Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

by Sean Williams

  His voice was worse.

  “Your droid’s personality module has been supplanted. The being you called PROXY no longer exists.”

  The apprentice fought to keep his emotions under control. “Why have you done this?”

  “Your droid accessed my systems. I defended myself.”

  “Self-defense I can forgive. This is theft.” He indicated the cable connecting PROXY’s memory banks to the planet’s vast computer networks.

  “I do not seek your forgiveness. All I want is order. Organization. Predictability.”

  “You have that here already.”

  “Only here—and even here I am victim of outside influences, as you have proven. The Emperor and I share the same objectives, but I fear that his fallible organic mind is not up to the task of governing the galaxy. I clearly see that in your droid’s memories.”

  “Exactly,” he improvised, trying to gain time enough to reach the cable connecting PROXY to the network. “If you’ve read PROXY’s memories, then you know what my objective is. Perhaps we could work together. I could help you—”

  “You have already helped me.” The Core moved PROXY carefully out of reach. “You have brought me a fully functional starship. With it I can spread order across the galaxy.”

  “My starship is not available.”

  “It will be when you are dead.”

  The apprentice lunged for the cable, but the Core jumped PROXY’s body well out of reach. “Good-bye, ‘master.’ ”

  PROXY transformed into Obi-Wan Kenobi and activated the lightsaber that had been hanging at his side. The droid’s opening move was much faster than any he had attempted before—as of course it should have been, the apprentice realized when he blocked the blow barely in time. The Core had access to all the same records he did; its knowledge of Jedi lightsaber techniques might be unsurpassed in the entire galaxy.

  But knowledge was not the same thing as experience, just as clever technology wasn’t the same thing as the Force. He was confident that he could defeat the Core in PROXY’s body at a fair fight.

  As he jumped up onto a nearby processor to avoid another expert swing, he saw the Core’s other droid servants closing in. Fair fights were as rare as Jedi in the galaxy these days. He would have to even the odds somewhat.

  Reaching down for a cable, he sent a wave of Sith lightning through it. Lights flared and junctions sparked. The Core’s processors shrieked at the sudden overload, and so did its servants. PROXY was one of them—and unlike the others, he was physically attached to the systems his master was assaulting, so the effects of the energy surge on him were severe. The hologram dissolved into static and his arms came up. Static electricity crackled from every joint.

  The apprentice cut the current before he could fry his friend’s brain completely. There had to be some of PROXY left in there, somewhere, and he would rather fight an unfair fight than erase that remnant.

  Leaping down from the processor, he swung his lightsaber at the cable, but the Core regained its concentration in time to put PROXY’s body in the way. Their lightsabers 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-adequate 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.

  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. He 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 if he 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?”

  The apprentice drove the android back with a series of fast strikes and acrobatic maneuvers. PROXY was nowhere near as 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 feeling. 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 int
o 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?

  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 his 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 it 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.

  Part 3

  REBEL

  CHAPTER 32

  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 Coruscant 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 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 rebellion.

  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 his 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 the cloak and—”

  She stopped at the sound of metal footsteps on the deck behind her. She spun around and raised her hands, automatically on guard after the last time she had been confronted by the droid in the cockpit. Sudden panic made her veins pulse in her neck.

  “I’m sorry to startle you, Captain Eclipse,” said PROXY with a humble bow. “Please allow me to offer an unconditional apology for my actions on Raxus Prime. Your name does not appea
r on my target list and would never have done so had the Core not corrupted my primary programming. I am glad that I was able to merely render you unconscious so you would not follow me or sound the alarm.” The droid bowed again. “You have every right to have me spaced or junked and I will not object should you choose either course. I have argued with my master on this point many times, but I am determined.”

  Over the droid’s shoulder she saw Starkiller looking furious and worried at the same time, as though afraid that she might actually take PROXY up on his offer.

  “No, PROXY,” she said, forcing herself to drop her defensive posture. “That won’t be necessary. Let’s just forget it ever happened. It’s good to see you up and about again. As good as new, by the looks of it.”

  “I fear not, Captain Eclipse, but thank you for your kind words.”

  He stared expectantly at her and she racked her brain for something to break the moment. “Uh, that rear shield generator could use some looking at. I think I heard it heterodyning, and I’d rather it failed now than when we really need it.”

  “Of course, Captain Eclipse.”

  PROXY shuffled cheerfully off, and she wondered what he meant by suggesting that he was in less-than-perfect condition. Certainly it had been quieter on the Rogue Shadow without the endless dueling between him and his master, but she assumed that would resume now that he was back on his feet. Maybe the symptoms of his dysfunction would become apparent in time.

  Starkiller was looking at her, too. “Thank you,” he said.

  Juno turned and sat back down. “You’re sure his processor is clean? The Core could’ve planted all sorts of viruses in there.”

  “His mind is his own,” he assured her. “Out of all of us, he’s probably the only one who can say that.”

  “Speak for yourself, boy,” said Kota.

  Starkiller looked down at the old general. “Tell your friend Senator Organa that we’re not going to sit here on our hands forever. Rebellion thrives on action, not words.”