Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (8 page)

“A young fool I once was, ” he said. “A fool who thought my enemy’s enemy must be my friend. It was I who sabotaged our world’s planetary shields, resulting in our home’s occupation and my people’s enslavement. In the many years since, I have learned to regret that action, and to understand that my kind is not alone in its persecution. We must put aside our differences and work together to reclaim our world. We must stand together. “

He addressed them with a conviction that spoke more of necessity than real commitment, but Juno admired the attempt. In the face of years of animosity between his species and the Mon Calamari, plus the very personal antagonism displayed by Siric and the others, he was bravely standing his ground when it would have been much easier simply to go into hiding and never emerge.

“We’re here to help you, ” she said. “If you’ll let us. “

Siric said something in the Quarren tongue, which Tels translated.

“He says you’re only here to help yourselves. You care about starships, not the oceans or the people who live in them. “

“The right of all beings to live freely and in peace, ” said Organa, “is what the Rebel Alliance cares about. Ships will help us, yes, but that’s not our primary objective in coming here. We need leaders and soldiers; we need people who will spread the word; we need translators and medics and all manner of specialty. What we need most of all, though, is to know that the people we’re fighting for are behind us. We’re risking our lives-and the lives of our families-every time we so much as speak out against the Emperor. Forgive us if we ask for a little commitment in return. “

Organa’s expression was severe, and Juno could tell that he was thinking of more than himself. Now that the Emperor knew he was a traitor, Leia was in constant jeopardy. Only a constant pretense of innocence and compliance had saved her thus far-that and the fact that even the Emperor balked at murdering such a well-known and well-liked young woman.

Tels translated Senator Organa’s words, and some of the aggression left the five. Siric looked down at his hands, which were splayed out in front of him. Juno noticed that two of his digits were missing from his right hand. Explosives expert, she remembered, and wondered what efforts he had already made to repel the Empire from his world.

“The Hundred Eighty-First fighter wing is based in Heurkea, ” Ackbar went on, producing a datapad and displaying images as he spoke. The first was a map of the southern territorial zone, with the floating city appropriately marked. “We can approach from the east, behind the cover of Mester Reef. The Hundred Eighty-First patrols every three standard hours, in groups of two, with a ten-minute overlap, but there’s a period once every five days when all the pilots are recalled for debriefing. That can last anything up to an hour. The next such briefing is in six hours. “

Siric said something in his native tongue.

“I know we have no air force, ” Ackbar said. “Ask yourself what a frontal assault would achieve. Reinforcements would arrive within hours, and any advantage we gained would be quickly reversed. And more. The Empire does not take kindly to insurrection. “

“As we know all too well, ” said Tels.

“You’ve got something else in mind, ” said Juno, relieved she wasn’t going to be asked to mount a single-handed assault on the fighter wing, and thinking of Siric’s missing fingers.

Ackbar outlined the essence of the plan in a few brief sentences, and Juno learned why his mind had been so highly prized by the Grand Moff who had made him a slave. The plan was within their means, yet certain to have a far-reaching effect on the

Imperial forces in the region. If it succeeded, they were bound to galvanize the resistance into a single force. If it failed, no one would ever know.

“I like it, ” she said. “Count me in. “

“And I, ” said Tels.

All eyes turned to Siric and his assistants, who conferred in a series of hurried whispers. Siric asked Tels a question, and he translated it for the benefit of Juno and Bail Organa.

“Siric wishes to know how he can be sure that he can trust you. “

“He can’t, ” said Ackbar. “He can only rake as a form of assurance the fact that I will be fighting alongside him. “

“We all go down together, in other words, ” Juno said, “or we all give up and go home. “

The Quarren conferred again, and this time they agreed. Five nods indicated their willingness to be part of the mission.

“Thank you, ” Ackbar said. “We will never forger your decision today. “

“Neither will the Rebel Alliance, ” said Organa. He glanced at his chrono. “Six hours, you said, Ackbar? If we’re going to make that window, we’d better get started. “

“You’re coming with us?” Juno asked him.

“Of course. I didn’t come here just to make introductions and pretty speeches. “

“But you’re nor trained for this kind of work. I wouldn’t want to answer to your daughter if you were killed. “

“Don’t worry about that, Captain Eclipse, ” he said with an expression that was part smile, part grimace. “I think you’ll find that I can handle myself. “

Juno didn’t press. Organa’s experiences with the Emperor stretched farther back even than the formation of the Empire itself. No one lasted that long on luck alone, she supposed.

Ackbar stood and, with a powerful sense of gravitas, shook hands with Seggor Tels. Only then did the mission truly get under way.

Present day…

Starkiller stared up in awe at the massive beast that emerged from the shadows. All muscle and bone and teeth and claws, it walked with a hunched, thundering gait that made the stone beneath him shake. Its thick, powerful legs looked disproportionately small compared with the reach of its arms, but the strength they contained-capable of propping up a creature larger than most spacecraft and actually propelling it, too-was almost beyond comprehension. Were it to raise itself upright, its hands would brush the arena’s distant ceiling.

Thick duranium shackles that pierced its dense flesh down its back prevented it from coming any farther than the center of the arena. It strained against the chains, roaring. One mighty fist lunged forward to take out its frustration on the tiny creatures standing before it, with their bright blades raised in futile defiance.

Starkiller went one way, Kota the other. The stone cracked beneath them. Dust and splinters of rock flew like shrapnel. Starkiller rolled on landing, then jumped again as the Gorog groped after him. It missed by barely a meter, amazingly fast for a creature so large. He slashed at it, but although his blades parted the red-black skin, he couldn’t cut deep enough to do any real damage.

He was going to have to fight the Gorog some other way.

“You’re a Jedi!” said Kota from his memory. “Size means nothing to you!”

The Gorog’s heavy, domed head swung to its left, looking for the general. Starkiller drew its gaze back to him, pushing through the Force at its nearest foot. It barely moved, but the effort didn’t go unnoticed. Keeping its center of gravity low and stable probably took much of the creature’s resting energy, so the last thing it would want was to be nudged off balance in the middle of a fight. Whether it reasoned consciously or simply reacted by instinct, Starkiller didn’t care. He definitely had its attention now.

Both fists came for him, converging with enough force to crack a moon in two. He stood his ground, adding his defiant shout to the creature’s angry roaring. The fists came together, making Starkiller’s world shake, but he went unharmed behind the strongest Force barrier he could muster. When the fists lifted, he found himself buried almost a meter deep in a gravel pit of shattered rock.

The Gorog stared down at him in slow-witted surprise. He took the opportunity to leap onto one of its arms and run along it all the way up to its mountainous right shoulder.

It swiveled from side to side, trying to track him, and scratched blindly at its back. The heavy chains clanked and rattled. Starkiller leapt onto one of the anchors that bit deep into the creature’s flesh and braced himself against the filth-stained metal. His arms could barely reach from one side to the other. Starkiller took a moment to concentrate, and then poured a powerful stream of lightning through the thick metal teeth, directly into the rippling muscle tissue.

The Gorog flailed and roared. It rose up and up until the surface Starkiller was clinging to became very nearly vertical. He ceased shocking it and climbed from anchor to anchor, heading for its head. Its hands groped blindly, swinging the chains from side to side. He dodged claws longer than his entire body and leapt, finally, onto the great bald skull. A metal plate sealed shut a massive rent in its skull, where some genetic defect or wound had left its brain exposed.

He didn’t know if it could feel him yet, but he didn’t doubt that it would soon. Raising both lightsabers blade-down, he stabbed deep into the metal plate and ran forward, melting a double line downward, toward its hideous face. At the same time, he shocked it with lightning, using the plate and his lightsabers to conduct the electricity directly to the creature’s giant neurons.

The Gorog’s fury doubled. The head whipped from side to side with a great grinding of vertebrae and sinew. Huge ropes of spittle splashed from its slavering mouth. The sound of its roars was deafening at such close range.

Starkiller leapt onto one of its thick, plated eyebrows and clung tight to a branch-like hair with one hand. The other pointed down into the creature’s nearest eye, ready to send a shock along its optic nerve, right into its brain.

The eye rolled, fixed him in its black stare. The pupil tightened. It had seen him. Before Starkiller could move, one mighty hand came from behind him and, with the force of a mass-drive cannon, swept him from his precarious perch.

For a moment he was both weightless and stunned. The world turned around him, and he thought he heard Juno saying, “Have you done this before?” and himself responding, “Trust me. I’m doing the right thing, for both of us. “

Then he hit the stadium, and only a Force-barrier reflex honed by thousands of hours of punishing training stopped him from breaking every bone in his body.

His senses only slowly returned. Holograms flickered and sparked around him as he climbed groggily to his feet.

He was halfway up the side of the arena, surrounded by spectators from afar, chanting for one side or the other. Starkiller wondered if it mattered to them exactly who was fighting, and why. The promise of violence was all they cared about.

Well, he could give them that.

The Gorog hadn’t given up on him, either. It had broken half of its chains during its frenzied writhing, and it pulled free of the rest to follow him into the seating. The few spectators who hadn’t already fled Starkiller’s vicinity now did so, fearing what might come next. The stadium’s walls shuddered as the huge creature applied its full weight to them.

Starkiller took a moment to look for Kota. The old man was neither lying squashed on the arena floor nor foolishly rushing in to help, and both relieved him. He needed Kota alive, if he was going to find Juno soon, and he didn’t want to be distracted by keeping the old man that way. But he didn’t want to lose him, either.

A quick search through the Force revealed him to be climbing upward through the stands, slashing at anyone who stood in his way. Settling that score he had mentioned, Starkiller assumed. Then there wasn’t time to ponder the matter any further.

The Gorog approached, dark blood running down from the gash on its scalp and dripping into its gaping mouth. The taste seemed to enrage it.

One arm swept across the stands, destroying hologram generators and snapping pillars by the dozen. Starkiller ran in the opposite direction. Someone was shouting orders from the skybox above, but he didn’t pay any notice.

The creature followed him around the stadium, making it shake and reel.

A huge slab of stone, dislodged by one of its wild grabs, came down just in front of him. Starkiller leapt higher, to the very top of the stands. There he found a ramp along which the very last of the spectators were fleeing. He followed it to the roof of the stadium, and waited to see if the Gorog was following.

It was, using its arms to drag itself higher and kicking out with its legs to gain extra thrust. Through deep rents in the stone floor of the stadium, Starkiller could see the open air below.

He ran from the ramp onto the roof. The Gorog followed without hesitation, shouldering through an opening barely wide enough for its arm, let alone the rest of its body. It blinked in the daylight. All the lights and buzz of the suspended city meant nothing to it when its quarry stood just out of reach, tantalizingly still.

It lunged, and missed. Lunged, and missed. It didn’t care what damage it caused. Metal supports bent. Guy wires snapped and whipped away. A handful of jetpack-equipped stormtroopers buzzed about its head, trying to bring it back under control, but it had eyes only for Starkiller.

He led it halfway around the arena before he felt the first lurching from below. A number of supports and stanchions were broken, ruining the integrity of the entire arena. The Gorog just kept on coming. Only when they had returned almost to their point of origin did it seem to notice the way the surface beneath it was sinking, beginning to drop.

The broad disk of the arena roof shuddered. Starkiller jumped to the only structure still attached to the city above: the skybox from which the potentate, he assumed, had enjoyed the best possible view. He landed on the roof just as the last support for the arena gave way and began the long tumble to the sinkhole below.

The Gorog howled as it, too, began to fall.

Starkiller cut a hole in the roof of the skybox and jumped nimbly inside.

There he found the potentate standing his ground in front of an ornate gold throne. A half circle of slain Neimoidian aides lay at his feet. He held his blaster on Kota, who was approaching with lightsaber at the ready, unhindered at all by either fatigue or blindness.

Starkiller’s arrival distracted the potentate, who snapped a quick shot at him, easily deflected.