TWO JUMPS LATER, IT WAS time to talk.
“No sign of pursuit.” She put aside her scan of the surrounding space through the Rogue Shadow’s superior sensors with relief. “We’re light-years away from any Imperial forces.”
Starkiller looked up from tending a wound on his right forearm. Blood leaked from the gash. She was relieved to see it. Thinking of the injuries he must have suffered at the hands of his former Master made her stomach feel light. Part of him had to be synthetic now, but it was impossible to tell by looking at him. Unless the new getup he had on hid more than it suggested …
“Then what’s wrong?” he asked her.
She flushed, still hoping he couldn’t read her mind. Putting aside one concern for another, she said, “No one knows that we exist, or what we’ve done. We have the entire galaxy in front of us. So why, for the first time in my life, do I have no idea where to go …?”
Her throat closed on her words. The reality of her betrayal and desertion was still sinking in.
Starkiller studied her, his eyes flickering. She would never be able to read his mind.
“I hope you have a plan,” she said, clutching at her only straw.
He nodded, and then said slowly, as though sounding her out: “There are two things I want, and I can’t get them on my own. The first is revenge. To get that we need to rally the Emperor’s enemies behind us.”
She nodded, thinking of Callos and her father. After witnessing the way Starkiller had killed the troopers on the Empirical, she had no doubt of his sincerity—or his ability to deliver. “Go on.”
“The second thing I want is to learn all the things that Vader couldn’t—or wouldn’t—teach me about the Force.”
She leaned her elbow on the arm of her flight chair and rested her chin on that hand. “If we’re not careful, we might end up in our old job again—hunting Jedi.”
He seemed to be aware of the irony of their situation. “I know of one who might still be alive. PROXY, show us the file of our first target.”
They turned to face the droid, who flickered and transformed once more into the likeness of General Rahm Kota.
Juno frowned. “I thought you killed him.”
“When I fought him in the TIE fighter factory, he said he could see my future. He said he was part of it.”
She could see a thousand holes in his reasoning but had nothing better to offer. “Back to Nar Shaddaa, then.”
“Back to Nar Shaddaa.”
Starkiller tended his injuries while she worked on the nav computer. When they made the jump to hyperspace, he didn’t even look up.
She took that as a sign of trust.
CHAPTER 15
FACEDOWN ACROSS A TABLE IN the darkest corner of a disreputable cantina slumped a man who wanted to disappear. The Vapor Room was a particularly good place to make the attempt. Primarily an Ugnaught hangout, but attracting its share of Rodian and human workers as well, it was an after-hours dive boasting bottomless shadows in every corner. The air hung in dense, aromatic sheets that moved only when staggering beings passed through them. The music was wildly hybridized, like the bartenders, who glowered sullenly as they wiped grease-smeared glasses and spread pools of liquor in thin layers across the bar top.
An empty tankard of Andoan ale rested near the slumped man’s shoulder. His face was determinedly hidden from view, as if the only conscious desire he had left in him was to keep it that way. When he came up for a drink, which had happened with decreasing frequency in recent hours, he kept his face carefully averted from the cantina’s patrons. Greasy gray hair protruded from what had once been a rigorously maintained queue. His robes were ill fitting and stained.
No one in the Vapor Room knew who the man was or what he had done. No one remembered who had brought him to Cloud City. They didn’t care. They just wanted to be left alone to drink until their next shift came around.
The man who wanted to disappear had turned his back on the galaxy, but it hadn’t turned its back on him. Despite his very best efforts, he had been noticed. Inevitably so. A man with his injuries on Bespin was rare enough, but one who could still pour a glass of Corellian brandy without spilling a drop …?
Word had spread, and that word was trouble.
THE APPRENTICE WALKED SLOWLY INTO the Vapor Room, eyes peering into the corners, studying every face and figure he found there. The cantina’s atmosphere reeked of numerous negative emotions, but threat was not one of them. All eyes turned to him for a moment, then an older Ugnaught with an upturned nose and prominent belly raised a glass above his head in toast to the local King Ozz. The rest of his table purred loudly in agreement. Attention returned to frothing mugs, smoking pipes, and watching the chrono.
The nearest bartender cocked an antenna. The apprentice gestured at him, encouraging him to think about someone else. He didn’t want a drink. He had just one purpose. This, the first real test of his Master’s new plan, was the only thing on his mind.
It had been a long journey, with many risks taken. None had been as important or as dangerous as this.
“What happens if he recognizes you?” Juno had asked him with concern before he left the Rogue Shadow.
“He won’t,” he had said, remembering the general’s burned eyes and the absent scars on his own hands. His body had changed in subtle ways, thanks to Lord Vader. The Force-signature he had possessed over Nar Shaddaa, in the midst of his murderous mission, would be very different from the one he projected now.
Calm. Reassurance. Hope.
Kota hadn’t moved for twenty minutes, according to the feed from the security cam that Juno had sliced into. The apprentice was relieved to see that it hadn’t been a loop. The drunken Jedi was exactly where he had expected him to be, showing no signs of alarm.
The apprentice looked around the cantina, making sure that attention had really drifted away from him. Then he kicked the table, startling Kota awake.
The fallen Jedi lifted his head with a jerk, revealing a disheveled shadow of the man he had once been. His cheeks were hollow and thick with stubble. Dirty bandages, wrapped around his head, hid his eye sockets from view.
“General Kota?”
Kota’s voice was slurred. “I’ve paid for this table. So whoever you are, get lost.”
“General Kota, I’ve tracked you across the galaxy from Nar Shaddaa to Ziost—”
“Who are you, boy?” Kota’s brows tightened. “A bounty hunter?”
“Not quite. But I have been watching you.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “I think we can help each other, Jedi.”
Kota pulled a face and gestured toward his bandaged eyes. “I’m no Jedi now. Not since this.”
“I don’t need your eyes, just your mind—and everything you know about fighting the Empire.”
Kota slumped back into his chair, looking more weary than drunk. “Nobody fights the Empire and wins, boy.”
A sudden commotion in the doorway attracted the apprentice’s attention. Six stormtroopers had entered the Vapor Room flanked by two bipedal mechanical walkers, each controlled by a pair of surly-looking Ugnaughts. The lead trooper grabbed the stocky bouncer and began asking questions while his offsiders visually scanned the bar.
The apprentice cursed the Imperials’ timing. Juno had intercepted the message from a local rat alerting station security to Kota’s presence, but they had been unable to spirit him away in time.
He sighed and straightened, unhooking his lightsaber and placing himself between Kota and the Imperials.
“You’d better hope you’re wrong about that, General.”
With a snap-hiss loud enough to attract the attention of everyone in the Vapor Room, he activated the glowing green blade that had once belonged to the man whose life he’d ruined.
Kota flinched as though he had been struck and dived under the table. At that moment the Imperials opened fire. Ugnaughts squealed and leapt for cover as deflected energy bolts ricocheted around the room. Glasses shattered. Brightly co
lored liquid went everywhere, the more volatile catching fire and adding to the chaos.
“Stand up, General,” the apprentice called over the racket. “They may be shooting at me right now, but they came here for you.”
Then he was forced to concentrate on the Imperials and their local allies. The mechanical “Uggernaughts” were heavily armored and armed both. His first priority was to knock them out. He pushed one onto its side with the Force and overloaded the electrical systems of the second, encouraging the stormtroopers to scatter. The smell of scorched Ugnaught fur made the cantina smell even worse. From outside, he could already hear the clanking of reinforcements.
Whoever was behind Kota’s attempted capture, they weren’t taking any chances.
“Come on,” he yelled at the cowering general. “Follow the sound of my lightsaber!”
He turned his back on Kota, hoping the old man recovered a sufficient sense of self-preservation to look after himself. Not only did his would-be rescuer have to take out the Imperials, but he had to do it without harming any innocent bystanders. That wouldn’t look good to anyone schooled in the Jedi ways.
As he fought his way toward the cantina’s back door, he commed the Rogue Shadow and told Juno that he would need a rapid dust-off.
“Same place I dropped you off, I presume.”
“Unless it gets too hot there.” He brought the ceiling down on one of the troopers and telekinetically threw rubble at another. “Stay close and wait for my signal.”
“Will do. Juno out.”
He glanced behind him. Kota was finally moving, hunched over like a stunned mine crab with his hands splayed before him. Hopefully the Force would be with Kota, because the apprentice knew with one look through the door that he would have his work cut out for him. There were at least two dozen Imperials in the storeroom, taking cover behind crates and barrels. A line of Uggernaughts promised to make short work of him if he so much as blinked.
There wasn’t time to hesitate. Drawing on the Force, he burst the barrels, tore the crates apart, and filled the air with debris. Chased by blasterfire, he ran across the room in three steps and leapt onto the nearest Uggernaught. Lightsaber flashing, he cut the pilot and the gunner free and used the Force to crudely turn the machine about. Its weapons barked and sent its siblings reeling backward, showering sparks.
He leapt free, leaving it to stagger on, firing at random. Kota was keeping up, barely. He grabbed the old man’s arm and dragged him out of the storeroom and along a series of corridors. The Vapor Room’s supply dock wasn’t far away, and although he expected it also to contain a heavy Imperial presence, getting the Rogue Shadow in wasn’t an impossibility. The dock was open to the cloud-filled golden sky all along one side. One quick Force jump would do it …
A glimpse of a black-robed figure standing with the stormtroopers stopped him in his tracks. On sight of him, it tilted its black helmet and ignited a red lightsaber. The stormtroopers dropped to their knees and fired.
For the barest of moments, the apprentice was frozen. His stomach dropped away into Bespin’s glorious skyscape, and he felt betrayed all over again.
Then his mind caught up with his gut, shouting, That’s not Vader! The red blade protruded from the top of a long black staff, not a lightsaber hilt. The helmet was smooth and rounded, lacking the familiar death’s-head aesthetic of his Master’s. Instead of two rounded photoreceptors, this helm boasted a single strip visor, suggesting that beneath might lie the face of an ordinary human male rather than whatever blasted visage his Master kept permanently hidden. The figure wore combat armor under his flowing cloak—exactly like one of the Emperor’s Royal Guard, but entirely in black.
The apprentice’s blade came up of its own accord. Moving in extreme slow motion, as though the air were made of treacle, he deflected volley after volley from the blasters back at the troopers who fired them. They staggered and fell with smoke pouring from shoulder and neck joints. Their cries barely registered.
The black guard deflected every bolt he sent his way. When the last of the troopers fell, the black guard stepped forward with his saber-staff lowered to charge.
“Stay away from the dock!” the apprentice warned both Juno and Kota. “We need another rendezvous point!”
“There’s a shipping balloon dock not far from you,” Juno responded as his lightsaber clashed with his new enemy’s. “What’s that noise? You’re not fighting Kota, are you?”
“Too hard to explain,” he grunted, not sure what the explanation even was. “Get to the balloon dock and wait for me there.”
He broke off communications to block a downward slash that almost knocked him flat. Glancing around for Kota, he was relieved to see that the general was nowhere nearby. Now he could summon the full power of the dark side. Drawing on the sense of betrayal and shock he had felt on seeing the figure waiting for him—this deadly, dark assassin who might or might not have something to do with Darth Vader—he pushed with all his might.
His ears rang, such was the energy he released. The dock buckled underneath him; rivets popped and welds tore. His assailant went flying across the wide space, arms spread wide apart. The saber-staff cut a long, twisting line in the metal floor as its owner rolled and came up standing.
A bolt of Sith lightning shot from the hand not holding the staff. The apprentice grinned, having anticipated that tactic. He met the lightning bolt with one of his own. They collided in a spitting, crackling ball of pure energy that danced crazily from side to side. The air filled with the sharp stink of ozone.
The hooded assassin grunted and applied more effort. The apprentice met that effort and exceeded it. The ease with which he drove his assailant’s lightning back surprised him. For one wielding a Sith blade, the man he was fighting had less power than he should have.
The ball of energy where their crackling bolts met drifted closer and closer to the black guard. He grunted audibly and leaned physically forward with both hands upraised, one in a shaking claw and the other stabbing the saber-staff into the beam, adding its energy to his desperate attack. To no avail. The ball inexorably approached, driven by the dark power of the apprentice’s will. When it touched the hilt of the black guard’s saber-staff, all its pent-up energy was drawn into him.
With a truncated shriek the guard flew out the open dock and fluttered away, dead before his feet even left the ground.
The apprentice let the tension flood out of him and brought his arms down. Comming Juno, he followed the directions she gave him to their new rendezvous. It wasn’t far, with only a couple of obvious ambush points along the way. Thanking her, he ran through an observation deck and along an exterior crosswalk, barely noticing the view. His mind worked over everything that had just happened, trying to find the sense in it.
A dark figure wielding a modified red blade and lightning, a Royal Guard but black all over … The Sith connection could not be denied. Unless Darth Vader had trained a second apprentice in the last six months—which didn’t strike him as likely, for why would he then set them against each other?—there was only one other possible Master for such a being.
The Emperor.
Great minds thought alike. The apprentice grimaced as he approached the first of the likely ambush points, an air-conditioning heat exchange, where he would be forced to traverse a wide but long duct and pass through a series of fans. Darth Vader had sent his apprentice on a mission to find and kill the last of the Jedi. Perhaps the Emperor had intended the same with his dark minion.
If so, he would be disappointed by the results. Kota may not have wielded a blade, as he had on Nar Shaddaa, but the Emperor’s emissary had died all the same. That would send a clear threat to the Emperor, perfectly in line with Darth Vader’s wishes.
Assuming Kota survived, of course. The apprentice could only hope that he was heading to the balloon dock via a different route and wouldn’t get himself killed along the way …
A squad of troopers was waiting for him in the heat exchange, wi
th three of the mobile Uggernaughts. He made short work of them, neither rushing recklessly in nor drawing the fight out. There was no point to be made here. They were simply inconveniences.
He tossed the last of the Uggernaughts into the spinning blades of a fan four times as tall as he was. It exploded in a ball of flame, almost taking out its twin farther along the heat exchange. Out of the cloud of metal fragments leapt a second of the Emperor’s Sith assassins, saber-staff upraised. The apprentice met him with a clash of sparks and lightning.
Sith against Sith, they fought backward and forward through the broad, metal-lined space. This assassin was more proficient than the first, wiry and strong with a good reach and penchant for telekinetically throwing items from inside the apprentice’s blind spot. He proved to be tough work until the apprentice wrenched the next giant fan off its gimbals and sent it spinning through the air. The black guard seemed so stunned by the sight of it that he didn’t jump until it was too late. One spinning blade took his right leg off at the knee. From then, the fight was over.
The apprentice left the dismembered black-clad body behind and hurried on his way, through a maintenance area filled with nervous Ugnaughts and up a ramp to the balloon dock.
Stepping out into the open air, he found himself facing another squad of troopers, two more of the Emperor’s assassins, and no less than six Uggernaughts. Two transport balloons heavily weighted with supplies hung overhead, motors whirring to keep them on station, presumably waiting to land. Kota was nowhere to be seen. The apprentice bent his knees and adopted a fighting stance.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked his gathered foes.
The answer came in the form of blasterfire from the troopers, a barrage from the Uggernaughts, and a combined charge from the two assassins. He whirled and leapt, filling the air with reflected energy. All thought ceased; his connection to the Force became deeper than it ever had been before. He moved with grace and pure reflex, ducking under saber-staff blows, hurling troopers bodily at their Ugnaught allies, tossing walkers off the dock, and even raining supplies from one of the balloons above.
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