Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (29 page)

Just in case another team of Imperials came to reactivate the emplacement, Starkiller ran his blades through each of the sniper weapons, rendering them useless. Then he left the room and went up onto the roof. A passing TIE took a potshot at him, but he jumped before the bolts could hit him. The top of the tower exploded into flame as he dropped in a carefully controlled fall to where Kota and his squad stood below.

They were hunkered down at the entrance to the command center. Kota had his blade deep in the armored door while one of his militia tried to slice through its lock. Both succeeded at the same time, and the squad burst inside with Starkiller hot on their heels. They made short work of the Imperial officers within and immediately took control of the consoles they found.

“Get those hangar doors open, ” Kota ordered. “Quickly!” He turned to Starkiller. “Vader’s TIE fighters are going to keep us pinned down here until we get air support. “

“Good to see you too, General. “

“I knew you’d he hack. ” His attention was directed through the curved window and the facility outside, as though he could see without the slightest impediment. “I’m just surprised it rook you so long to catch up. “

“I need to get to the cloning towers. “

“Well, he quick. They’ll he coming down around your ears once we get through the dome. “

A close strike from one of the TIE bombers made the command center shake.

“Time’s running out, ” Kota growled at one of the Rebels, furiously tapping at his console.

“I almost have control of the hangar doors, ” was the response. “Just give me…”

A second blast tore one corner of the roof away, raking the Rebel technician with it. Kota cursed and led the dash forward, out of the center and back onto the walkways.

“I’ll deal with the hangar doors, ” Starkiller told him as they dodged fire from snipers and cannon emplacements on all sides. “You just give me time to get Juno before you take everything out. “

Kota didn’t argue. “Good, good. We’ll find the security hub and try to prevent any more lockdowns. “

They split up at the next intersection, and Starkiller leapt from ledge to ledge toward another command center near the base of the dome. Behind it was the nearest hangar entrance, and its thick durasteel doors were rightly sealed against the Rebels outside. The Imperials inside the command center saw him coming and took steps to prepare: by the time he had burned his way in, the controls were locked, and when he tried to interfere with them they self-destructed.

There went that plan. But it wasn’t the only one he had. Leaving the ruined command center behind, he leapt to the base of the hangar door and, facing it, spread his arms wide, palms forward.

For Juno, he thought, and pushed.

The hangar doors shook in their tracks, but didn’t give.

He stepped back, changed his stance, and tried pulling instead.

Again, nothing.

A sniper had taken a bead on him. He took a moment to deflect a shot very precisely back to the other side of the dome. The resulting explosion seemed tiny from such a great distance, but had the desired effect. No more shots came his way.

Starkiller turned back to the doors and extended his widespread fingers to the stubborn metal.

Waves of intense electricity surged into the doors, shorting out systems both physical and electromagnetic. He gave them a good twenty seconds before stepping back and trying to pull again.

This time the doors responded as they were supposed to. With a shriek of complaint, the metal buckled and curved inward, allowing access to the outside. When the doors were protruding vertically from the wall, he pushed each side back so it was flush. Barely had he finished when the first Rebel Y-wing swept by, saw the opening, then came around to rush through.

It roared past him, a wave of exhaust hot in its wake. The pilot took in the situation and began firing at the TIE fighters pestering Kota, turning the fight a little more in the Rebels’ favor.

Starkiller felt that he had discharged his responsibility to Kota. It was time now to go for Juno. But the spires were on the other side of the dome, and the lower levels were crawling with AT-STs and stormtroopers.

Seeking the best shortcut available, he climbed to the top of the ruined hangar door and waited for the next starfighter to come through.

Two TIE fighters followed the Y-wing, then a Headhunter. He let them go unmolested: There were insufficient handholds on the top of either models canopy. The fifth was a Y-wing-exactly what he was after.

As it rushed through the open hangar entrance, he jumped onto it and caught the R2 unit protruding from its exposed chassis tightly about the domed head.

The impact nearly tore his arms off at the shoulders, and the Y-wing dipped sharply under the unexpected weight. The droid squawked in alarm, prompting a barrel roll from the starfighter’s pilot. Starkiller hung on tightly as the world turned around him.

“Tell the pilot I’m on your side!” he shouted over the roaring of the Y-wing’s twin ion jet engines.

The starfighter banked to avoid the fire-blackened tower where Starkiller had dealt with the snipers, then it leveled our.

“You’re not doing any damage back there, ” crackled a voice from the R2’s vocoder, “so I guess you really aren’t an Imp. But what are you doing? Do you have a death wish or something?”

I hope not, Starkiller thought. “I need a ride. See those spires over to starboard? That’s where I have to go. “

“Where the firepower’s heaviest?”

“If you’re not up to it, I’ll find myself another ride… “

The pilot laughed. “No one’s ever called Wedge Antilles a coward. Hold tight and we’ll see what this wishbone can do. “

The Y-wing began to curve around the inside of the dome, dodging fire from turbolasers and TIE fighters. Starkiller braced himself with both feet and one hand gripping a manipulator extended by the R2 unit. With his free arm, he supplemented the starfighter’s energy shields with one lightsaber, bouncing laser blasts up into the dome and Force-pushing ion torpedoes away.

At first it looked as though getting to the spires would be easy, but the more the number of ships under the dome increased, the harder it became to fly in a straight line.

After a tense dogfight with two TIEs flying in tandem-which ended with them colliding thanks to some deft flying from Antilles-the Y-wing rushed the spires head-on, but was driven back by fire too concentrated to fly through.

“Okay, now what?” asked Antilles as he swept them smoothly out of range.

Starkiller thought for a second. “That depends on what kind of odds you like. “

“I make my own odds. “

“Good. Go down. “

“What? We can’t go down. There’s…”

“There’s an opportunity. The facility sits on platforms over the ocean. Find a gap in the platform and you can get under it. Then it’s just a matter of finding a way hack up near the spires. See?”

“All I can see is my life flashing before my eyes. ” The pilot laughed again. “But that’s okay: I always skip the boring bits. Get ready-here we go!”

The Y-wing’s nose suddenly dropped. The R2 unit wailed. Starkiller held on with both hands as the rooftops of the facility rushed up at him. The terrified exhilaration he felt was more intense than when he had surfed the Sulfation down onto Kamino. He was a passenger now, trusting entirely in the flying abilities of a pilot he’d never met. The chances were he’d misjudge the insertion into the infrastructure and kill both of them. But it was too late to bail now. They were committed.

The Y-wing sped down a gap between two buildings, dodging bridges and walkways. At first Starkiller saw no gap through the rapidly approaching lower levels, but then he caught a gleam of light on wave tops through a square hole. Antilles must have spied it by radar from above. It looked very small, barely enough room to fir the widely spaced twin ion engines, even on the diagonal.

“Keep an eye on that eyeball for me, will you?”

Starkiller looked behind him. A TIE fighter had their tail and fired twice, just missing their port engine. Starkiller didn’t know what Antilles expected him to do about it. He couldn’t let go, not with a sudden course change just seconds ahead. All he could do was hope the rear deflector shields would last long enough.

The hole rushed for them. The pilot jockeyed the Y-wing from side to side, adjusting its trim by minute degrees. Then suddenly they were through, and Starkiller was wrenched to his right by the violent delta-vee. His legs were swept out from under him, leaving him hanging by his fingertips from the R2 unit. The ion rockets roared. A mist of flash-boiled seawater sprayed him. He swung back and forth violently before the Y-wing found horizontal again and sped off, ducking and weaving around the facility’s many deep-sea supports.

Behind them, the TIE fighter clipped the edge of the hole and exploded with a flash of yellow light against the surface of the sea.

Starkiller’s knees touched the back of the Y-wing and gratefully took some of the pressure off his hands. It was dark under the facility, apart from the odd shaft shining down through the lower levels and a distant glimmer shining past its outer edges.

“Good flying, ” he said breathlessly.

“You’re still there? That’s a relief. Deesix has gone quiet. I think he’s in shock. “

The R2 unit made a mournful sound.

“Just hold on a minute longer, ” Antilles told it, “then we’ll get back to shooting bucketheads. ” The Y-wing curved gracefully around a trio of heavyset columns supporting something weighty above them. “If my guess is right, and it always is, we’re coming up on the spires now. All we need is a way in… “

“No need to be subtle about it, ” Starkiller told him, shifting position to see more clearly over the canopy. “What about up there, near that access ladder?”

“Set. Get ready for some more g’s, whoever you are!”

The Y-wing surged forward, laser cannon firing in a steady stream. Hot gas and molten metal exploded from the impact site. A new shaft of light beamed through the hole Antilles had made in the lower levels. He hit the retros and swung his starfighter in a complicated maneuver that left it rail-down and nose-up, directly under the hole. Both ion engines roared and they shot upward through what might have been a garbage chute, back into the secure facility.

They emerged in the midst of the cloning spires. Turbolaser emplacements instantly spotted them and began firing. Multiple flashes indicated hits to the Y-wing’s shields. Almost immediately, Antilles grew concerned.

“I can take this heat, but not for long. Where do you want me to put you down?”

Starkiller tried to get his bearings, but he had lost them under the facility. His instincts told him that Juno was ahead, and he hoped they spoke truly.

“Keep on as you are. No need to slow down. “

“You’re not going to jump again, are y-?”

Wedge Antilles’s voice was swept away as Starkiller launched himself off the back of the Y-wing and into space. The side of the nearest spire rushed toward him, and he lit his lightsabers an instant before striking the glass wall. He landed in a shower of glass shards, rolled, and stood unscathed.

The Y-wing swooped back to check he was okay, and Starkiller waved his lightsaber blade in thanks. The stubby craft acknowledged him by dipping its nose, then roared away.

He was alone. Splinters of glass crunched softly underfoot as he jogged to the end of the corridor in which he had landed. Alarms vied with the sound of explosions and starfighter engines for dominance, creating a dissonant racket all around him. He heard no footsteps or voices. If there had ever been Kaminoan technicians in this area of the spire, they had almost certainly been evacuated now.

He passed through an open doorway and passed into the heart of the spire itself. He stood in the entrance for a moment, eyes tracking upward along a seemingly endless series of cloning tanks, affixed to platforms barely wide enough for droids and technicians to gain access. Stormtroopers patrolled the tanks, but Starkiller didn’t think they were specifically stationed to watch for him. More likely they were guarding the beings who would one day swell their own ranks-for these were ordinary stormtrooper clones, nothing experimental or sinister. And as such they were a valid target for an attack by the Rebel Alliance.

Starkiller had his sights set much higher. He was sure now that he had the right spire. He could sense both Juno and Darth Vader in the cavernous spaces above him. It was just a matter of getting to them.

But if he could sense Vader, then the Dark Lord could sense him in return, and that made the game that much more complicated.

The stormtroopers in the cloning tower were too dispersed to take on all at once. Instead, and in order to confuse the trail he would inevitably leave in his wake, he chose a very different strategy.

Once, he had been paralyzed and abandoned in a trench full of bloodwolves, with no way to reach safety except by using the power of his own mind. It was a lesson Darth Vader had made sure his apprentice learned before even beginning combat training. Killing enemies wasn’t the same thing as controlling them. Each method had its uses, but they weren’t interchangeable.

Running lightly around the base of the tower, he approached the first clutch of sentries from behind. A judicious use of telekinesis triggered a life-support alarm a dozen clone tubes along, prompting a quick inspection by the stormtroopers. While they were distracted, he ran up the stairs they had been guarding, to the next platform.

There he put the thought into the mind of another trooper that he had heard a disturbance some distance away. The moment he and his fellows were busy, Starkiller crept past them, too. The Force absorbed all sound of his movement and shrouded his form in shadow. He didn’t just fade into the background: he became the background.

Before long, though, the guards became suspicious. They were of course in constant contact via their helmet comlinks, and a plethora of false alarms was itself unlikely to be innocent. So Starkiller turned the screws a little tighter, creating half-seen phantoms in the minds of the troopers that literally ran circles around them. Pressure hoses exploded with the force of grenades when Starkiller blocked them from afar. Clone tubes opened unexpectedly, spilling disoriented, half-minded bodies across the decks.