The Essential Novels

by James Luceno

  There was no answer this time. Cuis simply stared. He wouldn’t be broken. Vader clamped and relaxed, clamped and relaxed, taking Cuis to the point of death each time, but he got nowhere.

  Good man.

  He let go completely and Cuis pitched forward, taking huge gulps of air with the sucking wheeze of a dying old man.

  A door opposite him flew open. “Lord Vader!” Lekauf came running out, blaster drawn, but Vader held up his hand and stopped him a little more insistently than perhaps he should have. Lekauf bounced back with a grunt as if he’d run into a wall, which in effect he had. But Vader didn’t want Cuis dead right then. He was still savoring rage, seeing how it had swept through him and given him the power to defeat a faster Jedi and keep the memories locked deep within. He shut down his energy blade with a flick of his thumb.

  Lekauf picked himself up. “There might still be others, sir.”

  “There aren’t,” said Vader, and he stepped forward and held his arm out to Cuis. The assassin didn’t take it. Vader could have raised him with the Force alone, but he didn’t. He took hold of his tunic and lifted him to his feet, holding him steady.

  “You’ll never betray the man who sent you after me, will you?”

  Cuis never took his eyes off Vader’s mask. But it wasn’t horror on his face. It was simply disdain. It was a novelty for Vader, who had grown used to the awe his appearance alone inspired in everyone else.

  “Get one of those technicians,” he said.

  Palpatine sat up, distracted from his datapad, by a faint tingling ripple that filled the back of his mouth and spread into his chest. The Force shifted imperceptibly in a far corner and settled again, but it was different this time. Something had changed forever.

  Vader had changed.

  “How reassuring,” said the Emperor to himself.

  Boots clattered on the polished floor.

  “Sir, did you call, sir?” said the stormtrooper. “I heard—”

  “Nothing to worry about,” said the Emperor, laying the datapad on the inlaid table, screen-down. “There’s nothing further to worry about at all.”

  Arkanian Micro was a very obliging contractor. Vader sat and watched carefully as medical technicians took buccal swabs from Cuis’s mouth and passed cell-collecting devices over the skin of his arms. They were harvesting the building blocks of an army. For all the curious things Vader had seen in his life, this seemed the most extraordinary, that so much could be made from so little.

  “Is that it?” said Cuis. His voice had recovered a little from the repeated choking, but he still didn’t show any fear, or even that pathetic sense of hope that he might have escaped retribution. He did appear to be simply asking a question, not embarking on a plea for mercy.

  In his enhanced peripheral vision, Vader noted that the technicians were now watching Cuis with more interest than they were watching him.

  There were gestures and lessons and symbols that you could employ without even needing to harness the Force. Vader knew he had to choose one, or lose ground and reputation. He needed to stamp his authority on the situation and let word of mouth do the rest.

  It was still a pity.

  “I said, Is that it.” Cuis was insistent. “Answer me.”

  “I’m afraid it is,” said Vader, and took out his lightsaber. The red beam activated at the lightest of touches. “But you’ll become an entire army. How many men can say that?”

  He stood up and swept the saber as he had swept it so many times before in such a short life. Cuis’s head hit the floor. The sound of the impact was surprisingly loud: heads were heavy parts of the human body. A technician slumped against the wall, hand pressed to his mouth. The salutary lesson would be spread by horrified gossip: Darth Vader would be obeyed, or the consequences would be unimaginable.

  Sa Cuis had served everyone’s purpose but his own, whatever that had been. He was timely propaganda, an excellent clone template, and the tool by which Vader had grown. It was fitting that the essence of Cuis would survive in a unique way and serve the Empire.

  It was the least Vader owed a professional man, an honorable man who wouldn’t betray his Master.

  “But why a hired killer?”

  Lekauf had relaxed a little in the seat facing Vader in the shuttle. He was curious, Vader knew, not arguing. He wanted to learn from him. That meant he would watch the man carefully, despite the self-sacrificing loyalty he had shown earlier.

  “He’s absolutely loyal to his ideals,” said Vader. “His clones won’t have his memories, but I’m confident they’ll have the same courage and loyalty, and their ideals will simply be the ones I provide for them. Loyalty to the Emperor.” He wondered when he might retire to the privacy of his cabin to take some nutrients. “And his Force powers will be exceptionally valuable in the field.”

  Lekauf gave the faintest impression of a man teetering on the brink of asking a dangerous but obvious question. He was an officer who had been around Palpatine’s inner military circle long enough to know—probably—who Cuis was. Vader could almost hear his thoughts.

  Was it the Emperor who sent him?

  It wasn’t a good idea to ask that or answer it. But if rumor ever spread, he would have to deal with any suggestion that Vader didn’t have the Emperor’s confidence. Ordinary men couldn’t be expected to fully understand the relationship between a Sith Master and his apprentice. They would mistake the attempt on Vader’s life for vengeance or rivalry, not a necessary hard lesson.

  They were like regular Jedi in that respect. A Dark Jedi would understand far better. It was a shame about Cuis, but he was a more powerful tool now he was dead than he ever was in his lifetime.

  Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

  A Jedi philosophy: a good one, too, if providing only half of the picture, as their sanctimonious way always did. Vader realized he had feared losing Palpatine’s … approval.

  He no longer feared that. He’d let himself taste anger again—a reminder of its flavor was enough to refocus him—and then he was reassured that the Sith way was the reality of the Force. Anger was a necessary path. It could even motivate ordinary men to great things. It had its function, a reaction placed in living beings for the purpose of survival.

  Vader examined the detail in the handle of his lightsaber, almost not seeing it. Jedi had—yet again—helped him learn more about the Sith path: it would have sickened them. But it was yet another elegant lesson, if he needed one, that the dark and the light side were inseparable, necessary to each other.

  He defocused a little, surprised that he could still do such a thing with his artificially assisted eyes. The detail in the lightsaber’s hilt appeared to shift, turning convex surfaces into concave ones, creating a new image.

  It was all a matter of how you looked at it. The hilt had not changed at all. And that was it: that was the fundamental weakness of Jedi.

  Vader thought of the optical illusion that so amused him as a child. It was the simple silhouette of a white urn that then became the black profiles of two identical people staring at each other, then snapped back to the urn again as his mental focus changed.

  Some youngsters could see only the urn; others, only the faces. Vader could always see both, at will.

  Ah, he could remember without pain now. He could recall moments from his past. But could no longer feel who he had been, and something within him said that was a mercy to be welcomed.

  The Jedi would never—could never—let themselves see the whole picture. Still they couldn’t see that the Force was an indivisible amalgam of dark and light.

  But there were now very few left alive to learn that lesson, even if they could.

  And soon, he would ensure that there were none.

  Emperor Palpatine was waiting at the palace landing strip to welcome Vader back.

  Lekauf ran down the shuttle ramp to stand like an honor guard at its foot, but Vader dismissed him with a nod. The lieutenant seemed grateful to be sent away. It was
probably that he wasn’t comfortable now being so close to Palpatine.

  “A successful trip, I know,” said the Emperor.

  Vader almost enjoyed his dual layer of speech now, with its apparent meaning covering the subtext like a layer of snow, something soft and deceptive concealing hazards that might trip him if he trod carelessly.

  “Yes, I think we’ve made progress,” said Vader, meaning the clone templates, but also something else.

  “I admire your ability to see both the strategic view and the operational detail. It’s a rare combination.”

  “Will you require more staff, Master?” You lost your Hand. You’ll be proud when you see what he becomes. “You appear to be getting busier.”

  Palpatine smiled. “I have many staff.”

  I know. There’ll be others. “I’ve learned a great deal on this trip.”

  “Cloning is a complex and fascinating science, is it not?”

  “Indeed it is.”

  Vader paused for a moment to let Palpatine pass into the palace vestibule in front of him, standing back between white-armored stormtroopers who were at that moment the only beings around him whom he knew for certain wouldn’t make an attempt on his life.

  The thought no longer bothered him. The power of the dark side was his reassurance.

  “We should talk about the templates later when I’ve assembled the Moffs,” said Palpatine.

  “I’ll await your call, my Master.”

  “I know what you will do.”

  But I’ll do it sooner than you might expect. The thought was unbidden, and it was neither an unspoken threat nor the seed of a counterplot. It was simply a fleeting Force-vision of the future, Palpatine’s death far short of the millennium he planned to reign.

  “I’ll rebuild your army,” said Vader.

  “Exactly, and you’ll do it well,” said the Emperor.

  Vader waited for Palpatine to disappear from sight before walking to his adapted meditation chamber to feed himself and maintain and clean his suit.

  He was no longer a Jedi—or even a man—but the first Jedi rule still rang true somewhere inside him.

  Survive.

  TWO-EDGED SWORD

  Karen Traviss

  What can you teach a clone in a few months that a man takes a lifetime to learn?

  —Emperor Palpatine to Lord Darth Vader

  IMPERIAL TRAINING CENTER,

  YINCHORR, THE MID RIM

  For a dead man, Sa Cuis had a fine lightsaber technique. Lord Vader swung his blade and the two beams of red energy rasped off each other.

  Cuis—or one of his clones, anyway—circled and Vader matched him, keeping a constant distance between them. He had no intention of killing the assassin again. Arkanian Microtechnologies had spent more than a year creating this clone of the Dark Jedi, and it would have been wasteful to destroy him or any of his five brothers simply to prove superiority.

  Besides, they were men. Vader tried not to lose sight of that. If he had wanted mindless predictability, he would have commissioned droids for the Imperial Army.

  He was aware of two people watching the duel intently from the dais set a little above the gymnasium floor: his Master, Emperor Palpatine; and one of his own aides, Lieutenant Erv Lekauf. Part of his mind could sense Lekauf’s discomfort at being so close to the Emperor without Vader beside him.

  “Enough,” said Vader, and shut down his lightsaber. The Cuis clone snapped his blade down, too, but watched Vader cautiously until he stood back to allow the clones to continue their lightsaber drill with the instructor. Vader was satisfied. The clones had retained all the speed and sharp reflexes of the unfortunate Emperor’s Hand whose genome was now theirs. He hoped they had somehow inherited his extraordinary loyalty, too.

  I wonder if the Emperor knew Cuis would never reveal he was his Hand. I wonder if my Master values that kind of devotion, or just expects it.

  Vader went back to the dais to watch the clones continue their lightsaber training. They ran through parry and riposte, redoublement and remise, red blades shimmering. The cavernous hall echoed with the hum of lightsabers and the clack of armor plates, a combination that Vader found oddly disturbing. Their instructor was yet another of Palpatine’s many Hands—an assassin called Sheyvan, who had a taste for vibroblades as well as the more conventional lightsaber skills.

  Vader paced up and down the hall, watching the sparring pairs with a careful eye. Hands often thought they were the only personal assassin in Palpatine’s service, and most were unhappy if they found they were not. Sheyvan looked as if he was in that majority. His occasional glance at Palpatine was more accusing than adoring.

  “Men need to believe they’re unique,” said Palpatine quietly. He always lowered his voice to make people listen carefully to him. “And women, too. We all like to think we are special and irreplaceable. It is a great motivator.”

  Sometimes Vader suspected Palpatine could read more than his emotions. “You made me feel I alone could help you defeat the Jedi Council, Master.”

  “And that was true, was it not?”

  Vader had wondered just once—and no more—how his life might have unfolded had he not been seduced by Palpatine’s assurance that he was the only member of the Jedi Council whom he could trust. It was true, yes. But if he had resisted, Padmé would still have died. At least now he had the power and position to remake the galaxy as he wished—orderly. He used it. He used it more every day.

  “Not only do all men wish to be special,” said Vader.

  “They also wish to know there is someone they can trust.”

  Palpatine’s yellow eyes betrayed no reaction, just as he didn’t seem troubled by Sheyvan’s discomfort. The disappointment of those around him was of no consequence to him until they ceased to serve their purpose, and then they were discarded.

  You will not discard me, Master.

  “One day, I may form a legion of Dark Jedi,” said Palpatine, as if the idea had just struck him. “They have great potential. This Cuis would be honored to see what’s become of him.”

  It was as if he had never known Cuis. Vader had never mentioned that he knew Palpatine had sent Sa Cuis to kill him. He wouldn’t name you, my Master. Not even when I offered to spare his life. That’s what I want in my troops. Loyalty.

  Vader hadn’t taken the assassination attempt personally. It was part of his training. The path toward Sith mastery had to be hard because the power it yielded was not for the weak or lazy. Vader understood that. He still knew he would oust his own master one day. Palpatine knew, too, and seemed not to mind.

  Lekauf—loyal, intelligent, with no special powers beyond the capacity for hard work—hovered at his elbow, radiating anxiety. Clones had been created from him, too, but he was very much alive to see them. He had even trained them. Now they were being evaluated, and they had passed inspection in all core skills except hand-to-hand combat.

  “You still seem worried,” said Vader.

  “No, sir …”

  Lekauf had spent six months on this miserable, barren ball of rock training his clones. If they passed muster, he could finally return to Coruscant. It was clear what his fears were.

  “You haven’t seen your wife and children for six months, and you worry that if your clones don’t perform well, you’ll be here for another six,” said Vader.

  Lekauf swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes, sir. I do.”

  His courageous honesty was one of the qualities that made him both a good clone donor and a good instructor. Vader’s memories of missing someone dear—the memories that he had learned to wrap and lock away, almost without pain now—echoed in response.

  And I trusted you, too, Padmé. I’m practiced at handling betrayal now.

  “You’ll see your family soon,” said Vader.

  Lekauf looked toward the gymnasium doors. He was a strongly built man in his thirties, with an incongruously open face and scrubby light brown hair. “I always worry about disappointing you, sir. But when I see wh
at Dark Jedi can do, I wonder how ordinary humans can ever compete.”

  “Stormtroopers will never have to fight Jedi,” said Vader. “Only Rebels.”

  Lekauf inhaled and held his breath as the six clones marched in. Vader heard it, however hard the man tried to suppress it. They looked as Lekauf himself might have a few years earlier, with that same expression of permanent optimism. And, Vader hoped, they would be equally efficient soldiers.

  The clones, wearing the same Imperial armor as the Cuis batch, lined up in front of the dais and saluted. They were flash-trained from decanting to make them competent soldiers who could function in any army, but Vader needed them to be better than that. He needed them to meet the standards of the Kaminoan-cloned troops that still made up the majority of his stormtroopers.

  “No lightsabers.” Vader’s voice boomed across the gymnasium. “Use durasteel staffs. This is an exercise. I want no serious injury.”

  Palpatine turned his head very slowly to look at him. Vader hooked his thumbs over his belt, waiting for the challenge.

  “How can you test their suitability if you handicap them?” Palpatine’s voice was soft and insinuating, as it always was when he was planting an idea. “Is this not a concession?”

  “No, my Master. It creates more realistic conditions for the test.” Vader stood his ground. “They need only to perform well against Rebels, who are not Force-users. Just men.”

  Palpatine paused for two heartbeats, his sign of silent disapproval. “Very well.”

  Vader beckoned to Sheyvan to join them on the dais to clear the gymnasium floor for combat. The clones paired off, one Lekauf to each Cuis.

  “Begin,” said Palpatine.

  Lekauf swallowed again.

  The clones stalked each other, durasteel rods clasped in both hands. Then metal crashed as they smashed staff against staff, struggling to drive the other back. One Lekauf clone, the name NELE stenciled on his chest plate, brought his staff around in a low arc to upend his opponent. But as soon as the man fell flat on his back, he sprang to his feet again in one move and threw the Lekauf clone almost the full width of the gymnasium with a massive Force push. He hit the wall, the impact of his back plate making the hall echo, and struggled back to his feet, shaking his head to clear it.