Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

by Williams, Sean

  He forced his way through a tangle of long, leg-like roots, scattering a clutch of big, white spiders as he went. The knot he had felt lay dead ahead, at the base of the largest tree he had seen so far. Despite its size, the tree looked sick with a malevolence that surprised him. If Dagobah as a whole was alive with the Force, then this tree had been poisoned by the dark side.

  His searching gaze found a deep hole choked with roots and vines at its base. This was undoubtedly the source of the poison that had ruined the tree. A lingering evil lurked here, wedded to the place as firmly as the tree itself. Its roots dug deep and stretched far.

  He approached more cautiously, no longer worrying about the planet’s more obvious predators. Was this the cave Kota had alluded to? Part of him hoped it wasn’t, even as he yearned for this particular part of his mission to be over. Juno wasn’t here, and he didn’t want to be, either, any longer than he had to.

  There was a clearing in front of the cave. He ran to it, and braced himself to enter the cave. His head was thick with foreboding. He felt as though black tendrils were reaching into his mind, stirring up memories that had been mercifully dormant until now. The voices of Darth Vader and Jedi Master Shaak Ti warred within his mind as though fighting over who controlled him.

  “The dark side is always with you.”

  “You are Vader’s slave—”

  “Your hatred gives you strength—”

  “You could be so much more.”

  “You are at last a master of the dark side.”

  “Are you prepared to meet your fate?”

  A gentle tapping brought him out of his mental deadlock.

  He spun around with both lightsabers upraised. Something was watching him—a tiny green creature dressed in swamp-colored rags with green skin, long, pointed ears, and a heavily lined face. It stood on a log with the help of a short cane that it held in both hands, and it was this that made the tapping noise.

  The creature didn’t flinch at the sight of the lightsabers. Its brown eyes were alive with amusement, if anything. It nodded once at him—in acknowledgment or recognition, Starkiller couldn’t tell—and the cane ceased its gentle tap-tap.

  He lowered his blades and, after a moment, deactivated them as well. He sensed no threat from this unexpected being. Quite the opposite, in fact. The yawning void of the cave seemed to retreat for a moment, clearing his mind of confusion. The being before him might be small in stature, but he was much greater than he looked.

  “You guard this place?” Starkiller asked him, gesturing at the cave with the hilt of one of his lightsabers.

  The creature chuckled as though pleased by the question. “Oh ho. Only a watcher am I now.”

  “Then you’ll let me pass?”

  That earned him a shrug. “Brought you here, the galaxy has. Your path, clearly this is.”

  Starkiller turned and looked behind him, into the cave mouth. The swamp jungle had fallen utterly silent around them. The air was as thick as glass.

  “You know what I’m looking for?”

  Something poked the back of his knee. He jumped. The little creature had hopped off the log and approached close enough to test him with his cane—so lightly and silently that Starkiller hadn’t noticed.

  “Hey!”

  The creature persisted, poking his flight suit and lightsabers and gloves, and dissecting him with intense eyes.

  “Something lost,” he said. “A part of yourself, perhaps?”

  Starkiller brushed him away, profoundly unnerved by the accurate and unasked-for reading of his situation.

  “Maybe.”

  “Whatever you seek, only inside you will find.”

  The creature settled back with his hands on his cane, staring up at Starkiller with so powerful a gaze that for a moment he felt as though he were being looked at from a great height. All trace of humor was gone.

  “Inside?” he repeated.

  The tip of the cane lifted, pointed at the cave.

  Starkiller hesitated. The insidious pressure of the hole in the tree roots grew stronger, and his mind clouded again.

  “Be careful, boy,” said Kota from the past. “I hear the long shadow of the dark side reaching out to you.”

  Like a diver preparing for a long descent, he took a deep breath and entered the cave.

  IT WAS DARK INSIDE, of course, but somehow it managed to be even darker than he had expected. He struggled through thick curtains of roots and vines, resisting the urge to slash at them with his lightsabers. He kept his weapons carefully inactive, intuitively understanding that any aggressive move that he took might be reflected back at him a hundredfold. Intuition was all he had to guide him now.

  His groping fingers encountered a wall of stone ahead of him. Instead of a dead end, however, he found that the cave bent sharply to his right. He pressed on, feeling the dark side throbbing in his ears and beating against his useless eyes. The air seemed to vibrate. Every breath made him want to scream—but in dismay or delight, he couldn’t tell.

  Another wall ahead of him. This time the tunnel turned to his left. His grasping hands were wet with moisture. He could see them now, somehow, reaching ahead of him as he felt his way into the far reaches of the cave. Gradually the vines fell away, leaving just the roots to obstruct him.

  Through a dream-like fog, he stumbled into a larger chamber, the outer limits of which were obscured. He looked down at his feet but couldn’t see them, either. The ground was hidden by a crawling gray mist.

  He realized with a shock that his flight suit was gone. He was now, somehow, wearing the traditional robes of a Jedi Knight. A flash of memory came to him then, of seeing himself exactly like this on Kashyyyk, wielding his father’s blade.

  He heard himself asking Darth Vader.

  “Your spies have located a Jedi?”

  “Yes. General Rahm Kota. You will destroy him and bring me his lightsaber.”

  The voices from his memory seemed to echo through the room, whispering, tugging him on.

  “… at once, Master …”

  “… one more test …”

  “… as you wish, my Master …”

  “… one step closer to your destiny …”

  “… will not fail you, Lord …”

  “… do not disappoint me …”

  He emerged into a much larger cave. The fog cleared, revealing muddy walls overgrown with roots. The floor was treacherous underfoot. He walked carefully forward, seeking the source of the whispers, but stopped dead on realizing that the tangled roots ahead of him were moving.

  It was too dark to see properly. The time had come to shed some light on his unusual situation. Igniting both his blades, he held them up above his head, crossed in an X.

  The light they cast was blue, not red. That was the first unnerving detail. By their cool light, he made out something hidden by the roots—and it was this that was moving, struggling against the winding net. He stepped warily closer, peering into the shadows. Was that an arm he saw, with a hand clutching vainly at freedom? Was this a hallucination, a vision, or something that was really happening?

  A face shoved forward through the muddy roots. Starkiller gasped and stepped back, bringing his lightsabers down between him and the figure caught in the roots. He recognized those features. They were his own: lean and desperate and full of hunger.

  Movement came from his right. Another body struggled against the grasping vegetation. Another version of him. And another. They were all around him, dozens of them, writhing, twisting, straining, whispering in agony.

  “Yes, my Master.”

  “I am strong, my Master, and I am getting stronger.”

  “When will my training be complete, Master?”

  They wore the black uniforms of Kamino. They were clones like him.

  “What will you do with me?”

  Starkiller shuddered and moaned. He looked about for an exit from the chamber, and saw a narrow crack in the stone. He lunged for it, but not so quickly that he avo
ided the hands that clutched at him. They gripped his flight uniform with his own strength, trying to hold him back, entrap him with them, where he belonged. He cried out and pulled free, falling back into the chamber. He raised his lightsabers automatically, thinking to hack his way free.

  “Kill me and you destroy yourself.”

  He heard the voice clearly, as he had on Kashyyyk. That time, he had not hesitated to strike down the doppelgänger he had seen in his mind. This time he listened to himself, and once more extinguished his blades. The decision renewed his strength, gave him the courage to continue.

  In the near darkness he faced the clutching hands of his other selves, and pushed firmly through them. Their slippery fingers skidded off his flight uniform and fell away. Behind him their whispers became moans and then faded to silence. All he could hear now was his breathing—fast and heavy, as though he had been running. He had been underground for hours, or so it felt. How much farther until he reached the end of the cave and found what he was looking for—or what was looking for him?

  Another chamber, this one swirling with shadows. He kept walking, and the shadows rose up around him, forming short-lived figures that loomed and retreated, blocking his path. He tried to force his way past them, as he had with the visions of his other selves, but found himself confused and disoriented. His head spun. Twice he found himself facing the way he had come. He put out both hands to stop the world turning. There had to be a way out somewhere, if only the cave would let him find it.

  He could hear rain in the distance, and he stumbled toward it.

  Thunder boomed—

  —and suddenly he was standing in the cloning facility on Kamino, near the hole he had ripped in the wall during his escape. Visible through the hole, the sky hung wild and low, racked by a fierce electrical storm. Spray-slicked metal gleamed even in the gray light. The howl of wind was relentless and eerie.

  A figure walked closer to the hole in order to inspect the torn metal. Armored from head to foot in gray and green, with an unfamiliar T-shaped visor and some kind of jetpack affixed to his back, his voice had the inflectionless grate of a vocoder. It was clear, though, that he wasn’t a droid. Perhaps his vocal chords had been damaged.

  “He has a healthy head start.”

  Starkiller moved closer. Only when he moved did he recognize the closeness of armor, the heaviness of limb, the sensation of being trapped. He had experienced all these sensations before.

  He said in leaden tones, “The Empire will provide whatever you require, bounty hunter.”

  Starkiller strained to move his former Master’s limbs, but he was powerless to do anything other than ride out the vision. He could only see through Darth Vader’s eyes and wait for it to end.

  “I’ll need backup,” said the green-armored figure.

  Starkiller’s black-gloved left hand gestured out the hole, toward the landing pad. There a long line of troopers was marching into two Lambda-class shuttles, followed by a type of droid he had never seen before. It was huge, with long legs, powerful armament, and heavy shielding. It was so big, the full extent of it was hidden behind the buildings near the landing bay.

  The bounty hunter turned to Starkiller and said in a satisfied tone, “They’ll do.”

  A flurry of rain obscured the view and—

  —he was back in his body, and the shadows were retreating, forming a dense knot in front of him. He reeled away from it, holding his hands in front of him. They were flesh and blood, with no sign of prosthetics. He was himself, wholly and only himself, which came as a great relief even as the knowledge that his former Master was hunting him sank in. That was what the vision had been telling him, beyond all doubt. He thought himself free, but Darth Vader thought otherwise.

  The shadows swirled and burst apart, and came rushing at him, filling his head—

  —with an image of PROXY, which surely couldn’t be possible, since he had been destroyed by Darth Vader on Corellia. This had to be something from the past, Starkiller decided. But when, and where, and who was he now?

  There was none of the heaviness of Vader, and no sign of an Imperial presence at all. He was on a ship of some kind, a large one, bigger than the Rogue Shadow. Crew members rushed around him, briskly but without urgency. They wore uniforms identical to the ones he had trained against on Kamino.

  Soldiers of the Rebel Alliance.

  A canine-faced officer turned to face him.

  “I’m having trouble with the forward sensor array, Captain.”

  Starkiller looked through the observation canopy, out at the space ahead. A small cluster of ships dotted the view, accompanied by an escort of Y-wings. In the backdrop hung a dense and beautiful nebula, all curls and swirls, glowing every color of the spectrum.

  A familiar voice asked, “Interference from the nebula?”

  PROXY turned from an instrument he was studying. “Perhaps. I’ll try to pin it down.”

  “Let’s not take any chances.”

  Starkiller barely heard the words. He was stunned by the knowledge that it was Juno speaking. He was experiencing what she was experiencing. Whatever had happened to her would happen to him now.

  He punched a button on the console with her hand, not his.

  “This is Captain Eclipse.” Her voice echoed through the ship. “Set defensive protocols throughout all ships. Prime your shields and check your scanners for anything that’s not one of ours.”

  The canine-faced officer nodded and checked the screens in front of him. “All clear, Captain.”

  “Keep looking, Nitram. We can’t be too careful.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Starkiller watched the screens with her, searching for any sign of disturbance. His senses prickled. Something was coming. She could feel it, and therefore he could, too.

  A voice crackled over the comm. “Captain Eclipse—we’re picking up five, no six small warships, coming in fa—”

  Explosions puffed alongside a ship ahead. Starkiller didn’t see where the attacking vessels had come from, but he could see what they were doing. Four precisely aimed missiles cracked the ship in two, sending crew and air gushing into the void. With one ship down, the focus of the attack turned to the center of the group: the ship containing Juno.

  “Shields to full,” she called over the intercom. “Open fire, all batteries!”

  An impact rocked the deck beneath her. The bridge swayed.

  “We’ve been breached,” said her second in command. “Troopers boarding!”

  “Send a security detail to the main reactor. Seal off life support.”

  Another explosion, closer than before. Rebel crew went flying, but Juno held on to her post.

  “Get those deflector shields up!”

  PROXY leaned into view. “Internal security beacons are going crazy. Captain Eclipse, I think we should—”

  The bridge doors blew in. Smoke and burning debris filled the air. Through the cloud stalked two heavily armed troopers, already firing. Juno ducked down, blaster pistol in hand. One precise shot to the throat seal put one of the troopers down. Another barely missed the second.

  Four more troopers rushed into the bridge. The maze of blasterfire intensified. Starkiller felt his heart racing as he edged to a better vantage point, picking off troopers as best he could. His crew died around him. First PROXY, blown backward in a shower of sparks, then the dog-faced second in command. Rage rose up in him, pure and clean. He stood up in order to see more clearly through the thickening smoke.

  A blaster bolt took him in the shoulder, sending him spinning sideways, falling—

  —and when he hit the ground in the cave he realized that, although it had been Juno’s heart pounding all along, his still kept perfect time with hers. He was covered in sweat, and the stink of the smoke was thick in his nostrils. The pain of the bolt to Juno’s arm hurt all the more for knowing that he hadn’t been there to stop it.

  The timing of the vision tormented him. Juno hadn’t been captain of anythi
ng larger than the Rogue Shadow while PROXY had lived—or while the original Starkiller had lived, for that matter. She hadn’t been shot, either. Was it conceivable that PROXY had been brought back to life—or simply replaced? He had seen other droids of his make on Kamino, so that wasn’t impossible. That placed the vision sometime after the events of the Death Star. But when? Had they already happened, or were they still to come? Could he prevent them from happening?

  He struggled to his hands and knees. The shadows crowded him, made it hard to move. His lightsaber hilts had fallen from his hands and rolled out of sight. He scrabbled about for them in the gloom, but they were nowhere to be found.

  “Give them back,” he told the shadows. “Give them back!”

  All they gave him was another vision.

  He was crouched on a metal surface, holding Juno in his arms. Rain pounded them. Her eyes were closed. She was covered in blood. He was covered in blood. She wasn’t breathing. He tipped his head back and howled back at the storm.

  The image of Juno faded into nothing and he fell face-forward onto the muddy ground of the cave, as though gravity had multiplied a thousand times. In that vision, he had definitely been himself. It was either the future or a past he could no longer remember. Or the work of another clone. Or some equally bizarre possibility he could not for the moment fathom.

  “We form a strong team,” said her voice out of the past. “It’s unfortunate we can’t keep on as we are.”

  The memory gave him strength to resist the terrible weight of the shadows. Juno had said that on their return to the Empirical, at which time he had expected to help Darth Vader overthrow the Emperor and she, he had assumed, would have been allocated to other duties. She had been wrong then, and this vision might be wrong now. Past, present, future—if anyone could change it, it would be him.

  Juno could not die.

  The pressure fell away. He leapt to his feet. His lightsabers flew out of the shadows and landed in his hands, and were lit an instant later. They were red once more, as red as the blood in his final vision. The shadows fled.

  By the crimson light he could see that there was nowhere else to go. He had reached the end of the caves. The only direction he had left to go was back.