The battle had already spiraled well past where Rahm Kota wanted it to be. The Imperials had delivered their transport to Shenandor Prime. Somehow they'd also disabled the shieldship, preventing Kota from delivering reinforce-ments. He had no choice now but to ride the spiral and try to wrestle it back under control, though his strained to figure out how.
The fight was all around him. He could feel it in the Force, a maelstrom full of eddies and currents, each one powerful as a lethal torrent. Through the Force he knew it better than eyes could ever show.
He felt Y-wings explode beneath hails of emerald TIE fighter laster blasts, their pilots and gunners extinguished in last moments of flame. TIE fighters got clipped by bolts from X-wings and he felt, too the dying panic of Imperial pilots whose ships spun out-of-control around them before smashing into debris or flak or stubborn shields. And he felt the thousands of crew on Solidarity and its Imperial opposite, all working frantically as their mammoth capital ships strained to receive as much fire as they were gushing out. If he concentrated hard enough, Kota could pick out the familiar mind of Commodore Viedas on Solidarity's bridge, trying his best to hold the battle and his crew together. Sometimes he could also feel the mind of the Imperial commander, a man not known to him but nonetheless unmistakable, because he fought with the ferocity of a cornered animal.
Most vividly, Kota experienced the destruction of the bulk cruiser Manumission.
He felt the moment when it's starboard shields collapsed as it tried to move away from the star destroyer's flank. He felt a volley of missiles tear apart its hull, washing away some lives in millisecond bursts of flame while others were pulled screaming through hull breaches into an airless vacuum. Those in other parts of the ships panicked; some deluded themselves into thinking they might be saved while others fell down the slope of despair as they realized this was the end. And those who reached the bottom were left asking themselves one question, unspoken, unheard by anyone except Rahm Kota: Was it worth it?
Then the cruiser's drive core was ripped open by Imperial turbolasers. The resulting explosion washed heat and radiation across the length of the cruiser; when the awful fire died the delusion and despair and life were all gone, leaving a void as cold as space.
In that moment Kota's heart quailed, and he struggled to remember why he'd ever loved war.
Control, he decided. He needed to take control of the situation.
With effort, Kota removed himself from the hideous Force-echoes of Manumission's demise. He concentrated on is immediate surroundings. His Bantha-class assault shuttle, a durable new Mon Cal design, sat within Solidarity's hangar, where it was shielded from the worst fighting. Inside its armored shell were over forty of Kota's commandos, each one of them a hand-picked veteran who'd accompanied him on many raids. All of them knew things were going wrong and all of them itched to take the fight to the enemy. Kota was in full agreement.
The tragic loss of Manumission had at least simplified the battle. It was giant versus giant now, Mon Cal cruiser against star destroyer. While the latter had a mild edge in arms and armor it had sacrificed half its fighter screen at the start of the battle and suffered heavy damage from attacks of either flank. Barring the arrival of Imperial reinforcements, this battle was anyone's for the taking.
Kota decided he'd had enough sitting around. He shoved his way to the front of the shuttle's cockpit and said, "Patch me a line to the bridge. I need to speak to the commodore."
"Yes, sir." Molakis, the co-pilot, sounded eager to get things moving.
Kota waited until Rodian's voice scratched online. "This is Viedas."
"Kota here. We're sick of waiting. Time to lend a hand."
"I take it you have an idea?"
"We can't get reach the Furnace but we can get aboard that Impstar."
He felt his crew tense; heard Viedas tense too. "That will be a hard fight."
"And we'll take it straight to the enemy. Most important, if we damage them from the inside you can break them down from the outside."
"If we destroy that Impstar I don't want to take you with it, General."
"Don't worry. We'll evac if we have to. I'll need you to clear away a patch of shields so we can set down and burn through the hull. The closer to the bridge the better."
"Stand by. I'll rustle a fighter squad for escort."
"Standing by," Kota confirmed, and Viedas killed the comm.
He felt that tension rise within his crew, along with excitement and even confidence. Anything was better than sitting in this box and waiting for doom to fall. Once they got into the fight, they'd take it in their own hands.
Excitement grew until Viedas sent them their orders. Their target: the exposed section of the destroyer's starboard flank, aft of the damaged flank turbolaser batteries. Their escort: the seven remaining X-wings of Blue Squadron.
After the X-wings formed up outside the hangar, Kota declared, "Let's get moving, gentlemen."
When the assault shuttle surged out of Solidarity's hangar bay, he reminded himself that no matter happened, the true crux of this battle was out of his hands. Right now, inside the warrens of Shenandor Prime, Starkiller was fighting for his life and liberty. Likely the Imperial assault force was huge and he was battling impossible odds, but that was what Starkiller did. If anyone would be able to pull victory from defeat's jaws it was him.
Kota had faith.
Sometimes Starkiller even awed him. The naïve apprentice he'd first battled over Nar Shaddaa had blossomed into a wellspring of wild Force power unlike any Jedi he'd ever known. He'd even returned from the black of death. There was a destiny at work in the man. Kota, no stranger to pride, had gradually come to accept that whatever his own fate was, it would be in service to the boy's greater glory.
"So… no pressure," he laughed to himself as the shuttle soared into space.
"General?" asked his pilot.
"Nothing. How's our escort holding up?"
"Fine so far," responded Molakis. "Close formation. The TIEs haven't noticed us yet but they will."
"Then we'd better be fast. Are shields still down on their flank?"
"Yes, though it'll take fancy flying to get past those turbolaser batteries."
"Think you can manage, Ekens?"
The pilot gripped his control yoke tight. "I've been waiting all day for this, General."
Yes, they were ready. They were eager. Kota felt his men, felt the alert minds of the X-wing pilots hovering close. And he felt the star destroyer looming dead ahead. For all the evil it did it wasn't dark in the Force, but it did exude a warning menace. That menace got sharper as soon as its gunners spotted the incoming shuttle and opened fire.
Anxiety rose around him and so did the heat of fat, burning plasma bolts. Molakis warned the X-wings to break formation and thanked them for their help. Ekens nudged their bulky assault shuttle into precise slips and dodges, always just enough to evade the powerful turbolasers. Those batteries were thankfully designed for capital ship combat, and the shuttle was able to escape their bolts and finally slip beneath their firing arc.
"Coming in for landing!" Ekens reported.
"Tell me those shields are still down," Kota said.
He didn't get a reply; Ekens was too deep in concentration. He got an answer, though, with a lurch that nearly threw him off his feet, and the audible scrape of the shuttle's magnetic landing claws clamping onto the destroyer's exterior hull.
"We're latched," Molakis reported. "Firing up the cutting torch now."
"Keep our dorsal shields up. I don't want any TIE pilot punching through the hull."
"Got it," Ekens confirmed. "We're good to deploy."
"Excellent." Kota turned from the front of the cockpit to the packed rear hold, and he raised his voice to a roar. "Get ready! We've knocked on their door, gents. Now we're going to kick it the hells down!"
-{}-
Even before the Rebel commando shuttle latched onto his star destroyer, Miltin Takel decided that things really could have been going better.
He'd lost shields over twenty-one percent of Magic Dragon's hull, lost sixty percent of his TIE fighters, lost thirty percent of his operable gun batteries. He'd delivered the packages, yes, and taken out two Rebel gunships and one bulk cruiser, but that Mon Cal behemoth was still pounding him hard. Those refitted pleasure cruisers, he decided, were not to be taken lightly.
As for the situation on Shenandor Prime, the grand admiral hadn't the damnedest clue.
When the Rebel shuttle landed, Takel's response was swift. "Get stormtrooper squads there immediately! Shut down all security doors. Prepare to vent sections to space if you have to."
As his crew relayed the order, his chief security officer reminded, "Sir, we sent most of our stormtroopers to the planet."
"How many are still onboard?"
Lieutenant Gorek said, "Two platoons, sir."
"Do we have data on how many that shuttle can carry?"
"Nothing in the computers. I checked."
"Get the rest of your security teams down there. Make sure they block off all access routes to key areas."
"Understood, sir, though since they've landed next to the gun batteries-"
"I know. Reinforce those too." Gorek frowned, and Takel snapped, "I don't care how short-handed you are, stop those Rebels! Get down there yourself and do it!"
The lieutenant hurried to comply. As Gorek scampered off the bridge Takel felt tiny remorse for losing his temper; he was still toeing the edge of a spice-high, which left his nerves jumpy. The state of this battle didn't help.
As the bridge shuddered with renewed volleys, he staggered to the comm console. "Do we have an ETA on our reinforcements?"
"Twenty-six minutes."
Not good enough, especially not with enemy commandos in his ship. Takel paced the bridge anxiously, wondering whether the Rebels would go for the gun batteries or the bridge first. He wondered which parts of Magic Dragon would start collapsing from the inside even before reinforcements came to finish off that Mon Cal cruiser.
Then the comm officer said: "Hail from Chief Gorek. He's engaged the enemy."
That was fast. Fast was not good. Takel took out his personal comlink and said, "Patch him in."
Within a moment, the lieutenant's fuzzy voice came in. "Admiral, we've engaged the enemy."
"I heard. Have you sealed them off?"
"Sir… The doors… I don't think they can hold them."
"What's wrong? Malfunction?"
"No. Sir, one of them has a lightsaber. I… I think he's a Jedi."
Yes, things really could have been going better.
"Hold best you can and kill that karking freak!" Takel snapped, then closed the link.
His mind swirled frantically. He needed something, anything to tip the fight in his direction. This time he didn't require spice to spark a solution. There was really only one option left.
"Comm," he snapped, "prepare a long-range transmission. We're calling for help."
"But the reinforcements-"
"Not those. There's a Jedi on my ship. We're infested. You know what that means, don't you?"
The ensign blinked stupidly.
"It means you call an exterminator."
-{}-
Starkiller and Vader had fought before, but never like this. At Kamino it had felt like a contest of wills; on the Death Star a savage fight to survive. And in the far-off years when Galen Marek and Darth Vader had sparred, their matches had been forceful but controlled; Vader might wound him with skimming touches of the lightsaber, but the intent had never been to kill.
Their battle in the Furnace was a strange mix of all three. Two powerful Force-users strained to dominate each other; each fueled himself with a wellspring of rage and fear. Yet Vader was not trying to kill. As he forced Starkiller out of the vault in which he'd been imprisoned, into the rocky tunnels of the base, he never strained himself enough to attempt a lethal blow. He defended, he attacked, but he never took a risk to end it.
In his own words, he was saving Starkiller for another.
Starkiller could feel his enemy approaching. It was a black and rising tide coming at his back, and he could feel Juno and the scraps of surviving Rebels carried with it. Without the distraction behind him he might have thrown himself fully into the battle in front, might have even bested Vader. Instead, he was pushed further and further down the hall, toward the shaft, toward his waiting and mysterious enemy.
Finally Starkiller and Vader broke out onto one of the three catwalks that converged above the broad, bored plunge through the planet's crust. As Vader forced him toward the intersection of the Y-bridge, Starkiller heard a great clamor behind him and knew his enemy was almost here.
He gave Vader a push in the Force that slammed the Sith Lord's back against the catwalk railing. With a mighty leap he rose into the air and delivered twin Force-powered kicks into the black helmet. Vader just barely managed to avoid tipping back over the rail; Starkiller used the distraction to leap toward the center of the bridge and face those coming down the trunk corridor.
Only a dozen or so frantic Rebels remained. Starkiller only noticed Juno. She spotted him; he ran toward her. Their bodies collided at the center of the Y-bridge and Starkiller stifled every urge to embrace her.
Juno slammed into his chest, bounced back. Her eyes were wide with panic. "It's coming," she rasped. "It's you."
For a split-second Starkiller was confused; then he saw the black-robed figure emerge from the main hallway. He saw the red lightsabers in its hands, saw it tilt its head back, saw it shuck off the robes and expose the black-armored body beneath, the bare and so-familiar face.
He understood that vision he'd received on Salvation, where he'd given into his anger and attempted to kill Darth Vader, only to be slain himself. He'd thought he'd outwitted this fate, first by destroying his other clones and then by showing Vader mercy.
There was no escape. Behind him Vader said, "It took years of trial and failure. Death after death. But I finally created the perfect apprentice. Supremely powerful in the Force, but not hindered by the chains of conscience or love."
Starkiller couldn't tear his eyes away from his other self. The clone stood with a lightsaber in either hand, face hard, eyes harder, waiting for their destined duel to begin.
"Juno, get back," Starkiller said.
He shoved her down the catwalk that led toward the droid factory. She staggered away but did not run to shelter, if shelter it was. She looked at him, eyes imploring him to run, but she didn't speak the words. She knew they'd do no good.
Starkiller stood at the center of three forking paths, suspended over a planet's abyss. On the branch ahead of him, the one leading to the hangars and escape, was his dark simulacrum. Behind him to the right: Vader. To the left: Juno.
The past he hated. The future he wanted. And dead ahead, the present he'd have to surmount to get there.
He felt a strange confidence settle over him. In his battles against Vader and the Emperor he'd truly been struggling against a darker version of himself, the one they'd made, all the while trying to create a better self that Juno and his father would be proud of. Above the abyss of Shenandor Prime the metaphor had turned real, but it was the same battle he'd always fought.
He'd come this far. He had to go a little further.
Pushing past and future out of his mind, Starkiller threw himself at his present. He threw a wall of Force ahead of him to knock the clone off-balance, but the clone barely budged. He lifted dual lightsabers to block Starkiller's attack; Starkiller feinted, jumped back, beckon the clone to counter-attack. So he did, with a flurry of violent and speed that would have stunned even Vader. Grunted, Starkiller found himself forced back to the spot where the three catwalks converged.
He didn't dare look over his shoulder for Juno, but he shouted to her, "Get back! Get inside! Now!"
The clone kept attacking. Rather than lead him closer to Juno, Starkiller willingly backed down the other catwalk, toward Vader, praying the Sith Lord would rather watch his students kill each other than end the battle himself.
Behind him Vader jibed, "Love and mercy have hobbled you. They leave you helpless before your better self."
"Shut up!" Starkiller shouted, though again he only watched the clone, the endless rain of dual blades.
If he had both his sabers back he might stand a chance; fighting two swords with one would doom him. He allowed himself to be backed further toward Vader, hoping desperately he might wrestle his other saber from the Sith Lord.
The clone saw his intention and unleashed a pulse of powerful Force energy. It crackled against Starkiller's chest and threw him hard into the catwalk railing. Metal snapped against the base of his spine; a kick from the clone knocked his feet out from under him and he fell hard onto the metal deck.
Suddenly he was staring up at the straight, blazing lines of dual lightsabers aimed for the killing strike. Beyond them was his own face, clenched mercilessly tight.
Darth Vader appeared beside the clone. He didn't even have a lightsaber in hand, so confident he was. The Sith Lord told his true apprentice, "Finish him. Do it now and complete your destiny. Then, together, we will dethrone the Emperor himself."
Starkiller braced himself for death, yet the clone didn't strike. One blade twitched. Starkiller felt a premonition of intent, brief but strong, unmistakable and shocking.
Vader felt it too. The Sith Lord gasped and reached for his lightsaber just as the clone swung one blade toward his maker.
Vader didn't get it up in time. The red blade skirled across his armor, narrowly missing his already-damaged breathing apparatus. Vader staggered back and finally ignited the blue lightsaber just in time to deflect the clone's second attack.
At the same time Starkiller rolled away and sprung to his feet. He snapped his lightsaber on and swung.
The clone caught Vader's blow with his left blade, Starkiller's with his right. Two sets of lightsabers snarled against each other: red and blue, blue and red.
"Why are you doing this?" Vader groaned in exertion. "You are my creation!"
In the Force he emanated shock, confusion, and the unique sting of betrayal. This wasn't another staged manipulation; this was real. Starkiller didn't understand why and it didn't matter.
This clone, who wielded dark side power with savage strength, was trying to kill him and Vader both. Starkiller would have run, leaving Vader to fight and die against a monster of his own creation, but for Juno, PROXY, and the other Rebels trapped far from the hangar.
The only way for them to escape was to defeat the dark apprentice. For the sake of his friends—for Juno—he would have to stand with his maker against their shared enemy.
Starkiller understood that. As he stared into that ebon mask across sparking red and blue, he felt Darth Vader understand it too.