The voice was Darth Vader’s, but again from another time, another memory. The present-day Darth Vader hadn’t spoken at all.
Starkiller put his manacled hands to his head and turned away, lest his disconcertion be exposed. No matter how he tried, no matter how he concentrated, the past simply wouldn’t leave him alone.
Vader’s close attention hadn’t ebbed. “You are still haunted by visions.”
“Yes.” There was no point denying it. “Yes, my Master.”
“Tell me what you see.”
He didn’t know where to start. Thirteen days, this time, he had stayed motionless in the pit, subjected to visions and hallucinations through all his senses: strange odors, fleeting touches, voices calling him, sights he could never have imagined. He tried to ignore them, and when he couldn’t ignore them, he tried to piece them together instead. Neither was entirely possible, and every attempt hurt so badly he despaired of it ever ending.
“Sometimes,” he said, falteringly, “I smell a forest on fire.”
“Continue.”
“I see the general falling, and feel the ground shake as a starship crashes around me. And I hear a woman—a woman’s voice—when I try to sleep.” He swallowed. This was the most painful recollection of all. “I can’t understand what she’s saying. Do you know who she is?”
A pleading note had entered his voice, and he hated himself for it.
“They are the memories of a dead man.” Vader came closer, his physical presence lending weight to his words. “A side effect of the accelerated cloning process and the memory flashes used to train you. They will fade.”
“What if they don’t?”
“Then you will be of no use to me.”
Starkiller straightened. For the first time, that fact had been said aloud. He had always known it was so; Darth Vader wasn’t renowned for his charity. But to hear it stated so baldly—that this Starkiller, this clone, would be disposed of like some faulty droid if he didn’t pull himself together soon—had a profoundly focusing effect.
Not for long.
“Try the Corellian razor hounds.”
That was a new voice, one he hadn’t heard before. He winced, and knew that by wincing he had effectively doomed himself.
“Starkiller’s emotions made him weak,” the Dark Lord said. “If you are to serve me, you must be strong.”
What form of service that might take, Darth Vader had never said. To take the former Starkiller’s place, he presumed, as a weapon that could be aimed at the Emperor then Vader’s enemies whenever he commanded. From treacherous commanders to perhaps the Emperor himself—that was how it had been, and how he assumed it would be now. For the moment, however, that didn’t matter. The new Starkiller wanted only to live.
“I am strong, my Master, and I am getting stronger.”
Vader stepped behind him and waved a hand. Metal complained as the manacles dropped from Starkiller’s wrists and hit the floor with a boom.
“Show me.”
Numerous pairs of eyes lit up in the shadows. The PROXY droids were activating. Starkiller’s fists balled in readiness. He had defeated their training programs over and over again. There wasn’t a Jedi simulation that could beat him.
But this was different. Even as Darth Vader provided him with his weapons—two lightsabers with matched crystals, producing identical red blades—he saw that he wouldn’t be fighting Jedi Knights this time. The targets stepping out of the shadows wore uniforms not dissimilar in color to the Sith’s ancient enemy, but these were ordinary men armed with nothing more than blasters.
He had seen such armor before, in the memories of the original Starkiller’s life. Men like this had fought him in a TIE fighter factory high above Nar Shaddaa. They had been on Corellia, too. He remembered the places clearly, even if he couldn’t put them in context. The uniforms weren’t Imperial. That was the only thing he could be sure of.
More voices came to him, a veritable babble of overlapping statements that went some way to filling one hole in his memory.
“We’ll join your alliance.”
“All we needed was someone to take the initiative.”
“Let this be an official Declaration of Rebellion.”
And he did remember now. The PROXY droids were wearing the uniform of Kota’s militia, later adopted by the Rebellion—the Rebellion the original Starkiller had brought into being through a mixture of deceit and something that felt, through the obscuring veils of the cloning process, remarkably like sincerity.
“You must destroy what he created,” Darth Vader intoned.
Starkiller ground his teeth together. If he was going to survive the coming minutes, he had to concentrate. He wasn’t really destroying the Rebellion, just an imitation of it. And what did the Rebellion matter now, anyway? It existed. The original Starkiller was dead. He needed to move on.
The troopers rushed him from all sides. Twin red blades flashed as he met their advance, spinning and slashing with an easy grace that belied the strength behind it. Mastery of the Jar’Kai dual-lightsaber fighting style hadn’t come easily, even given his inherited knowledge of the Niman and Ataru techniques. Using two blades came with both advantages and disadvantages. Although he could attack or defend himself against more than one opponent at once, he could only wield his lightsabers one-handed, reducing the power of his blows.
Building up his physical strength had therefore been a key part of his training on Kamino, starting with simple weights and graduating to combat training with droids like these. Dueling the Dark Lord himself had come last of all, and he had clung to that ultimate challenge even as his mind played games with him. He might not know who he was, but he could learn—and had learned—how to fight.
Fight he did, deflecting every attack the faux-Rebels dealt against him, singly or in pairs and trios. Holographic limbs and blasters were no match for his blades. Sparks flew. Droids fell in pieces. Brown uniforms turned red with illusory blood.
More droids issued from the wall, crowding him, coming at him in waves of four or more. Starkiller went into a fighting trance, stabbing and sweeping complex arcs through the air. His nostrils were full of smoke. The stink cleared his head. No more voices assailed him, and no doubts, either. He was who he was. Born to kill, he killed.
With a roar he forced his way through a wall of Rebels, slashing and hacking as he went. They fell apart on either side, leaving just one standing before him. He raised both blades to strike him down.
Not him. Her. She was a slender, blond woman in an officer’s uniform clutching a blaster in both hands.
Starkiller froze. He knew that face.
He took a step toward the woman.
“You’re still loyal to Vader! After all he did to us—branding me a traitor and trying to kill you—”
“No,” he said.
The words in his head wouldn’t be drowned out.
“I saw you die. But you’ve come back.”
“No,” he repeated, raising his blades.
“Don’t make me leave another life behind.”
“No!”
The woman cowered before him. “Wait,” she said in a voice identical to the one in his head. “Don’t!”
“Now the fate of this Alliance rests only with you.”
He lowered his blades, stunned out of his fighting trance. The voices were the same!
Memories stirred in his mind. Images of the woman before him came in a bewildering rush. Vader wanted him to destroy everyone the original Starkiller had fought with, and that meant this woman, this Rebel officer, this …
“Juno?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Strike her down” came the command from Vader. “I—I can’t.”
“You must learn to hate what he loved,” said Vader, and suddenly it was just the three of them in the center of the droid-strewn training ground. Starkiller, the Sith who had created him, and a woman from the first Starkiller’s past.
Conflicting impulses warred
within him, triggered by the ongoing cascade of recollections. Juno was Juno Eclipse, the woman Starkiller had, yes, loved. But he wasn’t Starkiller, so what did he owe her? He was just a clone, and she was only a droid, an illusion fashioned to test him. What did it matter if he did as he was told, as he had been bred to do?
His hands trembled. The twin red blades wavered. They grew steadier as he drew his elbows back, preparing to strike.
“I guess I’ll never need to live this down.”
He remembered a tender pressure against his lips, the feel of her body against his, a heat he had never experienced before, in this life or any other …
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t kill her.
With a double click, he deactivated his blades. His arms came down and hung at his sides.
“It is as I feared.”
Darth Vader lashed out, channeling the dark side with practiced ease. Starkiller winced, but it was the training droid the Dark Lord had targeted. His lightsaber sliced it neatly in two. The image of Juno Eclipse vanished in a shower of sparks.
Starkiller held his ground. No more my Master. No more pretense. “What will you do with me?”
Darth Vader strode to face his former apprentice, kicking the body of the droid out of his path.
“You will receive the same treatment as the others.”
“What others?”
“Those who came before you went mad within months, tormented by emotional imprints I was unable to erase. Some would not kill their father, others their younger self. With you, it is this woman. Now you will suffer the fate they did.”
Starkiller bowed his head, rocked by the revelation that he wasn’t the only Starkiller Darth Vader had re-created. This he had never been told. The possibility hadn’t even been insinuated—although he should have guessed.
How many had come before him? How many had died before they had ever truly lived? Could his creator possibly be telling the truth about their stubborn emotional imprints? He spared no feelings for the father he could no longer remember or the boy he had stopped being long ago. It didn’t seem remotely possible that any version of Starkiller could do anything other than share that love for Juno Eclipse.
Another vivid memory tore through him.
Staring down in shock at the sight of his Master’s lightsaber protruding from his stomach. Unbearable pain. Falling heavily to his knees with a choked scream.
And another woman’s voice, the dying words of a Jedi Master he had killed.
“The Sith always betray one another—but I’m sure you’ll learn that soon enough.”
His mind cleared, and he stared in new understanding at the Dark Lord before him.
Vader was lying. There had been no other clones—or, if there had been, they had felt the same way as him. The original Starkiller had loved Juno Eclipse, and so did he. He was sure of it. He felt it in his bones, in the genetic machinery of his cells. It was the one thing he was sure of.
Vader wanted to weaken that certainty, to turn him back into a weapon, by implying that this feeling was spurious.
And worse—the act of killing Juno Eclipse was symbolic only, here in the Vader’s secret cloning laboratory. How long until that became Juno’s actual slaughter? Would that have been the next stage in his training?
The hum of the Dark Lord’s lightsaber changed pitch slightly as Vader shifted position.
Before Vader could strike, Starkiller turned. He didn’t activate his own lightsabers. Vader would expect be expecting that—a defensive pose, or at best a halfhearted attack. Starkiller would surprise him with the one weapon Vader couldn’t wield in return.
A burst of lightning arced from Starkiller’s fingers. Too late, the Dark Lord raised his lightsaber to catch the attack. Lightning crawled up and down his chest plate and helmet, provoking a painful whine from his breathing apparatus. The servomotors in his right arm strained.
Starkiller had only a split second before his former Master repelled the attack. The Force flowed through him. Droid parts and debris rose up and spun around the room. With a harsh rending sound, the metal wall burst outward, letting in the fury of the storm.
But even in the grip of his passions he knew that there was a difference. He was intimately familiar with what being driven by negative emotions felt like. His original had been a slave to the dark side until Juno and Kota had shown him how to be free. That legacy remained even now. He would choose the emotions that ruled him. He would not be a slave to them.
The dark side tugged at Starkiller, and it was hard to resist. He hated his former Master. He feared for Juno. He doubted the very fact of his existence. Killing the man who had created him would go some way to solving at least two of those problems. The temptation was very strong.
Vader’s blade caught the edge of the lightning. The Dark Lord began to straighten.
Starkiller leapt for the hole he had torn through the wall and entered the storm. He jumped high and long, aiming for the landing platform he had located by hearing alone, weeks ago.
He came down with a solid thud on the slick metal platform, just meters from Vader’s TIE fighter. Lightning split the sky into a thousand pieces. Thunder boomed. Far below, and all around, the sea raged.
The rain and wind scoured him clean. He opened his mouth and felt moisture on his tongue for the first time in thirteen days. After so long in the pit, it tasted like freedom itself.
His arrival took the squadron of stormtroopers guarding the facility by surprise, but they reacted quickly enough. Sirens sounded. Blaster rifles came up to target him. Three AT-STs standing guard over the landing platform clanked and began to turn.
Starkiller bared his teeth. His heart beat with an excitement he hadn’t felt since his awakening in Vader’s laboratory. This was why he had been made. This was why he existed.
He reached out with his hands and flexed his will. The Force responded, swelling and rising in him like an invisible muscle. A nearby communications tower groaned and twisted. Sparks flew. He wrenched the tower down and sideways, sweeping it over the platform, knocking the AT-STs into the ocean and crushing the stormtroopers gathering to rush him.
Something exploded—a generator, pushed far beyond its capacity. Through the exploding shell of shrapnel stalked a black figure holding a red lightsaber. Vader was moving with surprising speed.
Starkiller almost smiled. Vader’s rage was not so easily escaped. But he had done it once before. He would do it again.
The starfighter behind him was unharmed by the devastation he had wrought. Starkiller ran to it and leapt inside. He worked its familiar controls with confident speed, activating systems still warm from its last flight. Its ion engines snarled.
An invisible fist gripped the starfighter. Starkiller increased the thrust. His determination met Darth Vader’s rage, and for an instant he was unsure which would win.
Then all resistance fell away, and the TIE fighter leapt for the sky. He fell back into the seat and watched the black storm clouds approach him. Electrical discharges danced around the cockpit. Darkness briefly shrouded him.
Then he was through and above the clouds and rocketing high into the atmosphere. The planetary shield surrounding Kamino was designed to keep ships out, not in, so he passed easily through their visible barrier. Stars appeared, and Vader was far behind.
Now what?
He didn’t dare believe that he was entirely free, or that Juno was entirely safe. He had to find her before Vader did. He had to be with her.
Every breath he took filled him with the certainty of that fact. This was the emotion that would rule him, not revenge or bloodlust or despair. But how to pursue this mission? Where did he start looking for one woman in an entire galaxy?
“Starkiller’s former conspirator has been captured.”
General Kota. If anyone knew where she was, it would be him.
As the cloud-racked face of Kamino receded behind him, Starkiller locked in a course for Cato Neimoidia.
THE OLD RE
PUBLIC
(5,000–33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)
Long—long—ago in a galaxy far, far away … some twenty-five thousand years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: A New Hope … a large number of star systems and species in the center of the galaxy came together to form the Galactic Republic, governed by a Chancellor and a Senate from the capital city-world of Coruscant. As the Republic expanded via the hyperspace lanes, it absorbed new member worlds from newly discovered star systems; it also expanded its military to deal with the hostile civilizations, slavers, pirates, and gangster-species such as the slug-like Hutts that were encountered in the outward exploration. But the most vital defenders of the Republic were the Jedi Knights. Originally a reclusive order dedicated to studying the mysteries of the life energy known as the Force, the Jedi became the Republic’s guardians, charged by the Senate with keeping the peace—with wise words if possible; with lightsabers if not.
But the Jedi weren’t the only Force-users in the galaxy. An ancient civil war had pitted those Jedi who used the Force selflessly against those who allowed themselves to be ruled by their ambitions—which the Jedi warned led to the dark side of the Force. Defeated in that long-ago war, the dark siders fled beyond the galactic frontier, where they built a civilization of their own: the Sith Empire.
The first great conflict between the Republic and the Sith Empire occurred when two hyperspace explorers stumbled on the Sith worlds, giving the Sith Lord Naga Sadow and his dark side warriors a direct invasion route into the Republic’s central worlds. This war resulted in the first destruction of the Sith Empire—but it was hardly the last. For the next four thousand years, skirmishes between the Republic and Sith grew into wars, with the scales always tilting toward one or the other, and peace never lasting. The galaxy was a place of almost constant strife: Sith armies against Republic armies; Force-using Sith Lords against Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights; and the dreaded nomadic mercenaries called Mandalorians bringing muscle and firepower wherever they stood to gain.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Page 31
