The Force Unleashed (4 page)

the level. He'd best hurry, he told himself, before the whole facility went up in

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flames.

No sooner was this thought complete than another shock wave rolled through the

structure, much stronger than the last. He barely kept his footing on the heaving

deck as TIE fighter and body parts tumbled around him. Juno was shouting something

at him, but it was a moment before he could hear her over the blaring of the

intercom.

"...the stabilizers or the repulsor engines-can't tell which-not good at all."

"What's that?" he said. "Repeat."

"Kota's accomplices have hit the facility where it hurts," she summarized. "Finish

up soon, or we're going down into the sky-lanes with it."

"Right." The deck was still moving underfoot as he made his way out of the assembly

area, blocking the path behind him with a pile of ejector seats and unmounted ion

engines. "Where did you say this control center was?"

Juno guided him through the quaking facility. Anyone unlucky enough to get in his

way was unceremoniously pushed aside by telekinesis. Doors buckled shut and weapons

mysteriously jammed. He didn't have time to play games anymore.

"Any available squadrons," blared the intercom, "defend the security stations at

once!" Then: "They're breaching the security stations!" And finally: "Command bridge

to all squadrons, we need your assista..."

The final broadcast ended with a rasp of blasterfire. Then relative peace fell.

Ambient gravity was noticeably lighter by the time he reached the doors that Juno

assured him led to the control center. That meant the entire facility was falling at

a faster rate than he cared to think about. Taking a moment to gather himself, to

wrap his will like a cloak around the fiery heart of his anger, he prepared himself

to face the Jedi whose presence he could feel through several centimeters of

durasteel.

Then he gestured with one finger, and the heavy blast doors slid open. Beyond lay a

room identical to hundreds in the galaxy: old and metallic, with red display screens

keeping staff updated on the facility's status. A long, elevated walkway led to a

command post where General Rahm Kota stood with his back to the door, in a gesture

deliberate in its commingled confidence and contempt. He hadn't even drawn his

lightsaber, which hung diagonally across his shoulder blades in a custom-made

sheath. A brown cloak hung from two metal shoulder pads that only added to the

physical presence of the man. He was a warrior with every breath and wore his battle

scars with pride.

The apprentice had been ready to attack, but now he felt a brief moment of

hesitation. This wasn't what he had expected. Jedi were soft from a life of

privilege, outdated, spent. He hadn't expected a soldier.

Kota's voice, when he spoke, was deep and commanding, as it had been during PROXY'S

impersonation of him. "So I've finally drawn you out of hiding." He turned at last.

"I ordered my men to lower the containment field on your approach and..." On seeing

the apprentice he stopped midsentence and looked visibly surprised.

"A boy?" With one blindingly fast movement, the lightsaber was in his hand and lit.

"After all these months of attacking Imperial targets, Vader sends a boy to fight

me?"

Grim and silent, the apprentice adopted a fighting crouch. So the trap had been

directed not at him but at his Master. If Kota was disappointed, the apprentice

swore that this would be the last emotion Kota ever felt.

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He raised his left hand and with the power of the dark side unleashed a bolt of Sith

lightning at the renegade Jedi.

Kota only laughed. Raising his left hand in a move that was a mirror image of the

apprentice's own, he sent the lightning arcing back to its source. The energy struck

both of them, hurling them apart.

The apprentice broke off the attempt, blinking smoke away from his eyes. His anger

intensified. He was the first to his feet and running as soon as his boots touched

the deck. He felt completely weightless, yet full of momentum, like a hurled spear.

His red blade cut a blur through the air, aimed hard at Kota's throat.

The Jedi general ducked and swept his green lightsaber up and down in a lazy attempt

to catch him as he went by. That was a move the apprentice had long ago learned to

avoid by tucking his head down closer to his center of gravity and rolling in

midair, then kicking himself back at his opponent off the nearest wall. This time he

pushed telekinetically as he came, attempting to knock Kota's feet out from under

him before bringing his blade to bear.

Again, however, Kota deflected his Force energies back at him. Again they were

pushed apart.

More cautiously the apprentice circled him, slicing chairs to pieces as he walked

and sending the glowing fragments at his enemy's head. Anger made him eager to

attack, but he knew better than to give in to it. He hadn't been humiliated. He had

successfully tested Kota's defenses. Now that he knew a direct attack would probably

fail, he had to find another way to get closer to the man. Or to make the Jedi come

to him.

Suddenly Kota was moving, charging with astonishing speed behind a furious diversity

of strokes. The apprentice retreated with lips pulled back over his teeth. This is

more like it! Green and red energies clashed as he blocked blow after blow and still

Kota kept coming, attempting to overwhelm him with sheer determination and speed.

The apprentice went back four steps, then stopped. He drew his blade close around

him, forming a tight defense in deliberate imitation of the Soresu style that

Obi-Wan Kenobi had favored. Realizing he couldn't penetrate it, Kota backed off and

tried a different style-slow, deliberate, with sudden and devastatingly quick

strikes. These, too, the apprentice parried, and when the old man's guard looked to

be slipping, he offered strikes of his own.

The duel raged all across the control center, which shook and rattled as the

facility around it broke apart. The apprentice ignored everything else-Juno's voice,

the wildly fluctuating gravity, the never-ending explosions, the rising temperature

of the floor beneath him-in order to concentrate solely on this one vital battle.

Kota wouldn't beat him, but could he beat Kota? He had to. He would rather go down

with the ship than break off and admit failure. Darth Vader's secret apprentice knew

which fate would await him if he did.

The general was wily and strong and possessed some moves the apprentice had never

seen before. But he was older and willfully ignorant of the dark side of the Force.

He attempted his charge attack two more times, obviously hoping to force a mistake

or wear out his opponent, but it was he who started to show the effects of the duel,

he who took hits. Soon his cloak was a smoking rag and one of his shoulder pads was

glowing red-hot.

The apprentice pressed harder, feeling victory and the attainment of his full power

approaching. Soon the Jedi's lightsaber-and head-would be his. Then he truly would

be worthy of his Master's praise!

He caught the general in a choke hold and maintained his grip even though it turned

partially back on him. He had been ready for this; his lungs were full. The general,

however, clutched at his throat with one hand while barely managing to parry with

the other. The apprentice let the fire in his lungs fuel his lust for triumph. Even

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as darkness crowded around the edges of his vision, he sent objects hurtling at

Kota's legs and face, battling him on all fronts.

Finally a fragment of smoking debris struck the general's knees from behind. With a

cry of frustration, the flailing Jedi went down, his face purple and eyes bulging.

The apprentice relented slightly, letting them both have a little air, but before

Kota could scramble to his feet he was on him, pressing down on their locked

light-sabers, which sizzled just millimeters from their faces.

Kota strained but couldn't force the red blade away. In his blue eyes the apprentice

saw not cleansing hatred, but regret. Even at the end, Kota clung to his weak Jedi

ways.

"Vader thinks"-the old man gasped-"he's turned you. But I can sense your future-and

Vader isn't part of it!"

The apprentice urged the lightsabers even closer to Kota's face.

Sweat beaded on the Jedi Master's forehead. "I sense-I sense only ..." A look of

shock and confusion passed over his face. "Me?"

The apprentice forced Kota's own lightsaber down into his eyes.

And suddenly-as though in a vision from out of time, exactly the sort of vision the

apprentice sought in the fire of his red blade-Kota's face became that of another

man, a man with dark hair and strong features, features not dissimilar to the

apprentice's own.

The general cried out in pain-and in that cry the apprentice thought he heard a man

shouting, "Run!"

He flinched away, blinking furiously, wondering if Kota in his desperate extremity

had concocted some new and insidious Jedi mind trick. But his head seemed clear of

intrusion, and the general seemed to be thinking of anything but attack. Blinded and

agonized, he scrabbled backward, his lightsaber slipping from his fingers and

dropping with a dead thud to the deck. A blast of telekinesis erupted from him,

shattering every viewport in the command center and sending the apprentice flying. A

raging wind swept past them, sucking out the smoke and shrapnel of their duel. Kota,

too, was sucked out and fell with a fading cry into the atmosphere below. Or had he

leapt?

The apprentice let the gale drag him closer to the hole where the viewport had once

been. Catching a bent stanchion with one Rind, he carefully leaned out and looked

down, lightsaber at the ready for any final deception.

Kota's body was already far below, spread-eagled and dwindling among the skylanes of

the Vertical City. A large transport intersected his path; thenceforth his body was

invisible. The apprentice imagined it being swatted like a bug on a transparisteel

windscreen and told himself to feel the satisfaction of a task completed.

It didn't come.

General Rahm Kota was blinded and gravely wounded. He couldn't possibly be a problem

any longer. But the apprentice couldn't assume he was dead until he had the old

man's body in front of him-and there was no chance of finding that body now.

He was profoundly disinclined to report failure to Darth Vader.

What to do?

"This place is going to tear itself apart at any moment!" came Juno's voice over the

comlink. "Are you almost done here?"

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"On my way." With a vehement look on his face and no triumph in his heart, he

retreated from the viewport and headed for the door, pausing only to scoop up the

fallen Jedi Master's lightsaber on the way.

Juno knew better than to expect a rapturous reception upon their return, but even so

she was disappointed. The secret hangar was empty when the Rogue Shadow docked. A

successful mission deserved some sort of acknowledgment, surely. Even after

Callos...

She pushed that thought away. The job was done. What more needed to be said? She had

done it well-in her eyes, at least, although Starkiller had barely acknowledged the

fact on returning to the ship-and they had lived to fight another day. Or to kill

more Jedi Knights, if that was what Lord Vader's scruffy, incommunicative agent was

really up to. She had seen the second lightsaber hilt hanging from his belt, and she

knew what that probably meant.

It had taken thousands of clone warriors to completely wipe out the Jedi. That was

the official version-ignoring the rumors she'd heard about Darth Vader's ongoing

hunt for the last survivors of that strange and deadly sect. From the stories her

father had told her as a child, she'd imagined them to be monsters four meters high

sucking the lifeblood out of the Republic. Now it turned out they still existed, and

young men went forth to do battle with them alone.

Could they really be so reduced, these villains that had once held the galaxy in

their thrall?

Or... could the young man who was now her traveling companion possibly be so

powerful?

The landing struts had barely touched metal when he was on his feet and heading for

the door.

She leaned back into her seat and ran her hands across her temples. Her skin felt

oily and covered in grit, as though she had been the one running around in the smoke

and the mess above Nar Shaddaa instead of watching it from the feeds she'd managed

to slice into from one of the facility's security cams. She wanted to check over the

ship and get into the refresher and scrub the dirt away.

She hadn't felt clean for weeks...

The voice of Starkiller almost made her jump out of her skin. She had thought him

long gone.

"Good work, Juno," he said. "I'll leave PROXY here to help you run through the

checklist."