The Force Unleashed (34 page)

clashed, and the apprentice gave ground to think what next to do.

PROXY'S holographic skin re-formed in the shape of Qui-Gon Jinn. The long-dead Jedi

Master's fighting style, however, was all the Core, with swift efficient lunges and

more-than-adequ.itr blocks. The Core kept its body and blade carefully between the

apprentice and the cable. Every trick he tried to get past them the Core anticipated

and forestalled.

The red-eyed droids recovered as quickly as PROXY and soon joined in the fray. He

knocked them down in droves with telekinesis, but they inevitably got up again or

were replaced by more from outside. Still weary from his efforts with the Star

Destroyer, he saved each big push until the very last moment, to spare his energies.

And ultimately the droids weren't his enemy. He had to find a way to strike at the

Core directly, without hurting PROXY. Sith lightning was out of the question, but

there were other ways.

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He leapt out of PROXY'S reach and into the clamoring mob of slave droids. Swinging

his lightsaber wildly around him, he cut cables and sliced through processors with

abandon. Surges of electronic thought seared the air as droids rushed him all at

once. I le blew them back and thrust his blade deep into a bank of processors.

"Does that hurt?" he asked the Core.

"I do not feel pain," said the Core through PROXY'S vocoder, "and my thoughts

encompass the entire planet. Nothing you accomplish in this room will make a

difference."

PROXY leapt over the droids, shaped this time like Anakin Skywalker. The apprentice

met him in midair and attempted to drive him back. The cable danced behind the

droid, never snagging or looping forward. The Core used PROXY's internal repulsors

to keep it securely out of his reach.

His physical reach. No doubt the Core would expect him to use telekinesis to break

the link, so he hadn't even tried that. But there were more indirect ways of

attacking. The cable traced a sinuous path over the heads of the slave droids. It

didn't take long to find a big one in exactly the right spot. It was even easier to

grip it with the Force and squeeze it until its power supply erupted.

The explosion boomed through the massive chamber. PROXY reeled backward in midparry.

The apprentice hung back, waiting to see what effect the explosion might have.

Holograms flickered and fled across his friend's fluid exterior. Famous figures came

and went, human and alien, light, dark, and all shades in between. Again he saw

himself flash into being and was intensely glad that someone else soon superseded

him. He had had enough of fighting himself for one lifetime.

The smoke cleared. PROXY straightened, and his image settled into the form of a

Zabrak with eyes full of hate and numerous horns sprouting from his red-and-black

skin. His robes were midnight. His leer was full of bloodlust.

The apprentice was taken momentarily aback. He had never seen that training module

before. Either it had been dredged up from the depths of PROXY'S memory banks, or

the droid had been saving it for just the right moment.

The Zabrak Sith grinned at him and drove forward through the parting sea of droids.

None now came within a meter of the intact cable, so even that option was lost.

"You are weak," crowed the Core as it approached. "You will not sacrifice this droid

even though letting me possess its memories means your downfall."

The apprentice didn't waste energy on speech, blocking each of the Core's moves and

driving the droid a step backward. Frustration made him strong, even if he presently

had no outlet for that strength. Bringing down the ceiling could kill both of them

and probably wouldn't have a profound effect on the Core. If it really was

distributed across the entire planet, it could be unkillable.

What was the point of being stronger than Darth Vader it lie couldn't save his best

friend?

"Violence feeds disorder," blared the Core as they fought "Violence is a threat to

control. Violence will, therefore, be eliminated under my rule."

"Sounds like you've thought of everything." He barely blocked a combination of blows

that he had never seen before, even when fighting his Master.

"There is not a contingency I have not explored," the Core said through the mouth of

the Zabrak Sith.

"Oh no?"

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The apprentice drove the android back with a series of fast strikes and acrobatic

maneuvers. PROXY was nowhere near .is flexible as him and had none of the

Force-enhanced reflexes he possessed. The droid could never beat him at a lightsaber

duel, even with the Core behind it. He fought with a single-minded intensity-one

designed to empty his mind of all thought and feel ing. The being he was fighting

was neither Sith nor PROXY. It was the Core-and the time had come to stop playing

with it.

They froze with lightsabers locked and scraping together, human strength warring

with droid's, brown eyes fixed on red photoreceptors.

"Submit or die," said the Core.

"There is a third option." With a sudden, twisting move, he brought his saber down

into PROXY'S chest and slashed deep, right through the droid body. "I could beat

you."

The red eyes flickered. For an instant just enough of the Core remained in PROXY to

register surprise and then extreme alarm. The hologram sparked and faded, revealing

the terrible, smoking wound in the droid's chest. The apprentice removed the blade,

satisfied that his blow had done the job.

The Core spun the body around, reaching in vain for the open hatch from which the

severed cable protruded. Then all control left the metal limbs and PROXY dropped

heavily to the floor.

It was already over, but the Core still had some fight left. Hundreds of slave

droids converged on the apprentice, hoping to crush him under their combined weight

before he could reach the nearest processor. He blew them away with a single push

and slashed open the processor's casing. Ignoring the hot metal edges, he pushed his

left hand into the workings inside.

Lightning surged through him and all the processors making up the Core's network. He

projected all his anger and grief into the surge, and the strength of it surprised

even him. For PROXY, for Juno, for Kota, and for himself he fried the planetwide

mind into slag.

Slave droids jerked about in a ghastly dance. The sound they made was awful to hear,

the dying scream of a mind that had never before had to contemplate its own demise.

It should have been immortal. It had planned to rule the galaxy. Now it was just a

tangle of wires experiencing a brainstorm that would inevitably destroy it.

"Order!" it roared and raged. "Order must be restored!"

The paroxysm of the droids took minutes to ebb, during which time the apprentice

kept up the blistering power of his rage, ensuring that he erased every last trace

of the memories pulled from PROXY'S braincase. Nothing of him would remain there.

The Emperor would never know how forces had gathered to unseat him, for good or for

ill. There would be no witnesses, living or droid.

When the last metal body was still and silent, along with all the processors and

every blinking light, he let himself sag down onto his knees, then slip around with

his back against the processor's plastic casing. He leaned his head back and closed

his eyes.

Was that enough? Would anything more be asked of him today? He was so tired. A week

of sleep might not revive him.

And worse still: was the Core right? You are weak, it had told him. You will not

sacrifice this droid even though letting me possess its memories means your

downfall. That was true. He had an emotional attachment to PROXY, and might very

well be developing attachments to Juno and Kota as well. How was it possible that a

Sith apprentice could have fallen afoul of such weakness.

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PROXY was dead.

Juno and he had no hope of a life together. How could he go on?

Something moved in the massive chamber. He opened In heavy eyelids and raised his

lightsaber.

One of the empty droid bodies tipped and rolled over. A familiar hand reached out

and clawed at the dirt.

"Master?"

He was on his feet in an instant, pushing droid bodies aside and freeing his injured

friend. PROXY was severely damaged by the blow that had severed the wire, but his

photoreceptors had returned to their normal color. It had been a long shot, cutting

through the droid like that to reach the cable, but he had hoped || might pay off.

How many times had he killed PROXY before, yet seen the droid able to repair

himself? This was just another.

"PROXY, are you all right? Can you stand?"

The droid struggled and failed to lift his torso. "I fear not, master. Better you

leave me here, where I belong."

"What are you talking about? We can repair you once I get| you to the ship."

"The Core . . ." PROXY put a hand to his forehead. "Master, it burned out portions

of my processor. My primary programming has been erased. I'm useless to you now."

He smiled. A flicker of hope remained. "You've never been useless, PROXY. And you're

not staying here. Come on."

The droid seemed very light against his shoulder as the two of them wound their way

through the wrecked slave droids and processors, out into the murky daylight.

Rebel

THE DESERTS OF RHOMMAMOOL GLOWED a hot, baking orange under the light of its primary

star. Juno broke into a sweat every time she looked at it. She had been down to the

surface just once so Starkiller could purchase a pair of new shoulder servos for

PROXY, and she had ventured from the ship no longer than she had needed to. The

impoverished mining world stank of famine and warfare. Luckily, its neighboring

world Osarian was distant enough for the eternal conflict between the system's two

civilizations to be at an ebb. Otherwise she would have insisted they find somewhere

else to lie low while word came from their co-conspirators.

Bail Organa had notified them five days ago of a series of meetings being conducted

at his Cantham House residence on Corus-cant among him, Garm Bel Iblis, and Mon

Mothma. Apparently they had gone well, and the beginning of a rebellion was slowly

gathering momentum. That was positive news. At the same time, however, the

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involvement of two notorious resistance leaders and fugitives had raised the stakes

dramatically. If the Emperor ever overheard the whispers of an "Alliance to Restore

the Republic," there would be no end to his revenge.

Accordingly, the minimal Imperial force around Rhommamool worked strongly in its

favor as a place to hide out for a while, as did the fact that it was just off the

Corellian Run. HoloNet transmissions were more up to date there than they would have

been in the Outer Rim. Juno watched the newsnet for any reports of their activities

and pored over Imperial propaganda for hints of concern. Thus far the HoloNet had

remained empty of anything to do with uprisings and sabotage on Kashyyyk and Raxus

Prime-or, indeed, anything to do with kidnapped Wookiees, secret projects requiring

slave labor, and a gathering rebel lion.

She told herself that this wasn't a bad sign. The right people were noticing, on

both sides of the political divide. The Emperor could not fail to be aware of armed

opposition growing against nil regime, and those who dreamed of toppling him from

power now had new allies to make them stronger.

Their mission was to wait for word to come from Bail Organa, confirming that

everyone involved could meet at last at a location that was for the moment kept

determinedly vague. The Rogue Shadow had hopped systems three times at her

instigation in the previous week, staying one step ahead of an imagined-but all too

possible-pursuit.

The delay was harder than anything she had ever imagined. That, and staying cooped

up in the ship with Starkiller day after day, barely speaking, barely being in the

same room longer than a few seconds at a time. She stayed in the cockpit and the

maintenance areas of the ship; he kept to the meditation chamber, where he slept and

worked on fixing PROXY. Kota oscillated between them like a weight on a tightly

wound spring, even more surly and introverted than usual after Raxus Prime, although

why that was he refused to say. Sometimes the tension was so thick in the air that

she felt she could drown in it.

Everything was on hold: the rebellion, Starkiller's plans, her life . . .

"Couldn't we just go to Corellia and wait for word to come from there?" she asked

Kota on the seventh day. "I mean, that's where the meeting's going to be held. It

doesn't take an idiot to work that out, if Bel Iblis is going to be involved."

"All the more reason for us not to be there, then," the ex-Jedi told her. "If we're

spotted in the area, it'll spook everyone."

"They'd never notice us," she argued, even though she knew he was right. "We have