by James Luceno
Firing on the run and hurtling pieces of disintegrated droids, Starstone, Filli, Cudgel, and Chewbacca made a desperate dash for the hatch. The corridor beyond was crowded with battle droids marching in to reinforce those in the docking bay.
Explosive quarrels from Chewbacca’s bowcaster combined with blasterfire and deflections from Starstone’s lightsaber dropped a dozen droids at a time. But for every dozen destroyed, another dozen appeared. Archyr and some of the Wookiees brought up the rear, ultimately allowing Starstone’s contingent to shoot their way into a turbolift that accessed the destroyer’s outrigger arm.
Prepared for the worst, the four of them burst onto the command bridge, only to find a group of befuddled humaniform technical droids, outfitted with power studs at the backs of the heads that allowed them to be quickly and methodically shut down.
Realizing that the bridge had oxygen, everyone removed their rebreathers. Chewbacca dogged the hatch to the corridor while Filli centered himself at the ship’s control console and activated the bridge’s emergency lights.
“Gossams have longer fingers than I have,” he said in the scarlet glow of the illuminators. “This could take some time.”
“We’re running short as it is,” Cudgel said. “Just get the main cannons enabled.”
Battle droids on the far side of the sealed hatch were already trying to pound their way onto the bridge.
Filli went back to work, but a moment later said: “Uh-oh.”
Chewbacca loosed a trolling roar at him.
“Uh-oh, what?” Starstone asked.
Abruptly the destroyer lurched and began to nose about toward Kashyyyk’s crescent of bright side.
“The brain wants to complete the task it was in the middle of when the ship was shut down,” Filli said.
Starstone turned to him. “What was the task?”
“It thinks that the Separatists are losing Kachirho. It’s converting itself into a giant bomb!”
“Can’t you retask it?”
“I’m trying. It won’t listen!”
Cudgel muttered to himself, and Chewbacca issued a sound that was somewhere between a growl and a groan.
“Filli!” Starstone said sharply. “Let the brain think what it wants. Just assign it a new target.”
His blank stare yielded slowly to a grin of comprehension. “Can do.”
Starstone returned the smile, then glanced at Cudgel. “Comlink the Drunk Dancer to prepare to receive guests.”
As soon as Jula received word that the drop ship and transport had exited the Commerce Guild warship, she left the Drunk Dancer in the capable hands of Brudi Gayn and Eyl Dix and headed for the docking bay. Her eagerness sabotaged by the lightsaber gash she had suffered on Alderaan, she moved slowly and carefully, arriving just as the two craft were drifting through the hatch. Forewarned that both were carrying injured, she had ordered the ship’s med droids to rendezvous with her there.
Forewarned.
But not thoroughly enough to prepare her for the number of wounded evacuees who hobbled from the ships, Wookiees squeezing out like circus performers from an absurdly cramped vehicle, and many of them in grave condition.
As for the Jedi, only five of the original seven had survived, and just barely, from the look of them. Jambe Lu, Nam Poorf, and Klossi Anno especially were in a lot worse shape than when they had first come aboard the Drunk Dancer, weeks earlier.
Even the ship’s med droids were dismayed. “This may prove overwhelming, Captain,” one of them said from behind Jula.
“Do all you can,” she told the droid.
It was an unnerving sight, however, and she felt a bit panicked. But the tears she had been holding back since learning of Roan’s sacrifice didn’t gush forth until she set eyes on Filli and Starstone. Seeing her standing distraught, crying into the palms of her hands, Starstone hurried over to wrap her in a comforting embrace.
Jula allowed herself to be held for a long moment. But when she finally stepped out of the embrace, she saw that Starstone’s cheeks were slick with tears, and that only got her crying again. Gently she stroked the young woman’s face.
“What happened to avoiding attachment?” Jula said, sniffling.
Starstone backhanded tears from her cheeks. “I’ve lost the skill. It doesn’t seem to fit well with the Emperor’s New Order, anyway.” She held Jula’s searching gaze. “Your son saved our lives. We tried to go back for him, but …”
Jula averted her eyes. “Someone had to try to stop Vader.”
“I don’t know that Vader can be stopped,” Starstone said.
Jula nodded. “Maybe if I’d raised Roan, he wouldn’t have turned out to be so stubborn.” She frowned in distress. “Some people can’t be talked out of being a hero.”
“Or a Jedi.”
Jula nodded. “That’s what I meant.”
Starstone smiled sadly, then turned to regard a Wookiee and a bearded human who were standing at the foot of the transport’s boarding ramp, speaking with Filli, Archyr, and Skeck. Taking Jula by the hand, Starstone led her over to the unlikely pair, whom she introduced as Chewbacca and Cudgel.
Clearly in distress, the Wookiee was leaning against the ship, resting his head on his folded arms, and slamming his paws against the hull.
“We saw Chewbacca’s tree-city in flames,” Cudgel explained. “There’s no way to know whether his family escaped in time.”
“I promised him the transport,” Starstone told Jula.
Jula looked at Cudgel. “We’ll get it refueled as quickly—”
“No need,” Cudgel cut her off. “Chewie knows that it’s too late. He figures he can do more for his people as a fugitive than he could as a captive.”
The Wookiee affirmed it with a melancholy roar.
“You’re speaking for all of us, Chewbacca,” Starstone said.
“So,” Cudgel continued, “we’re wondering, Chewie and I, if we could ride out of this with you.”
Jula’s comlink toned while she was nodding yes.
“Captain, we’re T-ten for the jump to hyperspace,” Brudi said from the bridge, almost casually. “Assuming everything goes according to plan.”
“Have you been able to notify the other ships?” Jula asked.
“As best I could. And I’m trusting that that Interdictor isn’t eavesdropping on every comlink frequency.”
“See what jump options the navicomputer provides,” Jula said. “I’ll join you in a moment.”
She moved away from Starstone and the others to gaze at Kashyyyk’s waning crescent of bright side. Tears streaming down her face, she said in a quiet voice: “I love you, Roan. I thank the Force that I got to know you for a time. But I’ll miss you more now than I ever did.”
In command of the Detainer parked above Kachirho, Captain Ugan normally refused to allow himself to be disturbed when he was on the bridge. But Ensign Nullip was so insistent about seeing him that he finally granted permission for the young technician to be escorted onto the command deck.
A swarthy man with blunt features, Ugan remained seated in his chair, his dark gaze shifting between projected holoimages of the invasion on Kashyyyk and the viewport panorama of the planet itself.
“Be quick about it,” he warned Nullip.
“Yes, sir,” the ensign promised. “It’s simply that we’ve been monitoring some unusual readings from one of the Separatist ships that was left in orbit after the battle here. Specifically, a Commerce Guild Recusant-class support destroyer. I’ve tried repeatedly to convince someone in tactical to bring this to your attention, sir, but—”
Ugan cut him off. “What makes these readings ‘unusual,’ Ensign?”
“They are initiation readings, sir.” In response to the captain’s dubious look, Nullip continued: “I know, sir. I was puzzled, too. That’s why I took it upon myself to check the scanner recordings. Much to my surprise, sir, I learned that the destroyer’s central control computer had been remotely enabled to run a diagnostic, and then to bring
several of the ship’s systems online.”
When Ugan’s expression of perplexity deepened, Nullip activated a small holoplate he had placed on the palm of his right hand. A grainy recording shone from the device.
“You can see two craft entering the destroyer, just here, at the forwardmost docking bays.” Nullip’s forefinger fast-forwarded the recording. “Here, you can see the craft leaving. We’re still trying to determine their destination.”
Ugan glanced from the recording to Nullip. “Salvagers?”
“That was my first thought, sir. But, in fact, when the craft exited, the destroyer itself was in motion.”
Ugan stared at him. “In motion? What’s its heading?”
“That’s just it, sir. It’s heading toward us.” Turning to the forward viewports, Nullip indicated a dark shape moving through the greater darkness. “Just there, you see?”
Ugan swiveled to an officer at the tactical duty station. “A Separatist ship is approaching our port side. Scan it, immediately!” Rising from his chair, he walked to the viewport, Nullip a step behind him.
“Captain,” the tactical officer said, “the ship is a Confederacy droid-piloted support destroyer—”
“I already know that!” Ugan said, whirling around. “Does it pose any risk to us?”
“Checking, sir.”
The officer spent a moment studying the duty station’s array of display screens, then turned toward Ugan, ashen-faced.
“Captain, the destroyer’s main reactor is in critical failure. The ship is effectively a massive bomb!”
Shryne sprawled in the wroshyr’s cavernous opening, the wind tugging at his clothing, blood trickling from the corners of his mouth, clearly struggling with the revelation he had been granted.
Vader stood over him, his right hand resting on the hilt of the lightsaber, though he had no intention of drawing it from his belt again. One strong gust could topple Shryne to his final resting place.
It is enough to let him die knowing that the order was betrayed by one of its own.
More important, Vader’s bloodlust had been appeased; replaced by self-possession of a sort he had never before experienced. It was as if he had crossed some invisible threshold to a new world. He could feel the power of the dark side surging through him like an icy torrent. He felt invulnerable in a way that had nothing to do with his durasteel prostheses, his suit of armor and gadgets, which now seemed little more than an outfit. And it had taken a Jedi—yet another Jedi—to usher him over that threshold.
He gazed down at Shryne, emblematic of the defeated Jedi order, as Obi-Wan should have been. He recalled the way Dooku had gazed down at him on Geonosis, and the way Anakin had gazed down at Dooku in the General’s quarters aboard the Invisible Hand.
Someday he would gaze down at Sidious in the same way.
After he took an apprentice, perhaps. Someone with the same rebellious spirit that Shryne demonstrated.
Shryne coughed weakly. “What are you waiting for, Skywalker? Strike me down. You’re only killing a Jedi.”
Vader planted his fists on his hips. “Then you do accept the truth.”
“I accept that you and Palpatine are a perfect match—” Shryne began, when without warning an immense explosion turned a small region of the western sky bright as day. Eclipsing stars, a roiling ball of fire blossomed high over Kashyyyk, expanding and expanding until the vacuum of space suffocated it.
When Vader looked at Shryne again, the Jedi appeared to be grinning.
“Would that be one of your ships? Your Interdictor cruiser, maybe?” He coughed blood and a laugh. “They’ve escaped you again, haven’t they?”
“If so, they will be found, and killed.”
Shryne’s expression suddenly changed, from smug to almost rapturous.
“I’ve seen this,” he uttered, mostly to himself. “I envisioned this …”
Vader pressed closer to hear him. “Your death, you mean.”
“An explosion bright as a star,” Shryne said. “A forest world, intrepid defenders, escaping ships, and … you, I think, somehow at the center of it all.” His bloodstained lips formed themselves into a sublime smile, and a tear ran from his right eye. “Skywalker, it won’t matter if you find them. It won’t matter if you find and kill every Jedi who survived Order Sixty-Six. I understand now … the Force will never die.”
Vader was still gazing down at Shryne’s inert body when several stormtroopers emerged from one of the Wookiees’ ingenious turbolifts and hurried over to him.
“Lord Vader,” the officer among them said. “The Interdictor positioned over Kachirho has been destroyed. As a result, hundreds of evacuation ships succeeded in jumping to hyperspace.”
Vader nodded. “Inform the group commanders that they are to continue their orbital bombardment,” he said angrily. “I want every Wookiee flushed out of hiding, even if that means burning these forests to the ground!”
EPILOGUE
TWO THERE SHOULD BE; NO MORE NO LESS.
ONE TO EMBODY POWER, THE OTHER TO CRAVE IT.
—DARTH BANE
A half-life-size holoimage of Wilhuff Tarkin shone from one of the cone-shaped holoprojectors that studded the lustrous floor of the throne room.
“The planet suffered more damage than I might have anticipated,” the Moff was saying, “especially given the military resources I placed at Lord Vader’s disposal. Although I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by the Wookiees’ intractability.”
The Emperor gestured negligently. “What is one world, more or less, when the galaxy is being reordered?”
Tarkin took a moment to reply. “I will bear that in mind, my lord.”
“What of the Wookiees themselves?”
“Some two hundred thousand were rounded up and placed in containment camps on the Wawaatt Archipelago.”
“Can you accommodate that many?”
“We could accommodate twice that number.”
“I see,” the Emperor said. “Then you have my permission to transport the slaves to the weapon.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
“Be certain to inform the regional governor of your activities, but make no mention of the Wookiees’ final destination. Oh, and see to it, Moff Tarkin, that you cover your tracks well. Questions are already being asked.” The Emperor paused, then leaned forward to add: “I don’t want any problems.”
Tarkin inclined his head in a bow. “I appreciate the need for utmost secrecy, my lord.”
“Good.” The Emperor sat back. “And, tell me, what is your opinion of Lord Vader’s handling of the occupation of Kashyyyk?”
“He proved very capable, my lord. No one involved in the operation will soon forget his … sense of commitment, shall we say?”
“Do the fleet commanders concur with your assessment?”
Tarkin stroked his high-cheekboned face. “May I speak candidly?”
“I suggest you make it a practice, Moff Tarkin.”
“The commanders are not pleased. They don’t know who Lord Vader is under his mask and armor. They have no inkling of the true extent of his power, or how he came to be your liaison with the regional governors and the fledgling Imperial Navy. There are rumors, my lord.”
“Continue to speak freely.”
“Some are convinced that Lord Vader is a former Jedi who assisted you in your counterstrike against the order. Others believe that he was an apprentice of the late Count Dooku.”
“Who is spreading these rumors?”
“From what I have been able to ascertain, the rumors began among the special ops legions that attacked and secured the Jedi Temple. If you wish, my lord, I could pursue the matter further.”
“No, Tarkin,” the Emperor said. “Let the rumors persist. And let the regional governors and naval officers think what they will of Lord Vader. His identity shouldn’t concern them. I am interested only in their obeying his commands, as they would mine.”
“If nothing else, my lord, they understand tha
t much. Word of what happened at Kashyyyk is spreading quickly through the ranks.”
“As I knew it would.”
Tarkin nodded. “My lord, I wonder if I might call on Lord Vader’s … expertise from time to time, if only in the interest of enhancing his reputation among the fleet commanders.”
“You may, indeed. Both you and Lord Vader will profit from such a partnership. When the battle station is completed, your responsibilities will be manifold. Lord Vader will relieve you of the need to oversee every matter personally.”
“I look forward to that day, my lord.” Tarkin bowed once more, and the holoimage disappeared.
Sidious was pleased. Vader had done well. He had sensed the change in him, even in the brief conversation they had had following the events on Kashyyyk. Now that Vader had begun to tap deeply into the power of the dark side, his true apprenticeship could begin. The Jedi were incidental to him. He was covetous of the power Sidious wielded, and believed that one day they would be equals.
You must begin by gaining power over yourself; then another; then a group, an order, a world, a species, a group of species … finally, the galaxy itself.
Sidious could still hear Darth Plagueis lecturing him.
Envy, hatred, betrayal … They were essential to mastering the dark side, but only as a means of distancing oneself from all common notions of morality in the interest of a higher goal. Only when Sidious had understood this fully had he acted on it, killing his Master while he slept.
Unlike Plagueis, Sidious knew better than to sleep.
More important, by the time Vader was capable of becoming a risk to his Mastery, Sidious would be fully conversant with the secrets Plagueis had spent a lifetime seeking—the power of life over death. There would be no need to fear Vader. No real reason to have an apprentice, except to honor the tradition Darth Bane had resurrected a millennium earlier.
