Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (32 page)

Her guards’ comlinks chattered too faintly for her to make out the words. Orders, she assumed, from the Dark Lord. They nodded and took new positions, two on either side of her. Then they all turned to face their Master, and he turned his back on them.

For a second, the world paused. The fighting around the spires seemed to lessen. Even the conflict in the sky grew still. She felt as though everyone in Kamino was looking in her direction-although surely, she knew, they didn’t even see her. It was all about Vader and Starkiller-if the man she had loved was still alive.

Footsteps came up the ramp. She strained against her bonds, but Vader was directly in her line of sight. She couldn’t see past him.

She could hear, though, and she would recognize his voice under any conditions, just like the Rogue Shadow.

“Get out of my way, ” he said to Vader.

“Your memories betray you. “

“They make me who I am. “

“You must turn your hack on them in order to become who you will be. “

“Never, ” he said.

Vader stepped to one side, and past the swirling of his cloak, Juno saw him-Starkiller-and for an instant she didn’t see the blood all over him or the tattered state of his flight uniform. All she saw was his eyes. And they in turn saw nothing but her.

“Then she will die, ” Vader said, raising one hand in a signal to her guards.

They raised their weapons, took aim, and fired.

It happened so fast she barely had time to flinch. Vader had been keeping her alive for so long now that it didn’t seem entirely real that he would dispose of her so suddenly. She jerked forward as far as the shackles allowed her, straining to get away. Every muscle in her body tensed in readiness.

The weapons’ muzzles flashed…

…and at that very instant a massive force struck her and the guards, flinging her backward so hard she thought her chains might break her wrists. The stormtroopers effectively disappeared, swept off the top of the spire in an instant. The shots they had fired all missed, deflected by the powerful force, although one burned her right cheek as it went by. The four energy bursts followed wild trajectories, outward across the crowded sky.

“Juno!”

Her shackles fell to the ground with a heavy clatter.

Alive but winded, she couldn’t reply. She could barely even believe she was alive. She had caught just the fringe of the push that had killed the guards, and she knew that even so she had almost been killed herself.

A different force gripped her, one no less powerful than the first, but aimed at her, not at anything else. It gripped her cruelly about the throat and lifted her so her feet barely touched the ground.

“Bow before me, ” said Vader to the man she loved.

Starkiller took a step forward. The force gripped her even more tightly, closing her windpipe. She choked, kicking out and finding no ground at all beneath her now. Her hands pulled at her throat, but there was nothing there to grip, and no way to fight it.

“Juno!”

She heard the furious despair in Starkiller’s voice, and understood that he was fighting for her, and losing.

“Bow before me, ” Vader repeated, “or she dies. “

Don’t, she wanted to say. Don’t do it. You’ve been down that path before. You know where it leads you. But she couldn’t speak. She could barely even see him. Black dots were crowding out her vision as her oxygen-starved optic nerve began to fail. Don’t let hint trick you again.

He couldn’t possibly hear her, but she suspected it wouldn’t make any difference. In his shoes, she would be tempted to give in, too. After all they had been through, after all they might have been but had been denied, they at last had a second chance. Arguably that was worth more than any political movement or philosophy. So long as they survived, their love would survive. Nothing else mattered.

She understood, but she felt no relief as Darth Vader’s terrible grip loosened and she fell painfully to the ground. Cool air rushed into her lungs. She coughed as though retching, feeling pain all along her windpipe.

Over the sound of her hacking and wheezing, she heard two metallic clinks and looked up to see what had happened.

Starkiller had deactivated his lightsabers and thrown them at Vader’s feet. They rolled across the rooftop, their residual hear making the raindrops steam.

Her vocal cords were red raw. Juno could only shake her head as Starkiller rook three steps forward, and went down on one knee at Darth Vader’s feet.

“I’ll do your bidding, ” he said. “Just promise me you’ll never hurt her again. “

“That, ” said Vader, “depends entirely on you. “

Starkiller bowed his head, and Juno fought the urge to weep. She understood the dark place from which his capitulation had come, but submission to Darth Vader was not the way to save her. That way lay nothing but more separation and death. And betrayal. And murder.

She had to find the strength somehow to free Starkiller-just as he, clone or original, had somehow fought his way back from the dead in order to find her again.

Her desperate gaze caught sight of one of Starkiller’s lightsabers. It had rolled in her direction and lay just out of her reach. If she was quiet, she might just be able to reach it.

The equation was very simple, really. Once before, she had abandoned her entire life for Starkiller. She could easily abandon this one too if it meant saving him from the horrible fate he had just accepted, thinking that it would save her.

Vader’s back was to her, and Starkiller’s head was still bowed.

She raised herself to hands and knees and reached out for the lightsaber.

“You will find and kill General Kota, ” Vader said. “If you refuse, the woman dies. “

Starkiller said nothing. Maybe he nodded, but Juno couldn’t see him. Vader had placed himself firmly between them once again, symbolically as well as physically.

“You will return to me and give yourself to the dark side, ” Vader went on. “If you resist, she dies. “

The warm metal hilt slid into Juno’s hand. She lifted it gently, afraid of making any noise at all, and raised herself to her knees. This was the first time she had held a lightsaber. She knew all too well that it was probably going to be her last.

“And when your training is complete, ” Vader said, “you will hunt down and execute the Rebel leaders. “

Still winded and aching from head to foot, Juno rose unsteadily to her feet, feeling for the lightsabers activation switch and hardly daring to take her eyes off Vader’s back as she did so. They were less than two paces apart.

“If you fail, she dies. “

She pressed the activation switch at the same instant she lunged. The bright blue blade sprang to life with a startling hiss, but she didn’t let herself be distracted. She had used vibroblades in her training days; she knew how to wield a sword. It was even simpler than the point-and-shoot quip about blasters.

She stabbed at Vader’s back, raking the one chance she had left to reclaim her life with Starkiller.

For an instant, she thought it might actually work. Vader’s attention was firmly on Starkiller, and the sounds of battle provided effective cover. What was one more energy weapon over the hundreds in play in the facility?

At the last instant, however, some arcane instinct must have warned him. He turned with inhuman speed. She could barely credit her eyes-black holes didn’t spin so fast. The tip of Starkiller’s lightsaber grazed the front of his chest panel, producing a shower of sparks. She felt no resistance.

Then he pushed her in exactly the same way Starkiller had pushed the stormtroopers. She felt as though the world moved out from under her, sucking all the air away with it. The lightsaber fell from her hand, and suddenly she was flying. Her head snapped forward, and the rain boiled around her. The air itself seemed to hurt, she was moving so fast. Vader receded into the distance with uncanny speed.

How far he pushed her, she couldn’t tell. It seemed to last forever, but she knew she had to hit the ground sometime. She hoped it wouldn’t be soon. Landing was going to hurt.

Something slammed into her from behind.

It did hurt.

The last thing she felt was rain falling into her open eyes. The last thing she saw were three lightsaber blades painting red and blue shapes against the encroaching black.

Starkiller ran past Darth Vader to where Juno lay broken on the edge of the cloning spire’s roof. Horror and self-reproach filled his mind. He hadn’t seen her crawling for the lightsaber; he hadn’t sensed her desperate plan until the very last moment-and it was his alarm that had alerted Vader, he was sure of it. He and his former Master had reacted at the same rime. If Starkiller had moved an instant faster, had a fraction more of a second to think the problem through, he would have pushed Vader just as Vader had pushed Juno, impaling him on the blade before it was whisked away. Instead, he had thought only of saving Juno-a plan, he feared, that might always have been doomed to failure.

He stopped her before she flew off the edge of the roof, at least, but the grisly crunch of bones when she landed was unmistakable. Her head was bent at an impossible angle, and her eyes didn’t track him as he ran toward her.

“Juno!”

A black-gloved hand grabbed his shoulder. He pulled away, howling with rage. His fallen lightsabers snapped into his hands and came instantly to life. With both blades moving in tandem, he struck out at his former Master using all his strength, all his rage, all his grief. Darth Vader blocked the blow, but only just. Starkiller pushed, and the Dark Lord stumbled backward.

Instead of pursuing the attack, Starkiller went to go to Juno, but once again Darth Vader stood in his path.

“Get out of my way. “

“Your feelings for her are not real, ” Vader said, nor moving.

“They are real to me. “

Starkiller attacked the Dark Lord again, but this time he was the one driven back.

With a sense of piercing despair, he saw exactly how the fight would go. He and his former Master would dance like marionettes while Juno lay dying-if she wasn’t already dead-and the war raged around them, unchecked by this minor tragedy. In the context of the galaxy’s suffering, Juno was just one freedom fighter who had died that day-one among many on Kamino alone. Only she hadn’t given her life in combat or to save someone less fortunate than herself. She had been snuffed out thanks to the manipulations of one single tortured man, a man whose stubbornness would never allow him to give up, admit fault, or compromise.

Starkiller knew nothing about the Dark Lord’s origins, but he knew what he had become. More monolith than man, his shadow bestrode the Empire, casting darkness wherever it fell. But what was the source of that scourge? What twisted psychology had brought him to where he stood now-risking his life to prevent the clone of his failed apprentice from coming near the body of the woman he had loved?

Sudden understanding burst in Starkiller’s mind. This was what Darth Vader had wanted all along. He had been right to fear that Juno was in danger, but not just from clones like him-from Vader, who would use her death to destabilize Starkiller and lead him headlong back to the dark side via anger and despair. Where Starkiller had seen hope, where Starkiller had been willing to sacrifice his own destiny to give the woman he had loved a chance to live, his former Master had seen only opportunity for betrayal-for without Juno, what did Starkiller have left to live and fight for? He had no family, friends, or allies. Juno was always intended to be the catalyst for his downfall. Her precipitous attack had merely brought the critical moment forward.

Starkiller saw things very differently. It wasn’t Juno who had to die to complete Starkiller’s training. It was Darth Vader himself, and he had brought this moment upon himself. Had he been content to let Starkiller go, none of this would have happened. Were he dead or freely searching for Juno, either way, he would never have willingly come back to Kamino. He would have gone anywhere else, and never returned.

Darth Vader simply wouldn’t let go. The massive cloning exercise itself was proof of that. He had raised Starkiller to be a monster, and he would let nothing get in the way of achieving that outcome. Not even Starkiller’s own death. Even if it took a thousand reincarnations and the death of trillions of innocent people, Darth Vader would not give up. His persistence, his unwillingness to accept defeat, was both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness.

All the clones were destroyed. As far as Starkiller knew, he was the last one left-so that was one vision averted, at least. No matter what happened, no version of him would hill foul of Darth Vader’s vile plan now.

They fought like the Sith Lords of old, raging back and forth across the roof of the spire, uncaring what happened around them. Starkiller maintained his efforts to get to Juno, and Darth Vader did everything in his power to stop him. Neither would capitulate. Neither would be the first to break. Their wills were locked.

They broke apart, lightsabers hissing in the ceaseless rain. Lightning split the sky into a thousand jagged shapes. Thunder rolled. Neither had noticed the battle fading around them.

“Let me go, ” Starkiller said, sounding much calmer than he felt. His heart was pounding, and his lungs burned. “You’ve taken everything from me. You must see that I will never serve you now. “

“You are wrong. I have given you everything. “

“This?” He gestured at Juno’s inert form. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing, but he still held out a distant hope. “You have done nothing for me. “

“It is our destiny to destroy the Emperor. You and me, together. “

There it was, Starkiller thought. That promise again. Surely Darth Vader could see that it meant nothing now, after so many times offered in the past, and none of them fulfilled?

Unless… A deeper layer of understanding presented itself. Unless Darth Vader felt exactly the same as he did.

What lengths had the Emperor, Darth Vader’s Master, gone to in order to create him? And how far would Darth Vader go to get revenge? To attain his own destiny as a Sith?