The Force Unleashed (22 page)

And the face of the Jedi Knight was the very same one he had seen while dueling Kota

. . .

Time slowed. The air felt as thick as honey. He strained against It, fearing that he

was about to succumb to another hallucination, but he remained in control of his

limbs. A shadow fell over the hut, as though a cloud had blocked the sun. He

shivered and raised his hands to hug himself.

Cold metal touched his skin. He looked down in horror at what had become of his

fingers. They were artificial claws, like the hands of a surgical droid, with blades

sharp enough to cut bow His wrists and forearms were part flesh, part machine. The

unnatural amalgamation continued up to his shoulders and disappeared under a high,

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metal collar that protected his neck. What skin was visible on his wrists was

blistered and scarred, as though burned many times over by ferociously high heat.

More than just his hands and arms had changed. His clothes were different, too.

Instead of the new uniform Darth Vader had given him, he now wore a ribbed vest of

flexible armor plates and a series of leather belts around his waist. From the belts

hung a collection of grisly trophies-lightsabers most prominent among them. Under

the tight black garments, his body felt strange, more mechanical than alive.

With shaking hands, he raised his metal fingers to touch his face. Metal blades

touched armor with a piercing squeak. His face was hidden behind a mask, as

deathless and horrible as his Master's. His breathing was loud in his ears.

He had become someone's worst nightmare.

A golden glow flickered through the honeyish air. He turned his masked head to face

it, and made out a dark silhouette walking toward him. His clawed right hand reached

for his lightsaber, which he selected automatically from the many at his waist. It

snapped on, casting a bloody red glow through the hut.

By that light, a man in Jedi robes was revealed, tall and straight-backed. The face

beneath the hood was smooth-skinned and calm. His eyes gleamed, containing sorrow

and pity. Familiar and yet unfamiliar, known and yet utterly unknown . . .

The apprentice hissed a low, dangerous sound through his mask's vocoder and crouched

like a poised snake, master of Juyo, the most vicious form of lightsaber combat

known in the galaxy.

The Jedi drew his own lightsaber-a bright sky blue-and adopted a classic Soresu

opening stance, with left arm upraised, palm-down, running parallel to the

lightsaber in his right. With his left foot forward he balanced perfectly on his

right, ready to defend himself against any attack.

The apprentice didn't keep him waiting. He didn't employ any wild acrobatics or

fancy Force moves. He simply lunged, using his whole body as a weapon, his balance

and dexterity utterly focused. The dark side thrilled through him, harmonizing

perfectly with the anger and hate in his heart. The Jedi was going to die, one way

or another. It might as well be now.

Blue blocked red in a spray of energy. The apprentice struck again, higher this

time, a deceptively loose blow that hid deadly subtleties beneath its wide swing.

The Jedi blocked it, too; just. Soresu was a defensive fighting style well suited to

the close confines of the hut, but it wouldn't last forever against the malignant

grace of Juyo.

The Jedi came in hard and fast before the apprentice could idly another attack. He

cared little if the Jedi hit him, so long as damage was minimal. Close hits left

flesh sizzling and armor smoking. The energy he saved on wild dodges he spent on

tearing jagged planks from the walls and throwing them at the Jedi's head. All were

deflected, but it distracted the man, robbed his attack of some of its momentum.

When he paused, the apprentice sent a surge of Sith lightning under his guard.

The Jedi was caught in the flickering storm. His face twisted into a pained grimace.

Then he brought his right arm down and placed the blade of his lightsaber directly

in the lightning's path. The energy was absorbed by the blade, then bent back upon

itself in a superconducting loop, striking its source with more energy than it had

originally possessed. The apprentice stiffened as pain coursed up his hands and

arms. The agony was unbearable-but hear it he did. His skin melted and warped all

over his body, and he gagged on the stink of his own burning flesh. The pain and

revulsion only fed the dark side, so the faster the lightning came back to him, the

harder and stronger it flowed from him.

The loop couldn't last forever. With a blinding blue flash he and the Jedi were

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blown far apart, crashing with arms out stretched into the walls of the hut and

dropping to the floor. Then lightsabers skittered away in opposite directions, dead.

Flat on his back, the apprentice wheezed through his mask like an asthmatic Gand,

only gradually regaining sensation in his arms and legs. His muscles twitched

spastically when he tried to move. Acrid steam poured from his mask's narrow eye

slits. Fearing that his Jedi opponent might be on his feet before him, he called on

all the power of the Force to lift himself bodily into the air. Hanging suspended

like a doll, with his feet some centimeters off the ground, he blinked his searing

eyes until he could see again.

The Jedi was faring no better. He, too, was upright, but only just. He, too, had

lost his lightsaber and not yet managed to it-claim it. The apprentice leered behind

his mask. He had several other lightsabers to choose from, belonging to all the Jedi

Knights he had killed. All he had to do was select one at random and strike

Instead he reached out with his left hand and, as his dark Master had done to the

first Jedi killed on this spot, long ago, gripped his opponent about the throat with

the Force. Still smoking from the lightning attack, the young man jerked abruptly

into the air.

They faced each other across the ruined hut, neither touching the ground.

"Kill me," gasped the Jedi, "and you destroy yourself."

The apprentice laughed gloatingly, a hideous sound that bore little relationship to

anything made by a human throat. Summoning his lightsaber, he activated it and threw

it at the stricken Jedi. The blade went through the Jedi's right shoulder and

deactivated when the pommel hit flesh. The Jedi arched his back but didn't cry out.

Savoring the moment, the apprentice unhitched one of tin-other lightsaber hilts from

his belt, ignited it, too, and impaled the Jedi again. Over and over he stabbed the

Jedi Knight until there were no more hilts at his belt and the ground beneath his

victim was stained deep red.

Still the Jedi lived. A flicker of annoyance spoiled the moment, but then he

remembered that there was one more lightsaber he hadn't used: the Jedi's own.

Snatching it to him, the apprentice ignited the blade, drew his arm back, and

stabbed the Jedi Knight through the heart.

That did the trick. The body dropped to the ground, inert, and tin apprentice

allowed himself to stand properly on the soil. The .lit k side throbbed through him.

He was the living embodiment of power.

Tipping his masked head back, he crowed in triumph like a feral wolf cat.

"I never wanted this for you," whispered a hollow voice out of I he shadows.

He spun, lightsaber back in his hand and lit in less time than it took to think

about it. Someone else stood in the hut: a man with lung dark hair and a Wookiee

sash down his front. He looked at the body of the Jedi Knight on the ground, grief

and loss in his eyes.

The apprentice went to strike him down, but stopped, recognizing him as the man from

two visions: the father of the boy who had been taken and the man he had glimpsed

over Nar Shaddaa.

"I never wanted any of this for you," the man said. "I'm sorry, Galen."

Rooted to the spot, the apprentice stared as the Jedi Knight turned to walk back

into the shadows. Vision or reality? Truth or fantasy? His mind felt as though it

were turning as fast as a pulsar.

"Father, wait!" The voice burst out of him, unfiltered by hideous deformities or the

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strictures of the mask. Suddenly he was the boy again, whole but alone, standing

abandoned in the bloody hut. "Father, no!"

The Jedi Knight walked on without pause and vanished into the shadows.

Collapsing to his knees, the apprentice lowered his head and screamed.

A BEDRAGGLED FIGURE EMERGED FROM the ruined hut, eyes wild and jaw set. With

determination, he set off along the dry creekbed, following the directions he had

been given in another age, another life. Empty of thought, he let duty sweep him

forward. Duty to his Master, to Juno, to Kota, to the Wookiees . . .

What duty he owed himself, he didn't know. He hadn't realized that there had even

been a him to think of outside his relation ship with Darth Vader. He had imagined

himself simply made, somehow, one of his Master's stranger biological experiments,

with no parents and no home but the one he remembered. What if the visions he had

endured were real and he had had a family, here on Kashyyyk? How did that affect his

place in Vader's schemes? Did it change everything, or nothing?

Juno called on the comlink to ask him if he was all right. He said he was. She asked

if he was sure. He said he was. She sounded hurt by his terseness, but he couldn't

help that. He was so full of emotion-confusion and doubt, and dismal certainty and

hope as well-that he couldn't cope with her feelings on top of it. He was trying his

best not to feel at all. Galen?

He had a job to do.

As he ran through the undergrowth, putting the depthless shadows of the hut behind

him, he repeatedly touched his hands, reassured as he never had been before by the

feel of skin on skin.

* * *

The MOORINGS WERE LARGER EVEN than he had guessed from the brief plans displayed by

the astromech droid. Its mistress's instructions had been simple: destroy the

moorings and the skyhook would be ruined. That sounded deceptively easy, given the

amount of fortification and security in place.

Simplicity suited him, however. He didn't want to think, to have to agonize over

motives and methods. He just wanted to act. With none of the joy he had felt while

assaulting the lodge and with none of the challenge offered by the black Imperial

Guards on Bespin, he plowed through the faceless stormtroopers as a wampa would

stride through snow. Sith lightning crackled; bodies broke under his irresistible

telekinesis; his mind influenced the decisions of officers, who ordered their

underlings to attack one another in droves. None could stand up to him and survive.

When he reached the base of the skyhook, he was momentarily given pause. How to

bring about the ruin of six constructs several stories high? Their super-strong

materials were designed to handle the stresses of holding the massive station

directly above, against all the laws of physics. How would he overcome their

resistance?

The answer, as always, lay in the Force. The Force was beyond physics. The Force

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could not be resisted, when wielded by confident hands. The Force would always be

sufficient.

Turning his back on the body-strewn battlefield, he put both hands on the base of

the nearest mooring. Closing his eyes and his mind to all forms of distraction, he

imagined himself at one with the metal, permacrete, and stone. He felt the mooring's

strengths and its weaknesses. He resonated with it, until it was hard to tell where

his hands stopped and the mooring began.

When he could achieve no greater focus, he reached out for the dark side and let it

guide him.

Energy came like a dam bursting, as wild as every predator on Kashyyyk combined but

as pure as a laser. He tilted his head back and relished the wonder and terror of

what he had brought into being. This was a power far greater than Sith lightning,

designed for one single task. He lost himself utterly in that task. He became

destruction.

The mooring shook. Its more delicate components-nanowires, sensitive self-regulating

systems, microscopic hydraulic channels-fused almost immediately. Once the complex

processes maintaining its stability were disrupted, a chain reaction began that

could not be stopped. Pressures mounted in areas close to exceeding their maximum

load; hairline cracks formed and spread; a deep vibration sprang up that could not

be dampened. Even if left to its own devices, the mooring would shake itself to

pieces in minutes.

The apprentice maintained his assault until hairline cracks became gaping rents and

the vibration shook the world, howling material agony over the renewed firing of

blaster cannons. When the first shower of boiling dust and pebble-sized fragments

rained down on him, he decided it was time to step back and take stock-and to

prevent some hapless stormtrooper creeping up on him and shooting him in the back.

He opened his eyes and looked up. The mooring was barely recognizable as the same