The Force Unleashed (23 page)

structure. Electrical discharges danced across its conducting surfaces.

Ultrastressed permacrete flowed like treacle. Larger fragments began to fall and he

batted them away with the Force, feeling no more drained by his exertion than he

would have from a light run. He almost smiled at his accomplishment, but one stark

fact sobered him to the core.

One down. Five to go.

The Imperials were rallying. They needed to be reminded of who they were dealing

with. While crossing to the next mooring in line, he detonated fuel tanks and

exploded ammunition stores. AT-STs cracked open like seedpods and burst into

short-lived flame. He reached his target without encountering serious resistance and

brought it down as he had the first.

By now the Imperials on the ground were calling for reinforcements from above. A

trio of TIE fighters shrieked down through Kashyyyk's atmosphere, stitching the

blackened permacrete with needles of fire. He laughed mirthlessly. They considered

that a solution}

With a well-timed nudge on the lead TIE fighter's port solar gather panel, he sent

it tumbling into the permacrete, where it exploded instantly. The impact shook the

ground beneath his feet and sent cracks spreading across its face.

That gave him an idea. When the two remaining TIEs came around for another pass, he

sent them both into the third and fifth moorings. The fourth took so much collateral

damage that it fared almost as badly as its siblings.

Only one mooring remained.

As he turned to it, he became aware of the clanking of an AT-ST coming from behind

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him. He turned just in time to deflect a barrage of precision weapons fire from the

nose of a walker that was sprinting at him as fast as its two mechanical legs could

run. A flurry of concussion grenades followed.

He detonated them all before they could arrive and repulsed the furious blossoming

of hot gases in a sphere around him.

The AT-ST didn't take the hint. It was moving fast, bearing down with its flat

footpads as though trying to physically trample him. Maybe it was. The walker had

registration markings identifying it as belonging to the commander of the Imperial

ground forces.

Captain Sturn had come to finish the job at which his underlings had failed so

miserably.

The apprentice dodged the stamping feet as they went by and zapped the rear of the

walker with lightning. Nothing happened. Sturn's walker obviously possessed a layer

of shielding above and beyond that provided to his grunts. The AT-ST's armaments

also set it apart from the others, including a long-barreled hunting, cannon and

what appeared to be a net launcher on its left flank.

Sturn brought the walker about. The apprentice reached out in twist the man's mind,

but found it too opaque with anger and resentment; not fear, though. Sturn wasn't

the sort of man who would be frightened of one person. He was convinced of his own n

invincibility, certain that there was no resistance he couldn't quash. The

apprentice had met men like him before, many times. The AT-ST's extra weaponry

confirmed it. He imagined Sturn hunting Wookiees for sport, when he wasn't

persecuting his junior officers for fun and plotting the betrayal of his superiors.

The apprentice had dispatched many such men in the service of his Master.

The apprentice smiled with no trace of humor. Normally he liked nothing better than

putting beings in their place, but this was just irritating.

Sturn's walker jogged ponderously toward him. He considered his options. It would be

a simple matter to crush the walker as In would a faulty comlink, collapsing the

casing and instantly killing, the man within. He could play with the walker as he

had played with the two by the lodge and blow it up from within. He could even use

it as a battering ram to destroy the last mooring, thereby killing two spade-headed

smookas with one swipe. The grim irony in that appealed to him.

He deflected another round of cannon fire into the mooring and noticed only then

that the thick cable leading up to the skyhook station was visibly vibrating.

Strange surges rushed up and down its length as though it had been plucked by a

giant hand. He shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun and looked upward. The

skyhook was faintly visible, as was a cloud of debris coming down from above. Small

specks quickly resolved into objects as big as boulders. They were growing rapidly

in size.

He performed a quick mental calculation. The debris would arrive about the same time

as Sturn's walker. Ideal.

He reached out and crumpled the walker's cannon and grenade launchers, for a moment,

the only sounds came from his lightsaber and the heavy tread of the AT-ST.

He straightened. Through the command viewport, he saw a man with a red face wearing

what looked like Wookiee fur trim on his uniform. The captain's mouth was open,

bellowing orders at his hapless gunner. The apprentice couldn't hear the words, but

he could imagine.

The walker reared up one leg to stamp him into the ground.

At that moment the debris hit with all the force of a hundred shooting stars,

striking everything around the base of the skyhook-the sixth mooring included-and

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crushing the walker into scrap metal. Debris went everywhere. The noise was

unimaginable. The apprentice didn't flinch or move in the slightest as rubble rain

impacted about him. He only watched, with satisfaction, as the skyhook base ripped

free of the planet and recoiled like a whip INTO the upper atmosphere. The station

exploded shortly thereafter, briefly outshining the sun, even through the dust and

smoke of his handiwork.

The rain of rubble ceased. He remained exactly where he was, hypnotized by the

slowly fading star in the sky, until the Rogue Shadow swooped down directly in front

of him, repulsors whining to hold itself just above the ground.

He blinked, realizing only then that Juno was trying to talk to him.

"I said, it's done. Hop aboard. Let's get out of here."

He moved as though in another vision, stepping lightly up onto the open ramp but

feeling like he weighed a thousand tons.

With a piercing whine, the cloaked ship angled up from the cratered ground and made

for free space.

PROXY FUSSED OVER STARKILLER AS never before, brushing ash and dust from his clothes

with vigorous flicking motions of his slim metal hands. Maybe the droid had never

been separated so long from his master before; Juno didn't know, and she didn't care

i<> ask. The look on Starkiller's face was thunderous.

"Who was she?" he said to Kota, who had moved back to the jump seat, freeing up the

copilot's spot for him.

"Princess Leia Organa. Her father is Bail Organa, my contact in the Senate."

"I want to talk to him."

The general passed a hand across his face, as though resting his eyes. "You can't."

Starkiller's fury found the outlet it had been looking for. "I just risked my life

rescuing his daughter from a planet overrun by stormtroopers..."

"Don't, boy." Kota raised one weary hand as Starkiller loomed over him. "You can't

talk to Bail because I can't find him. He's gone missing."

"What?" Starkiller's frustration redoubled. "When?"

"I haven't been able to contact him since we left Bespin. The last time I saw him

was on Nar Shaddaa some weeks after-after I fell. He found me, and tried to recruit

me then to rescue Leia. I refused, of course." He indicated his eyes as though that

explained everything. "When I refused, he sent me to Cloud City. I haven't seen or

heard from him since."

Kota turned away, shrunken and inward looking, as though regretting his decision. In

another time, Juno supposed, Kota wouldn't have hesitated an instant. He would have

happily marched into a den of Imperials and dealt them the rough justice they had

administered to his own friends. But what could he have done now, one blind old man

against thousands of able-bodied, well-armed soldiers?

She stayed carefully out of it, and not just to avoid the argument. Her heart was

stinging from its own wounds, and she remained unsure exactly which side of the

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fence she stood on where the two men were concerned.

Starkiller backed down without apologizing. They seemed to find that an acceptable

resolution. Kota stayed in the jump seat, chin tilted resolutely downward, while

Starkiller retreated to the meditation chamber. After he had gone, the air smelled

of sulfur and smoke.

Juno looked down at the controls. He hadn't given her a heading. She trimmed the

Rogue Shadow's trajectory automatically-and PROXY mirrored her every move m the

seat beside her, an act she still found profoundly disturbing. Knowing better now,

however-that the droid couldn't help it, that this was as much a part of his being

as breathing was for her-she didn't ask him to stop.

"How do you cope with him when he's like this?" she asked the droid.

PROXY didn't need to ask who she was talking about. "I usually fight him. That seems

to help. Would you like me to..."

"No, PROXY. Stay there. I think it's time someone tried a different tack."

Leaving the ship in Kota's and the droid's unlikely hands, she climbed out of her

seat and headed aft.

* * *

THE MEDITATION ROOM WAS DARKER than it seemed through the security slice. Its air

was cooler, somehow, and the sound of the ship's hyperdrive came as though from

thousands of kilometers away. Despite its spareness, there was a calmness to the

angular space that struck her as soon as she entered. The chamber fell poised

between moments, possessing a kind of criticality that she supposed someone of

Starkiller's former occupation would need to acquire. The ability to remain calm

while hunting Jedi didn't come easily, she was sure. And the cost. . .

"Is there a problem, Juno?" He was kneeling in the center of the chamber with his

hands hanging loosely in front of him. On the ground before him lay the hilt of his

deactivated lightsaber, the one he had used since their escape from the Empirical.

Next to it lay a small blue crystal. His back was slightly to her, so she couldn't

tell if his eyes were open.

"I don't know," she said. "You tell me."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She decided to just come out and say it. "Are you all right? After what happened on

Kashyyyk..."

"I'm not wearing out," he said. "The moorings were tough, but I feel stronger than

ever now. It gets easier, I think, the harder you try. The Force is stronger than

anything we can imagine. We're the ones who limit it, not the other way around."

He half turned to look at her, and she was prepared to let him talk about that, if

he wanted to. He had never spoken to her of the Force before; a life she had never

seen flickered in his eyes when he did. But that was all he said, and when she could

think of nothing to offer in return, his head drifted back around to face the floor

and she had lost him again.

"What about what's happened to us apart from that? I turned my back on the navy and

you abandoned your Master. We're going through the same thing. We can help each

other."

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"Nobody can help me."

"I don't think you really mean that. I just think you're afraid lo let me try."

"Is that really what you think?" He didn't look up, but she noted a stiffening of

his neck muscles. "After all those stormtroopers I killed, I'm afraid of you}"

"It wasn't just stormtroopers," she said with more heat than she had intended.

He glanced at her again. "Yes, and Captain Sturn."

"Don't forget the pilots of the TIE fighters," she said. "One of them was a kid I

used to fly with."

Starkiller looked up at that, but said nothing.

"It's a lot easier to fight the Empire when it's faceless," she said, "when the

people whose lives are ending are hidden behind stormtrooper helmets or durasteel

hulls. But when they're people we knew, people like we used to be . . ." She

shrugged. "How much harder is it going to get?"

He stared at her until gooseflesh broke out all down her back.

"Are you having second thoughts?" he asked.

"No," she said. "I..."

I just want you to talk to me.

She couldn't say that.

"It doesn't matter."

She turned on her heel to leave. Maybe PROXY was the only one who would ever reach

him, on the point of a glowing lightsaber.

"Juno," he said, stopping her in the doorway. "I'm sorry about your friend."

She took a deep breath. "That's okay. He wasn't really a friend and it wasn't

anything personal. Youngster was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"And on the wrong side," he added.

"Yes, that, too." She almost added, You don't need to remind me, but left it unsaid,

sensing that he was probing her, perhaps testing her, somehow.

"I'm exhausted," she said-thinking again, Why me?-and went back to work.

* * *

STARKILLER REAPPEARED A SHORT TIME later, looking tidier and at least physically