by James Luceno
For a moment, frozen in time, Vader saw a forest of red lightsaber shafts exactly like his own. He punched a Force shock wave into the cockpit just as his field of vision erupted in hot yellow light and the loud whoomp of flame filled the ruptured compartment ahead of them, fire licking across bulkheads and darting into the cockpit hatchway.
He could see inside now. He heard screams. Three lightsabers had disappeared, appearing to merge with the flames. Fierce gold reflections danced on white armor. But three shafts of energy continued to glow, and he could see three of Cuis’s clones enveloped in Force-shields of their own, managing to hold off the flamethrower assault.
The stormtrooper plates and bodysuit were fire-resistant, and Lekauf’s men had overcome that hardwired human terror of fire to walk through the inferno and continue to shoot jets of burning gas into the compartment before them. Vader could see three bodies on the floor, matte black from charring, and three moving lightsaber blades … but where was the fourth?
He reached out with his mind, searching behind burning panels and control fascias. Another ball of fire rolled up to the deckhead from the muzzle of a flamethrower. Lekauf, tight at Vader’s side and without a respirator, coughed as acrid smoke billowed back.
“Get clear,” said Vader, and stabbed his Force reach through the shield of the Cuis clones, seizing their throats and crushing them. One yielded and Vader moved in fast, taking three strides forward and slashing his saber down to fell the clone.
Two were left, plus Sheyvan. He was still alive. Vader could feel him yet not see him. Lekauf’s men fired rapid bursts of flame at the last two Cuis clones standing, pinning them against the port bulkhead as Vader moved in and they struggled to maintain the protective bubble around them. Smoke rolled from every surface. The shuttle’s interior was made from fire-resistant materials, but the temperature in the confined space was now getting unbearable.
Nele fired another burst of burning gas at the Dark Jedi. Then one of the Cuis clones made a massive effort and sent the ball of flame back at Vader.
Vader’s suit could withstand nearly every assault. But Lekauf, a man trained to react without pausing to debate, flung himself in front of him and took the brunt of the flame. He fell, gasping, as the clones closed in on the Dark Jedi and Vader burst apart their Force-shields with pure focused rage.
Lightsabers winked out of existence.
“Pepin, fire control, now!” Vader shouted.
The shuttle’s power came back and a fine rain of fire retardant began falling from the conduits in the deckhead, dousing the smoldering surfaces. Vader dropped to one knee to grab Lekauf’s shoulders and pull him clear.
Lekauf’s action had been a foolish gesture, and one Vader didn’t need. But this was a painful reminder for him. Not so long ago, he had been the one burning and desperate for help—and the Master he trusted, Obi-Wan Kenobi, had abandoned him and left him to die.
Vader would not abandon Lekauf as he had been abandoned. He supported the officer’s head, not to win his allegiance as Palpatine might, but because it was what Vader believed Kenobi should have done for him.
Lekauf’s skin was blackened but his eyes were open, wide and white in a shocked face. Vader called for bacta, and Nele and Pepin ran to him with medpacs. Lekauf raised an arm and looked at the blistered back of his hand as if it weren’t his own. “My wife’s going to be furious with me,” he said in the nonsensical way that badly injured men often did.
“I bet your wife will just be glad to see you back in one piece,” said Pepin. “Let’s get you into the cabin.”
Vader straightened up. The other clones were searching the charred and twisted forward compartment, blasters aimed.
Sheyvan had to be in there somewhere. It was too small a ship in which to hide. Vader stepped carefully through the steaming debris, now slippery with a coating of fire-retardant liquid, and gestured to the clones to leave him to the search. He felt that the Dark Jedi was alive, but with a black layer of wet ash covering everything it was hard to tell what was a body and what was simply a melted sheet of plastoid. He prodded lumps with his boot, lightsaber in hand.
He counted eight bodies: six Cuis clones and the two crew who were already dead when the assault began. Then one blackened shape yielded slightly when he kicked it.
Sheyvan sprang to his feet, a nightmare smeared in wet black ash. His lightsaber cut through the damp hot air, and Vader blocked it with an upward thrust.
“He’ll betray you, too, sir,” said Sheyvan, his lightsaber locked against Vader’s.
“Few men will not try to betray me,” said Vader, and swung back at him. He could focus only on Lekauf’s plight at that moment, an echo of his own, and rage was a fine lens through which to concentrate his power. He drove Sheyvan back across the slippery deck, sending him stumbling. Even now, after holding back flame and surviving smoke, the Dark Jedi was still a formidable fighter. Vader genuinely regretted the final stroke that sliced him from shoulder to hip and left him dead on the deck.
Sheyvan was what Palpatine had made him. Vader had once thought he was made as Palpatine had planned, but now he knew he was his own man.
The Emperor could even have influenced Sheyvan to do this. So many layers. So many games.
The cockpit was too badly damaged to pilot the shuttle back to Imperial Center. Vader sent out a distress signal and waited for rescue. He walked back to the day cabin to check on Lekauf and found Palpatine watching the emergency first aid as if it were a demonstration.
“Will he survive?” Vader asked. I know how this feels. I know the pain. “Are his lungs damaged?”
Pepin took him to one side. “He’s very badly burned, sir,” he said in a whisper.
“I survived burns once,” said Vader. “And so will he. He will have the best medical care.” He leaned over Lekauf and stared into his face, seeing a fraction of the image that Palpatine must once have seen of him. “You are too loyal for your own good, Lieutenant.”
“That’s my job, my lord.”
He might have been attempting humor. Judging by the expressions on the faces of the clones he had trained, he had created that same sense of allegiance in them. They had almost formed a defensive line around him. Nele handed Pepin a succession of bacta-soaked swabs.
“You never disappoint me,” said Vader. Lekauf, face and hands swathed in wet gauze, blinked a few times. “Your apology was premature.”
Lekauf would recover in time, and he might even train men again. But he would now be the progenitor of a clone battalion. His men had defeated Dark Jedi, and, even if assisted by Vader, they had still given a good account of themselves.
Lekauf could be proud. And at least he would see his family again. Scarred or not, he had certain things that others—even Vader—might envy.
IMPERIAL PALACE, CORUSCANT;
TWO DAYS LATER
“How is your lieutenant?” asked the Emperor.
Vader studied the ranks of the 501st Legion from the window overlooking the parade ground. There was a certain comfort in knowing that for most of them—those whose whole life was soldiering and who had no ambitions beyond that—life was a straightforward process of doing their job, with no thought of whom they might oust or assassinate or outmaneuver.
“He’s improving, Master.”
“Loyalty is a fine quality.”
“I have asked Arkanian Micro to produce a battalion of Lekauf clones. I think they have proved themselves.”
“Yes.” Palpatine wandered across to the window to stand beside Vader as if curious about whatever had caught his attention. “Cancel the orders for the Cuis clones. For the time being.”
I already have. “It will be done, my Master.”
“You are still troubled. I feel it.”
Vader decided to risk the question that was on his mind. Palpatine knew it was there anyway. The only issue was whether Vader would ask it.
“Master, was Sheyvan’s rebellion designed to test me?”
Palpatine turned his head sh
arply. The cowl shadowed his eyes: once his face had seemed kindly to Vader. “If it was a test, Lord Vader, it was for the clones, not for you. And if it was, then the Lekauf batch proved the more worthy.”
So that was your motive. With a little mental manipulation to turn Sheyvan’s resentment into hatred. And what a poor reward for Lekauf.
Vader curbed his anger simply to deny his Master the taste of victory. “A real crisis shows what a man is made from.”
“I have not ruled out more Cuis clones, of course.” How far ahead do you plan your little games? You waited decades to defeat the Jedi. You used trillions of lives to achieve it. Will I ever be able to think enough steps ahead of you?
“I feel Dark Jedi are not suitable for the Imperial Army.”
“With the right commander they would be.”
“And who would train them?”
“You, Lord Vader.”
“I prefer ordinary soldiers. They don’t covet power. I would spend all my time watching my back.”
“Indeed you would,” said Palpatine.
It had been a game at first, an annoying one, but just verbal sparring; the Emperor neither lied nor told the truth. Now it had ceased to be a challenge, and Vader longed for a simpler relationship. There was a very fine line between strengthening a man through constant challenge and turning him into an enemy.
“Perhaps the solution to having to watch your back is to make your enemy watch theirs instead,” said Vader.
I will come for you one day.
“Or have others want to watch it for you,” said Palpatine, and turned to leave his apprentice alone in the anteroom.
Vader now knew there were no Force-users, dark or otherwise, whom he could wholly trust—his own Master least of all. Vader had no loyalties beyond himself, except for his interest in the well-being of the likes of Lekauf, men with no extraordinary gifts or powers whatsoever.
Unless, of course, you counted simple honesty as a gift.
At that moment he thought it the equal of any Force power. Yes, Vader preferred ordinary men made excellent by effort. The part of him that was Anakin Skywalker remembered the few things he had struggled to achieve—love, excitement, freedom—and thought how much more they had thrilled him than his prodigious and easy powers.
He had been a man himself, once. Thinking of Lekauf, he wondered if he would ever choose to be one again.
Star Wars: Crosscurrent is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
2010 Del Rey Mass Market Edition
Copyright © 2010 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or ™ where indicated. All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.
Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-79601-1
www.starwars.com
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v3.1
For my two little Padawans, Roarke and Riordan
Contents
Master - Table of Contents
Crosscurrent
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Dramatis Personae
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
dramatis personae
Drev Hassin; Jedi Padawan (Askajian male)
Jaden Korr; Jedi Knight (human male)
Kell Douro; assassin/spy (Anzat male)
Khedryn Faal; captain, Junker (human male)
Marr Idi-Shael; first mate, Junker (Cerean male)
Relin Druur; Jedi Master (human male)
Saes Rrogon; Sith Lord; captain, Harbinger (Kaleesh male)
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away …
THE PAST:
5,000 YEARS BEFORE THE BATTLE OF YAVIN
The crust of Phaegon III’s largest moon burned, buckled, and crumbled under the onslaught. Sixty-four specially equipped cruisers—little more than planetary-bombardment weapons systems with a bit of starship wrapped around them—flew in a suborbital, longitudinal formation. The sleek silver cruisers, their underbellies aglow in reflected destruction, struck Saes as unexpectedly beautiful. How strange that they could unleash annihilation in such warm, glorious colors.
Plasma beams shrieked from the bow of each cruiser and slammed into the arboreal surface of the moon, shimmering green umbilicals that wrote words of ruin across the surface and saturated the world in fire and pain. Dust and a swirl of thick black smoke churned in the atmosphere as the cruisers methodically vaporized large swaths of the moon’s surface.
The bright light and black smoke of destruction filled Harbinger’s viewscreen, drowning out the orange light of the system’s star. Except for the occasional beep of a droid or a murmured word, the bridge crew sat in silence, their eyes fixed alternately on their instruments and the viewscreen. Background chatter on the many comm channels droned over the various speakers, a serene counterpoint to the chaos of the moon’s death. Saes’s keen olfactory sense caught a whiff of his human crew’s sweat, spiced with the tang of adrenaline.
Watching the cruisers work, watching the moon die, Saes was reminded of the daelfruits he’d enjoyed in his youth. He had spent many afternoons under the sun of his homeworld, peeling away the daelfruit’s coarse, brown rind to get at the core of sweet, pale flesh.
Now he was peeling not a fruit but an entire moon.
The flesh under the rind of the moon’s crust—the Lignan they were mining—would ensure a Sith victory in the battle for Kirrek and improve Saes’s place in the Sith hierarchy. He would not challenge Shar Dakhon immediately, of course. He was still too new to the Sith Order for that. But he would not wait overlong.
Evil roots in unbridled ambition, Relin had told him once.
Saes smiled. What a fool his onetime Master had been. Naga Sadow rewarded ambition.
“Status?” he queried his science droid, 8K6.
The fires in the viewscreen danced on the anthropomorphic droid’s reflective silver surface as it turned from its instrument console to address him.
“Thirty-seven percent of the moon’s crust is destroyed.”
Wirelessly connected to the console’s readout, the droid did not need to glance back for an update on the information as the cruisers continued their work.
“Thirty-eight percent. Thirty-nine.”
Saes nodded, turned his attention back to the viewscreen. The droid fell silent.
Despite Harbinger’s distance from the surface, the Force carried back to Saes the terror of the pre-sentient primates that populated the moon’s surface. Saes imagined the small creatures fleeing through the trees, screeching, relentlessly pursued by, and inevitably consumed in, fire. They numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Their fear caressed his mind, as faint, fleeting, and pleasing as morning fog.
His fellow Sith on Harbinger and Omen would be feeling the same thing as the genocide progressed to its inexorable conclusion. Perhaps even the Massassi aboard each ship would, in their dim way, perceive the ripples in the Force.
Long ago, when Saes had been a Jedi, before he had come to understand the dark side, such wholesale destruction of life might have struck him as wrong. He knew better now. There was no absolute right and wrong. There was only power. And those who wielded it defined right and wrong for themselves. That realization was the freedom offered by the d
ark side and the reason the Jedi would fall, first at Kirrek, then at Coruscant, then all over the galaxy.
“Temperature in the wake?” he asked.
The science droid consulted the sensor data on its compscreen. “Within the tolerance of the harvester droids.”
Saes watched the cruisers slide through the atmosphere and light the moon on fire. He turned in his command chair to face his second in command, Los Dor. Dor’s mottled, deep red skin looked nearly black in the dim light of the bridge. His yellow eyes mirrored the moon’s fires. He never seemed to look up into Saes’s eyes, instead focusing his gaze on the twin horns that jutted from the sides of Saes’s jaw.
Saes knew Dor was as much a spy for Naga Sadow as he was an ostensible aide to himself. Among other things, Dor was there to ensure that Saes returned the Lignan—all of the Lignan—to Sadow’s forces at Primus Goluud.
The tentacles on Dor’s face quivered, and the cartilaginous ridges over his eyes rose in a question.
“Give the order to launch the harvester droids, Colonel,” Saes said to him. “Harbinger’s and Omen’s.”
“Yes, Captain,” Dor responded. He turned to his console and transmitted the order to both ships.
The honorific Captain still struck Saes’s hearing oddly. He was accustomed to leading hunting parties as a First, not ships as a Captain.
In moments hundreds of cylindrical pods streaked out of Harbinger’s launching bay, and hundreds more flew from her sister ship, Omen, all of them streaking across the viewscreen. They hit the atmosphere and spat lines of fire as they descended. The sight reminded Saes of a pyrotechnic display.
“Harvester droids away,” 8K6 intoned.
“Stay with the droids and magnify,” Saes said.
“Copy,” answered Dor, and nodded at the young human helmsman who controlled the viewscreen.
The harvester droids’ trajectories placed them tens of kilometers behind the destruction wrought by the mining cruisers. Most of them were lost to sight in the smoke, but the helmsman kept the viewscreen’s perspective on a dozen or so that descended through a clear spot in the sky.