The Force Unleashed (31 page)

now in the pursuit of his mission? Was anything worth so much death?

PROXY muttered something to himself, but she ignored him. The comlink signal was

crackly with so much electromagnetic interference in the area.

"I've reached the cannon," Starkiller was trying to tell her. "I just have to deal

with a bit of security."

"All right," she said. "PROXY accessed the construction plans. Once you get past the

Imperials, you shouldn't have any trouble reconfiguring the cannon to fire at the

shipyard."

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"That's good. I'd hate to have to aim this thing with my bare hands."

She wasn't in the mood for joking. "Good luck."

"Thanks."

She sighed and leaned back into her seat. With her hands over her eyes, she groaned

at the awkwardness of the brief conversation. Maintaining so many masks was wearing

her down. Shi didn't know how much longer she could keep it up.

"My primary programming?" the droid said. "I'm programmed to kill my master."

"What's that, PROXY?"

"I have tried dozens of tactics, but I continue to fail him."

Juno uncovered her eyes and sat up straighter. The droid was perched on the edge of

the copilot's seat, staring out the viewport at nothing.

She waved a hand in front of his photoreceptors. He glanced .n her and then turned

his head pointedly away.

"Well, if you think it will help," he said.

"PROXY, are you all right?"

"I suppose you could access my core process..."

The droid suddenly went rigid. His photoreceptors flickered then turned a bright,

bloody red. One of his training images-a red-skinned Zabrak with a fierce

expression-rippled across his body.

" PROXY, who are you talking to ?"

The droid turned to look at her. "Yes. I am on my way now. Just a few loose ends to

deal with."

Juno backed away, too late, as PROXY reached out with claw like hands for her.

* * *

THE APPRENTICE STOOD AT THE top of a mound of foul-smelling organic rubbish and

surveyed the cannon superstructure. The ship yard over Raxus Prime was building

arguably the Empire's greatest assets-the Star Destroyers that policed the space

lanes and put down innumerable rebellions-and it was guarded accordingly. He took a

long moment to consider his best route through the cannon superstructure. A closely

monitored perimeter kept stray droids from wandering too near. Automatic cannon

emplacements fired at semi-regular intervals, as though to remind the locals that

they were being watched. The Imperial ground forces obviously had no fear of heavy

assault, as the routes in and out of the superstructure weren't even fenced off. Get

rid of the cannon and he could practically walk right in.

A number of walkers clanking around inside the perimeter might make things

difficult, he reminded himself. And he would have to find the cannon's control room

before someone guessed what he had in mind. He didn't want it shut down. It might

take days for the enormous linear accelerator to charge up again-and if the

production supplying the giant metal "cannonballs" should happen to be put into

reverse . . .

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Be quick, he told himself. That was the solution. Don't think too much about

anything. Let your instincts guide you.

His instincts weren't doing a very good job on any other aspects of his life, but at

least he was still alive. He felt safe trusting them once again, in the service of

his distant Master.

My Master is not a coward, he had told Shaak Ti.

Then why are you here in his place? she had responded.

Because he could do things his Master could not. That was the only answer he would

accept. He was anonymous and less likely to attract attention. He might even, one

day, become stronger than his Master-although that thought seemed almost

preposterous. How many people had challenged the infamous Lord Vader, Jedi or

otherwise? All had failed. What made him special?

And then there was the vision he had received of a gravely injured Darth Vader.

Past, present, or future, it clearly demonstrated that the Dark Lord was not

invulnerable. Human tissue lay behind that mask and armor. Tissue died eventually.

But the Dark Lord's attacker in that vision had died, too. That was how it had

seemed to go. Died and become more powerful than ever, if the Emperor's words were

to be believed. Perhaps they couldn't be. Perhaps that vision was nothing but

fantasy. He couldn't tell, but he did take some comfort from it. No one was in

destructible. No tyranny lasted forever.

And in the meantime, he had a job to finish.

Don't think, he reminded himself. Just do!

With lightsaber raised, he leapt from the summit of the rubbish pile into the nest

of Imperials below.

* * *

THE UTTER DARKNESS OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS slowly gave way to an irrational dreamscape

combining the forests of Felucia, Kashyyyk, and Callos. The three worlds were now so

entangled in Juno's mind that she could barely tell them apart. Similarly, the man

she was chasing through the trees could have been her father, Kota, or an older

version of Starkiller. She wouldn't be sure until she caught up with him and turned

him around.

The chase felt never-ending. His pace perfectly matched hers. No matter how hard she

tried to keep up with him, he never drew closer-but he never pulled away, either. He

seemed to be leading her somewhere.

Just as she began to despair of ever catching him, he ran through a gap in a dense

stand of saplings, and when she went to follow him, she found herself on the shore

of a wide lake. The man she had been pursuing was nowhere to be seen. Her attention

was caught by a massive, cubical structure resting on a wooden platform in the

middle of the lake. The structure appeared to be made of solid stone, with no

windows, doors, or openings of any kind. It was so large that clouds skimmed the

top. The wooden platform holding it just above the water was obviously very old. It

strained under the weight of the giant stone cube. She could hear it creaking from

where she stood on the shore. Even as she watched, two of the piles splintered and

gave way. The cube tipped slightly in that direction, then settled amid a chorus of

complaints from the wooden beams below. Two sections of the upper edge dislodged and

splashed loudly into the water.

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It's going to fall into the lake, she told herself. And that was a very bad thing.

Why it was a bad thing, exactly, she didn't know, but the certainty of it filled her

completely. Tugging off her uniform jacket-which she had been wearing in the dream,

even though she had lost it while imprisoned on the Empirical-she took a running

leap into the water and started to swim.

She had to repair the platform and stop the cube from collapsing. That was the

thought that filled her mind. But even as she swam, another wooden pile gave way

with a crack. The cube shifted again, and more chunks fell into the water. Waves

buffeted her. She gasped as water went up her nose, but kept on swimming.

The creaks and groans of the straining wood grew louder. Collapsing piles sounded

like blaster shots all around her. Boulders rained into the lake, tossing her from

side to side. Spluttering, half drowned, she tried to see where she was going but

the vast stone edifice was invisible behind the surging waves. She was lost and

everything was going to collapse if she didn't find her way soon.

A hand reached down to save her. She clutched at it without knowing who it belonged

to. The fingers were strong and warm and lifted her as easily as though she were a

child. She came right up out of the water and found herself standing on solid

ground. The man who had saved her loomed over her like a giant with the sun behind

his head so she still couldn't make out who he was.

Squinting, she tried to see his face. It melted and changed the more she tried to

pin it down. He shrank and grew darker and became PROXY, with glowing red

photoreceptors and outstretched hands.

She screamed and fell back into the water. This time she didn't come back up, and

she was glad to let the darkness take her.

* * *

DESOLATION. DESTRUCTION. DEATH.

That's what I bring, the apprentice thought, wherever I go. Ten stormtroopers, a

hundred, a thousand-the numbers don't matter, faceless, futureless, disposable,

they're all the same to me.

And that isn't power.

He glanced behind him, at the swath he had cut through the Imperial forces. Wrecked

walkers lay in smoking ruin, red-glowing gashes still visible in their armored

exteriors. Stormtroopers lay in piles where they had died, futilely regrouping to

turn back his advance. Choked, blasted with lightning, dismembered, they had .11

least met quick deaths. He had lost the stomach for prolonged engagement. He just

wanted to get in and out and back to the ship-where a host of difficult problems

remained, for certain, but .11 least he wasn't treading the same old territory.

I am my Master's weapon, he thought. I lay waste to all that stands in his path. But

where is the power in that? There are levels of mastery beyond the simple act of

killing that Darth Vader has never taught me. One must be able to control without

applying lethal force; otherwise there will soon be nothing left to control. It

takes more than a really big stick to own the galaxy.

Fear, he decided. That was the key. People were afraid of his Master and the Emperor

above him. If he was ever to rule as they did, he would have to learn that art

himself. But from whom? Ami to what end? If Darth Vader taught him those secrets, he

might rise up against his Master and wrest control of the galaxy from him. The

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teachings of the Sith-such as he had been exposed to, anyway-had little to say about

limiting the desire for power. There could be no such limits. They were expressly

forbidden.

From one of the cannon engineers, he extracted the location of the targeting control

systems. He hurried there through thickening layers of defenses. The workings of the

cannon were almost deafening now, as it charged up its mighty capacitors and

electrified its linear induction rails. The booming of each metallic missile, which

accelerated to supersonic speeds in less than a second, was almost physically

painful. Even the act of moving such a large mass into position through the guts of

the machine made more noise than he had ever heard before. He doubted his ears would

recover.

When he reached the controls, it was a relatively simple matter to program the

cannon to shift targets just slightly: from the magnetic scoops that gathered up

each orbital projectile and brought it safely in to dock, to the disk-like

infrastructure itself. He estimated that two shots would probably do the job, but

three would make certain of it. Beyond that, the shipyard's orbit would start

shifting, so the cannon might hit nothing at all. He planned to be well on his way

by that point, with his mission to hurt and embarrass the Empire complete.

He finished programming the cannon and waited patiently for confirmation. As soon as

he had it, he stabbed his lightsaber deep into the control panel's guts, thereby

ensuring that no surviving controller could reset the cannon's aim. Confident that

the machine would follow its new programming to the letter, he made his way through

the superstructure to the outside world, where the air might not have been any

fresher but at least it was a little less thick with blood.

The first of the three cannonballs was in place. An earsplitting whine indicated

that the linear accelerator was fully charged. With a surge of acceleration that

made the ground literally move beneath his feet, the ball of metal was suddenly

airborne, glowing red with friction as it arced up into the sky. Its course seemed

true. The apprentice watched, hypnotized, as it shrank to a dot then disappeared

completely from sight. Even then he followed its progress with his mind, knowing the

course it was expected to follow.

The bright circle of the shipyard was easily visible in the sky. He stared at it

until it was burned into his retina. When the first of the explosions came, as

expected, he was surprised at its brightness.

The weapon had a second cannonball in place. As it seared up through the atmosphere,

the apprentice let his gaze fall and continued on his way. The explosions were

spreading across the shipyard's superstructure. That process would only increase

when the second missile arrived. He didn't need to watch the progress of his plan to

know that it would succeed. His time would be better spent getting away than in

indulging hubris.

When the third missile was on its way, he had reached the crater below which Drexl's

former hideout had rested. Scavenger droids swarmed over the site like insects on a

carcass. A contingent lashed out at him as he approached, and he was forced to deal

with them before he could continue. Only when that was done did he glance up at the