He stalked back to the meditation chamber, and she went back to waiting. For the moment, that seemed to be the only action she was allowed.
TWO DAYS EARLIER, SHE HAD left her seat to freshen up. Upon her return, feeling slightly more human both in mind and breath, she had overheard Kota and Starkiller talking in the cockpit.
“—can’t identify the style,” the old general was saying, “and it would help me understand you if you’d tell me who your original teacher was.”
“Who says you need to understand me?” Starkiller responded.
“Garm Bel Iblis will. He knows nothing about you, and militaristically speaking that makes you a threat.”
Juno held her breath.
“The only threat anyone should worry about is from the Emperor,” Starkiller responded in a tone suggesting that the conversation was over. “I can bring him down. That’s all you need to know.”
Kota was silent for a long while. “Be careful, boy. When you speak like that I hear the long shadow of the dark side reaching out to you.”
The two men lapsed into a moody silence. An instant before Juno decided the time was right to burst in on them, Starkiller spoke again.
“There was a girl on Felucia, an apprentice who turned to the dark side. I let her go.”
“Bail told me. What of her?”
“Was there no hope for her, once she fell?”
Kota made a clicking noise with his tongue. “Is that what happened to your teacher?”
Starkiller didn’t reply.
“Gah,” exclaimed Kota eventually. “Leave me alone, boy. You’re exhausting me with your silence.”
Juno ducked back out of sight as Starkiller exited the cockpit. When the door to the meditation chamber shut behind him, she retraced her footsteps and found Kota slumped in the seat with his eyes determinedly shut, still thinking his secret thoughts.
She had felt furious at both of them. What was it about men that led them to agonize in silence, or to talk circles so tightly around the truth that they stifled it? She could tell Kota things about Starkiller that would make his dead eyes pop, but he had no more moral high ground than either of them, with his endless despair and willingness only to complain. Surely no one really cared what Starkiller’s name was or who his teacher had been. What he did was all that mattered.
Depending, she told herself, on what he did do.
ON THE EIGHTH DAY STARKILLER called for her and PROXY to join him in the meditation chamber.
She hesitated, wondering if she had heard correctly, then left the contemplative Kota and made her way through the humming ship. The droid met her at the entrance of the meditation chamber, and together they entered its dim, angular space.
Starkiller occupied the center of the room. His expression was very serious. With a hiss, the door shut behind them.
“Stand there and don’t say anything,” he told her, pointing at a recessed corner where she would be in complete shadow. “PROXY, here.” The droid stood between Starkiller and her. She could barely see Starkiller for PROXY’s silhouette.
The lights flickered and dimmed almost to black. Starkiller took a deep breath and lowered his head.
PROXY’s metal skin sparked into life and began to change.
A darker shadow fell across the room.
“My lord,” said Starkiller, and Juno’s heart stopped.
The dark figure that stood where PROXY had been a moment before spoke. “Your actions on Raxus Prime left the Emperor most … displeased.” Vader’s leaden tones sent a ripple of disgust down Juno’s spine. “Who has now joined your cause?”
Starkiller raised his head to look directly at his Master.
“The Emperor’s enemies are cautious. I am earning their trust and respect, but some of them remain suspicious. If I’m ever discovered talking to you, my efforts will come to nothing, and we will have no army to challenge the Emperor.” He straightened to his full height. “You can’t appear to me again. I’ll contact you.”
Vader’s gloved fingers tightened into fists. “When?”
“After the alliance is formalized and ready to strike at the heart of the Empire.”
The Dark Lord said nothing for a long moment. His thoughts were utterly hidden by the all-concealing black mask. Juno didn’t know what to hope for and felt nothing but relief that the moment was over when Vader nodded slowly at last.
“Do not wait too long to contact me.” The index finger of his gloved right hand pointed at Starkiller’s chest. “The Emperor grows only more powerful.”
Vader flickered out, and PROXY became himself again. Unlike previous times, however, the droid seemed none the worse for impersonating the Dark Lord. Starkiller stared at him, deep in thought, and then gestured for the droid to leave.
She was alone with Starkiller for the first time since Felucia. Was this the moment she had been waiting for?
There is much conflict in you, Vader had said to him, long days ago. Your feelings for your new allies are growing stronger. Do not forget that you still serve me.
The thought that maybe he wasn’t a completely lost cause filled her with hope, but it was hope qualified by a very real uncertainty. When she had seen him staggering out of the misty distance on Raxus Prime, bearing the weight of his stricken droid entirely on his own, the expression on his face had almost broken down her resolve to mistrust him. The thought of losing his oldest companion had left him emotionally naked—even if it was a droid who had tried to kill him all his life. She had seen the conflict in his face that Vader had talked about. She had understood then that his mind wasn’t completely made up.
Yet when she had hurried out to meet him and tried to take some of PROXY’s weight, he had brushed her aside and continued up the ramp on his own. It was as though he felt his emotional vulnerability was caused by her, as if she had somehow manipulated him into feeling this way, and her anger at him had immediately rekindled. It wasn’t her fault she had been assigned to him. She hadn’t made him rescue her on the Empirical. He could easily have dumped her and piloted the ship himself.
The situation was no one’s fault. It just was. The sooner he worked that out, and where he stood with her and everyone around him, the better.
“We’re going to Corellia,” he said. “They’ll all be there—Bail and his allies …”
She couldn’t tell if he was glad or terrified.
“Well, if that’s the case, you’ll have your rebel alliance,” she said. “What are you going to do with it?”
His eyes met hers. “Trust me, Juno. I’m doing the right thing, for both of us.”
She wanted to believe him. She had no choice but to believe him. She was trapped in a web of possibilities. Only time would tell if she could find her way out of it again.
The sound of Kota’s voice calling them from the cockpit echoed through the ship.
“It’s time,” he was calling. “We can finally get moving.”
“Where to?” she asked Kota, dropping into her well-worn seat and flexing her fingers
“Corellia, of course.”
“I knew it.” And Starkiller had, too, before the call had arrived. Juno put that thought out of her mind. “As it happens, I have a course already laid in.” She checked the nav computer and found everything in order. The route had been updated automatically every half hour while she slept. With a series of deft touches she activated the sublight engines to nudge the ship out of orbit—not so fast as to attract attention but not too slowly, either. She was keen to get under way, despite the sudden butterflies in her stomach. As much as she had yearned for something to happen, now she was almost dreading it. They had reached the point of no return …
She looked up at the viewport and saw Starkiller’s reflection there, standing at the back of the cockpit with arms folded and eyes looking straight ahead, as though he could already see their destination. She couldn’t read his expression and found herself distracted by his presence in a way that annoyed her.
What
if Vader had chosen her solely to test Starkiller’s commitment? What if he was now failing that test?
She flicked a switch, and the strangeness of hyperspace engulfed them. The Rogue Shadow swayed beneath them, flying as smoothly as it had the first time she’d sat in its cockpit.
CHAPTER 33
HYPERSPACE. STARS. ATMOSPHERE.
Juno never seemed to tire of crossing the same boundaries every trip she flew. The apprentice wondered if she ever missed her glory days as a TIE fighter pilot, when work involved strafing and bombing runs as well as ferrying passengers backward and forward across the galaxy. He supposed, thinking of Raxus Prime, that she had seen some action, but it was hardly glamorous. The pay was awful, and her crew mates left a lot to be desired.
Kota was nowhere to be found when he emerged from the meditation chamber. That disappointed him, obscurely. He had hoped the general might rise above his usual dull funk now that the rebellion was taking a definite step forward. But he told himself not to be surprised. After months of depression and drunkenness, it would take something extraordinary to put the old man back together.
Assuming the jump seat behind Juno, the apprentice examined the strange new calm that enveloped him. Two contradictory feelings still tugged him in deeply divergent directions: one toward the rebellion, the other toward his Master. Between the two rested the separate foci of Juno and the Emperor. He was caught between them like an acrobat on a tightrope maintaining a constant and difficult balance.
That balance had eluded him until recently. Leaving Raxus Prime, he had promised to find a way to destroy the Emperor and at the same time keep Juno in his life. For a full week he had considered the obvious alternatives over and over again, to the point of madness. But then one new possibility had occurred to him: to create the rebel alliance as planned, but—instead of handing it over to his Master—keep it for his own use. Then, when the Emperor was gone …
What? he asked himself. Hand control of the galaxy to an inexperienced band of insurrectionists? Rule in peace—with Juno at his side? Abdicate and disappear forever?
The plan was riddled with uncertainties, but it was his. He had found a direction of his own, rather than one dictated to him by his former Master. He could pursue it in the full knowledge that he really was chasing his own destiny.
And Juno was trusting him …
Perhaps, he thought, he should trust her. Perhaps the truly wild possibility of his plan was that the rebels could help him destroy his Master, thereby setting all of them free.
He hardly dared think of that.
It was enough to know the meeting would go ahead as planned, safe from betrayal. The rebellion would be born, wherever it ultimately led. Reaching that decision had finally bought him a reprieve between the warring factions inside. While the delicate balance in his mind was maintained, he felt more at peace than he had for months.
The Rogue Shadow descended from a polar orbit over the planet’s northwestern mountain ranges. From a distance, the planet was startlingly beautiful, with two broad oceans surrounding temperate, well-tended lands. Industry was for the most part confined to orbit, so Corellia’s biosphere had been spared the industrial ravages wrought on so many other worlds. There were, however, patches that showed evidence of past mismanagement. Their landing site was one such, a ruined city in the midst of high-altitude wasteland. He didn’t know its name or what had happened to it, but as they drew near and the once-scorched, now-icy grid and its crumbling buildings came into focus, he took the lesson it offered wholeheartedly.
All ventures fail, in the end. All monuments fall. Even the greatest plan rarely survives its creators. If he, Darth Vader, or the Emperor were to die tomorrow, who would remember the strange plots that united them?
Juno guided the ship with sure hands, circling the ruins once to check for surprises and then bringing it down gently next to a trio of shuttles whose edges had been softened by snowfall. One of the transports was clearly Bail Organa’s. Uniformed guards placed themselves between all three and the landed Rogue Shadow.
“Well,” Juno said as the sublights cooled, “here we are. I always knew the stories about Corellia were exaggerated.”
“Looks like they’re all here.” He was too focused on what was to come to acknowledge the joke. “PROXY? Come on.”
She turned. “Isn’t Kota going with you?”
He glanced around the empty cockpit. “Looks like I’m flying this one solo. Wish me luck.”
Her face took on a determined look. “You’re not going out there on your own. Hold on.” She fairly leapt out of the pilot’s seat, straightened what remained of her uniform, and made a hasty attempt to tidy her hair. Flipping a hidden switch, she opened a secret panel and pulled out a holstered pistol, which she affixed to her belt. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“This is where you tell me not to take that the wrong way,” he said.
She pointed at the lightsaber hanging from his belt. “Just don’t make me need it. That’s all I have to say.”
He nodded, not blaming her, and led them out into the driving snow.
GUARDS IN WARM ENVIRONMENT GEAR led the three of them into the ruins without speaking a word. Long, stone corridors wound up to a watch station overlooking the rugged mountaintops. Within the makeshift meeting room was a rectangular conference table large enough for a dozen people. Beside it stood Bail Organa, dignified and formal in the robes of his office. With him were a straight-backed woman with a careworn face, who could only have been former Senator Mon Mothma of the Bormea sector, and a broad-shouldered man with long graying hair and mustache, the former Senator from Corellia, Garm Bel Iblis. Organa nodded in sedate welcome, but his colleagues were more reserved.
The apprentice walked without hesitation to face the trio gathered at the table. Bel Iblis stood directly opposite him, in front of the room’s northern “wall,” little more than an open-air overhang supported by a handful of stone pillars. A snowy clifftop beyond made the entire structure feel precariously balanced between sky and stone, as though gravity might at any moment smash it down.
The large stone door slid shut behind them. Juno jumped slightly and stepped to one side, joining the men and women in the uniforms of Corellia, Chandrila, and Alderaan guarding the meeting. At Bail Organa’s command, PROXY flickered and adopted the holographic image of his daughter, Leia, broadcast from elsewhere in the galaxy. She, too, nodded in recognition as she stepped up to the table next to her father.
“Friends.” Bail Organa was the first to break the silence. “Thank you for coming. I know it was a difficult decision. By meeting here, we have all put our lives at risk—as you have on many occasions already.” He inclined his head at the apprentice, who straightened at the acknowledgment but said nothing; public speaking was as foreign to him as the Whirling Kavadango Dance. “I believe that hope exists for a better future,” Organa continued. “This meeting heralds a time in which we won’t need to gather in secret—in which all will live in peace and prosperity, free of the yoke of fear the Emperor has cast over the galaxy. I believe that together we can make your dreams a reality.”
Mon Mothma nodded. “We have discussed this at great length,” she said. “We agree that the time for diplomacy and politics has passed. It is time for action.”
“Well timed,” agreed Bel Iblis in a rough, deep voice.
“Logistically,” Organa went on, “it makes sense to join our forces. My wealth can fund such a rebellion, while Garm will provide our fleet and Mon Mothma our soldiers. We’ve been working at cross-purposes for years now, waiting for the catalyst that would bring us together. I believe we have that catalyst now and that we would be foolish not to take advantage of it.”
“All we needed was someone to take the initiative,” said Mon Mothma, speaking directly to the apprentice. “We know we have the power of the Force on our side.”
“In short,” said Garm Bel Iblis with narrow, cautious eyes, “we’ve agreed to follow your lead. We’ll joi
n your alliance.”
“You have saved two of us here already,” Leia Organa concluded with fierce solemnity. “If the Emperor thinks he can push us around forever, he’s mistaken.”
“You’re wrong on one point, Princess,” said a voice from the doorway.
The apprentice turned. The doors had opened again without him hearing, allowing Kota entrance to the room.
“The boy saved three of us.” Kota was no longer the disheveled drunk, but a seasoned general. His blind eyes were uncovered and his boots polished. Every wayward strand of his gray hair had been pulled back into its queue, and his robe hung straight. With three unhesitating paces, he crossed to face the apprentice and put a hand on his shoulder. “I will join his rebellion, too, if I’m welcome.”
The apprentice reached up and gripped the gnarled fingers. “I thought you were still passed out in the cargo hold.”
Kota smiled. “I finally came to.”
Over the general’s shoulder, the apprentice saw Juno beaming as well. She nodded and indicated that he should turn back to the meeting.
“It’s settled, then,” said Bail, his voice rising into full oratorical mode. “Let this be an official Declaration of Rebellion. Today we vow to overturn the Empire in order that the galaxy and all its peoples will be one day free, be they human or Hamadryas, Wookiee, or Weequay. Every sapient being has the inalienable right to live in safety and to fight for that right if it is ever—”
The sound of a massive explosion cut him off. The floor shook beneath them; dust rained from above.
Bail Organa’s smile disappeared. He pulled back from the table and turned to face his daughter.
“PROXY!” he shouted. “Cut transmission!”
The droid dissolved the hologram and became himself once more.
Another explosion shook the eagle’s nest. The apprentice ran to the northern wall and looked out through the stone pillars. A Star Destroyer loomed in the upper atmosphere. TIE fighters raced through the sky.
“No,” he whispered. “No!”
Behind him the door blew open, and his denial vanished under the sound of blasterfire and screaming.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Page 25
