He stood with a grunt.
“If you won’t give me any peace and quiet,” he said, “I’m going to the cargo hold to sleep.”
“You do that, General,” she said, relieved that the moment was over and unsure what exactly had passed between them. “I’m going to see if I can find out what that skyhook is for.”
He patted her dismissively on the shoulder and shuffled out of the cockpit, making his way by feel through the ship’s hard-edged interior.
Juno checked the instruments to make sure they were still flying true. Starkiller hadn’t called in yet. She wondered if that was a good sign or the worst imaginable …
CHAPTER 17
WITH ONE DESPERATE LUNGE OF his lightsaber, the apprentice killed the last of the giant spiders that had ambushed him in the forest’s lower levels. Hideous creatures with fat, red-pigmented bodies and tenacity beyond all reason—he almost wondered if they saw his potential escape as a personal affront as well as lost lunch—they had tracked him for over a kilometer before finally springing their trap. Barely had he begun to wonder at the dearth of Kashyyyk’s dangerous undergrowth dwellers in his vicinity than five of the giant weavers had suddenly converged on him at once, swinging on thick strands of web with mandibles raised and dripping poison. He had barely survived the ambush.
Wiser now, and splattered in thick green ichor, he abandoned the undergrowth for the upper levels of the forest. It was taking him too long to approach the coordinates Kota had given him. Leaping from branch to branch, he ascended two hundred meters before the light started to brighten appreciably. Such was the perpetual gloom below that he felt as though he was ascending from deep underwater.
Kota hadn’t told him what lay at the coordinates, and he hadn’t commed the Rogue Shadow to find out. He wanted to learn for himself, to test the aging general’s memory, reliability, and word.
Once he was sure he was out of the territory of the deadly spiders, he took a more level heading, albeit one still angling slightly upward. The forest canopy stretched at least another half a kilometer above him, consisting of the branches of mighty trees overlapping one another for support and carrying many thousands of species on their broad terraces. The kingdoms of animal, vegetable, and even mineral flourished everywhere he looked. Birds flew in complex flocks around nesting grounds like small cities. Insects crawled and swarmed in sappy splits in the bark. Soil from rotting vegetable matter and airborne dust pooled in the joints between branches and trunks, creating oases for leafy plants and spreading vines. The cool air was full of animal sounds and the rustling of leaves.
It was very different from Felucia, where everything seemed swollen with moisture and the Force, always on the brink of bursting. Here life was hard-edged and knife-sharp. Turning one’s back on it was very, very dangerous.
Back in a relatively safe domain, leaping or swinging on vines from branch to branch, the apprentice was able to resume thinking about what he had seen from orbit.
A skyhook.
Startling enough on its own. Only a handful existed in the galaxy, and most of those were on Coruscant. But that wasn’t what had struck him.
As the Rogue Shadow had descended to the world’s surface, he had seen the skyhook from a different angle. Catching the last rays of the sun, it had resembled a fiery line reaching up into the sky—
—up to a point in low orbit where a cluster of tiny lights gathered.
He had seen that vision before, of the skyhook over Kashyyyk. It had come to him while he’d been unconscious in Darth Vader’s secret laboratory, undergoing surgery for the terrible wounds his Master had inflicted. He had thought those visions nothing but dreams, meaningless fancies thrown up by his subconscious while his body was under duress.
Could they in fact have been glimpses of his future?
He didn’t know. Certainly he had never before achieved foresight, not through meditation or any of the other trials he had set himself, but that didn’t rule it out. He had been suspended between life and death for months. Who knew what straits he had endured on the road back to survival? It would be foolish to discount the possibility, for the visions might contain information that could help him on this particular journey, and others.
He struggled to recall more details of the vision, but found it difficult. His memories were jumbled. Something about the smell of raw meat, and Darth Vader talking about someone who had died. The hint of more was tantalizing but worthless on its own. He needed something tangible or else it would only distract him.
In the vision, the view of the skyhook seemed to come from a ground-level perspective. There couldn’t be many places offering that on Kashyyyk. And there had been someone else with him. A young woman. Juno, perhaps?
He frowned, sensing that he was drifting from the truth of the vision, whatever that was. Not Juno. Someone else. Someone unknown.
Friend or foe?
The vision was exhausted, and so was he from trying to wring more from it. He had felt weighed down ever since he’d arrived on Kashyyyk. There was something in the air of the place, in the trees, in the color of the sun—and it bothered him. If the source wasn’t the vision, then what could it be?
He abandoned the attempt and concentrated solely on negotiating the forest’s upper fringes.
As he neared the coordinates Kota had given him, the sound of industry rose up over the natural ambience of Kashyyyk.
The first to reach his ears was that of a shuttle taking off. Its flat, metallic whine ramped up, almost to the level of being painful, then faded away to the west. Birds erupted from the trees around him, adding their own clamor to the aftermath. When they had settled down, he made out the clanking of Balmorran All Terrain Scout Transports. The awkward-looking, two-legged machines had earned the apprentice’s unending dislike on Duro, where Darth Vader had sent him to put down a local despot who had grown too big for his Imperial boots. The machines were heavy and graceless, but troublesome in proficient hands. He hoped he could stay out of their gunsights for as long as he was on Kashyyyk.
Whirring landspeeders, buzzing vibrosaws, and the whine of a generator drifted to him as he neared their collective source. He was momentarily puzzled as to how such a large-sounding settlement had found a secure foothold in the dangerous forest. The answer came to him before long.
The forest ended as though a knife had been carved through it and the trees to one side scraped away. Raw, scarred dirt lay exposed to the naked sun for the first time in millennia, knotted with dead roots and mixed liberally with angular wood chips. The ground sloped down in a large valley to a choked riverbed, then angled up again to a summit that would have seemed prominent on any other world, but which remained dwarfed by the trees that crowded resentfully around the cleared area. On the summit of the far side of the valley was a lodge, clearly the home of someone important, doubling as an Imperial base, one bristling with weapons emplacements and satellite dishes, planted high above the forest with a shuttle landing pad jutting out of one side.
From where he crouched, he could see several steps leading up to the main entrance. A single shuttle rested on the pad, its arms folded demurely upward over its body. AT-STs strutted about below with an air of iron impregnability, shadowed by droids of all shapes and sizes. Stormtroopers patrolled the lodge’s perimeter with blaster rifles at the ready, some herding Wookiees in groups of three or four. The planet’s tall, heavily furred indigenes seemed to be wearing restraints, although it was hard to make out why across such a long distance.
The apprentice took all this in from a lofty vantage point on the very fringe of the forest, crouched on a slender bough like a Kowakian monkey-lizard. There was no obvious way into the lodge that he could see. Perhaps with a little more information, he could come up with some kind of plan.
From far below came the tinny crackle of a stormtrooper’s vocoder.
Exactly what he needed.
Dropping with apparent weightlessness through the branches, he landed between the member
s of a two-man patrol. Before either could sound the alarm, he raised his left hand and ordered one of them to sleep. As that trooper sagged gently to the ground, the second fell under the influence of a different mind trick.
“You’re not alarmed,” he told the trooper. “I’m authorized to be here. In fact, you’ve been expecting me.”
The man in the anonymous white helmet nodded. “Everything’s in order, sir. Can’t explain what’s gotten into Britt here, though—” He kicked his unconscious fellow with one white boot.
“Britt isn’t your concern. You want only to help me.”
“Yes, sir. I’m at your disposal. How can I assist you?”
The white helmet tipped inquisitively to one side, and the apprentice gave thanks for the small minds of most stormtroopers.
“Tell me who’s in charge here.”
“Captain Sturn, sir.”
“And where would I find him?”
“In the lodge with the guest, sir, if he’s not out hunting.”
“Who’s the guest?”
“I don’t know, sir, but we’re under strict orders to keep them out of harm’s way. These Wookiees are mindless brutes.”
The apprentice ignored the speciesist slur. “Is this person a guest, or a hostage?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Can you show me to the guest quarters?”
“I’m not authorized for that area, sir.” Again the helmet tilted. “Why don’t you ask Captain Sturn these questions?”
His hold on the stormtrooper’s mind was slipping. Before it could fall away entirely, the apprentice asked him about the Wookiees.
“What are we doing with them, sir? Why, giving them what they deserve. Filthy, mindless animals. Hey, you’re not one of those sympathetic types, are you? One of them tore my platoon leader limb from limb, right in front of me. Kill them all, I would, like Captain Sturn—”
“Enough.” He waved his hands across the stormtrooper’s face and stepped back to avoid his collapse. Leaving the pair where they lay, he melted into the shadows of the undergrowth and began to circle the enormous clearing. The lodge at its heart was built tough, with no obvious weak points. The far side projected over the ridge, into virgin forest. He didn’t want to get entangled in another web-weaver ambush if he could avoid it. By any account, it’d take an army to get in there, or firepower above and beyond anything he had at hand—unless he stole some of the Imperials’ concussion grenades, or got his hand on a blaster cannon …
A slow smile crept across his face. He didn’t need anything like that. He had the dark side of the Force on his side. Edging back up into the trees, he set out to find the best possible place to launch an assault.
Only once, when the scent of a distant burn-off hit his nostrils, did the strange feeling of disorientation strike him again. He put it firmly out of his mind. Dozens of stormtroopers lay in his immediate future, and all of them would be keen to keep him from his goal. He would give them cause to reconsider.
CHAPTER 18
WITHIN HALF AN HOUR OF slicing into the local Imperial mainframe, Juno had exactly half an answer.
The purpose of the skyhook was to ferry Wookiee slaves from the surface of Kashyyyk into low orbit, from which point they would be taken elsewhere.
Where they were to be taken, however, was hidden by a deeper level of security than she could penetrate. And the matter of why was completely obscured. After that productive half hour had come a frustrating search through every available record, looking for any kind of clue but finding none. She was as much in the dark on that point as she had been at the beginning.
She did learn that Darth Vader himself had visited the planet years earlier, but that appeared to have been on a completely unrelated matter.
Leaning back into her seat, she ran her fingers through her hair and stretched. Starkiller was busy on the ground. Kota was back in the hold. PROXY was still keeping himself amused. It had only just occurred to her that, for the moment, she was completely alone.
Leaning forward again, her fingers began tapping at the keys. Certain Imperial records were duplicated all across the galaxy. They came with every invading force, updating local networks and keeping themselves up to date in turn by downloading new information from capital ships passing through. Thus the administration of the Empire kept itself consistent across many thousands of inhabited worlds—for how else would distant governors know about new laws and appointments, or wanted criminals who might stray across their borders?
Data from the Imperial Academy was part of that automatic download. Encrypted, of course, but Juno knew the keys by heart. She told herself that she was just idly curious. Callos had been less than a year ago. She had heard nothing about her former friends and colleagues in all that time. It would be inhuman not to wonder …
The Black Eight Squadron was an elite unit with a reputation for discipline and ruthlessness. From the outside, she could see how its composition was carefully maintained by Darth Vader to ensure that both qualities remained unsullied. Leadership and pilots frequently turned over, a fact obscured by the air of mystique surrounding the squadron. Those inside never talked about their wingmates or missions; those outside never speculated. They got the job done. That was all that mattered.
She had been proud to fly as squadron leader, but her time at the helm had been brief. That, she learned, was normal. Her predecessor, whom she had flown with only twice, had lasted barely longer than her. His predecessor had lasted just a single month before being transferred by Darth Vader to a position she couldn’t trace. Both pilots were now listed as deceased.
She wondered if either of them had flown for Starkiller.
Turning away from that fruitless line of speculation, she investigated the careers of those pilots she had flown with. A third of them were still in the squadron. A third were dead—killed in action, she presumed, although only half were listed as such. The remainder had been promoted.
Reading the list of advancements, her hackles rose. A pilot with the call sign Redline had been promoted to head of squadron in her absence. Redline was, in her experience, the coldest, cruelest, least considerate being she had ever flown with. She had had serious concerns about his mental health, describing him in her flight logs as psychopathic and consistently penalizing him for using excess force. He was one of three under her who had complained about the withdrawal from Callos. The squadron should have stayed, they argued, and finished the job.
The world had died. She couldn’t see what was left to finish. And now here he was, running the most feared TIE fighter squadron in all the Empire.
She could see how that fit Darth Vader’s twisted vision of the galaxy. What she had once considered a close-knit unit, almost a family, she now knew was utterly dysfunctional—the product of a tyranny driven by fear and greed. Had she stayed with the Black Eight, she would have been forced to commit atrocities like Callos over and over again—as Redline was no doubt doing even now—or she would have resisted and been shot for disobeying orders.
She understood, but that didn’t mean she liked it, not one bit. Other promising pilots had been completely looked over. The replacement she had recommended, Chaser, was still flying fourth. And Youngster, the pilot who had followed her into the squadron, a cheerful graduate whom she had felt sure would pursue her rapidly up the ranks of enlisted officers, was …
It took her fifteen minutes to find out what had happened to him. He had left the squadron—alive, apparently, one of the few who had transferred while still able to fly—but from there his progress was difficult to track. He had suffered a change of heart, it seemed, but not one great enough to result in execution. He had flown transports for a while and then returned to active duty as a sentry around Imperial construction sites. He had seen combat in several hot spots, but nothing special. His latest posting …
Juno stared at the answer for a minute before accepting that it could be true. Youngster was stationed on Kashyyyk.
A terr
ible mixture of yearning and fear swept through her. With a flick of a switch, she could open a comm channel and hail her old wingmate. His familiar voice would fill the cockpit and for a moment, just a minute or two, she could feel as though she belonged again. She could roll back time and forget about betrayals and the uncertain future stretching ahead of her. She could be an accomplished Imperial pilot again, secure in the knowledge that nothing could ever change that.
One switch. She didn’t even have to say who she was. They could verbally handshake and that would be enough. What harm would that do?
She shuddered. Her hands were clenched tightly in her lap and she kept them there lest they betray her.
She couldn’t go back, not even for a minute. Hailing an Imperial squadron while Starkiller was on the ground risked blowing everything. Nothing was worth that. Not even talking to someone she had once called an ally and now considered her enemy, most likely. If he ever learned that she still existed …
Her shaking hands returned to the keyboard. Slowly, she typed in her own name.
Her files were no longer restricted. In fact, they came up immediately. She read the summary of her career as she would her own obituary. In one very real sense, it was exactly that.
Spy … traitor … executed by Imperial command.
There was no room for doubt. She could not go back. She didn’t even recognize the life she was supposed to have had. Her record had been tampered with. All her major achievements were gone. Even Callos didn’t rate a mention. She had been reduced to an inept fighter pilot who had somehow scraped a lucky break into the galaxy’s top squadron and then let her team down. Worse, she turned on them. The woman in the record had deserved that fictional blaster bolt. That was exactly what the old Juno Eclipse would have believed.
The old Juno Eclipse no longer existed. The new Juno Eclipse was angry that she had been so easily reduced, even in an official record she no longer cared about. Or believed. If this had happened to her, how many times had it happened to others branded traitor—like her own mother?
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