Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

by Williams, Sean

  In the same way that he could feel his fingers and toes, his mind seeped outward into the metal and plastoid of the frigate, until every joint and weld, every porthole and deck became part of his sense of being. There was no line anymore between Starkiller and the Salvation. They were one and the same being, from the perspective of the Force.

  He raised his right arm, and the ship followed the movement, listing slowly and heavily to starboard. Some of the headlong shuddering faded, as though it were grateful to have someone at the helm again. Even the wind’s shrieking seemed to ebb.

  Something tore away at aft of the ship, and he bent his knees slightly to absorb the shock.

  The Salvation steadied, found a new center of gravity, and roared on.

  Confident that his vast metal charge was now under control, he cast his mind outward. He was shocked by how far he had fallen. The Salvation must have punctured the planetory shield itself some time ago, and he simply hadn’t noticed in all the turbulence. Now the cloud cover was less than a hundred meters below and coming up quickly. Behind the Salvation, a long fiery wake stretched across the sky, trailed by starfighters, and, farther back, capital ships on both sides, coming through the hole in the shield. The generators below would soon repair the hole, if he didn’t guide his hurtling missile correctly, leaving the Rebel ships on the inside trapped, with him.

  Assuming he survived …

  For Juno.

  The frigate slammed into the clouds with a tearing sound. At that speed, individual droplets of water hit like thermal detonators. The Salvation’s own shields were holding, barely, but even so it lost still more of its mass to the ongoing battering. Several lower decks peeled back and were swept away, including the bridge. Most of the short-range array was gone, leaving him with just the base to hold him steady. He clenched his hands into fists and willed the ship to keep going.

  Something succumbed to the plasma with a flash. A bright spark tumbled in his wake—the secondary reactor he had spent so much energy saving from the giant droid. He ignored it. The bottom of the cloud layer was approaching, and with it would come his first clear glimpse of the shield generators.

  The air became still and relatively quiet when the Salvation punched through the clouds. The extra friction had slowed the frigate somewhat, making it a more manageable beast. Starkiller opened his eyes and discovered that he could see over the bulge of the forward decks to his destination. Perhaps some of the hull had been ripped away there, too.

  The cloning facility lay spread out ahead of him. Had he wanted to, he could have hit it dead-center and wiped it off the face of Kamino. And had Juno not been inside, he would have been tempted. He felt no sentimental attachment to the place of his rebirth, and if there was any chance of taking out Darth Vader with it, all the better.

  His sole target, however, was the shield generator buildings, and at last he saw them, as clear as they had seemed from the bridge, directly ahead.

  Carefully, wary of putting too much strain on an already overtaxed chassis, he nudged the Salvation’s nose down. If he came in low and hit the ocean first, he could concentrate the damage to one location. If he overreached by so much as a degree, he might miss the ocean completely and scrape a long, fiery line right through the heart of the facility.

  The Salvation resisted. He pushed harder. The nose descended and held there for ten seconds, strain echoing all through the ship. It wasn’t made for anything like this. Nothing larger than a starfighter was. Neither was he.

  With a bone-jarring crack, the spine connecting fore and aft sections of the frigate snapped clean through. Starkiller reached out with the Force, trying desperately to keep the two pieces together, but nothing could be done. They were already moving on slightly different trajectories. Air and debris sprayed from the great wound that separated them, providing entirely unpredictable thrust.

  Groaning, juddering, the fore section began to lift again. Starkiller didn’t fight it. With so much mass already stripped from it, the damage it would do when it hit was negligible. The rear was the priority. The heavy engines and main reactor continued powering forward on the trajectory it had originally been following. Was that the right trajectory or not? Starkiller anxiously studied its fall, projecting it forward to the best of his senses.

  It looked good. He felt positive about it. Keeping an eye on the stubby rear section as it passed under him, he braced himself for impact. Barely a minute remained now. If he survived the crash, he would soon know whether he was right or not.

  Ahead, a series of cloning towers loomed, standing as upright and tall as wroshyr trees on Kashyyyk. The fore section he stood upon was going to come down among them, doing a considerable amount of damage in the process. Starkiller didn’t mind. Until their memories were activated, clones weren’t truly alive; they were little more than meat in suspended animation. And the technicians attending them were servants of the Empire, and therefore viable targets. Some of them, perhaps, were responsible for his birth, if clone he truly was, and for their complicity in Vader’s twisted plans. He smiled as his fiery steed descended toward them, imagining them fleeing in the face of the meteor as it grew large in the sky.

  He could actually see tiny long-necked figures running through the complex, white-armored stormtroopers resolutely standing at their stations, and a black-robed figure looming high above them all, watching him approach.

  Vader.

  Below and slightly ahead, the engines struck the surface of the sea, sending a wave of superheated steam radiating outward along the wave tops.

  Starkiller couldn’t take his eyes off his former Master. He was right in his path, and not even moving! For a moment Starkiller couldn’t understand why—until, next to Vader, bound in shackles and so small he had barely noticed her, he saw—

  Juno.

  A huge eruption heralded the impact of the engines into the side of the shield generators. The sky and sea convulsed. A shock wave spread through the facility, making the cloning towers sway. The fore section of the Salvation rolled to starboard, but not by enough to miss the cloning towers. Its terminus was fixed.

  Just seconds remained before the Salvation’s fore section hit Kamino. The facility was in close focus ahead of him, and he imagined he could see Juno’s eyes widening on seeing him, haloed with his Force shield on top of her precious ship. Did she know it was him, or did she wonder at this strange apparition? Did she imagine that he was her death coming at last, from the skies instead of Darth Vader’s hand?

  Starkiller closed his eyes. He didn’t have time to wonder what was going through her mind. He had to think of something fast, or Juno was going to die.

  There was only one thing he could do, and although he knew he wasn’t likely to survive, he didn’t hesitate. What was death when the love of his former life was at stake? Besides, anything was possible. Dying, as he had thought once before, always seemed to bring out the best in him.

  With his mind and all the power of the Force, Starkiller embraced what remained of the frigate beneath him—and blew it into a billion pieces.

  CHAPTER 20

  JUNO WAS HYPNOTIZED by the fiery blaze in the sky. Ever since it had broached the cloud cover, two things had become clear. It was a ship, a big ship, and it was going to hit the facility. The roar it made vied with thunder for loudest sound in the sky. Lightning scattered from the disturbed clouds in its wake.

  Then the falling ship had split in two, with one half powering down at a steeper angle, and the other continuing onward. Only then had she realized that the second one was coming right for her.

  “Was this part of your plan?” she asked Vader, who still stood, unmoving, beside her.

  He didn’t respond. Neither did he make any move toward the ramp that might take him to safety. Maybe, she thought, he had other means of protecting himself, means that neither she nor the stormtroopers possessed. She could see that they were getting nervous, too. The fiery balls grew brighter and brighter until they were almost too painful
to look at. She refused to avert her eyes.

  The first came down hard and fast, striking a well-defended portion of the facility outside the dome immediately surrounding her. There was a bright flash of light. The boom followed later, along with a rising sensation that she assumed was the shock wave rolling through the flexible foundations of the ocean-bound facility. She could see the cloning towers swaying from side to side. A vast column of flash-boiled steam and wreckage rose up into the sky. Hot, damp air rushed outward in its wake.

  Still the other fragment of the ship came toward her. Seconds remained before it hit—not long enough to think anything coherent, barely time even to observe what was happening. The stricken ship was glowing red, with the last shreds of plasma still clinging to it like flames. Its class was almost unrecognizable, but she made out stumps that might once have been a communications array on the upper port side. That made it a Nebulon-B frigate, one of many EF76s in the service of either the Empire or the Rebel Alliance. It could have been any one of them.

  So why, then, did she feel a cold stab of certainty in her gut that this was none other than the Salvation?

  Her own ship was going to kill her.

  The irony wasn’t lost on her.

  At the last instant she made out a tiny human figure standing on the upper hull. The flames and rushing wind swept past him, as though he were impervious to their touch. His arms were upraised in defiance and his head was tipped back so she couldn’t see his face. But she knew. Just as she knew that it was the Salvation, she knew it was him.

  He would come for her in flames and smoke, wreaking destruction all around.

  Despite the apparent certainty of her death, she smiled. Either he would save her—in which case there was nothing to worry about—or he wouldn’t, and she didn’t want to live anyway.

  The ship was almost upon them when the figure brought his hands down in a fierce, pounding motion, and the last solid fragment of the Salvation exploded into fiery pieces.

  She had to close her eyes. The conflagration was too intense, and the sound was that of worlds ending. The cloning tower kicked beneath her. She was momentarily afraid that she might be falling with it into the sea. But then she was rising again, and she understood that the structure had survived, somehow, and so had she.

  Her eyelids flickered, braving the brightness that only slowly faded around her. A cloud of hot metallic fragments was spreading across the city. Dense splinters rained from it, hissing where they landed. Heavier fragments struck with more substantial thuds, near and far. None struck her. The rain ceased for a moment, and then returned, settling the cloud of dust still further. Of the Salvation, nothing at all remained.

  Darth Vader lowered the hand he had risen to shield his helmet and took stock around him. Juno did the same. Fires blazed in the wreckage where the rear half of the Salvation had come down. Alarms sounded through the facility, loud enough even for Juno’s blast-numbed ears to hear them. Ash was settling on every horizontal surface and forming a thick, gray sludge.

  Above, the clouds, already disturbed by the Salvation’s fiery passage, were being torn apart by a new outrage. Starfighters and capital ships powered down from orbit in large numbers, dodging and firing at one another as they went. Juno recognized more frigates, and dozens of Headhunter, Y-wing, and TIE fighters. There were bombers, cruisers, even Star Destroyers bringing up the rear. An all-out war was taking place above Kamino, between Imperial and Alliance forces, and it, too, was growing ever nearer.

  “I ask again, is this part of the plan?”

  Instead of answering, Vader stalked off, waving for the stormtroopers to remain where they were. When he was gone, they stationed themselves several paces away from her and carefully watched the perimeter around them. High above their heads, the secure facility’s dome began to close.

  Juno coughed and wished she could wipe her eyes clear of ash. Her ship had blown itself practically to atoms; she had seen it happen, right in front of her. There was no chance at all that Starkiller could have survived. He had been riding right on top of it.

  But she knew as well as they did that this wasn’t the end. He had come back from the dead sufficient times now to make anything possible. Anything at all.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE GIANT REPTILIAN biped loomed over him, roaring in its own language. He didn’t understand what it was saying. Fear made it almost impossible to think. All Starkiller wanted to do was run.

  A bright yellow blade slashed across his vision, and the lizard fell backward, dead. The woman who had wielded the blade rushed to him and enfolded him in her cloak. He tried not to cry, but the fear was too great.

  “Take him, Mallie—take him somewhere safe!” His father’s voice cut through the screams and shouts that filled the village. “I’ll hold them off.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Kento. You can’t do it alone.”

  “I can slow them down while you get into the forest. Go!”

  “No.” Mallie stood up and faced her husband. “You know Kkowir better than I do.”

  “All you have to do is get to the Kerritamba, or if they’re under attack, try the Myyydril caverns as a last resort—”

  “But there’s the Sayormi to think about, and the dead area. You’re the expert, Kento. If anyone goes, it should be you.”

  The boy looked up at his parents in anxious confusion, unable to understand what the argument was about. Weren’t they both coming? Wasn’t it time to run now?

  Explosions sent trees tumbling nearby. One of them crushed the hut he had known all his conscious life. There his mother had told him stories of the great Wookiee warriors and showed him how to braid his own friendship band. There his father had thrown him up to the ceiling and held him floating aloft, spinning as though sitting on air. The crushing of the walls sent splinters flying, and he screamed at the thought of everything he loved disappearing in an instant.

  More of the big lizards came running out of the trees, firing at the villagers and setting their hair on fire.

  His father went to run forward, his blue lightsaber raised, but his mother caught his arm.

  “Kento,” she said in a soft but firm voice, “you know I’m right.”

  His anguish was plain to see, even for a very young child. When he sagged, something broke inside him.

  “You always are, my love.”

  They embraced, quickly, and then she ran toward the lizards, shouting a battle cry. Her son cried out, too, wondering where she was going, but his father scooped him up and began running for the trees.

  “Don’t worry, son,” he said as they escaped. “I’ll keep you safe. And when she comes back, we’ll make a new home. Somewhere safe and special, I promise you.”

  Behind them, the lizards cried out in surprise and pain. He tried to look, but his father held on too tightly. And when the trees enfolded them, the sound of his mother fighting became muffled and indistinct. Slowly, over the course of many years, it faded into silence.

  STARKILLER’S EYES JERKED OPEN. Where was he? All was dark around him. He smelled smoke and his body felt as though it had been hit by an asteroid. The last thing he remembered was tightening the Force shield around him and destroying the Salvation so it wouldn’t kill Juno. He was somewhere on Kamino, then. But his mind remained full of strange images and feelings that he had never experienced before.

  Kashyyyk. Trandoshan slavers. His parents …?

  He tried to shrug them off. They had been dead for a long time, and the living mattered more. But he was struck by this brief glimpse of the woman who had given birth to him. Tall, with short brown hair and a physique honed by years of training, she, too, had been a Jedi Knight, like her husband. She had been a warrior, and yet she had loved her son as well. She had loved him and most likely died defending him and the Wookiees they had befriended. And until this moment, he had never known she existed or that his father had made a promise he couldn’t keep.

  Where had the memory come from?

  It
didn’t matter. She didn’t matter. Starkiller had to get moving, or the promise he had made to himself would also go unfulfilled.

  For Juno.

  He reached for his comlink, but it was gone. Lost during the fall, presumably. He sat up and felt around him, seeking the dimensions of the space he found himself in. It was a deep, stone pit—and for a terrible moment he feared that he was back in the training rooms Vader had confined him to ever since his reawakening. But then he found a doorway, not far from the pile of rubble he had brought down with him. Somewhere far above, he was sure, was the hole he had made when he had hit the facility. There was no way of telling now just how far he had tumbled, burning and smoking like a meteor.

  He wrenched the door off its hinges. Outside was marginally lighter. A corridor led off into the distance. He loped along it, concentrating on faint sounds of fighting in the distance. Numerous varieties of weapons were in play, and several starfighters screamed overhead. That meant the shields were safely down, and the Rebel forces were making their way into the facility. He allowed himself a small feeling of satisfaction, even though he knew the battle was far from won. The Imperials were well entrenched on Kamino. They wouldn’t go down without a fight.

  The corridor led to a darkened command room. He flicked a switch and its blast shields opened, letting in the cool gray light of the outside world. Details assaulted him, too many at once. The first thing he needed to do was work out where he was. To his right were the cloning spires where he had seen Juno, now protected behind a clear, curved dome. They were too smoke-blackened to make out if she was still there. A thick column of steam rose up from the shield generators, forming a spreading mushroom cloud high above the facility. Fighters on both sides dodged and weaved around the cloud, while higher up capital ships vied for ascendancy.