Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

by Williams, Sean

  Satisfied that nothing too vulnerable was exposed, she peered out from cover and hefted her modified snub rifle. Illegal on Coruscant except for elite special forces commandos, it featured a powerful sniper sight, which she trained on the Black Sun safehouse. The main entrance was deserted, and there was no sign of the roof guard. That was unexpected. Still the blasterfire came from within the fortified building. Could it be a trap of some kind?

  Wishing as always that she had backup, she lowered the rifle and lifted her helmeted head into full view. No one took a potshot at her. No one even noticed her. The only people she could see were locals running for cover. But for the commotion coming from within, the street could have been completely deserted.

  Trap or no trap, she decided to get closer. Rattling slightly, and ignoring the places where her secondhand armor chafed, Larin hustled low and fast from cover to cover until she was just meters from the front entrance. The weapons-fire was deafening now, and screaming came with it. She tried to identify the weapons. Blaster pistols and rifles of several different makes; at least one floor-mounted cannon; two or three vibrosaws; and beneath all that, a different sound. A roaring, as of superheated gases jetting violently through a nozzle.

  A flamethrower.

  No gang she’d heard of used fire. The risk of a blaze spreading everywhere was too high. Only someone from outside would employ a weapon like that. Only someone who didn’t care what damage he left in his wake.

  Something exploded in an upper room, sending a shower of bricks and dust into the street. Larin ducked instinctively, but the wall held. If it had collapsed, she would have been buried under meters of rubble.

  Her left hand wanted to count down, and she let it. It felt wrong otherwise. Moving in—in three … two … one …

  Silence fell.

  She froze. It was as though someone had pulled a switch. One minute, nine kinds of chaos had been unfolding inside the building. Now there was nothing.

  She pulled her hand in, countdown forgotten. She wasn’t going anywhere until she knew what had just happened and who was involved.

  Something collapsed inside the building. Larin gripped her rifle more tightly. Footsteps crunched toward the entrance. One set of feet: that was all.

  She stood up in full view of the entrance, placed herself side-on to reduce the target she made, and trained her rifle on the darkened doorway.

  The footsteps came closer—unhurried, confident, heavy. Very heavy.

  The moment she saw movement in the doorway, she cried out in a firm voice, “Hold it right there.”

  Booted feet assumed a standing position. Armored shins in metallic gray and green.

  “Move slowly forward, into the light.”

  The owner of the legs took one step, then two, revealing a Mandalorian so tall his helmeted head brushed the top of the doorway.

  “That’s far enough.”

  “For what?”

  Larin maintained her cool in the face of that harsh, inhuman voice, although it was difficult. She’d seen Mandalorians in action before, and she knew how woefully equipped she was to deal with one now. “For you to tell me what you were doing in there.”

  The domed head inclined slightly. “I was seeking information.”

  “So you’re a bounty hunter?”

  “Does it matter what I am?”

  “It does when you’re messing up my people.”

  “You do not look like a member of the Black Sun syndicate.”

  “I never said I was.”

  “You haven’t said you aren’t, either.” The massive figure shifted slightly, finding a new balance. “I’m seeking information concerning a woman called Lema Xandret.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “Are you certain of that?”

  “I thought I was the one asking questions here.”

  “You thought wrong.”

  The Mandalorian raised one arm to point at her. A hatch in his sleeve opened, revealing the flamethrower she’d heard in action earlier. She steadied her grip and tried desperately to remember where the weak points on Mandalorian armor were—if there were any …

  “Don’t,” said a commanding voice to her left.

  Larin glanced automatically and saw a young man in robes standing with one hand raised in the universal stop signal.

  The sight of him dropped her guard momentarily.

  A sheet of powerful flame roared at her. She ducked, and it seared the air bare millimeters over her head.

  She let off a round that ricocheted harmlessly from the Mandalorian’s chest plate and rolled for cover. It was hard to say what surprised her more: a Jedi down deep in the bowels of Coruscant, or the fact that he had the facial tattoos of a Kiffu native, just like she did.

  SHIGAR TOOK IN THE confrontation with a glance. He’d never fought a Mandalorian before, but he had been carefully instructed in the art by his Master. They were dangerous, very dangerous, and he almost had second thoughts about taking this one on. Even together, he and a single battered-looking soldier would hardly be sufficient.

  Then flame arced across the head of the soldier, and his instincts took over. The soldier ducked for cover with admirable speed. Shigar lunged forward, lightsaber raised to slash at the net that inevitably headed his way. The whine of the suit’s jetpack drowned out the angry sizzling of Shigar’s blade as he cut himself free. Before the Mandalorian had gained barely a meter of altitude, Shigar Force-pushed him sideways into the building beside him, thereby crushing off the jet’s exhaust vent.

  With a snarl, the Mandalorian landed heavily on both feet and fired two darts in quick succession, both aimed at Shigar’s face. Shigar deflected them and moved closer, dancing lightly on his feet. From a distance, he was at a disadvantage. Mandalorians were masters of ranged weaponry, and would do anything to avoid hand-to-hand combat except in one of their infamous gladiatorial pits. If he could get near enough to strike—with the soldier maintaining a distracting cover fire—he might just get lucky …

  A rocket exploded above his head, then another. They weren’t aimed at him, but at the city’s upper levels. Rubble rained down on him, forcing him to protect his head. The Mandalorian took advantage of that slight distraction to dive under his guard and grip him tight about the throat. Shigar’s confusion was complete—but Mandalorians weren’t supposed to fight at close quarters! Then he was literally flying through the air, hurled by his assailant’s vast physical strength into a wall.

  He landed on both feet, stunned but recovering quickly, and readied himself for another attack.

  The Mandalorian ran three long steps to his right, leaping one-two-three onto piles of rubbish and from there onto a roof. More rockets arced upward, tearing through the ferrocrete columns of a monorail. Slender spears of metal warped and fell toward Shigar and the soldier. Only with the greatest exertion of the Force that Shigar could summon was he able to deflect them into the ground around them, where they stuck fast, quivering.

  “He’s getting away!”

  The soldier’s cry was followed by another explosion. A grenade hurled behind the escaping Mandalorian destroyed much of the roof in front of him and sent a huge black mushroom rising into the air. Shigar dived cautiously through it, expecting an ambush, but found the area clear on the far side. He turned in a full circle, banishing the smoke with one out-thrust push.

  The Mandalorian was gone. Up, down, sideways—there was no way to tell which direction he had chosen to flee. Shigar reached out through the Force. His heart still hammered, but his breathing was steady and shallow. He felt nothing.

  The soldier became visible through the smoke just steps away, moving forward in a cautious crouch. She straightened and planted her feet wide apart. The snout of her rifle targeted him, and for a moment Shigar thought she might actually fire.

  “I lost him,” he said, unhappily acknowledging their failure.

  “Not your fault,” she said, lowering the rifle. “We did our best.”

  “Where d
id he come from?” he asked.

  “I thought it was just the usual Black Sun bust-up,” she said, indicating the destroyed building. “Then he walked out.”

  “Why did he attack you?”

  “Beats me. Maybe he assumed I was a justicar.”

  “You’re not one?”

  “No. I don’t like their methods. And they’ll be here soon, so you should get out of here before they decide you’re responsible for all this.”

  That was good advice, he acknowledged to himself. The bloodthirsty militia controlling the lower levels was a law unto itself, one that didn’t take kindly to incursions on their territory.

  “Let’s see what happened here, first,” he said, moving toward the smoke-blackened doorway with lightsaber at the ready.

  “Why? It’s not your problem.”

  Shigar didn’t answer that. Whatever was going on here, neither of them could just walk away from it. He sensed that she would be relieved not to be heading into the building alone.

  Together they explored the smoking, shattered ruins. Weapons and bodies lay next to one another in equal proportions. Clearly, the inhabitants had taken up arms against the interloper, and in turn every one of them had died. That was grisly, but not surprising. Mandalorians didn’t disapprove of illegals per se, but they did take poorly to being shot at.

  On the upper floor, Shigar stopped, sensing something living among the carnage. He raised a hand, cautioning the soldier to proceed more slowly, just in case someone thought they were coming to finish the job. She glided smoothly ahead of him, heedless of danger and with her weapon at the ready. He followed soundlessly in her wake, senses tingling.

  They found a single survivor huddled behind a shattered crate, a Nawtolan with blaster burns down much of one side and a dart wound to his neck, lying in a pool of his own blood. The blood was spreading fast. He looked up as Shigar bent over him to check his wounds. What Shigar couldn’t tourniquet he could cauterize, but he would have to move fast to have any chance at all.

  “Dao Stryver.” The Nautolan’s voice was a guttural growl, not helped by the damage to his throat. “Came out of nowhere.”

  “The Mandalorian?” said the soldier. “Is that who you’re talking about?”

  The Nautolan nodded. “Dao Stryver. Wanted what we had. Wouldn’t give it to him.”

  The soldier took off her helmet. She was surprisingly young, with short dark hair, a strong jaw, and eyes as green as Shigar’s lightsaber. Most startling were the distinctive black markings of Clan Moxla tattooed across her dirty cheeks.

  “What did you have, exactly?” she pressed the Nautolan.

  The Nautolan’s eyes rolled up into his head. “Cinzia,” he coughed, spraying dark blood across the front of her armor. “Cinzia.”

  “And that is …?” she asked, leaning close as his breathing failed. “Hold on—help’s coming—just hold on!”

  Shigar leaned back. There was nothing he could do, not without a proper medpac. The Nautolan had said his last.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You’ve no reason to be,” she said, staring down at her hands. “He was a member of the Black Sun, probably a murderer himself.”

  “Does that make him evil? Lack of food might have done that, or medicine for his family, or a thousand other things.”

  “Bad choices don’t make bad people. Right. But what else do we have to go on down here? Sometimes you have to make a stand, even if you can’t tell who the bad guys are anymore.”

  A desperately fatigued look crossed her face, then, and Shigar thought that he understood her a little better. Justice was important, and so was the way people defended it, even if that meant fighting alone sometimes.

  “My name is Shigar,” he said in a calming voice.

  “Nice to meet you, Shigar,” she said, brightening. “And thanks. You probably saved my life back there.”

  “I can’t take any credit for that. I’m sure he didn’t consider either of us worthy opponents.”

  “Or maybe he worked out that we didn’t know anything about what he was looking for in the safehouse. Lema Xandret: that was the name he used on me. Ever heard of it?”

  “No. Not Cinzia, either.”

  She rose to her feet in one movement and cocked her rifle onto her back. “Larin, by the way.”

  Her grip was surprisingly strong. “Our clans were enemies, once,” Shigar said.

  “Ancient history is the least of our troubles. We’d better move out before the justicars get here.”

  He looked around him, at the Nautolan, the other bodies, and the wrecked building. Dao Stryver. Lema Xandret. Cinzia.

  “I’m going to talk to my Master,” he said. “She should know there’s a Mandalorian making trouble on Coruscant.”

  “All right,” she said, hefting her helmet. “Lead the way.”

  “You’re coming with me?”

  “Never trust a Konshi. That’s what my mother always said. And if we’re going to stop a war between Dao Stryver and the Black Sun, we have to do it right. Right?”

  He barely caught her smile before it disappeared behind her helmet.

  “Right,” he said.

  THE OLD REPUBLIC

  (5,000–33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

  Long—long—ago in a galaxy far, far away … some twenty-five thousand years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: A New Hope … a large number of star systems and species in the center of the galaxy came together to form the Galactic Republic, governed by a Chancellor and a Senate from the capital city-world of Coruscant. As the Republic expanded via the hyperspace lanes, it absorbed new member worlds from newly discovered star systems; it also expanded its military to deal with the hostile civilizations, slavers, pirates, and gangster-species such as the slug-like Hutts that were encountered in the outward exploration. But the most vital defenders of the Republic were the Jedi Knights. Originally a reclusive order dedicated to studying the mysteries of the life energy known as the Force, the Jedi became the Republic’s guardians, charged by the Senate with keeping the peace—with wise words if possible; with lightsabers if not.

  But the Jedi weren’t the only Force-users in the galaxy. An ancient civil war had pitted those Jedi who used the Force selflessly against those who allowed themselves to be ruled by their ambitions—which the Jedi warned led to the dark side of the Force. Defeated in that long-ago war, the dark siders fled beyond the galactic frontier, where they built a civilization of their own: the Sith Empire.

  The first great conflict between the Republic and the Sith Empire occurred when two hyperspace explorers stumbled on the Sith worlds, giving the Sith Lord Naga Sadow and his dark side warriors a direct invasion route into the Republic’s central worlds. This war resulted in the first destruction of the Sith Empire—but it was hardly the last. For the next four thousand years, skirmishes between the Republic and Sith grew into wars, with the scales always tilting toward one or the other, and peace never lasting. The galaxy was a place of almost constant strife: Sith armies against Republic armies; Force-using Sith Lords against Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights; and the dreaded nomadic mercenaries called Mandalorians bringing muscle and firepower wherever they stood to gain.

  Then, a thousand years before A New Hope and the Battle of Yavin, the Jedi defeated the Sith at the Battle of Ruusan, decimating the so-called Brotherhood of Darkness that was the heart of the Sith Empire—and most of its power.

  One Sith Lord survived—Darth Bane—and his vision for the Sith differed from that of his predecessors. He instituted a new doctrine: No longer would the followers of the dark side build empires or amass great armies of Force-users. There would be only two Sith at a time: a Master and an apprentice. From that time on, the Sith remained in hiding, biding their time and plotting their revenge, while the rest of the galaxy enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace, so long and strong that the Republic eventually dismantled its standing armies.

&nbs
p; But while the Republic seemed strong, its institutions had begun to rot. Greedy corporations sought profits above all else and a corrupt Senate did nothing to stop them, until the corporations reduced many planets to raw materials for factories and entire species became subjects for exploitation. Individual Jedi continued to defend the Republic’s citizens and obey the will of the Force, but the Jedi Order to which they answered grew increasingly out of touch. And a new Sith mastermind, Darth Sidious, at last saw a way to restore Sith domination over the galaxy and its inhabitants, and quietly worked to set in motion the revenge of the Sith …

  If you’re a reader new to the Old Republic era, here are three great starting points:

  • The Old Republic: Deceived, by Paul S. Kemp: Kemp tells the tale of the Republic’s betrayal by the Sith Empire, and features Darth Malgus, an intriguing, complicated villain.

  • Knight Errant, by John Jackson Miller: Alone in Sith territory, the headstrong Jedi Kerra Holt seeks to thwart the designs of an eccentric clan of fearsome, powerful, and bizarre Sith Lords.

  • Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, by Drew Karpyshyn: A portrait of one of the most famous Sith Lords, from his horrifying childhood to an adulthood spent in the implacable pursuit of vengeance.

  Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars novel set in the Old Republic era.

  1

  Dessel was lost in the suffering of his job, barely even aware of his surroundings. His arms ached from the endless pounding of the hydraulic jack. Small bits of rock skipped off the cavern wall as he bored through, ricocheting off his protective goggles and stinging his exposed face and hands. Clouds of atomized dust filled the air, obscuring his vision, and the screeching whine of the jack filled the cavern, drowning out all other sounds as it burrowed centimeter by agonizing centimeter into the thick vein of cortosis woven into the rock before him.

  Impervious to both heat and energy, cortosis was prized in the construction of armor and shielding by both commercial and military interests, especially with the galaxy at war. Highly resistant to blaster bolts, cortosis alloys supposedly could withstand even the blade of a lightsaber. Unfortunately, the very properties that made it so valuable also made it extremely difficult to mine. Plasma torches were virtually useless; it would take days to burn away even a small section of cortosis-laced rock. The only effective way to mine it was through the brute force of hydraulic jacks pounding relentlessly away at a vein, chipping the cortosis free bit by bit.