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 out, 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.
CHAPTER 16
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 attack 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.
She rose up onto her hands and knees and explored the space around her more thoroughly. She soon learned that it was a cage approximately two meters high, wide, and deep, with horizontal metal bars along two walls and plastoid elsewhere. She searched for a hinge or a lock but found nothing: The bars most likely recessed into the walls and would only retract on the ship’s owner’s command. With no tools and no light, she could see no way of getting out of the cage, let alone taking control of the ship and turning it around.
She put her head in her hands. That she had to go back was something she didn’t doubt, at first. Starkiller had returned. What else was there to worry about? But the unremitting darkness began to get to her, the questions she had asked herself while being dragged from the Salvation returned.
Starkiller was undeniably back. How? Why? How long? And where was he now? Could he possibly be dead again?
Time wore on and she began to doubt the evidence of her eyes. She had only glimpsed him on the Salvation. It was conceivable that she had mistaken someone else for him—but was it conceivable that there was anyone else in the galaxy with the ability to do what he did?
It had to be him. But the rest of her doubts weren’t so easily dismissed. Starkiller was alive, and while the part of her that had mourned him rejoiced, the simple fact of his existence wasn’t enough to reassure her completely. The ramifications of his return weren’t going to go away simply by assuming that he would eventually come for her, or hoping that she could escape, in order that they would be together again.
How had he come back? She had seen him consumed in a massive explosion while rescuing the Rebel leaders from the Death Star—an explosion that Kota had assured her had definitely killed him. She had felt as though part of her had died, and she had moved forward in complete faith that what she had seen was real, that Kota had neither lied nor been mistaken. Starkiller had died. But now he was back. The explanation for this apparently simple fact had to lie far beyond what she regarded as normal, perhaps even possible, and the s
ource of that explanation worried her.
Had he been alive all this time, or had he only recently returned from the dead? That was another question with powerful undercurrents. If he had been alive the last year, why hadn’t he contacted her? What had he been doing? When had Kota learned about it? It was clear to her now that Starkiller had been aboard the Rogue Shadow when it docked, and that he was most likely the source of the tactical information Kota had given her. How long had they been in league to keep this knowledge from her? How far, in that light, should she trust the information?
On the latter point, she had no choice. Sealed up in the belly of a bounty hunter’s prison ship, she might as well have been in another universe as far as the Rebel Alliance was concerned. They might even think her dead, if the battle went badly and the Salvation was destroyed. She might never get the chance to share her concerns, or to ask Kota why he had deceived her.
The painkiller was wearing off. A long, throbbing ache spread outward from her shoulder, down her arm and spine and up into her skull. She embraced the pain at the same time as she hated it. It cleared her thoughts.
She remembered the Empirical, the last time she had been a prisoner. Then she had thought Starkiller dead, killed by his Master under the orders of the Emperor. Then, as now, he had returned from the grave. Darth Vader had told him that he had been rescued before his life signs had faded away completely, but that could have been a lie. Had whatever process brought him back then been used now, too? How many times could a man die and be reborn and still remain the same man?
Escape had seemed impossible from the Empirical. It was Starkiller himself who had rescued her. His appearance in her cell had seemed a miracle, or a pain-induced fantasy designed to ease her own passage from life. She had put out of her mind what the guards had called him then, but those words came back to her now. They had called him “experiment” and “lab rat.” They had feared him long before he had attacked them, for reasons she had never wondered about before.
“I saw you die,” she had told him. “But you’ve come back.”
All he had said in reply was, “I have some unfinished business.”
As though that explained everything. She wondered now if he could have used a Jedi mind trick on her in that moment, to assuage her concerns. He had been mostly Vader’s tool at that point, so she could readily understand why he might have done so. But those concerns about his survival returned a hundredfold, as though they had compounded at the back of her mind in the time since.
What would she say to him now, if he appeared in the cell with her?
Would he tell her what his unfinished business was, this time?
Did it matter?
If it was her, perhaps it made all the difference in the universe.
She got up and paced as best she could. The diagonal across a two meter-square cell was less than three meters, but it gave her something to do. She didn’t know how soon they would arrive at their destination, wherever that was. It could be hours, yet. She needed a distraction from her thoughts, because they were leading her down a very dark path.
If Starkiller was back because he loved her, why hadn’t he revealed himself before now?
If love had nothing to do with his return, what reason did she have to be glad of it?
She thought of PROXY mourning the loss of his primary programming and desperately seeking a new one. For the first time, she truly understood his pain. How simple it would be, if such a thing existed for humans, to plug a module into her head and have all these thoughts erased. To forget Starkiller and all he had meant to her. To finally get on with her life at last. What unimaginable freedom!
But it would be a lie, she knew. She wouldn’t be who she was anymore. Starkiller had given her a new and better life. To turn her back on him would be to turn her back on the Alliance as well as everything she had become. That was a betrayal she could never contemplate.
As the ship rushed on through hyperspace, Juno remembered a moment on Felucia when she had been sure Starkiller was about to kiss her. She remembered making that thought come true above the Death Star, and the way her heart had pounded from fear and excitement at once. And she remembered Kota telling her about what he had seen in Starkiller’s mind: “Among all the dark thoughts in his head I glimpsed one bright spot, one beautiful thing that gave me hope—and that he held on to, even at the end.”
She had asked what that was, and Kota hadn’t told her, but she had known—and she still knew now. They had been each other’s salvation in very dark times. They would be so again.
Come rescue me, she said in her mind, knowing the words would be lost in hyperspace forever but hoping that he would hear her anyway. Rescue me, Starkiller, so I can return the favor.
CHAPTER 17
STARKILLER FACED THE GIANT DROID and stared hard into its two remaining eyes. It had lost four of its legs and numerous gaping rents had been carved all across its underbelly and back, but it remained a formidable opponent. It had killed every soldier Kota had thrown at it, leaving only Starkiller between it and the secondary reactor. He could feel the damage already done to the frigate as a deep, irregular vibration that rose and fell in the normally semi-audible rumble of the hyperdrive. There was no doubt in his mind that any more fluctuations in power would result in a catastrophe.
He feinted to his left. The droid shifted right to block him. He feinted in the opposite direction. It shifted again. Internal mechanisms thudded and groaned behind its durasteel shell. It crouched low, preparing to spring, and issued a noise like an antique boiler hissing its last.
Mentally, Starkiller triple-checked the layout of the secondary reactor against the rest of the frigate. He and the droid had been sparring vigorously for what felt like hours, and he was afraid of getting everything back to front. Without a clear landmark, that would have been very easy. Two decks, uncountable rooms and corridors, and one water tank had been completely destroyed during their fight, leaving an immense tangle of wreckage in their wake.
He hoped Juno would forgive him for the damage when he finally found her. It was still her ship, after all, and she might not take kindly to his giving it such a battering.
Still, he thought, shifting a couple of meters to his right, it wasn’t as if he had much choice …
The droid tracked his movement, and pounced.
He ducked as he had many times before, and gave the droid a solid shove as it went over his head. Its lasers flashed around him, cutting yet another hieroglyphic pattern deep into the metal deck. Its innards whined as it spun to reorient itself, intending to arrest its trajectory against the wall ahead with three feet, and then leap back at him, stabbing with the fourth limb, hoping to impale him on its deadly, sharp tip.
He stayed still just long enough to give the machine the impression that this time, unlike all the other times, its plan might work.
The droid hit the bulkhead with a mighty thud, and kicked its three legs as hard as it could. The bulkhead, strained and scarred by many such impacts, gave way with a shriek. The noise was instantly joined by another, much louder sound—that of atmosphere rushing out into the void.
This was no ordinary bulkhead. It was the outer hull of the frigate, and it had been pushed far beyond its tolerance. The droid, realizing its error, scrambled to withdraw the legs that now stuck through the hull, outside the ship, but Starkiller wasn’t having any of that. He braced himself firmly against the interior bulkhead behind him and pushed. The droid sank a meter deeper into the metal, which tore and stretched further in response. Through the rents he glimpsed the abstract angularity of hyperspace rushing by, and he felt the droid’s desperation increase. Starkiller didn’t know what happened to ordinary matter when it was separated from the hyperdrive that lay at the heart of a starship and left to founder in the unreal spaces beyond. He suspected the droid didn’t, either. It was about to find out.
One last flurry of laserfire slashed and burned at him. He ducked but held his ground, not caring if the d
roid scored a few light hits at this terminal stage. There was only one possible outcome now.
He pushed again, and the hull bent outward. The droid gave up all attempts to fight back and concentrated solely on survival. Its legs left deep scratches in the metal as they fought to maintain their purchase. But Starkiller’s strength was too great, when combined with the strange effects of hyperspace outside. One claw slipped, then another, and then, with a final shriek of metal, it vanished, swept away by forces neither of them could understand.
Starkiller staggered backward, weakened by the effort and feeling giddy from the sudden drop in pressure. He hurried to a hatch leading down to the secondary reactor that had been the cause of all the fuss. It was sealed tight against the vacuum, but with the last of his strength he forced it open and fell through. He landed heavily on his back and stared up at the ceiling. The hatch slammed shut behind him. Deeply, gratefully, he filled his lungs.
Gradually he became aware of alarms and his comlink squawking. He reached down and brought it up to his mouth.
“What is it, Kota?”
“I’ve been trying to ask you the same question,” the general shot back. “The hull breach on deck three—your doing?”
“The reactor’s out of danger now,” he said. “How’s the rest of the ship?”
“Holding together.”
“ETA?”
“You might want to get moving if you intend being on the bridge when we arrive.”
Starkiller groaned and sat up. Two nervous reactor technicians he hadn’t noticed before backed deeper into the corner they occupied.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m one of the good guys.”
They didn’t look terribly reassured, and he couldn’t blame them. His black flight uniform was torn and charred; laser-cauterized wounds covered almost every square centimeter of his exposed skin; his face was smudged and bruised. Favoring his right leg very slightly, he left the technicians to tend the machine in their care, and began the complicated ascent back to the bridge, through damaged decks and past mounds of wreckage and bodies everywhere.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II Page 19
