A dozen open-helmeted men and women in brown combat uniforms—Kota’s insurgents, the apprentice presumed—came down the hangar’s primary access corridor, sealing the blast door behind them. Baring his teeth, he ran to meet them, eager to take the offensive. Their rifles were no match for the power of the Force. A single, powerful push scattered them like dolls. One he blasted with lightning. A second he choked until all consciousness fled. A third he swept up and pounded against the nearest bulkhead. The rest he dismembered with graceful aggression, ignoring their cries of fear and pain.
The blast door opened, and both insurgents and Imperials retreated through it.
“All Imperial squads maintain offensive stance,” blared a voice over the intercom. “All squads maintain offensive stance!”
The apprentice grinned and followed his welcoming committee up the corridor.
“Can you hear me?” Juno said through the comlink.
“Yes.”
“Reports are showing that Kota’s forces have stormed the command bridge.”
“Then that’s where I’m headed.” He stepped over the bodies and followed her directions to the letter.
Her calm voice guided him level by level up a huge chasm leading to the top of the facility. Once he was out of her sight, he didn’t have to worry about her asking questions about his harsh treatment of their supposed comrades. Lord Vader could fill her in on that point later, if he thought it necessary. For now Kota was the most important thing.
“The intruders may try using TIE fighter assembly lines as cover,” she said. “And I am picking up explosives on my scanners. Be careful.”
He assured her he would, even as he dodged a trap laid by Kota’s insurgents at the top of a turbolift shaft. The voice over the station’s intercom became progressively more alarmed.
“Threat status upgraded. Eliminate all unauthorized personnel.”
“Unnecessary force is authorized.”
“All K-Level squads report in!”
“Reinforce local security stations immediately!”
The walls shook from an explosion so close, it must have buckled every bulkhead on that level. Always he kept in mind Juno’s echoing of his own observation: We are walking into a trap. Except he was doing the walking while she sat in the ship, safe from BlasTech E-11 rifles and the insurgents’ ragtag weapons.
“Another stormtrooper squadron has reached Hangar Twelve,” Juno informed him. “It looks like we will have some help in retaking the facility.”
“The station is not our concern.”
“But Imperial High Command will be quite upset if the TIE assembly lines are damaged—”
“I don’t answer to High Command. Now cut the chatter. I’m trying to concentrate.”
On the floor of a massive starfighter assembly rig, he stopped with his head raised and his lightsaber cocked. A prickling in the back of his neck warned him of a new threat just as a railgun charge exploded to his right, sending bits of TIE fighter in all directions. He deflected the main force of the explosion, but was still stung by tiny pieces of shrapnel down the back of his right hand.
“Give up!” the insurgents shouted. “We have the factory!”
“What is he?” called another to one of his fellows. “Some kind of shadow trooper?”
“Doesn’t matter. Blast him!”
Anger rose up in him, pure and clean, sweeping all other concerns aside. He vaulted a stack of detached solar gather panels and sent a stream of machine parts raining down on the source of the weapons fire.
Screams sounded over the crashing of metal. Kota’s insurgents scattered from behind the TIE cockpits they had been using as shelter. Some fired shots at him, employing a range of weaponry that displayed either a lack of organization or restricted resources, or both. He deflected every shot with controlled fury and poured his rage into retaliation. He felt no need to hold back. Those disloyal to the Empire deserved everything they got.
Only when the last was buried under a small mountain of titanium alloy hull plates and reactor shielding did he examine in more detail the equipment they had been carrying. As well as their motley weapons and mismatched armor, the fighters had brought explosive timer packs and had clearly been setting such charges elsewhere on the level. He’d best hurry, he told himself, before the whole facility went up in flames.
No sooner was this thought complete than another shock wave rolled through the structure, much stronger than the last. He barely kept his footing on the heaving deck as TIE fighter and body parts tumbled around him. Juno was shouting something at him, but it was a moment before he could hear her over the blaring of the intercom.
“—the stabilizers or the repulsor engines—can’t tell which—not good at all.”
“What’s that?” he said. “Repeat.”
“Kota’s accomplices have hit the facility where it hurts,” she summarized. “Finish up soon, or we’re going down into the skylanes with it.”
“Right.” The deck was still moving underfoot as he made his way out of the assembly area, blocking the path behind him with a pile of ejector seats and unmounted ion engines. “Where did you say this control center was?”
Juno guided him through the quaking facility. Anyone unlucky enough to get in his way was unceremoniously pushed aside by telekinesis. Doors buckled shut and weapons mysteriously jammed. He didn’t have time to play games anymore.
“Any available squadrons,” blared the intercom, “defend the security stations at once!” Then: “They’re breaching the security stations!” And finally: “Command bridge to all squadrons, we need your assista—”
The final broadcast ended with a rasp of blasterfire. Then relative peace fell.
Ambient gravity was noticeably lighter by the time he reached the doors that Juno assured him led to the control center. That meant the entire facility was falling at a faster rate than he cared to think about. Taking a moment to gather himself, to wrap his will like a cloak around the fiery heart of his anger, he prepared himself to face the Jedi whose presence he could feel through several centimeters of durasteel.
Then he gestured with one finger, and the heavy blast doors slid open. Beyond lay a room identical to hundreds in the galaxy: cold and metallic, with red display screens keeping staff updated on the facility’s status. A long, elevated walkway led to a command post where General Rahm Kota stood with his back to the door, in a gesture deliberate in its commingled confidence and contempt. He hadn’t even drawn his lightsaber, which hung diagonally across his shoulder blades in a custom-made sheath. A brown cloak hung from two metal shoulder pads that only added to the physical presence of the man. He was a warrior with every breath and wore his battle scars with pride.
The apprentice had been ready to attack, but now he felt a brief moment of hesitation. This wasn’t what he had expected. Jedi were soft from a life of privilege, outdated, spent. He hadn’t expected a soldier.
Kota’s voice, when he spoke, was deep and commanding, as it had been during PROXY’s impersonation of him. “So I’ve finally drawn you out of hiding.” He turned at last. “I ordered my men to lower the containment field on your approach and—” On seeing the apprentice he stopped midsentence and looked visibly surprised.
“A boy?” With one blindingly fast movement, the lightsaber was in his hand and lit. “After all these months of attacking Imperial targets, Vader sends a boy to fight me?”
Grim and silent, the apprentice adopted a fighting crouch. So the trap had been directed not at him but at his Master. If Kota was disappointed, the apprentice swore that this would be the last emotion Kota ever felt.
He raised his left hand and with the power of the dark side unleashed a bolt of Sith lightning at the renegade Jedi.
Kota only laughed. Raising his left hand in a move that was a mirror image of the apprentice’s own, he sent the lightning arcing back to its source. The energy struck both of them, hurling them apart.
The apprentice broke off the attempt, blinking smoke
away from his eyes. His anger intensified. He was the first to his feet and running as soon as his boots touched the deck. He felt completely weightless, yet full of momentum, like a hurled spear. His red blade cut a blur through the air, aimed hard at Kota’s throat.
The Jedi general ducked and swept his green lightsaber up and down in a lazy attempt to catch him as he went by. That was a move the apprentice had long ago learned to avoid by tucking his head down closer to his center of gravity and rolling in midair, then kicking himself back at his opponent off the nearest wall. This time he pushed telekinetically as he came, attempting to knock Kota’s feet out from under him before bringing his blade to bear.
Again, however, Kota deflected his Force energies back at him. Again they were pushed apart.
More cautiously the apprentice circled him, slicing chairs to pieces as he walked and sending the glowing fragments at his enemy’s head. Anger made him eager to attack, but he knew better than to give in to it. He hadn’t been humiliated. He had successfully tested Kota’s defenses. Now that he knew a direct attack would probably fail, he had to find another way to get closer to the man. Or to make the Jedi come to him.
Suddenly Kota was moving, charging with astonishing speed behind a furious diversity of strokes. The apprentice retreated with lips pulled back over his teeth. This is more like it! Green and red energies clashed as he blocked blow after blow and still Kota kept coming, attempting to overwhelm him with sheer determination and speed. The apprentice went back four steps, then stopped. He drew his blade close around him, forming a tight defense in deliberate imitation of the Soresu style that Obi-Wan Kenobi had favored. Realizing he couldn’t penetrate it, Kota backed off and tried a different style—slow, deliberate, with sudden and devastatingly quick strikes. These, too, the apprentice parried, and when the old man’s guard looked to be slipping, he offered strikes of his own.
The duel raged all across the control center, which shook and rattled as the facility around it broke apart. The apprentice ignored everything else—Juno’s voice, the wildly fluctuating gravity, the never-ending explosions, the rising temperature of the floor beneath him—in order to concentrate solely on this one vital battle. Kota wouldn’t beat him, but could he beat Kota? He had to. He would rather go down with the ship than break off and admit failure. Darth Vader’s secret apprentice knew which fate would await him if he did.
The general was wily and strong and possessed some moves the apprentice had never seen before. But he was older and willfully ignorant of the dark side of the Force. He attempted his charge attack two more times, obviously hoping to force a mistake or wear out his opponent, but it was he who started to show the effects of the duel, he who took hits. Soon his cloak was a smoking rag and one of his shoulder pads was glowing redhot.
The apprentice pressed harder, feeling victory and the attainment of his full power approaching. Soon the Jedi’s lightsaber—and head—would be his. Then he truly would be worthy of his Master’s praise!
He caught the general in a choke hold and maintained his grip even though it turned partially back on him. He had been ready for this; his lungs were full. The general, however, clutched at his throat with one hand while barely managing to parry with the other. The apprentice let the fire in his lungs fuel his lust for triumph. Even as darkness crowded around the edges of his vision, he sent objects hurtling at Kota’s legs and face, battling him on all fronts.
Finally a fragment of smoking debris struck the general’s knees from behind. With a cry of frustration, the flailing Jedi went down, his face purple and eyes bulging. The apprentice relented slightly, letting them both have a little air, but before Kota could scramble to his feet he was on him, pressing down on their locked lightsabers, which sizzled just millimeters from their faces.
Kota strained but couldn’t force the red blade away. In his blue eyes the apprentice saw not cleansing hatred, but regret. Even at the end, Kota clung to his weak Jedi ways.
“Vader thinks”—the old man gasped—“he’s turned you. But I can sense your future—and Vader isn’t part of it!”
The apprentice urged the lightsabers even closer to Kota’s face.
Sweat beaded on the Jedi Master’s forehead. “I sense—I sense only …” A look of shock and confusion passed over his face. “Me?”
The apprentice forced Kota’s own lightsaber down into his eyes.
And suddenly—as though in a vision from out of time, exactly the sort of vision the apprentice sought in the fire of his red blade—Kota’s face became that of another man, a man with dark hair and strong features, features not dissimilar to the apprentice’s own.
The general cried out in pain—and in that cry the apprentice thought he heard a man shouting, “Run!”
He flinched away, blinking furiously, wondering if Kota in his desperate extremity had concocted some new and insidious Jedi mind trick. But his head seemed clear of intrusion, and the general seemed to be thinking of anything but attack. Blinded and agonized, he scrabbled backward, his lightsaber slipping from his fingers and dropping with a dead thud to the deck. A blast of telekinesis erupted from him, shattering every viewport in the command center and sending the apprentice flying. A raging wind swept past them, sucking out the smoke and shrapnel of their duel. Kota, too, was sucked out and fell with a fading cry into the atmosphere below. Or had he leapt?
The apprentice let the gale drag him closer to the hole where the viewport had once been. Catching a bent stanchion with one hand, he carefully leaned out and looked down, lightsaber at the ready for any final deception.
Kota’s body was already far below, spread-eagled and dwindling among the skylanes of the Vertical City. A large transport intersected his path; thenceforth his body was invisible. The apprentice imagined it being swatted like a bug on a transparisteel windscreen and told himself to feel the satisfaction of a task completed.
It didn’t come.
General Rahm Kota was blinded and gravely wounded. He couldn’t possibly be a problem any longer. But the apprentice couldn’t assume he was dead until he had the old man’s body in front of him—and there was no chance of finding that body now.
He was profoundly disinclined to report failure to Darth Vader.
What to do?
“This place is going to tear itself apart at any moment!” came Juno’s voice over the comlink. “Are you almost done here?”
“On my way.” With a vehement look on his face and no triumph in his heart, he retreated from the viewport and headed for the door, pausing only to scoop up the fallen Jedi Master’s lightsaber on the way.
CHAPTER 4
JUNO KNEW BETTER THAN TO expect a rapturous reception upon their return, but even so she was disappointed. The secret hangar was empty when the Rogue Shadow docked. A successful mission deserved some sort of acknowledgment, surely. Even after Callos …
She pushed that thought away. The job was done. What more needed to be said? She had done it well—in her eyes, at least, although Starkiller had barely acknowledged the fact on returning to the ship—and they had lived to fight another day. Or to kill more Jedi Knights, if that was what Lord Vader’s scruffy, incommunicative agent was really up to. She had seen the second lightsaber hilt hanging from his belt, and she knew what that probably meant.
It had taken thousands of clone warriors to completely wipe out the Jedi. That was the official version—ignoring the rumors she’d heard about Darth Vader’s ongoing hunt for the last survivors of that strange and deadly sect. From the stories her father had told her as a child, she’d imagined them to be monsters four meters high sucking the lifeblood out of the Republic. Now it turned out they still existed, and young men went forth to do battle with them alone.
Could they really be so reduced, these villains that had once held the galaxy in their thrall?
Or … could the young man who was now her traveling companion possibly be so powerful?
The landing struts had barely touched metal when he was on his feet and he
ading for the door.
She leaned back into her seat and ran her hands across her temples. Her skin felt oily and covered in grit, as though she had been the one running around in the smoke and the mess above Nar Shaddaa instead of watching it from the feeds she’d managed to slice into from one of the facility’s security cams. She wanted to check over the ship and get into the refresher and scrub the dirt away.
She hadn’t felt clean for weeks …
The voice of Starkiller almost made her jump out of her skin. She had thought him long gone.
“Good work, Juno,” he said. “I’ll leave PROXY here to help you run through the checklist.”
“Thank you, but I—” By the time she turned her seat around, the cockpit was empty of anyone but her and the droid. PROXY stared back at her with unwinking photoreceptors. She didn’t want to admit that he made her slightly nervous, so she flashed her warmest smile and hauled herself out of the seat.
“Well, let’s get to it. I’ve got a report to write before I get any rest—if anyone other than me will ever read it …”
PROXY PROVED AN EFFICIENT AND unobtrusive co-worker. He followed instructions, showed initiative, and did his level best to stay out of her way. That was more than she could say for half the real people she had worked with since graduating from the Imperial Academy on Corulag. Together they checked over the ship in record time, noting only a few small carbon scores on its port side and, near the aft sensor array, a blaster burn that had been weakened so much by the shields, it would barely have fried an egg.
When they were done, she dismissed the droid, telling him to go take an oil bath or whatever he did for relaxation, and then set off to her quarters to work on the mission report she insisted had to be completed.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Page 3
