulder. She didn’t doubt he could have it trained on her in a microsecond.

“Hands, ” the bounty hunter said, demonstrating with his own how he wanted her to stand.

She slipped her forearms through the bars so he could reach her wrists. He clamped binders around her, not so rightly that it hurt, but leaving no possibility of slipping free. When she was secure, he hit a stud on the wall and the bars retracted.

She didn’t run or attack him. There was no point. Better, she had decided long ago, to save her energies for when they were needed. The only thing resistance now could get her was another injury, or worse.

The bounty hunter pressed a second stud, opening the inner door of a small air lock, probably the one through which they had entered the craft. It was just large enough for two.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Kamino, ” he said, waving her ahead of him.

That rang a bell. “Imperial cloning facility?”

He shrugged and closed the inner lock behind them. An instant later the outer lock opened and rain poured in.

He rook her arm and roughly pulled her from the ship. She understood instantly that this was part of the act. The customer had to see that they were getting their money’s worth.

The odd-looking prison ship sat on a landing platform belonging to a high-tech facility mounted on long columns directly over an ocean-an ocean that stretched as far as her eyes could see. A broad walkway connected the platform to a series of tall habitats constructed in a distinctly Imperial style. She must have seen hundreds like them, all across the occupied worlds. At the nearest end of the ramp was a welcoming committee of ten stormtroopers, their white armor slick with rain. The building behind them showed signs of recent construction, or possibly repairs. A rail door opened in its side, and through it stepped Darth Vader.

She tensed without wanting to, and the bounty hunter felt it. Perhaps fearing that she might make a break for the edge of the platform, there to hurl herself into the sea, he tightened his grip and pulled her forward.

“You returned sooner than I expected, bounty hunter, ” said Vader when they were within earshot.

“I work faster than most. ” The bounty hunter pushed her forward. “She’s all yours. “

“And Starkiller?”

“He’s your problem, Lord Vader. I know my limitations. “

“Our arrangement is not complete until he is in the Kamino system. “

“I don’t think you’ll be waiting long. “

Juno swallowed her fear as Vader’s attention turned to her.

“Captain Eclipse, you and your fellow subversives in the Rebel Alliance have caused me considerable inconvenience. I should execute you now as the traitor you are, but there is one last service that I would have you perform. “

“I will never willingly serve you. “

“Your compliance is not required. ” Vader raised his right hand, but stopped at the sound of footsteps. A signals officer had emerged from the doorway and was proceeding in haste along the ramp, slipping occasionally in the rain.

“Lord Vader, ” he said. “We are detecting the signatures of several large vessels entering the Kamino system. They lack Imperial transponders and will not reply to our hails. “

Vader’s hand clenched into a fist. “Excellent. Notify Fleet Commander Touler that it is time. ” He turned to the man next to her. “You have done well. You will he rewarded handsomely once this matter is concluded. “

“But you said…”

“Bring her. ” Vader stalked off, not waiting around to hear the bounty hunter’s objections. Stormtroopers shoved him aside and closed in on Juno.

Gloved hands took her shoulders and elbows. Armored figures blocked her front and back. She could barely see the top of the bounty hunter’s broadband antenna as he turned away and trudged back to his ship.

Vader was moving fast. The stormtroopers hustled her to keep up, occasionally making her stumble. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the facility before they entered it, but it seemed enormous, the furthermost tip of a city-sized structure that covered a significant amount of ocean. They passed long-necked aliens who shied away from Vader with either respect or fear, or both. Native Kaminoans, she assumed: The geneticists responsible for the army of clones that had given the Emperor an unbeatable advantage in his overthrow of the Republic.

She didn’t like how fast they were moving. Vader had something in mind. The more she could do to distract him from it, the better.

“He’s coming, you know, ” she called after Vader’s back. “Doesn’t that worry you?”

He walked on, unchecked.

“I mean, he’s beaten you once before. You know it as well as I do. A lesser man would have killed you there and then. Do you really want to give him the chance to change his mind?”

Nothing. Just the grating draw and release of his respirator, as implacable as his heavy footfalls.

“And when you’re gone, what chance do you think the Emperor has? You’re the one everyone’s afraid of. Or don’t you care about the Empire? You just want to protect your tiny piece of it-the piece your Master lets fall from the table, to keep you compliant. “

Still nothing. Grudgingly, she decided that taunting him was probably not going to work, in terms of him letting something slip. But that wasn’t the only reason why she kept at it.

“To be honest, ” she said, “I’m a bit disappointed. Using me as bait shows real desperation. How do you know it’ll work? What makes you think he cares a bit what happens to me? He’s more likely to come here for you, because you’re the one he wants. “

She waited a moment, and then added, “Which is odd, when you think about it. The harder you drive him away, the harder he comes back. No matter how you punish him, no matter how many rimes you betray him, he keeps returning for more. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s been on your side the whole rime, and just doesn’t know it. “

They entered a new section of the facility, one containing vast cloning spires studded with growing bodies destined one day to become stormtroopers in the Emperor’s army. That prompted her to change tack.

“You probably want me to think that you brought him back, ” she said. “Well, I don’t. You know what I believe? I believe he brought himself back, and you found him while he was weak, convinced him that he owed his life to you, and thought that this way you’d have power over him. Like you didn’t learn the first time that no one has power over him. Not you, not me, not the Emperor himself. You’re wasting your time trying to control him-but hey, if that’s how you want to end it all, don’t let me stand in your way. “

Without turning, Vader raised a hand and cocked two fingers to the lead stormtrooper. Their little troupe came to a halt. Juno backed away, expecting to be stunned again. She hated that.

Instead, the stormtrooper produced an armor sealant patch from his thigh pocket and placed it firmly over her mouth.

Fair enough, she thought. Her failure to get a rise out of the Dark Lord was beginning to wear her down, too. But at least now she knew one thing for sure.

He definitely wanted her alive.

Her mouth sealed shut, the long walk resumed. At the base of one of the cloning spires they stopped to wait for a turbolift. Four of the stormtroopers entered with Vader, including the one who had gagged her. The rest stayed behind, improving her odds but not by much.

They went upward, fast. Her ears popped. The only sound was the harsh in-out of Vader’s respirator. Not for the first time she wondered what lay inside the black, expressionless helmet. She hoped she would never know.

The lift slowed and she was escorted our again. They were perhaps halfway up the cloning spire, in a section heavily guarded by stormtroopers. The rubes around her were different-larger, darker, connected to more wires and tubes than those below. The figures within were shrouded in shadow.

One moved as she was led to a second turbolift, farther around the tower. Its leg kicked our, blindly. One hand barred against the curved glass. Then it stilled and went back to growing.

They reached the base of the second lift, where they waited for the cab to descend. She had time to study the nearest rube in more derail. The clone within was taller than the average stormtrooper, and leaner. It, too, twitched, as though it could sense her watching it. It rolled over, like a child turning in its womb.

Its face approached the curved glass, and she flinched on seeing its features. They were younger, slighter, not entirely whole, but they definitely belong to just one man.

Starkiller.

She gasped and recoiled from the tank, resisting the explanation even though she admitted to herself, was forced to admit, that no other made sense. The only alternative was the one she had offered Vader-that Starkiller was so strong in the Force that he could stave off death itself-and at accepting that she had to balk. As Bail Organa had said, such power was too great to be trusted, in anyone. And if the Emperor ever got his hands on it, there would go all hope for the galaxy.

But cloning was dangerous and unreliable. It was impossible to imagine what was going through the mind of the Starkiller she had seen. Clones had gone mad from identity crises many times in the past. Why would he be any different?

Her shoulders slumped as a new thought sunk in. The clone in the rank before must have come from the real Starkiller’s cells-from his corpse’s cells-and she didn’t want to think about that at all.

But what difference did it make, really? Clone or otherwise, Starkiller was back. He had come to find her. He was following her now. What right did she have to say that his feelings were counterfeit? Who was her captor to suggest that she never give him a chance to at least put them into action?

Behind the gag, Juno’s jaw worked. She noticed Vader watching her reaction closely and pulled herself together.

She had to believe Starkiller was himself until proven otherwise. It didn’t matter where he came from if he was the same at the end of it. And she would know that the moment she saw him, the very second they were standing face-to-face.

You can clone his body, she wanted to tell the Dark Lord, you can torture him any way you want, but you’ll never turn him into a monster.

The second turbolift led to a section far above the clone tubes and the second Starkiller she had seen. A series of irregular terraces rose upward to the very top of the spire. Water dripped in a steady cascade from the uppermost platform, and she wondered if the building was entirely finished. That would make sense, she supposed, if Vader’s cloning experiments were relatively new. For all she knew, Starkiller was merely the test subject. Vader’s long-term plans might be to create an army based on himself.

She shuddered at the thought. One of him was bad enough-and he was damaged. A copy of Darth Vader, perfect in every way, would be an unstoppable force for evil. Beyond evil, perhaps. Not even the Emperor could withstand him.

They ascended on foot from the last turbolift, right up to the exposed platform. The facility dome was open, allowing in the rain. Juno, the only one not wearing armor and a helmet, felt the full effect of the storm. In a way, she welcomed it. The chill precipitation and swirling wind provided something new to think about, apart from her predicament.

“Bind her, ” said Vader, pointing to a restraint harness erected on one side the platform.

The stormtroopers did as they were told, attaching her legs first, then undoing her binders and placing her arms in shackles. When they were finished, she could hardly move.

Vader was standing on the far lip of the platform, staring up at the clotted sky as though waiting for something to happen.

Juno followed his gaze and imagined she saw faint streaks and flashes of light through the clouds, as though something momentous in scale were taking place on the far side, something much brighter than lightning.