There. She found the sign she was looking for and cut a path through the crowd toward it. In blinking yellow and green pixels, it promised REPAIRS—NO QUESTIONS ASKED and hung above the entrance to a green, two-story building that might once have been a small theater. Graffiti advertising the latest Podrace covered the walls almost entirely from ground to roofline. She had watched one of the planet’s high-speed extravaganzas the last time she had visited; it had made even her pulse race.
Juno walked through the door, brushing past an elderly insectoid Riorian clutching a dented gyrostabilizer to his chest. He chattered something to her in a dialect she didn’t understand then hurried away.
“Another satisfied customer,” said the Gran behind the shop counter, smiling hopefully. Its three stalked eyes blinked at her in the low light. Two Kowakian monkey-lizards, possibly a rare breeding pair, chased each other across the tops of shelves stuffed with dusty machine parts. Their squawking voices were loud in the claustrophobic space.
“I’m looking for your boss,” she told the Gran. “The repairman.”
“Lots of people looking for him. Who says he’s here?”
“He never goes anywhere. Tell him it’s Juno.”
The Gran hesitated, and then lowered its snout to speak into a comlink fixed to the counter. Its native tongue was another Juno couldn’t interpret, but she heard her name mentioned at least twice.
A voice answered in the same dialect, and the Gran nodded and pointed at the shelves.
“You know the way?”
“Unless you’ve changed it, sure.”
The Gran pushed a concealed button, and a section of the wall slid aside. Juno went through it and waited for the panel to close behind her. There was a moment of absolute darkness and silence, and then the inner panel clicked. She slid it aside and walked into the workshop.
It was a mess of starship components, droid limbs, photoreceptors, sensors, wires, core processors, field generators, environmental units, and more. Stacks of parts stretched high up to the distant ceiling, while some hung suspended in nets cast from corner to corner. Several ramps led up and down to farther layers, and Juno knew that the deepest levels contained the components required to make weapons and targeting computers. Many of the broken machines that came through the store contained information relating to the Empire’s activities in the system and beyond, and the Rebel Alliance had gained valuable data by tapping into this inadvertent leak, as well as sourcing much of its military matériel from reclaimed or completely rebuilt items.
She looked around, standing on the tips of her toes to see over the piles.
“Over here, Juno,” called a familiar voice. “Come on through.”
A mop of blond hair was just visible on the far side of the room. She wound her way through the close spaces of the workshop to where its owner was working. The main workbench had moved, but it looked about as messy as it had the last time she’d been here. Myriad fragments of a multitude of machines covered its surface, mixed with all the delicate tools of the trade, material, sonic, and laser. As she approached, the owner of the tools put down the blue-spitting lance he had been working with and flipped back his visor.
“Well, well. It is you! Pull up a seat and tell me where you’ve been. You don’t write, you don’t call—I was beginning to get worried.”
She dragged a stool over to the bench and gratefully perched herself on it. Her calves were killing her in the high g. The so-called and literal repairman, Berkelium Shyre, was a human technician who had been living on Malastare for more then a decade, and—after an initial hitch or two—had successfully ridden out the transition from Imperial to independent rule. He was broad-shouldered and very strong, thanks to the local conditions, and his loyalty to the Rebellion was matched only by his skill with machines. Juno couldn’t tell how old he was, for the freshness of his features and skin were matched by stress and worry lines, the origins of which she had never asked about. They had become friends over the months she’d helped the Rebellion strengthen its hold on the planet. She’d lost count of the number of late nights they’d spent discussing tactics and drinking cheap Corellian whiskey. He’d sent her the occasional cheerful message since, letting her know that all was well on her old patch. She’d always been too busy to respond.
“I’m looking for the fleet,” she said. “Do you know where it’s moved to?”
“Hey, not so fast,” he said with a grin. “I mean it. Tell me what you’ve been up to. I won’t let you go without having at least a halfhearted conversation.”
She caught a faint edge to his tone and wondered if he suspected she might have turned traitor. That was a reasonable concern, and a reassuring one. He shouldn’t hand out the fleet’s location without proper cause, even to someone he thought he knew.
“Well, you know I was promoted,” she said.
“You told me that when you were last here. We’ve missed you in the sector. How’s it going?”
She didn’t want to tell him about her contretemps with Mon Mothma, but she found herself doing it anyway. It felt good getting it off her chest. Shyre had always been easy to talk to. There was something so direct and open about him. She saw no judgment at all in his cheerful blue eyes.
“Suspended, eh?” He pushed a couple of fuses around his workbench with the tip of magnetic screwdriver. “That must be hard.”
“Well, I’ve been keeping busy.”
“I bet. You couldn’t help yourself. That droid of yours still playing up?”
“Actually, he’s on the mend now. No more visual glitches, mostly. He worries sometimes about his lack of a primary program, though. I don’t suppose you could help me with that?”
He shook his head. “Afraid not. Specialized units like PROXY, you probably need to replace the whole core.”
“That’s what I figured, and they’re thin on the ground. Thanks regardless.”
“Anytime, Juno.”
There was a small but awkward silence.
“So,” she pressed him, “the fleet …”
“It’s not far from here,” he said, not taking his eyes off her. “In the Inner Rim, just off the Hydian Way. Ever heard of a place called Nordra?”
“No,” she said, “but I’ll find it.”
“Stick around the area and they’ll find you.”
“Thanks, Shyre.”
She hopped carefully down from the stool, mindful of twisting an ankle.
“Wait,” he said, taking her arm. “Do you really have to go so soon?”
“Places to be, Emperors to overthrow,” she quipped.
“But you’ve only just got here. You haven’t told me about what you’re feeling these days, where your head is.”
She didn’t remember ever talking much about that kind of stuff, with anyone, and it was her turn to wonder what was going on. Could he have notified Imperial agents who might already be converging on her location?
She tried to pull away, but his grip was too strong. She did throw him off balance, though, and the gyros of his stool whined in complaint. From the waist down, he was entirely machine. His legs had been lost in the early days of Malastare’s independence, when a thermal detonator had gone off in the middle of a squad of saboteurs he had been helping, leaving him crippled. He had built the prosthetic himself and traded active combat for offering support behind the scenes, professing perfect satisfaction with his lot. But there were those worry lines …
Was that what this was about, she wondered—turning on those he felt were responsible for ruining his life?
“Let go of me, Shyre.”
He did so immediately. “Sorry, Juno. I don’t mean to be pushy. I just wish you’d stay.”
“I’ll be back. Don’t worry about that.”
“No, I mean stay. Here. With me.”
Understanding suddenly dawned, and she felt like an utter fool for misreading the cues so badly. Betraying her was the last thing on his mind.
“Don’t,” she said, backing away.
“Hear me out,” he said. “I have to say this now. You left too quickly before, and you never responded to my messages.”
“I don’t want to hear it. I can’t hear it.”
“But maybe you need to hear it,” he said with much more than simple entreaty in his voice. “You’ve been in a funk ever since that friend of yours was killed. I don’t know who he was or what happened to him, but I can tell what he meant to you. I can read you, and I know you needed to grieve for him, for what you lost; believe me, I understand that all too well.” He rapped the knuckles of his left hand against the metal of his mechanical stool. “But it’s been over a year now. Don’t you think it’s time to move on?”
She turned away to hide the pricking of tears in her eyes. Was it time? Yes, probably. Was she able to? No, it didn’t seem that way. Starkiller came so readily to mind. It was like he was still with her, even in death. She couldn’t move on until he was gone.
But when would that be? Maybe never, and she didn’t want to give Shyre false hope. He was a good man—handsome, smart, loyal, brave, and good-humored. He deserved better than her. She couldn’t even speak to him now, let alone give him what he wanted.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I think it might be better if you stopped worrying about me, and moved on yourself.”
He was silent for a long time. When he finally spoke, his tone was subdued, but not resentful.
“All right,” he said. “I hope you don’t think less of me for trying.”
“No,” she said, turning back to face him. “And I hope you don’t think less of me for saying no.”
“That wouldn’t be possible,” he said with a brave smile.
She squeezed his broad shoulder, marveled briefly at the rock-hard muscles, and then hurried away.
AFTER THE CLOSE DIMNESS of the workshop, the light outside seemed very bright and the noise was deafening. Instead of going straight back to the landing bay, she scoured the streets until she found a food seller she remembered from her previous visits, a wise old Cantrosian who made the best pashi noodles she’d ever tasted. The hit of familiar and very powerful spices cleared her head almost immediately. She was able to push the stricken look in Shyre’s eyes out of her mind for long enough to start thinking about the safest route to the Inner Rim. There were so many interdictors stationed on the Hydian Way, pirates and Imperials alike. It wouldn’t do to get caught by one of them.
“It’s been over a year now. Don’t you think it’s time to move on?”
As she threaded through the crowd back to the landing bay, she thought she glimpsed Kota’s silver topknot standing high above the heads, in a crowd of haggling mercenaries. That was impossible, of course. He had fallen on Cato Neimoidia over a week earlier.
Shaking her head and walking on, she admonished herself severely. When she started hallucinating dead friends, she knew she really was stuck in the past.
CHAPTER 9
DAGOBAH WAS A SMALL green-brown world with no moons. It seemed utterly uninhabited, and further examination didn’t prove that impression wrong. Starkiller checked the rest of the system, wondering if he’d come to the wrong planet, but there was no doubt. Its sibling worlds were boiling, airless, frozen, or gaseous. There was nowhere else to go but here, assuming he wanted to survive longer than a minute outside.
For the hundredth time, he asked himself what he was doing.
There was no ready answer.
Mon Calamari had been an utter dead end. With an Imperial administration boiling over from recent resistance activity, he had only barely managed to slice into records deeply enough to find out that no one called Juno Eclipse had ever officially come to the planet, let alone in the last week. With no other way to search for her open to him, he had been forced to retreat and think of something else. Unfortunately, another search through the Force had been fruitless. She was either dead, in hyperspace, or hiding somehow. The second was the most likely, of course, but a long wait and then another search had still given him nothing. If she was going somewhere, it was taking her a long time to get there.
Studying a map of the galaxy in frustration, he had stumbled across a name that Kota had used. Dagobah. Starkiller had never heard of it before, and the ship’s records had nothing to add, beyond its location. All he had to go on was Kota’s brief mention of it.
“Go to the forests of Kashyyyk or the caves of Dagobah or wherever you think you’ll find what you need, and let the galaxy die.”
The forests of Kashyyyk brought back memories of wood smoke and the face of a man who must have been his father. The original Starkiller’s father. He had found his birth name there, but that wasn’t where his quest was leading him now. He was going forward, not backward. His gut told him that there was nothing on Kashyyyk for him now.
What Kota’s gut was telling him was the issue. Had he mentioned Dagobah for a reason or entirely at random? Was the Force moving him in ways even he didn’t understand?
Either way, Starkiller had no other leads to follow. Kota had jumped ship to Commenor long ago, so Starkiller plotted a course to the Sluis sector and raced to the distant world as fast as the Rogue Shadow was able.
Now that he was here, he didn’t know if he’d found something or gotten more lost than ever.
Skimming over the planet’s atmosphere, carefully cloaked in case there was someone watching, he detected no hint of Juno, but he could feel a pervasive aura radiating from the planet. Like Felucia, where the original Starkiller had fought Shaak Ti and her young Zabrak apprentice, this world was rich with the Force. A multitude of life-forms thrived in its rich biosphere, which only made it stranger to him that no one had settled there.
Life was in principle a good thing, he reasoned, but living things weren’t always good to one another. Perhaps Dagobah was infested with giant predators, or its vegetable life ate anything that moved, or something he hadn’t come close to imagining.
He would have to be careful if he were to land there.
Was he going to do that?
He weighed up the pros and cons as thoroughly as he could. On the one hand, he had no reason to think that anything useful to his quest lay on the planet below. On the other hand, Kota was no fool, and he had deep connections to the Force of his own, connections that might become apparent if explored more deeply.
It was his own original instinct that convinced him. His first thought on leaving Vader had been to seek out Kota. On finding Kota, he had been disappointed that he couldn’t tell him anything about Juno’s whereabouts, but maybe this was why Kota had been important. Turning away now might leave him more lost than ever, even if he couldn’t see where this path might lead him. At the very least, he might find a place to meditate, as he had told Kota he was going in search of.
Operating the Rogue Shadow’s controls by feel, he followed his instincts down into the atmosphere and sought a safe landing spot.
It wasn’t easy. The tree canopy was dense and hid marshy, treacherous soil. Thick clouds clung to promontories and low mountain ranges, making them visible only to radar. He imagined a thousand hungry eyes peering up at him as he circled. Eventually he decided on a narrow strip of isolated land, just visible through a gap in the clouds. The Rogue Shadow swooped down with repulsors whining and settled onto the green-furred soil. Nothing lumbered out of the undergrowth to taste it. No huge vegetable jaws closed shut around it. Nothing happened at all, which only made him more nervous.
At least the ground was stable. He shut down the engines and waited as the ship grew quiet around him. A patter of rain rippled across the hull, sounding like asteroid fragments against shields. Streamers of mist blew through the trees.
When he got up and opened the hatch, a powerful smell hit his nostrils. The mixture of pollen, pheromones, and decay originated from all around him, from every living thing on the tiny world. He had never encountered anything like it before. Felucia was more cloying, with a thick fungal edge; Raxus Prime was just rot, all the way through; Kashyy
yk’s distinctive odor came from wood and its by-products. Dagobah was something else entirely.
Maybe, he thought, that stink was why no one had settled here.
He jumped lightly from the ramp onto the mossy ground. Water dripped from trees and leaves all around him, maintaining a steady patter. There was no wind to raise a sudden tattoo. The air was thick and motionless, as though it never moved, ever.
Juno wasn’t there. He was sure of that. But what was there? Where were the caves of Dagobah?
He closed his eyes and let the Force tell him what it could.
Life roiled around him, tugging his mind in a dozen directions at once. He let himself be buffeted, tilting his head from one side to the other, testing the flows. There was a hint of something unusual to the east, a knot in the Force unlike any he had felt before. It drew him and repelled him at the same time. The longer he studied it, the more he felt as though it was studying him right back.
He opened his eyes. A large reptilian bird was staring at him from the trees. Its black eyes blinked, but otherwise it didn’t move. With a flutter of leathery wings, another of its kind swooped in to join it.
Starkiller reached behind him to seal the Rogue Shadow’s hatch. Then he ignited one lightsaber as a precautionary measure. Still the reptavians didn’t move.
With every sense alert for danger, he loped off into the swampy forest.
THE GIANT SLUG had twenty-four legs and a mouth full of teeth. Eight meters from snout to tail, it loomed over him, roaring. Its breath was vile.
Starkiller hacked a double line down its belly with both his lightsabers and jumped to avoid the rush of foulness that released. Among the body parts expelled from the creature’s stomach was the head of one of the giant reptiles he had encountered farther back. The slug writhed and whined in pain. He left it to die on its own time. His destination was close.
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