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 tightly 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 took 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 tall 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 be 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 times you betray him, he keeps returning for more. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s been on your side the whole time, 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 o
f 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 out again. They were perhaps halfway up the cloning spire, in a section heavily guarded by stormtroopers. The tubes 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 out, blindly. One hand batted 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 tube in more detail. 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 tank 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.
A space battle.
Abruptly, Vader turned and stalked back to her, his cloak heavy and wet from the rain. He raised a gloved hand as though to strike her, and she didn’t pull away. She couldn’t fight him; she knew that very well. But she wouldn’t cringe before him, either.
“I sense your fear,” he said. With a single, surprisingly swift motion, he ripped the patch from her mouth. “Your doubt, too, is clear to me.”
The rain was cooling against her red-raw lips. “What doubt?” she asked, attempting to brazen out his uncanny insight into her mind.
He took one step to his right, and turned to face the way he had been before. Ahead of them, in the clouds, was a patch of yellow light. Not the sun, or even a bright moon. This was shifting slightly and growing brighter by the second. A meteor, she thought, coming right at her.
“Is that … ?”
Vader put his hands on his hips and nodded in satisfaction.
“He is almost here.”
CHAPTER 19
BARELY A MINUTE into the dive, Starkiller knew he had to move. Nebulon-B frigates weren’t designed for rapid reentry. Anything over eight hundred kilometers an hour risked tearing off control vanes and external sensors—and the Salvation was already doing far in excess of that.
The ship shook and thundered. Strange screeching noises ran from nose to tail, as though it might tear apart at any moment. It would physically hold together long enough—he was sure of that, but the controls in the bridge were already approaching useless. The main display was full of static. He could barely make out the planet, let alone the location he was aiming for.
He needed a better vantage point if he was going to pull this off.
That he was effectively riding in a giant metal coffin was an additional thought he tried to suppress.
The ship could fly itself for a short time. He had patched the navicomp into what remained of targeting computers, leaving him reasonably certain that it could point and thrust effectively while his hands were off the controls. He didn’t want to leave it long, though, so he ran for the exit and headed upward as fast as he could, taking turbolift shafts and passages cut by the bounty hunter wherever he could. He ignored bodies, personal effects, fires—everything. Where doors or bulkheads lay in his path, he telekinetically ripped them aside and kept running.
The ship lurched beneath him as he entered the upper decks. That, he presumed, was the result of the primary forward laser cannon being ripped away by the rising atmospheric friction. Its center of gravity perturbed, the ship began to sway from side to side. He tried not to imagine superheated air boiling up through the infrastructure from the hole left behind. He would be exposed to the same soon enough.
He reached the freshwater tanks and began moving horizontally, toward the rear rather than forward. When he reached the surgery suite—even more of a bloody mess than it had been before—he headed upward again, to where the short-range communications array protruded from a bulge on the frigate’s upper fore section.
He could hear the air rushing past as he approached the outer hull. It sounded like a mad giant screaming.
The ship lurched again, but less noisily this time. The rupture was more distant—probably the static discharge vanes on the aft section, he decided. That would rob the ship of even more stability.
Even as he thought that, the Salvation began slewing from side to side.
“Hang in there,” he told the ship. “I’m coming.”
He found a maintenance ladder leading to an air lock and leapt up it in two bounds, blowing the inner hatch as he came. He could feel a wild drumming from the far side of the o
uter door. The ship was moving so fast now that unexposed flesh wouldn’t last a microsecond. He would have to rely on a Force shield to keep him safe. A single lapse in concentration would be the end of him.
He took a second to compose himself.
For Juno.
Then he raised a hand and telekinetically burst through the outer hatch.
Instantly the world was fire. The air around the ship consisted of a blinding plasma, hotter than any ordinary flame. He forced his way into it, bracing himself against metal rungs that had turned instantly red on exposure to the outside. His eyes narrowed to slits in order to make out even the nearest outline. He could barely see the fingers in front of his face.
He didn’t need to see. The Force guided him, move by move, out onto the hull, where he braced himself with his back to the short-range array and turned to face forward. Like Kota, he would see without eyes.
A trembling shape up and to his left chose that moment to give way, showering molten fragments all along the spine of the ship. The primary array was no great loss: he couldn’t have heard anyone anyway over the racket in his ears. But the forward turbolasers and primary sensor unit, the next two chunks to go, were more of a concern. The ship was seriously unbalanced now. It shuddered underfoot, pulling wildly in different directions. If he was going to prevent it slipping into an uncontrollable tumble or tearing apart, he had to act quickly and decisively.
This was where it got difficult. He needed to maintain the Force shield against the sort of heat he might find in the outer layers of a star. He also had to keep in mind the target ahead—a target he couldn’t see through the plasma, but had to hit square-on or else the planetary shield generators wouldn’t fail. No matter what happened, he had to fly straight.
Starkiller took a deep breath. The cool trapped air behind the shield would last long enough, he hoped. He had been too worried about frying to consider suffocating to death.
He raised his hands and spread his fingers wide. His eyes closed tightly against the fiery brightness of the plasma. With each bucking and shaking of the ship beneath him, he encouraged himself to ride with it instead of fighting it. He was part of the ship, not a passenger. He was the ship, not a reckless pilot guiding it to destruction.
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