A familiar shape swooped overhead. The Rogue Shadow had scored some new dents and scratches during the action, but looked unharmed in any significant way. Rebel soldiers had cleared a space for it on the rooftop, and Kota loped off to supervise the next stage in the operation. Juno watched the ship descend lightly on its repulsors, and found herself looking forward to getting behind the controls again.
Just like old times, she thought. With the Empire on their heels, an uncertain future ahead, and fragile hope in their hearts.
“Excuse me, Captain Eclipse.”
Juno forced herself to tear her gaze from the ship. “Yes, PROXY, what is it?”
“While ascending through the cloning spire, I couldn’t help noticing the remains of several droids of my class. I wonder if, with your permission, I could attempt to salvage some of the components I require to restore my primary programming.”
The droid blinked anxiously at her, and Juno could see no reason to refuse. “All right, but don’t take too long. Imperial reinforcements will be here soon, and you don’t want to be left behind.”
“No, I do not. Thank you, Captain Eclipse.” PROXY hurried off, dodging and weaving around soldiers and technicians making ready the harness that would keep the Rogue Shadow’s new passenger secure.
Juno’s mood darkened at that thought. Hardly like old times at all, with him aboard. Still, it wouldn’t be for long, and if all went well, he’d soon be out of the picture entirely, and she, along with the rest of the galaxy, would breathe a heartfelt sigh of relief.
THE HARNESS SEEMED large enough to hold a rancor, and still the soldiers were nervous. Starkiller stayed nearby, in case of slip-ups or the slightest hint of an escape attempt. Except for one moment, when the harness swung a little too far to the right and threatened to hit the Rogue Shadow’s air lock frame, he let the soldiers do their work unimpeded. A slight nudge through the Force put the harness on course again, and no one was the wiser.
Kota followed the harness inside to check that it was firmly secured to the deck and ceiling. Starkiller didn’t go with him. He still wasn’t certain he had done the right thing.
Twice now, he’d had Vader at his mercy. Twice, Kota had talked him out of it. He wasn’t sure if that was wisdom of the highest order, or madness utterly beyond his understanding. If Vader broke free, he knew he’d never get a third chance.
He had to make this one count.
Kota emerged, looking satisfied.
“Did he say anything to you?” Starkiller asked.
“Not a word.”
“He never told me anything worth hearing in my entire life. What makes you think he’ll talk to anyone on Dantooine?”
“Everyone has their breaking point,” said the general. “Even him.”
“I think he passed his years ago.”
Kota’s blind eyes searched Starkiller’s face, but he said nothing.
Starkiller told himself to be happy. He had everything he had set out from Kamino to find, and more. The only thing he had forgotten to think about was what happened next.
“Brought you here, the galaxy has,” the strange creature on Dagobah had told him. “Your path clearly this is.”
Maybe this was his path, then. But if so, he remained utterly in the dark as to what lay at the end of it.
PROXY hurried past them and up the ramp into the ship, clutching a tangled mess of droid parts to his chest. He looked like a droid on a mission, and Starkiller took that as his cue to enter the ship, too. He couldn’t avoid going up the ramp forever. That was a journey whose end he was completely sure about.
He found the droid in the crew quarters, taking out bits and pieces of his own circuitry and plugging new modules in their place, prompting strange responses as he did so. His photoreceptors went from yellow to green and back again. Holographic limbs came and went. Weird buzzes and squeaks issued from his vocabulator.
“What are you doing, PROXY?” asked Starkiller, alarmed.
The droid looked up at him, and didn’t seem to recognize him for a moment. He took a half-melted circuit block out of the back of his skull and inserted the original back in place.
“My primary program is still missing, Master,” he said. “I am trying to replace it.”
“Are these from the droids I killed?” Starkiller asked, stirring the parts with a finger.
“Yes, Master. It is clear now that my line did not end with my manufacture.”
PROXY took out another block from his head and replaced it with one from the pile. Instantly his holoprojectors went crazy, shooting electrical arcs around the room. His arms and legs flailed, and Starkiller quickly reached over to remove the offending component.
“I think you should be careful,” he said as PROXY settled back down. Thin streamers of smoke rose up from the droid’s joints. “Better to have no primary program than no existence at all.”
The droid looked disconsolate. “That is what Captain Eclipse says, but I do not understand why. My malfunctions upset her. I fear she may have me melted down if they continue.”
“She would never do that,” said Starkiller, hoping it wasn’t true. “Describe these malfunctions to me. Maybe I can help.”
PROXY did so, quickly and clinically, even though it clearly caused him discomfort to admit to his faults.
“Most disturbing,” he concluded, “was the period when I looked like you, Master. For some reason I could not return to my normal form. That was when Captain Eclipse shut me down, for her good as well as mine.”
“I understand,” Starkiller said. He could imagine what Juno had felt with an identical copy of him hanging around, talking like PROXY talked, when he had been supposedly dead and gone. He hated the thought of it as well.
He understood on a deeper level, too.
“Something lost.” The voice of the wise little creature on Dagobah returned to him again. “A part of yourself, perhaps?”
“I think you’re trying to replace the wrong thing,” he said, indicating the chips and circuits from the dead droids. “Look at the people you’re imitating and ask yourself—do they have something in common? Maybe they possess something you’re missing.”
PROXY gravely considered the possibility. “Perhaps, but apart from all being human and known to me, I can’t see how you, Captain Eclipse, General Kota, Mon Mothma, and Princess Leia are similar at all.”
“Well, give it some more thought. That’s an order.”
“Yes, Master. I will do my best.” PROXY began fishing around in the pile of spare parts again, clearly not intending to abandon that pursuit as well.
“Just remember that I need you in one piece, no matter what kind of primary programming you have.”
“Yes, Master.”
Starkiller stood. He and PROXY were still alone on the ship, apart from the prisoner, but that would soon change. It was time to get it over with.
Leaving PROXY to piece himself together, Starkiller walked through the ship to the entrance of the meditation chamber. There he took a deep breath and checked that Vader’s lightsaber was safely at his side.
The door slid open at his touch. Two small overhead lights illuminated the entrance. More flickered on as he walked into the circular space. He didn’t hesitate; his step never faltered. Inside, though, he felt only conflict and confusion.
He stopped in front of the harness. The last of the lights flickered on, revealing the harness and the prisoner contained within. Darth Vader’s arms were hidden from the elbows down by thick, durasteel cuffs; his legs below the knees, likewise. Thick magna locks encased his waist, chest, and throat. A cage surrounded his helmet, leaving only the “face” exposed. A faint hum of energy fields pervaded the air. One more step closer, Starkiller knew, and he risked disintegration.
His former Master had no choice but to look down at him. Even Vader, with his prodigious strength and willpower, could barely turn his head. The only sound was the relentless in–out of his respirator.
Starkiller returned the s
tare, acutely aware that he had initiated this confrontation and that, even in the harness, his Master seemed more imposing and threatening than ever.
He didn’t know what he had come to say, exactly, but he could feel his determination fading fast.
“I let you live,” he said before he could think about it too much.
He meant it as a provocation, but it emerged more like a question, an expression of disbelief, as though he himself still didn’t quite believe what he had done. If he had truly cast aside the Sith’s notion of destiny—to kill his own Master—what did that leave him now? Did he even have a destiny, in this life?
Vader said nothing.
“You tell me I’m a clone—a failed clone. But I chose to spare you. Does this prove you right or wrong?”
Still Vader said nothing.
“Maybe Kota is right,” he said more softly. “Maybe everything you told me was a trick. Maybe you were trying to get me so confused I’d forget who I really am and become your slave again.”
His eyes narrowed as they took in the restraints keeping his former Master utterly helpless.
“Either way, I’ve finally broken your hold over me.”
Vader stared at him, unable to convey anything by expression or body language. It was like talking to a statue.
With a small, disgusted sound, Starkiller turned to leave.
“As long as she lives,” Darth Vader said, “I will always control you.”
Starkiller stopped and almost turned. What was this? Another empty threat? A last desperate mind game? The truth … ?
It didn’t deserve a reply. He wouldn’t give Vader the satisfaction of seeing his face, and the uncertainty he was sure it displayed.
When he left the room, the lights flickered out and the door slid securely closed behind him.
THERE WERE SURVIVORS of the Salvation among the troops on the ground. Juno had no intentions of going anywhere until they were accounted for and provided with berths on Alliance ships. Several Imperial vessels had been commandeered from the landing bays on Kamino; she felt it her duty to ensure at least a couple of them went to “her” crew. She didn’t know how long it was going to be before she would be in such a position again. Perhaps when more of the Mon Calamari cruisers came into service …
Juno thought of Nitram and how he had betrayed her to Mon Mothma. She couldn’t begrudge him that, although it had caused her inconvenience at the time; just like her, he had only been trying to do the right thing. It didn’t seem fair that he was dead, while she lived on. Had she been standing where he was on the bridge of the Salvation, she would be in his place. Had he had someone like Starkiller to champion him, he might still be alive.
One of the downsides of command, she told herself, was losing good crew to the vagaries of fate. Best she got used to it—just as Vader’s bounty hunter would have to get used to the idea that he wouldn’t be paid for this particular job, now that his employer was locked up for good …
Finally everything was ready for departure. The decoy freighters were loaded with fake cargoes and crewed by people either utterly loyal or, if there was a chance of a traitor among them, at least aware that they were part of a much larger deception. Only a handful of critical personnel knew precisely who was going where. The betrayal of the fleet’s location by the Itani Nebula was still fresh in everyone’s minds.
“Word will get to the Emperor eventually,” she said to Kota as they took their leave of each other on top of the cloning tower. The whining of engines was rising all around them. “We can’t avoid it.”
“So we get our demands in earlier,” the general said, “or we allow him to sweat for a bit. That’s Mon Mothma’s decision. Just get Vader to Dantooine in one piece and leave the rest to me.”
“Of course.” She saluted.
He returned the salute. “We’ll be waiting for you.”
“Not if I get there first.”
Kota jumped into a waiting shuttle and ascended immediately in the direction of the new frigate. Juno took one last look around the surface of Kamino, and shivered. The clouds had closed over again. A new storm was brewing on the western horizon.
She was the last one left on the roof of the cloning spire, where so many awful and wonderful things had happened. Soon it would be gone forever. Tightening the collar around her bruised throat, she ran up the ramp and into the Rogue Shadow, vowing never to look back.
Darth Vader was standing in the crew compartment, domed head looming high above hers, seeming to fill the whole ship with shadow.
Juno reached for the blaster at her side, heart thudding hard in her chest.
With a flash of light, Vader disappeared.
“PROXY?” Juno lowered the blaster. Her hands were shaking. “What on Coruscant are you playing at?”
“I am experimenting, Captain Eclipse,” said the droid, reaching up to tap the back of his head. “My Master suggested that I ask myself what the people I have been imitating have in common. The only detail I can discern is that they have a sense of purpose beyond themselves. They stand for principles, not just self-preservation—as I must, too, in order to be whole.”
She remembered what Leia had said about their being a message behind PROXY’s manifestations. “Maybe you knew that all along, on that deeper level of programming you talked about, and you’ve been trying to tell yourself about it.”
“That is possible.”
“But Darth Vader fits … how, exactly?”
“I am as yet unsure. This may be a residue from one of the chips I have salvaged.”
“He serves a Master, too, don’t forget. And if he has any principles, they’re not anything you’d want to follow.”
“Assuredly not, Captain Eclipse.”
PROXY look pleased, and she didn’t have the heart to argue the point.
“Well, good, I guess,” she said. “I’m glad your primary program is finally fixed. We’re going to need you in full working order.”
“I exist to serve, Captain.”
Juno brushed past him to the bridge, where Starkiller was sitting in the copilot’s seat. A hit of déjà vu struck her as she crossed the threshold.
He looked up. “Anything wrong?”
“Absolutely nothing,” she said, coming to sit next to him, at the controls. Although she hadn’t been inside the Rogue Shadow for more than a year, the layout of the console seemed as familiar to her as the back of her hands. As the battered fatigue on Starkiller’s face.
PROXY took his seat behind them. “All systems are fully functional,” he assured her.
She placed her hands on the controls. A series of deft touches closed the ramp and brought the repulsors to life. Gently, the Rogue Shadow lifted off and rose into the sky.
Starkiller’s expression was impassive, but she could tell that he was watching closely as the cloning towers receded below them. Barely had they lifted off when the first of the gutted Star Destroyers hit the ocean several klicks away. There was a flash like the rising of the sun as several megatons of water instantly vaporized. The shock wave radiated outward in a wave of steam hundreds of meters high. In seconds, the tsunami reached the towers, knocking them over and occluding the wreckage from sight.
Ahead, bright stars appeared through the thinning atmosphere. Dotted among them, the shining constellation of the Rebel fleet, all proudly marked with the symbol of the Alliance: Starkiller’s family crest, with none of the soldiers or commanders aware that the one who had inspired it was among them again.
The Rogue Shadow joined twelve small freighters in orbit above the waterworld.
“You have your orders,” said Commodore Viedas to each of them in a firm and steady voice. “May the Force be with you.”
One by one, the freighters accelerated, each heading along a different trajectory into hyperspace.
Juno counted them off, double-checking the course for Dantooine. As their numbers dwindled, she glanced at Starkiller, who was still staring back at Kamino. The expanding circular
shock wave looked like the pupil of an enormous eye.
He was difficult to read sometimes, and this was no exception. She reached out and placed a hand on his forearm, breaking his concentration.
“Ready for lightspeed,” she said.
He managed a smile. “I’m ready for anything.” Her other hand pushed a lever on the console, and the hyperdrives kicked into life. The Rogue Shadow flung itself forward. Stars turned to streaks ahead of them. This time, Juno hoped, the past was left far, far behind.
The galaxy has always been a dangerous place, but for the most famous singer in the universe, Javul Charn, it’s become downright deadly: murder is stalking her tour. What she needs is protection.
What she gets is Dash Rendar.
Between the discovery of dead bodies in a cargo hold and an attack by an unidentified warship, Black Sun intimidation and Imperial scrutiny, it’s up to Dash and co-pilot Eaden Vrill to try to understand who is terrorizing Javul’s tour and why.
STAR WARS®
SHADOW GAMES
A Star Wars Thriller
by
Michael Reaves and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
On Sale from Del Rey Books Winter 2011
“LEVEL ONE!”
The lift plunged, severing the darkstick’s thick hilt. The blade dropped to the floor at Dash’s feet, reddish, viscous liquid oozing from the tip.
“Wh-who was that?” Javul was huddled in a corner of the lift.
Dash reached down to haul her to her feet, avoiding the dripping tip of the darkstick. “I have no idea. I thought maybe you did.”
“Me? How would I know?” She was terrified—finally, when it might be too late. Her breath was coming in sharp gasps and all the blood had leached from her face. She was shaking.
Dash pulled her to his side, trying to think fast and well. If they went all the way to the first floor, made their way toward the Falcon’s berth, chose a way up at random …
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II Page 28
