Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (9 page)

Before Kota could strike-settling the score for a week of endless slaughter-the whole skybox lurched, sending all three of them flying. Metal squealed. Transparisteel shattered. The roar of the Gorog filled the air. Starkiller clutched a console as the skybox lurched again, tipping the floor steadily closer to vertical.

“You fool, ” cried the potentate, spread-eagle on the floor. “You’ve killed us all!”

Starkiller peered warily out the nearest window. It was immediately clear what had happened. The Gorog had arrested its fall by catching hold of the skybox with one hand, and now it was trying to climb to safety. In doing so, however, it was steadily destroying the skybox itself.

The gold throne broke free from its restraints and slid toward the shattered viewport. It scooped up the potentate as it went, dragging him down with its considerable mass. He clutched at the floor but could do nothing to arrest his fall. He screamed as he went out the window and fell straight into the Gorog’s gaping mouth.

The tiny meal galvanized what was left of the Gorog’s facility to reason. It looked up into the skybox, seeing it for the first time as a container, not simply something to hang on to. It saw the shining of the energy weapons that had stung it. With its free hand, it lunged for them, but succeeded only in bringing down still more of the structure. There was no way now to avoid falling. It knew that in the depths of its deranged mind. With the last of its strength it lunged again, and caught its enemy at last.

“Kota!” Starkiller shouted as the Gorog ripped the Jedi general from the skybox and dragged him down with it.

“Turn away, boy, ” he heard Kota saying in his mind. “Get on with your mission. There are some things you aren’t ready to face. “

He blinked. The words were another memory, not an instruction from the falling general. He wasn’t going to take orders from the past-especially when he hadn’t followed them the first time around.

There’s nothing I can’t face. Starkiller thought.

He let go of the console and took a running jump through the shattered window.

It was surprising just how far the Gorog had already fallen toward the gaping mouth of the sinkhole, but he refused to be discouraged. He dived in a straight line, using the Force to propel him through the whipping wind. He remembered with perfect clarity his former self’s plummet to the surface of the incomplete Death Star, and hard on the heels of that memory came the sensation of

Juno’s lips against his. Longing for her filled him, driving him downward even faster.

The stench of the Gorog’s fear and rage came heavily on the air as he approached it. The beast was tumbling. The fist containing Kota flashed once in front of him, then a second time. The general was slashing at the fingers holding him pinned, to little effect. Starkiller had to get him free before Kota’s strength gave out and he was crushed to a pulp.

Selecting his point of landing with as much care as he was able, Starkiller came down on the creature’s back, close enough to one of the duranium anchors to take hold of it. He braced himself with both feet against the spine, ignoring the way the world was spinning around him. The Gorog didn’t know he was there. It wouldn’t be expecting an attack from this side.

He took a deep breath, reaching deeper into the Force than he had before. He had never journeyed to the center of a planet, where the molten metal raged and burned under pressure hard enough to make diamond out of dust, but he imagined something much like that. This time, he wanted to do more than just enrage the Gorog. He could feel the web of veins thudding a panicky bear beneath the skin. He concentrated on that beat, on the rapid pulsing of life that would be extinguished when it reached the bottom of the sinkhole. Why wait that long, when Kota’s life was at stake as well?

For a moment, he faltered. He had never killed anything this big before.

But it was just one life, and it stood between him and his goal. He had no choice.

Instead of a wild crackle of lightning, he discharged a single pure bolt into the metal anchor, stabbing deep through the creature’s chest into its heart.

Its back arched. A strange, fluting cry emerged from its mouth. Starkiller rode out the spasm, maintaining the electric shock for as long as he was able. Muscular waves rolled back and forth, twisting him from side to side. It felt like a groundquake-a fleshquake on a planer-sized monster.

The pulsing coming through the soles of his boots ran wild, faltered, ceased.

He sagged as the mountain of flesh finally grew still. The fight was over, but darkness enfolded them as they entered the mouth of the sinkhole and went into free fall.

Starkiller used rough pits in the creature’s skin to pull himself up to the shoulder, then down the limp arm that had held Kota captive. The general was clinging to the slackened thumb, head cocked as though he could see the sinkhole walls sliding by. He shouted a greeting over the sound of the rushing wind.

“I hope you’ve got a way out of this, boy. “

Starkiller put an arm around Kota’s shoulders. Together they leapt off the Gorog’s hand. Starkiller could slow their fall somewhat, but he couldn’t fly. The beast fell ahead of them. Maybe, he hoped against hope, it would go some way toward arresting their impact.

“If you’re wearing a comlink, ” Kota said, “hand it over. “

Starkiller did so, even though that was as faint a hope as his own. “The whole city’s jammed. “

Kota punched keys on the comlink. “Let’s hope she can reach us in time. “

Starkiller’s heart quickened. She?

He glanced down into the shadow, wondering how deep the sinkhole could possibly be. Above, he saw only the shrinking circle of cityscape. He stared until it was occluded by something solid. He thought he recognized the silhouette. The roar of a starship’s engines echoed down the sinkhole, as the familiar angles and planes of the Rogue Shadow dived down toward them, and then overtook them so it could intercept them from below.

Though Starkiller pushed down against the starship’s hull with the Force to cushion their fall, they still hit the surface hard. Starkiller blinked away stars and groaned under the return of gravity.

Kota was faring no better, clutching his shoulder and struggling to sit up. A hatch popped open nearby, and the old man waved the younger man ahead of him.

Starkiller was already moving. His entire being thrilled at the certainty that Juno was here at last. He could practically see her already, waiting at the controls for him to arrive, ready with some quip about being late to his own funeral.

He dropped down through the hatch and ran breathlessly to the cockpit.

“Juno!”

He stopped dead. The cockpit was empty. All he heard in reply was a ghost of her voice, speaking from the depths of his memory.

“Please don’t make me leave another life behind.”

One day earlier…

Juno took one last look at the fluted domes of Heurkea a floating city, before diving under the waves. Its shell-like buildings gleamed red and gold by the light of Mon Calamari system’s primary, looking more like something grown than built-much like the coral of Mester Reef beneath her. None of the reef protruded above the water, and she was submerged up to her waist, buffeted by the alien sea as she stared at the city. She wanted something beautiful to hold in her mind before entrusting her life to air that stank of rotten rubber.

Ackbar ducked under without hesitation, followed a second later by Bail Organa, who had donned an old clone subtrooper breathing apparatus like hers. In a wet suit and mismatching white helmet he looked about as ridiculous as Juno felt. For the first time she didn’t worry that her weapons would be sealed in their packs until they emerged at the other end. If anyone saw them climbing out of the water at the far end, they would certainly not regard them as any kind of threat.

The Quarren were already underwater. Holding her breath instinctively, Juno took a single step forward, off the rough coral surface, and let herself sink into the water.

It was blue and clearer than she had expected. The cargo freighter was moored safely out of sight at the base of the reef, guided there by remote control once the ten conspirators had disembarked. She could see its featureless nose almost as though through air. She couldn’t, however, see their destination. Trusting to the Quarren’s sense of direction, she followed strongly kicking feet around the bulk of the reef and into the open ocean. PROXY took the shape of Seggor Tels, using repulsors to swim rather than sink straight to the bottom. Juno kept careful track of which Tels was which, just in case.

Strong currents favored them half the way, then shifted direction as the seabed grew nearer, making progress much more difficult. Heurkea was a true floating city, with no structural connections to the bedrock, but several chunky cables did run from its undulating base down into the sludge. Ferrying waste one way and geothermal power another, she guessed, but just then wasn’t the time to wonder about the city’s inner workings. As its underside came into view, she kept her eyes open for the vent Tels had described. PROXY had sliced into plans of the city and confirmed that it was still there. The vent had been sealed up early in the Imperial occupation of the city, but laser-cutting equipment designed for underwater use would make short work of that obstacle.

There: a dark patch against the city’s white underbelly. She waved to catch the others’ attention, and pointed. She could have used the subtrooper gear’s comlink, but they were maintaining strict radio silence.

White light flared as one of Siric’s apprentices activated the cutting equipment. Bubbles of steam spread upward and flattened out against the city’s hull, forming rippling streams and threads. Juno waited for lights to flash and alarms to sound, but nothing happened. The Imperials had clearly grown complacent about security, at least in this damp corner of the galaxy.

With one last flash, the white light died. The grille fell out in a single circular piece and dropped to the ocean floor far below. Tels went through first, staying carefully clear of the still-hot metal. His feet disappeared. A minute later his hand reappeared, giving a definite thumbs-up. One by one, the rest of the team followed him into the pipe.

Juno swam ten meters to a ladder that led up to a level deck. There the water was below knee height and the atmosphere was breathable. She gratefully dispensed with the breathing apparatus and took in a chest full of sweet, if slightly scum-tainted, natural air. The deck was illuminated by faint down-lights that flickered weakly with age. It didn’t look as if anyone had visited that level in at least a decade. Still, she moved as quietly as she could to a higher section, where the way was completely dry.

There she slipped off the wet suit and straightened the flight uniform she’d been wearing beneath. PROXY flickered back to his usual form and followed her, yellow eyes flickering in the dim light.

“Are you feeling all right?” she asked the droid. Apart from an occasional flutter, his chameleon circuit remained stable, but he had hardly spoken since his awakening. “Is there something I should worry about?”

“Oh, no, Juno. I am simply processing my lack of a viable primary program. “

“Does it seriously impair your function?” she asked, wondering if she had made a mistake involving PROXY in the mission.

“No, ” PROXY said, “but it does concern me. I have been deactivated twice since Raxus Prime, and each time it seems a miracle that I have returned. Who am I, if not my primary program? What am I, if I have no reason to function?”

That seemed a very human concern, and one that had no easy answer. “I guess you’re just you, ” she said. “And you seem okay to me. “

“Thank you, Captain Eclipse. That is of some small reassurance. “

“Every being is the sum of its experiences and actions, ” put in Bail Organa, coming up alongside them and dropping his discarded wet suit next to Juno’s. “Sometimes we don’t know what our primary program is, or was, until we’ve lived long enough to look hack at our lives. “

“I’m afraid I do not understand how to function under such circumstances, ” the droid said. “Droids are nor designed to pro-grain themselves. “

“I’m sorry, PROXY, ” Juno said, with real feeling. “I didn’t realize you felt so strongly about this. Do you wish I hadn’t woken you up this time?”

“Not at all, Captain Eclipse. I am glad to be in the world again, and I remain optimistic that I will be assigned a new primary program one day. I cannot be the only example of my class in operation. “

Juno wasn’t so sure of that. She’d never seen a droid like him before, and assumed that he was something Darth Vader had commissioned years ago to act as plaything and tutor to his young apprentice.

The thought of Starkiller darkened her mood. Why was she thinking about him so much? Sometimes she wished her primary-program could be changed as easily as a droid’s. It would certainly save her a whole lot of grief.

When the Quarren were ready, they gathered at the top of the ramp, where a corridor led off into two opposite directions.

“This is where we split up, ” said Ackbar. “Siric, you know what to do?”

The bomb expert and his assistants parted their waterproof packs and nodded.

“All right, good luck. Make your move on Seggor’s signal. “

The five headed off into the gloomy distance, feet slapping softly against the floor. Ackbar guided Juno, Organa, PROXY, and Seggor Tels up the other way. They moved silently, conscious of the fact that the city was entirely in Imperial hands. They could trust no one, and carried blasters openly in case they happened across anyone so deep in the basements.

Around them, the city hummed and shifted on the surface of the endless sea. There was no sense of motion, just a constant creaking and groaning of welds. Juno wondered if any of these floating cities ever sprang a leak, but didn’t think right then the time to ask. That was the least of their problems.

Ackbar and Tels swapped positions when they reached the upper levels. The Quarren had the codes for the fighter wing’s secure compound-obtained, he said, by bribing a maintenance team who had worked briefly for the city administration. Tels padded softly ahead of them, moving with stealthy confidence along the metallic corridors. If he was nervous, it didn’t show.