The Force Unleashed (10 page)

his right and sent a jagged line of Sith lightning crackling across the distance

between them. The warrior dropped dead to the ground but two more leapt out of the

bushes behind him, waving their bone swords and howling in their strange, guttural

language. He recognized the largest as one he had injured previously, but he moved

now with perfect grace and aggression; the shaman he had spared several minutes

earlier must have doubled back and healed the warrior's injuries. He vowed not to

make the same mistake again.

The bone swords were resistant to his lightsaber, but his skill with the Force far

exceeded theirs. Dodging their clumsy telekinesis and unwieldy blows, he dispatched

them calmly and without fuss, saving his energy for the real enemy waiting for him.

Shaak Ti: Togruta Jedi Master and practitioner of both Makashi and Ataru lightsaber

techniques. She was old and strong, and must have been wily indeed to have survived

so long. Order 66 may have been issued many years ago, but it was still firmly in

place all across the Empire. The apprentice swore to bring that fact home to her

just as soon as he could.

Getting to her, however, was proving to be something of a problem. Although he had

sensed her clearly from orbit as a deformation in the Force, much like a body of

mass deformed the fabric of space-time, he hadn't anticipated the dense flows he

would encounter on the surface. The entire jungle was alive with tin Force, from the

tiniest spore to the mightiest rancor, and the Felucians themselves were alive with

it, too-so alive, in fact, that they tapped into the Force as naturally as humans

breathed an oxygen-rich atmosphere. That made them dangerous to him, the Sith

apprentice who had come to crush the regime Shaak Ti had nurtured on Felucia.

She had taken a world enjoying the normal flows between the light and the dark sides

of the Force and twisted it out of balance. There was still darkness on Felucia, but

it was stifled, frustrated, weakened. He strained to awaken it, to remind it of its

proper place in the universe. The light side had held sway for far too long. It was

time to redress the issue. Killing Shaak Ti would do that quite nicely.

A rancor bearing a Felucian rider thundered through the forest, crushing delicate

life-forms beneath its clawed feet and sniffing for his scent. The apprentice jumped

from mushroom cap to mushroom cap until he was in a position above the rider's head,

then he leapt down with lightsaber swinging. The rider's organic headdress covered

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everything from the neck up, as with all the warriors. He had some Force resistance,

but he couldn't withstand Darth Vader's apprentice for long. Once the rider was

dispatched, he brought down the rancor with a stream of Sith lightning that made its

eyes shine like the headlights of a city speeder. It died with a roar that echoed

through the jungle.

He hopped off its back as it dropped to the forest floor, having seen a landmark in

the direction he was heading. Straddling a narrow, weed-choked river was a series of

bulbous structures that looked remarkably like buildings, albeit buildings hollowed

from the boles of giant fungi. Felucians ran through these narrow streets preparing

defenses and mustering their rancor mounts. If they were getting ready for a fight,

he wouldn't disappoint them.

The river wound through the forest to his right. He circled the rancor corpse to

find it. Along the way he sidestepped another of the pungent acid pools he had noted

already. They puzzled him, obscurely, since they didn't seem to be caused by

pollution, as were their counterparts on Raxus Prime. He had learned to steer well

clear of the occasional bubbles that surfaced through them, pop-ping with an

unhealthy splat and releasing an odor he hoped to forget very soon.

At the river's edge he used the Force to attract one of the many Hat-backed river

beasts he had seen the Felucians ride. Its mind was semisentient at best, but its

mighty flukes could manage a fair I urn of speed. Gripping its carapace with one

hand, he rode its undulating body toward the town, occasionally pausing to fling

lightning at Felucian guards who bothered him.

"That'll do," he told his half-submerged steed as they approached the town's

borders. The beast nuzzled into the bank and he leapt aground near a massive,

conical standing stone that loomed half a head taller than him among the gelatinous

trees. He put a hand against it for balance and was surprised by two things: that it

was warm and that it wasn't made of stone at all.

Puzzled, he swung his lightsaber in a sweeping arc, cutting the odd monument in two.

The top fell away with a crash, revealing an interior made of fibers and organic

material. Bone, he thought. A tooth.

The ground beneath him shook, and he braced himself against the monument. From the

town he heard the sound of Felucians crying out in alarm.

A curious thought began to take shape in his mind.

Ignoring it for the moment, he advanced on the town with lightsaber swinging. He

hacked through the jungle, felling every plant within his range. Felucians tried to

stop him, but he hurled giant trunks at them, driving them back. See what I can do,

he tried to demonstrate. I'll do it to your homes if you don't leave me alone.

The message sank in. There was no reception waiting for him as he neared the town's

borders, which consisted of an irregular oval a kilometer or two across, surmounted

by several of the strange giant teeth. A moat of acid and dead vegetation wound

through the crowding mushroom trunks, obviously a defensive barrier more against

pests than against serious invaders such as the apprentice. He hopped over the acid

and slashed at another tooth as he landed.

Again the ground shook. A visible wave rippled along the village's border, as though

something was moving under the soil. Several long, snaking tubes that he had assumed

were roots shifted restlessly back and forth.

The few Felucians visible on the streets fled into the jungle.

"Did you tell them to leave, Shaak Ti?" he called. He could sense the Jedi Master

nearby, burning brightly in the Force but hidden like a lantern behind a shutter.

His voice echoed down the empty street, unanswered except by the braying of a

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domesticated beast, tied by rope to the base of a slender, towering fungus. The

apprentice hopped off the border wall and walked into town, keeping his lightsaber

carefully at the ready. Circular doors and windows hung open, inviting him inside.

Bioluminescent growths cast a pale blue glow over the interior of the buildings, but

he wasn't tempted to investigate further. There could have been mountains of credits

or exotic spices in there, but he hadn't come for anything like that.

"Shaak Ti!" he called, turning his head to look from side to side. He passed more of

the giant teeth as he approached the center of the town. They were smaller and

cleaner than the previous ones, less infested with mildew and mushrooms, and

functioned as fences defining gardens or lanes. It struck him, though, that the

houses had been built to accommodate the fences, rather than the other way

around-which would make sense if the teeth belonged to some vast and sprawling

creature that lay directly underfoot. Why else would so many of the teeth be

pointing inward, leaning almost horizontally in a way that would trip or even injure

an unwary passerby?

The confirmation of that guess came when he turned the last corner and found himself

facing the center of the town.

There, perched on the concentric gums of a vast sarlacc pit, touched by neither the

massive feeding tentacles nor the flexing of the slender teeth, sat Shaak Ti. Her

legs were crossed and her eyes closed. Deep in meditation, she didn't look up as he

approached, and seemed not to be aware of him at all.

He didn't believe that for a second. With a flick of one wrist, he ripped a mushroom

out of the sarlacc's skin and threw it at her head.

She flicked it away with the Force, barely moving an eyebrow.

"You reek of that coward Vader," she said, unfurling her legs and standing in one

smooth movement. Her horn-like montrals framed her red-skinned face like an

elaborate headdress. The white oval patches around her eyes gave her a slightly

startled look, but the apprentice was under no illusion that he had surprised her.

She was dressed in the fashion of the Felucians, in a garment made of vegetable

material-some still living, judging by the mossy sheen on her belt-and bone. Her

striped lekku hung well out of the way down her back, adorned by ribbons and

decorative tassels.

He raised the tip of his lightsaber in challenge, but still she didn't reach for

hers.

"My Master is not a coward," he said.

"Then why are you here in his place?" she asked with a knowing smile. "Welcome to

the Ancient Abyss, a place of sacrifice since time immemorial."

He smiled, letting anger fuel his hatred for her and for all that the Jedi

represented. With the dark side behind him, he reached out for the mind of the

sarlacc and goaded it to lash out at her.

All the creature did was roar. It resisted him, he realized, with her help.

She smiled in mockery. "Are you prepared to meet your fate?" Then her lightsaber was

lit and she was spinning through the air toward him, striking downward as she fell.

The apprentice simultaneously backflipped and blocked her opening blow. The force of

it surprised him, and the recoil threw him backward. His hood caught on one of the

sarlacc's teeth, and he tore it impatiently away before the snag could interfere

with his defense. Shaak Ti's lightsaber was a jagged blue blur between them. He

blocked her as best he could until he had his balance again.

Then he jumped. Over her he spun and fell down two layers of teeth toward the mouth

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of the sarlacc. From there he jumped up again, angling away from her to avoid giving

the Jedi the advantage of height, but she was there ahead of him, driving him back

down with a series of blows so rapid he barely caught them all.

In desperation, he summoned a bolt of Sith lightning and sent it down, into the

flesh of the sarlacc. The beast roared and shook, giving him the opening he needed.

Shaak Ti's right foot slipped, forcing her to flip elegantly out of reach of his

blade. He leapt after her, swinging as he came.

The fight progressed around the sarlacc's center rings, blow and counterblow

accompanied by the roaring of the beast. The apprentice cut off teeth and threw the

fragments at his adversary's head. In return she took tighter control of the beast's

distributed intelligence and sent its food-seeking tentacles flailing for him. He

repulsed them and fought on.

Down they drove each other, closer and closer to the very lip of the creature's

enormous mouth. The air was foul down there, heavy with digestive by-products and

the stink of rotting meat. Ghastly exhalations rolled over them as the sarlacc

roared on. The apprentice was running out of teeth to sever, so he resorted more and

more frequently to Sith lightning and random slashes of his lightsaber to keep it

twitching underfoot. Thick ichor leaking out of the wounds made the footing even

more treacherous.

"You can't keep this up forever," he taunted Shaak Ti as they dueled.

"Neither can you," she said. "You are wasting your strength too quickly."

"The dark side is inexhaustible."

"Your strength is prodigious," she admitted, "but that is your doing. Light,

dark..." She paused to aim a blow at his head that he barely deflected. "They are

just directions. Do not be fooled that you stand on anything other than your own two

feet."

He slashed at her own feet as they spun by overhead and sent one of her ribbons

twirling down into the sarlacc's gaping mouth. "Spare me the philosophy lesson,

Jedi," he snarled. "I'm only here for your blood."

"And you may yet have it, or I yours."

On her last three words, she struck three blows that each partially found their

mark. The first burned a sizzling line down the apprentice's left shoulder. The

second scored diagonally across his chest. The third would have skewered his right

eye had he not held her back at the last minute with a desperate telekinetic block

that stopped her lightsaber barely a millimeter from his skin. He could feel his

eyelashes and eyebrows burning. The right side of his sight was entirely blue.

She gasped and staggered backward. Her lightsaber and her gaze dropped. A full half

meter of red blade emerged from her stomach, then the rest came free with a hiss.

He backed away, shocked by how close he had come to death and how lucky he had been

to defeat her. He had raised his lightsaber by reflex. She had, in the desperation

of her final assault, practically thrown herself on the blade. Perhaps she had meant

for the two of them to defeat each other at the same time.

Her weakening fingers let go of her lightsaber, which deactivated with a click as it