The Force Unleashed (26 page)

familiar as Bail Organa's, with its oval features, black lips, and seven thorns

sprouting from her forehead, black braids coiled intimately around her throat. She

wore combat boots and leather pants and a stripped-down vest to match. The only

difference between this woman and the one he had seen in a vision was her deep red

eyes.

When Shaak Ti had sent her Padawan to hide in the jungle of Felucia, she had indeed

been a servant of the light side of the force. Now she had tipped and joined him on

the dark side.

Because Shaak Ti was dead. Because he had killed her.

And now Shaak Ti's apprentice had come to kill him.

Did she know?

"Maris Brood," he said, moving a step away from Bail Organa.

She tilted her head in acknowledgment. "And you are?"

"That's none of your business." He kept his lightsaber carefully between him and

those hypnotically spinning blades. The shaking of the ground was worsening. "I've

come for the Senator."

"Well, you can't have him."

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"Can't doesn't apply here."

She grinned. "Let's see, shall we?"

"Stand aside, girl. Don't make me hurt you."

She laughed. "Oh, you won't do that. He won't let you."

The thundering noise reached a peak as, with a roar like the colliding of worlds,

the largest rancor yet crashed the bone walls aside and stood over them, dripping

slime from its mandibles. Its skin was a deathly white, giving it a ghostly,

supernatural cast. Organa and the apprentice went flying, followed by an avalanche

of bones.

His head ringing, the apprentice burrowed out from under the bone pile barely in

time to avoid a giant clawed foot crashing down on him. He ran between the enormous

legs and away from the swishing tail, slashing as he went, but the creature's skin

was so thick it didn't even bleed. Surmounted with tusks and horns longer than he

was, the brute-clearly a bull of the species-u a by far the biggest living thing he

had ever seen. Armor plating thicker than some starship hulls protected its neck and

head. Its every movement was ponderous but powerful. It stank of alien flesh and the

dark side. The imbalance that had tipped Mans Brood against the Jedi had also turned

what had probably once been a noble beast into an insatiable monster.

And now he had to kill it. His mind was undivided on that point, even if the precise

details eluded him. It had his scent now and all the malicious will of Maris goading

it to attack. Between grasping hands and cracking tail, he was going to have a hard

time just getting near it. When he tried tipping it over with the Force, it simply

roared at him in annoyance. Sith lightning glanced off its armored hide like water.

He could slash at it with his lightsaber for years and have no effect. Its mind was

small and already consumed by Maris's will.

The situation looked hopeless. Trying to outrun it would be fu tile, and he doubted

even Juno could land long enough for him and Organa to board and take off in time to

avoid several tons of bull rancor bearing down on the ship's hull. If he couldn't

fight and couldn't run, what other options were open to him?

He stalled, dodging the beast's blows and leading it in circles, wondering if it

might eventually tire or grow hungry enough to lose interest in him no matter how

much Maris prodded it. Ii seemed indefatigable, though, and rump, forcing it to

turn, she was there with twin blades spinning, trying to drive him into those

massive, snapping jaws.

He rolled under the bull rancor's boulder-sized chin and was blasted with moist, hot

breath. The sight of its teeth did nothing to reassure him. If Maris caught him off

guard again, OR if he made a mistake, those teeth could easily end any aspirations

he had OF nerving alongside his Master as co-ruler of the galaxy.

Those teeth . . .

All his powers useless . . .

The beginnings of a plan took shape in his mind. At first thought, it seemed

crazy-but no less crazy in its own way than bringing down a skyhook or killing a

Jedi Master.

He jumped a swing of the bull rancor's deadly tail. It brought us huge, white body

about, shaking the ground with every step, and focused its piggy eyes on him. The

slavering mouth opened, not to roar but to lunge and bite him in two. Muscles as

thick as tree trunks flexed, lowering its head, the better to strike.

When the mouth was open to its full extent the apprentice took two steps and a deep

breath, and jumped inside.

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The smell alone was almost enough to knock him out, but that was the least of the

dangers he had to face. He used the Force to keep the jaws open just long enough to

avoid the teeth when they closed. Then darkness fell and the creature's tongue

became the biggest threat. His lightsaber-the only source of life in the dank,

dripping maw-made short work of that. The bull rancor's head whipped from side to

side, but his will overrode the reflex to open its mouth-something Maris had not

thought to control.

Seeking to stun the beast, the apprentice drew on all the power of the Force and

sent a sizzling blast of Sith lightning into the un-armored roof of the creature's

mouth.

Every neuron in the bull rancor's brain lit up like a firework. The following

seconds were among the worst the apprentice had ever experienced. The bull rancor's

convulsions were wild and prolonged. He clung on for dear life, half drowning in

blood and half choked by the foul air, with arms and legs bracing him firmly against

the heaving, fleshy walls.

But it didn't die. He couldn't believe it. Wretched, weakened, stumbling, the bull

rancor clung to life with Kota's tenacity. No less desperate, the apprentice played

the only card left to him.

With one powerful release of kinetic energy, he exploded tin bull rancor's head from

within.

Immediately he was falling. A torrent of blood and vile liquid rushed up the gaping

throat, sweeping him out onto the field of bones. Blinking, gagging, he barely

retained a grip on his light saber as the massive headless body dropped to the

ground behind him with a mighty, wet crash.

It was lucky he had retained his weapon, for Maris was on him in an instant, blades

humming and whirling. He barely raised hi lightsaber in time to avoid decapitation

and stumbled awkwardly to his feet to deflect another attempt.

"You've made me angry now," she said, "and I'll make you regret that."

"I gave you a choice," he said, blocking another double blow "You killed that thing,

not me."

"The dark side doesn't split hairs," she snarled.

Her eyes blazed red as she rained blow after blow upon him. He staggered backward,

weakened by more than just his battle with the bull rancor.

He was fighting himself-but not in some flashback-inspired hallucination, where the

Jedi and the Sith warred in him for control of his future. This time the fight was

real, and his opponent was as joyously rich in the dark side as he had ever been.

She, too, had lost someone she cared deeply about; she, too, had been sent out into

the hard galaxy to fend for herself. They should be helping each other, not fighting

each other. But with Bail Organa watching, he couldn't even raise the possibility of

a truce. He was even using Soresu moves against her raw, unpredictable lunges, just

as the vision of himself had done in Jedi robes. And yet. . .

As he defended himself, he saw nothing but self-pity and fear in her eyes. Both were

inferior to pure anger, although both could be potent gateways to the true mastery

of the dark side that his Master had demonstrated to him. Maris was a newcomer,

barely beginning her journey-as he, too, was journeying along a path toward full

mastery. For the first time, he understood that the

I one didn't come in two shades only: dark and light, distinct and combative, never

meeting in the middle to form gray. Those were ideals, and ideals existed solely for

philosophers and theoreticians to argue over. In the real world, dark and light

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coexisted in varying proportions; nothing was ever static. Thus this former Jedi

Padawan could turn to the dark side after a lifetime serving the light-and she could

just as easily turn back to the light afterward, if she survived.

Light, dark, Shaak Ti had tried to tell him, they are just directions.

We're always moving, he thought, toward the dark or toward the light. It's

impossible to stand still. Some, like Darth Vader and the Emperor, had been

descending through the dark side for so long that the light must have become a faint

and distant memory. Some hovered eternally in the gray, never entirely choosing a

side. There were, in fact, no actual sides, just the direction in which one happened

to be moving. It was all relative.

Coming to that understanding gave him a new kind of strength. When Sith betrayed one

another, it wasn't because they were enemies. Their paths had simply diverged. So

fighting Maris wasn't turning his back on the dark side. She was simply in his way,

like so many other people before him.

Do not be fooled, Shaak Ti had also said, as so many have before you, that you walk

on anything other than your own two feet.

Blocking Maris Brood's spinning strikes, he changed from the staid form of Soresu

into the more aggressive Juyo favored by the dark side. Maris noticed the shift in

his fighting style but, having only been trained in Jedi methods, failed to

understand what it meant. She continued attacking with increasing desperation, even

as he began to drive her back across the mounds of bones, past the body of her giant

pet and away from Senator Organa. Her breathing became hard and her moves less

focused. Fear began to dominate the wild look in her eyes. She was close to losing

her concentration entirely.

Use the fear, he wanted to tell her. Use the fear to make you angry, because anger

makes you strong. I killed your Master. Mm, tried to kill me and I am stronger for

it. You could be, too, if you would only realize that simple truth!

But even in the depths of her darkness, the light had corrupted her too deeply. She

was a lost cause.

Enough, he thought.

Raising his left hand, he used the Force to lift a mound of bones into the air.

Rattling and tumbling, they swirled around tin two of them, picking up speed. Maris

didn't know where to look. While she was distracted, he disarmed her with two swift,

precise moves. Her blades skittered away through the bones and she fell back,

rubbing her singed forearms. Defiance gleamed in her eyes, but too late. Much too

late.

When she turned to run, he struck her in the back with Sith lightning and she fell

sprawling to the bones.

With his lightsaber held loosely in his right hand, he approached her.

"No," she gasped, making a futile attempt to imitate the bone dance floating around

them. He batted the missiles away.

"Please!" Defiance turned to despair and still she resisted het anger. "Don't!"

"Why not?" He stood over her, lightsaber raised, point-down, to strike. "If you're

the slave to the dark side you claim to be, I'd be doing the galaxy a favor."

"But it's not my fault. Shaak Ti abandoned me on this horrible planet." Tears

sparkled in her eyes. "Felucia is evil. It corrupted me. Just let me get away from

here and I'll put the dark side behind me. I want to."

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"Why should I believe you?"

She came up onto her knees. "Please let me go. You've won, haven't you? The Senator

is yours. There's no need to kill me." She reached for him. "Save me instead.

Please."

He backed away, repelled by the display. You're not worthy of the dark side, he

wanted to say.

But this was what the dark side hail turned her into. She had aspired to being a

Jedi Knight, once, and now she was reduced to begging for her life. What talents she

had were poisoned, turned to destruction, directed inward-used toward no greater end

than her own survival.

The dark side had changed Felucia in a similar fashion. The stench of death and

decay in his nostrils came from more than the bull rancor's blood all over him.

Corruption.

He lowered his lightsaber and deactivated it. The swirl of bones fell to the ground

with a clatter.

She clambered to her feet, looking as though she couldn't believe her luck. "Thank

you."

He wasn't sure he could believe it, either. Was he sparing her Out of pity or

because he recognized the emotions poisoning her? "Don't say anything. Just get out

of here."

"Can I come with you? I don't want to stay here..."

"You'll just have to, until another ship comes along. Or maybe the Imperials can

give you a lift."

She backed away, as though he might change his mind at any moment. Then she turned

and made a break for the tree line. He watched her in case she went for her weapons

and tried to take him by surprise. For all her pleading and bargaining, he didn't