The Force Unleashed (9 page)

dysfunctional droid hadn't been high on her wish list. Neither had been bombing

defenseless planets or being spurned by her father . . .

Funny how life turned out.

The blue-green world of Felucia hung against a vast and empty backdrop as they

emerged from hyperspace. It filled the forward view as she activated the sublight

drive and trimmed their approach vector. When everything was in order, she killed

the engines and let the ship coast silently through the planet's steep gravity well.

This wasn't the commswamped environment of Raxus Prime and Nar Shaddaa. If they came

in too hot, they would shine like a comet to anyone looking.

"Felucia in range," she announced. PROXY occupied the copilot's chair, monitoring

life support and comms. Starkiller Rood behind them with arms crossed over his chest

and face shrouded beneath a hood he had put on after leaving Raxus Prime. He had

barely said a word through the long trip, speaking only to give orders and avoiding

all her attempts to provoke conversation.

She felt slightly stung by this-she had thought she was breaking through his

strong-but-silent image and getting a glimpse of the man beneath-but she maintained

a professional demeanor. That was all her job demanded. "Readings?" he asked.

"No major settlements," she said, glancing at PROXY's board, "but life signs are

overwhelming the scanners. The planet is completely overgrown. I have no idea where

we should set down."

"I'll tell you."

The small hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She craned her neck to watch what

he was doing and saw only that he had closed his eyes. But something was definitely

happening. The air seemed to thicken around him, as though a whirlpool were

gathering. The hollows in his cheeks grew deeper, emphasizing his lashes and the

sensuality of his mouth. Her heart rate quickened slightly.

She took a deep breath and turned back to her controls. This was none of her

business. Ships and machines were her province, not the strange skills of Darth

Vader and his ilk. For all her innate curiosity, it was dangerous to know too much

sometimes. She had to remain detached and disinterested.

Just do your job, Juno Eclipse.

Starkiller stirred and leaned forward to point at a map display on the console near

her.

"There, on the equator." "What is there, exactly?"

He exhaled. She felt the warmth of his breath on her cheek. "Leave that to me.

Engage the cloak and take us down."

She nodded, hoping he wouldn't notice the slow flush spreading up her neck, and

eased forward on the throttle.

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* * *

The Rogue Shadow rocketed down into the planet's upper atmosphere, fighting

turbulence caused by surges of thick, humid air. Coruscant it might not have been,

but Juno began to feel a twinge of curiosity. Before her mother's death, Juno had

been interested in xenobiology-something frowned upon by her father, but which she

had found endlessly fascinating. There was so much life in the galaxy, assuming so

many different forms. She could have spent a thousand lifetimes trying to catalog it

all, only to find that it had evolved into countless new forms during the process,

forcing her to start all over again.

The thought hadn't appalled her. If anything it had filled her with wonder-the same

sense of wonder she now felt stirring at the sight of Felucia's vast fungal forests

and verdant lakes. Again she was struck by the contrasts among Nar Shaddaa, Raxus

Prime, and this world. Felucia was brimming over with life in all forms, from the

tiniest grass blade to the most massive fungi she had ever seen, with roots snaking

over the ground, vines and mildew curling up swaying trunks, and insects everywhere.

The air in the Upper atmosphere exhibited pollen and spore counts that were off the

scale. Her eyes felt assaulted by color everywhere she looked.

Magnificent, she wanted to say, but she kept the observation to herself.

Giant fungus stalks tossed violently in the starship's wake as the Rogue Shadow wove

between them. She avoided using her thrusters as much as possible, wanting to

minimize damage to the equatorial forest. But where was she to land? The ground was

invisible beneath them. She could sense Starkiller's impatience as she searched for

a suitable space. The only flat surfaces she could see belonged to the tops of

enormous mushrooms, dozens of meters across. They looked as sturdy as rock.

Why not? she asked herself, swinging the Rogue Shadow sharply about and descending

toward the nearest mushroom cap.

Gingerly, using every ounce of her skill, she eased the starship down. The ship

settled, then shuddered as the giant fungus gave without warning. The starship slid

and skewed wildly to one side. Stalks and fronds swayed as though in a storm. She

raised the power to the thrusters, and moved to a different position.

This time the mushroom held. The starship's landing legs extended and tightly

gripped the spongy surface where it teetered precariously on the edge of the

enormous cap. She throttled back, waited a full five seconds for any more surprises,

and then killed the sublight drive. She sagged back into the seat, drenched in

sweat.

"Whew," she breathed. "They don't teach you that in the Academy."

"Lower the ramp," Starkiller said shortly. "Wait for me here." "There's not much for

us to do..."

"Just wait."

"I..."

He was already gone. She looked for him on the scopes and glimpsed him jumping off

the edge of the mushroom and running into the forest, red lightsaber lit and ready.

She sighed and wiped her hands on her uniform pants. "Well, PROXY, it's just you and

me again."

"Yes, Captain Eclipse." The droid rarely seemed flapped by his master's behavior.

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"I'll begin a check of all systems, if you so wish."

"That would be fine." She stayed in her chair, still rubbing her palms against her

legs. "Is he always like this, PROXY?" "Like what. Captain Eclipse?"

"Moody and withdrawn. I almost caught him smiling a couple of times on Raxus Prime.

Now, nothing. What's going on inside his head?"

"I cannot speak with any confidence regarding his programming, Captain Eclipse,"

said the droid with a puzzled blink. "Perhaps Lord Vader could explain, since he was

the author of both our systems."

That was an odd phrase. "What do you mean? Vader programmed Starkiller?"

"My master has been in Lord Vader's care since he was a young child."

"Like a father." She frowned.

"My master refers to Lord Vader only as Master or Teacher," the droid corrected her.

"Never Father."

That reassured her, oddly. The thought of Vader nurturing a toddler was too strange

to be true. "Well, what happened to his real parents? Where did he come from?"

"I do not know, Captain Eclipse."

"Does he never talk about them?"

"They have been expunged from his primary memory, I believe ."

"What about friends?" She hesitated slightly, then asked, "Girlfriends?"

"My master leads a solitary life," the droid told her. "Lord Vader insists that it

is essential to his development."

"Development into what, exactly?" she asked, thinking Jedi killer, deranged mystic,

murderer. The way he had casually abandoned the falling TIE fighter facility over

Nar Shaddaa bothered her sometimes.

"We are all servants of my master's Master," the droid said, pointedly reminding

her, perhaps, of her primary duty, too.

"Your programming is absolutely spot-on there, PROXY." She levered her resistant

body out of the pilot's chair and straightened her uniform. "You continue with the

systems check from in here. I will perform a quick visual inspection of the hull."

"I advise caution," PROXY warned her. "Many of the life-l(u ins on Felucia are

hostile to humans."

"Have no concern on that score." She opened a hatch and removed her BlasTech pistol,

which she holstered around her waist with a well-practiced movement. "I can look

after myself."

"One of your predecessors used exactly those words before he was shot in the back by

a Corellian gunrunner."

She stopped on the verge of leaving the cockpit, unsure if PROXY was goading her,

joking, or offering an innocent observation. Part of her wanted to know all about

her seven predecessors, but a greater part wanted PROXY never to talk of them again.

"Just you watch your own back, PROXY," she told him. "Your master's Master has a

Master, too, you know."

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"Yes, Captain Eclipse."

She left the ship, face burning for the second time in a matter of minutes. What was

wrong with her? The slightest hint that sin had overheard the conversation between

Starkiller and Lord Vader regarding the Emperor and she'd be dead for sure. If

Vader's agent didn't do it, the droid would. He was an expert hand with a

lightsaber, after all.

Maybe that was what had happened to the other pilots . . .

She stepped off the ramp and stamped about on the surface of the giant mushroom,

testing its spongy surface. Her anger at herself rose with every second. Of course

she had wanted to reestablish control over the situation, but dropping dire hints

wasn't the way to do it, even if the droid had started it. She could only be

competent and professional, and she'd had plenty of practice doing that in the past.

Now was absolutely the wrong time to break the habit of a lifetime.

Eventually she calmed down and went about the duty she had set for herself:

examining the outer hull for any damage resulting from their rough descent. It

seemed unblemished, apart from a few new stains added by plants they had passed,

firing sticky bullets of sap designed to bring down flying insects. That observation

helped revive some of the excitement she had felt on the descent.

Life in abundance, she reminded herself. Think of that for a change.

And she did manage it, marveling at the huge diversity of plants, fungi, insects,

and animals in the jungle surrounding her. Many were rubbery and translucent. Liquid

oozed from gaping pores and vents. The most corpulent of the life-forms looked as

though they would burst if she so much as touched a finger to them. But all had

teeth or spines and other means of self-defense. Many were vigorous hunters or

parasites. She could hear the roaring of mighty predators and the crashing of large

bodies through the undergrowth, distantly and sometimes directly beneath her

strange, precarious landing site.

The more she observed, the more she thought of Callos. She had never set foot on

that world, but from orbit it had had the same verdant sheen as Felucia. Could it

have possessed forests as vibrant as these, as rich and splendid with life in all

its forms? As she patrolled the lip of the giant mushroom pad, she wondered how many

species had never been cataloged here, and now never would be on Callos. A familiar

guilt rose up in her like sickness, making her want to throw up, and she had to turn

back to the ship.

Since you feel so strongly on this matter, Vader had told her, I will give you an

alternative course of action.

The images of the planetary reactor blowing up were burned into her mind. The Black

Eight had pursued the mission objective with their usual surgical precision, coming

low over the horizon and launching their payloads well before the reactor's defenses

mild even come online. Each strike had been on target, sending up billowing clouds

of burning gases. If war could be called beautiful, then that had been a beautiful

moment indeed.

Your gratitude is wasted on me.

That was perfectly clear to her now.

But it didn't change a thing.

"The checklist is complete, Captain Eclipse," PROXY informed her via comlink from

the cockpit. "I have detected a slight misalignment of the aft deflector shields."

She grunted confirmation. The damage had almost certainly been sustained in the

magnetic lanes of Raxus Prime, while dodging, airborne lumps of explosive debris. "I

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will be right in, PROXY. Break out the tool kit. We're going to have that repaired

before Starkiller returns."

"Yes, Captain."

Juno took one last look around her, savoring the chance even plough it brought back

unpleasant associations. The forest was in fact fragile, despite its vibrant

lethality. It might look as though it could endure a thousand years, outlasting even

the Emperor himself, but a single nudge in the wrong direction could bring it all

tumbling down, clotting and rotting until nothing was left but a deep organic

sludge, fit only for refining into oil or protein cakes.

In the wrong hands, Felucia could be the vegetable equivalent of Raxus Prime in a

year.

Better to focus, then, on that which couldn't be killed: on ship like the Rogue

Shadow and their systems. The manifold problem* of life and death couldn't be fixed

with a spanner, and it was well beyond her purview to try.

THE APPRENTICE DUCKED ANOTHER BOLT of Force energy hurled by the Felucian warrior to