The Force Unleashed (25 page)

usurping of the Senate and the Jedi Purge; he would surely be adept at detecting and

rooting out spies. Once Organa was on his side, the apprentice would well and truly

be behind enemy lines, liable to be uncovered as both a traitor to the rebel cause

and to the Empire if he was uncovered by either faction. His skills were not

inconsiderable now, and growing stronger with every mission, but this would test his

every ability to the limit.

Somehow, though, Juno worried him much more. His Master had trained him extensively

in the arts of violence and deception. Women were a topic on which he knew nothing

at all.

With one last look at her, working diligently to ensure the well-being of her

mechanical charge, he reactivated his comlink and Sped off into the fetid jungle.

* * *

IT TOOK HIM NO TIME at all to attune his senses to the vast and tangled life-fields

of the fecund, overrun world. The balance had indeed shifted profoundly toward the

dark side since his last visit. He found the world's new ambience familiar but not

comfortable, and felt that he was recognized but not welcome. The latter surprised

him and occupied his mind even as he defended himself against every able-bodied

predator the world had to send against him.

So it seemed, anyway. Without Shaak Ti keeping their innate Force sensitivity in

check, the native Felucian species fought him every step of the way. The jungle was

cloaked with deep shadows and stank of rot. Bulbous plants exploded as he

approached, spraying him with acidic mist. Gnarled, muscular vines tangled in his

ankles or around his throat while poisonous leeches affixed themselves to his boots

every time he stepped in a puddle. Pools of quicksand sucked at him with more than a

passing semblance of life. Large, flying rays with scissoring, jagged jaws swooped

through the canopy, snapping at his head, and horribly animate fungal growths

smacked thick, meaty lips at him as he passed.

Once, when he took shelter from a flying ripper under a tree, the tree itself tried

to kill him. With a loud crack, it separated from its root system and toppled down

over him; it would have crushed him to the ground had he not jumped aside in time.

Startled and bemused, he had stared as an entirely new root system squirmed through

holes in the bark, obviously intending to feed on the creature it thought it had

imprisoned under its weight. Myriad scavengers, from the invisibly small to the

thunderously large, converged on the sound, hoping to take advantage of the tree's

in tended meal.

The apprentice put as much distance as possible between himself and what was bound

to become a vicious and highly competitive scene.

He had yet to encounter any of the intelligent natives, but he assumed they would be

no less hostile than every other life-form on the planet. Although he, too, was a

warrior of the dark side, they owed him no allegiance. The very notion of allegiance

was foreign to the dark side. The great happy family the Jedi had be lieved in was a

lie, or at the very least a fallacy. Nature was a bloody business; harmony was not

the dominant state. Truces could form, but they were always temporary. The Sith

understood that. His Master understood that. The relationship between Master and

apprentice was always a tense one-and from that tension sprang great power.

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Shaak Ti had understood that, too. The Sith always betray one another, she had said,

just as every life-form betrayed every other life-form, if left to their natural

inclination. Peace and harmony were aberrations imposed from the outside, to be

resisted at every juncture.

A recon party of stormtroopers stumbled across him while converging on the Rogue

Shadow's landing site. One of them must have noted its descent by eye, since the

cloak blocked all other electromagnetic sensors. He warned Juno and suggested she

move the ship to another location. She acknowledged his suggestion, and he went back

to eliminating the Imperials he had found. They clashed on the side of a lake of

quicksand, into which the apprentice telekinetically pushed several of his

assailants. They went down fast thanks to their heavy armor. Their cries for help

sounded loud over their companions' comlinks until their air supply finally ran out.

The clamor of blasters and lightsaber drew the attention of more scavengers and even

prompted a rancor to roar a short distance away.

He cocked his head, listening. Ignoring the last of the stormtroopers, who backed

into the jungle frantically calling for reinforcements, the apprentice paid close

attention to a feeling in his gut-that something was brewing. A trap, possibly. The

Felucians rode rancors. If the mighty beasts had noted the disturbance, the chances

were that their masters had, too.

He didn't move. The jungle around him stirred restlessly, recovering from his

skirmish with the stormtroopers. Birds flew back to their roosts; fluttering insects

reassembled their swarms; tiny lizards resumed their foraging. Animals called in the

distance, hooting and screeching to one another in search of food and mates. The

lush landscape seemed, on the surface, to be unchanged.

But he knew . . .

The feeling was confirmed when three enormous Felucian warriors leapt bodily out of

the quicksand with loud, alien cries.

He was ready for them, but the dark side had made them stronger. Their rancor-bone

blades sent sparks of red light dancing over their ornate headdresses. From their

invisible features came the sound of snarling bloodlust. Their desire for victory

was palpable. He blocked their blows with difficulty before knocking the legs out

from one of them then spearing another through the chest.

Two against one was a fairer fight. Soon a rotting branch he brought down made it

even. Sith lightning finished off the last, although he had to strain until the

creature's headdress caught fire before it finally died. The smoke was foul.

Another rancor roared, closer this time. Fearing a second ambush, the apprentice

hurried off through the dense jungle, slashing and hacking at anything that came

within range.

When he reached the village, he found it deserted and rundown. Its houses slumped

over like melted wax; the river was choked with frothing poisons. The sarlacc into

which Shaak Ti had fallen was dead, and the bile leaking from its vast body sickened

the land for hundreds of meters around. The apprentice stood over its putrid maw,

trying not to breathe, and wondered where to go next.

The dark side was stronger near the sarlacc than it had been anywhere else in his

short journey. Reaching out to the Force he pursued that impression in search of its

origins. The sarlacc couldn't be the source of this odd focus, since it was long

dead. He himself couldn't have left such an indelible impression, even after killing

a member of the Jedi Council. Something else had caused this darkening of the

life-flows. Something or someone . . .

The deepening of the dark side drew him north, along a narrow track that led away

from the village. He followed it, wondering what might lie at the end. He crossed

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blades with several Felucian raiding parties, all of them mounted atop foaming,

barely controllable rancors. Their behavior suggested to him that he was heading in

the right direction. When they ran from him, they a I ways tried to draw him off the

path. When he returned to the path, another raiding party appeared. Soon he was

fighting a dozen rancors and at least as many of the Felucian warriors. The more

determined they became to stop him, the more determined his insistence that he

continue unchecked. When another squadron of Imperials descended into the maelstrom,

the conflict threatened to become a stretch for him, just for a moment.

The sound of a rancor screaming its death throes was one he had carried with him

after his last trip to Felucia, occasionally disturbing his dreams. He had never

thought it a sound to which he could so quickly become accustomed . . .

He pressed on, following the strange Force-signature from hot spot to hot spot. The

wounded jungle and its slain inhabitants fell behind him. One furious encounter

seemed to signal the crossing of an invisible boundary, for no more attacks came

after that point. The Felucians had either given up or been told to stand back. That

was good advice, he thought. It seemed a waste to be fighting one another when no

number of Felucians were going to best him-not unless they'd come up with better

weapons than swords made of sharpened bones and the occasional telekinetic punch.

I A strange shape loomed at him out of the thick, humid air. Lightsaber at the

ready, he circled it, taking its measure before coming too close. It was the

skeleton of a long-dead rancor, its yellow bones painted green with moss and fungus.

Mighty ribs rose up like the bars of a cage from a spine mostly invisible under

ground cover. Leg bones and claws lay in a reckless jumble. The skull-almost large

enough for a small house-had tipped onto its side with its mouth open. Arm-long

teeth still looked sharp enough to rip flesh.

The apprentice walked respectfully past the skeleton, aware of a hush descending

over the jungle. Another skeleton lay a dozen paces on, then two more beyond that.

The presence of blackened, ancient bones poking out of the ground in places

confirmed his growing suspicion that he had entered a rancor graveyard.

Watched by enormous, empty eye sockets, he wound his way toward the center, where

the darkness seemed most dense. A low rumbling sound broke the eerie silence, as

though a very large animal was growling. When an enclosure made entirely of bones

loomed out of the undergrowth, he stopped for a moment and stared.

He had seen this before, too, in the strange state between life and death. He had

seen a man bound by cuffs sitting in front of a lamp in a building made of bones-and

that man had been Bail Organa. He had recognized the Senator's file photos but

hadn't been able to place the connection. Now he knew.

Leia's father was inside the enclosure. And nearby was a focus of the dark side.

That the two were intimately connected he was now completely certain.

With every fiber of his being alert for danger, he circled the enclosure, looking

for a way in. Bones of dozens of species, from the very large to the very small,

overlapped everywhere he looked. Human skulls were in the minority; most were

Felucian or the species they hunted. Giant rancor thighbones provided columns while

long, curving ribs created archways and support for the ceiling. Tiny finger and

wing bones crunched underfoot.

The interior of the structure was a maze of passages and tiny, irregularly shaped

rooms. After wandering at random for a lull minute, he caught a glimmer of yellow

light around a corner and followed it to Bail Organa's impromptu cell.

The man looked exactly as he had in the vision. Even the sun II matched. On the

ground lay a haunch of raw, rotting meat that the apprentice hoped hadn't been

intended as food. The prisoner looked up in surprise.

"I've come to rescue you, Senator Organa," the apprentice said, deactivating his

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lightsaber and kneeling to work on the cull'. Organa was filthy but didn't appear to

have been hurt. "Master Kota sent me."

"Hah. I knew he couldn't stay out of the fight for long." I hi cuffs sprang open,

and he leaned back, rubbing his wrists. "I thought he'd be angry with me for

ignoring his advice."

The apprentice couldn't hide a smile. "Oh, don't worry. Kota's angry. But I think he

wants to be able to yell at you in person."

He reached for his comlink, but the roar of a rancor cut him off, deeper and with

more animal fury than any he had heard be fore. It was so loud, a shower of tiny

bird bones tinkled down on them from the macabre roof above.

Bail looked up and swallowed nervously. "That's her pet." "Whose pet?"

"Maris Brood. Shaak Ti's Padawan, or so she claims to have been. She's been keeping

me to trade with the Imperials, to buy leniency from Vader. She's gone mad if she

thinks that'd make a difference."

The apprentice rolled his eyes. "This whole planet's gone insane."

The roar came again. This time the ground shook. Something big was approaching, and

it sounded hungry.

"Oh, we're not crazy," said a voice from behind him. The apprentice whipped around

with his lightsaber activated. A skinny female Zabrak stepped through the entrance

to the bone cell, spinning a pair of short weapons in each hand. They looked

harmless until, with a flare of bright red light, each handle ignited, producing two

miniature lightsaber blades. The spinning blades cast wild shadows across the

bonescapes surrounding them. She swept them about her as casually as if they were

wooden sticks.

When she was certain she had his full attention, she added, "We've just embraced the

power of the dark side."

The apprentice was staring at her, but not because of her words. Her face was as