11 months before the Battle of Yavin
As he battled his twin and his maker in the Furnace of Shenandor Prime, the dark apprentice knew that this was the moment he had been destined for.
Not the one he was made for, as Darth Vader had discovered to his shock and shame. In the Dark Lord's imagining this was to be a moment of personal triumph. Two clones, both conjured in the secret laboratories of Timira City on Kamino, born from the same flesh but sculpted toward different ends, would meet in mortal combat. The one molded for darkness would kill the one meant for light (because how could it be otherwise?) and thus ascend to the ranks of true Sith. Vader and his true apprentice (who needed no name, because he had no illusions of human vanity, human frailty) would stand as one, each empowering the other toward supreme darkness.
The man called Starkiller, pitifully blinded by the light, was a tool in his own right. Driven by a mindless obsession for a mere woman, he had burst free from Kamino, scoured the stars, then been led back to his birthplace by Vader's agents, this time bringing a Rebel fleet that would wipe out all evidence of the secret laboratory. All of this had happened according to the Dark Lord's designs. Vader had instilled Starkiller with memories of a woman and pushed him toward love through the remnant emotions of a dead man. With the dark apprentice Vader had been brutally honest. He was not Galen Marek, nor should he want to be. That man had been a weakling and a fool who'd died multiple times over as part of the Emperor's cruel schemes, all the while deluding himself that he was free.
Now it was different. Darth Vader would move in true rebellion against his Master, with a true apprentice at his side. The clone called Starkiller was as much a pawn as Galen Marek, but now he was Vader's alone. Even the Dark Lord's capture at Rebel hands had been orchestrated for this moment.
The dark apprentice had watched it all from the rainy rooftops of Timira City. His instruction from Vader had been clear: intervene only if the Dark Lord's life was in danger. But Vader's predictions proved correct. Starkiller was too hobbled by the Force's light side to give into his anger and slay his tormentor. Instead he chose to take Vader as a prisoner to the hidden Rebel base.
Vader had been hoping to uncover a greater prize than Shenandor Prime, but this starfire-wracked little world would suffice. Starkiller's death here would be the dark apprentice's culminative triumph. Next he and Vader would destroy the Emperor and rule the galaxy in his place. It was an ambition Vader had held close for years. Finally, with the perfect tool at his side, he'd accomplish that lusted-for goal.
The Dark Lord had thought himself very clever in his machinations, but he'd been a fool.
The Emperor, as ever, knew all.
The dark apprentice had spent months in Timira City's laboratory, suffering Vader's brutal training, but he'd never been alone. While his Master lectured him about the power of anger and the weakness of love, a voice had whispered to the dark apprentice, saying, "Your teacher reproaches you because he would reproach himself. He does not truly understand that he craves power he cannot and never will possess, because he is a slave to emotion and the shadow of what he once was. Therefore he will never be free."
When he'd sat alone in his pit for weeks, forced to meditate and drawn on the dark side to ward off starvation, the voice had encouraged, "Endure this privation. Become stronger than your Master. One day you will take revenge for all your humiliation."
When he'd diced practice PROXY droids and later squadrons of stormtroopers (a blood sacrifice to sanction his ascension) that voice had said, "Feel your hatred flow through you. Anger is the path to infinite power. You are already rising above the half-machine, half-child who brought you into existence. Soon you will supplant him and take his place at my side."
And when Vader explained to him the coming trial against his weaker twin, the voice had been almost mirthful. "See his posturing. He thinks himself a master of his fate, but he is merely a puppet, and my hand is on the strings. It has been so since before he was born, and it will remain so long after you have snuffed his pathetic life."
Without needing to ask, the dark apprentice had sensed that the voice speaking to him was his Master's Master, the Emperor Palpatine.
"That is just my profane title for a vulgar world," the voice had proclaimed as the dark apprentice prepared for his opposite's return to Kamino. "I am Darth Sidious, sith'ari. I am the perfection of darkness, and soon I will share with you power I have never hinted at to my poor, foolish Vader."
The dark apprentice lusted for power, but he was not a fool. Sidious had sculpted Vader, used him, and now was ready to discard him. Vader, like a child mimicking his abusive parent, treated Starkiller the same. The dark apprentice had no illusions that one day Sidious would dispose of him too.
Unless he overpowered Sidious first. He'd already become strong enough to best his Master; the only reason the dark apprentice hadn't slain him already was because poor, misguided Starkiller had joined the fight. After destroyed these fools he'd join Darth Sidious, learn from him, and destroy him also.
What other way could it be? A voice from another life, implanted into his mind while still in the clone tanks, had said it all.
"The Sith always betray each other. You'll learn that soon enough."
Better to be the traitor than the betrayed. In choosing to destroy his creator, he had broken the chains of his creation.
Unlike his wayward twin and broken Master, the dark apprentice was free.
-{}-
Starkiller had no voice whispering in his mind, but he nonetheless understood what the dark apprentice did: this was the moment he'd been destined for.
He had already bested Darth Vader twice, and though his maker tortured and abused him the Dark Lord was not his true enemy. Always, from when young Galen Marek had picked up a lightsaber to avenge his father to this very moment, his greatest foe had been the darkness inside him.
The darkness made manifest in this clone apprentice.
He sensed no doubt as he battled his twin, no hesitation, certainly not the deep self-loathing he felt from Vader. The dark apprentice was a creature without conscience. Fueled by brutal avarice, unimpaired by human weakness, he could battle Vader and Starkiller forever.
Their struggle dominated the center of the Y-bridge suspended over the mining shaft's endless plunge. Vader attacked on one flank, Starkiller on the other but neither could break the dark apprentice's two-handed defense. The battle seemed a stalemate, but Starkiller sensed his twin gathering a deep well of dark power inside himself that would soon explode.
Starkiller was also acutely aware of Juno, PROXY, and the handful of remaining Rebel soldiers stuck in the left-hand branch corridor. They needed to get to the main tunnel and thence to the hangar for escape, but with the three Force-users dominating the bridge there was no chance of that.
He would give up anything to ensure Juno's safety, even his own life. For that reason, he was determined to move the battle elsewhere.
As they fought the dark apprentice, he reached out and touched Vader's mind. He was shocked how open it was. Always his Master had disguised his true intentions behind layers of verbal and mental malice, but now he felt Vader's shock at the betrayal and desperate desire to survive. Focusing on the tenuous chord between them, Starkiller tried to speak in Vader's mind and tell him what they needed to do.
To his shock, Vader exhibited an earnest willing. Where Starkiller went, Vader would follow.
But the dark apprentice acted first. That wellspring of dark power exploded; a rush of hot, angry wind swirled up from the depths of the shaft, and for a moment Starkiller thought the planet itself had been roused to ire.
What he got was nearly as bad. The descending platforms that jutted from the shaft's circumference were littered with pieces of disused mining droids. None of the machines were operational but the dark apprentice did not require this. He only required puppets; fierce, giant, metal-skinned puppets to throw at his maker and his twin.
Standing at the center of the Y-bridge, the dark apprentice became the eye of a hurricane. Jagged durasteel pieces rose from below and swirled toward Vader and Starkiller. Master and apprentice were both forced to turn their attention from their enemy to bat away and Force-push their new attackers.
Some shambled down the catwalk like metal skeletons. Other times rusting claws lashed through the air. Once a diamond-tipped drill arm, minus its mechanical owner, came at Starkiller like a spear. He had to leap over it, grasp it with the Force, and fling it back into the abyss from whence it had come. Vader was likewise overwhelmed as metal chunks scraped and sparked against his armor. A droid's broken limb, jagged at its snapped tip, swiped at Starkiller like a sword and cut his left thigh, drawing blood.
This had to stop. Starkiller reached out to Vader in his panic. The Dark Lord agreed.
Together they turned from the assailing wreckage and attacked the dark apprentice. Seemingly tireless for the malice fueling him, the clone blocked both their attacks. This time, however, Starkiller did more. Channeling as much Force power as he could through his battered body, he crafted an invisible wall, then threw it outward.
The dark apprentice fell over the railing, down but not far enough. The Force was still with him and he directed his plunge to one of the platforms jutting from the shaft's circumference, perhaps fifteen meters down.
Starkiller did not hesitate. Even as the droid parts continued to swirl, he jumped, directing his fall to the same platform his twin was on. The dark apprentice saw him coming and extended one hand to spray dark side lightning. Starkiller caught as much as he could on his lightsaber but the force of impact knocked him off course, and suddenly he was falling.
Then an invisible hand picked him up and threw him onto a platform one level beneath the dark apprentice's. Starkiller landed hard on his flank, rolled harder into the rough stone wall, then scrambled to his feet, even as his wounded leg cried out in pain.
Up above, the man who'd saved him from his fall—Darth Vader—had joined the dark apprentice in battle.
Starkiller sprung up a level to join them. Again they had the dark apprentice pinned on either side, and again the clone defended tirelessly. Starkiller risked a glance at the bridge above and saw, to his utter relief, that the air was clear of droid parts. The path was clear. He prayed Juno and the others would take it.
That distraction cost him. The dark apprentice slipped past his defenses and landed a powerful kick to his stomach that knocked him down a platform. As Starkiller struggled to rise again, he spotted a dark shape fall from above and land on the spot he'd just left. He didn't understand until he heard the blaze of a fifth lightsaber and saw its scarlet glare.
On the higher platform, the dark apprentice now battled two versions of his maker: one real and clasping a borrowed blue lightsaber, the other a holo-shrouded PROXY droid wielding Vader's true blade.
Starkiller looked at the bridge once more. Bodies were moving across it but Juno's platinum head remained in place. She stood on the left branch, frozen, staring down at him.
"Go!" Starkiller screamed, knowing she wouldn't, not until he was safe, even if it wasted his sacrifice.
Because she loved him, damn it all.
Starkiller jumped onto the higher platform. With four bodies it was perilously crowded, and even though he was outnumbered three-to-one, the dark apprentice was holding his own. He fought with his back to the protective wall, and his three attackers couldn't rush him at once lest they dice one another with their own weapons.
It was easy for Starkiller to communicate his intentions to Vader, shockingly so. His Force-bond with his maker had never been so clear, or so easy. PROXY, for all his fine-tuned mechanical reflexes, was left out of the loop. The droid attacked fiercely nonetheless, with even more speed and agility than the real Vader. Red blades crashed together; the dark apprentice was forced to counter with a spray of Force-lighting from his fingertips, which shuddered through PROXY's metal skeleton, causing the Vader-shroud to wink off. Starkiller's heart clenched. Losing PROXY here would hurt almost as much as losing Juno.
He had to end this now. "Get back!" he called to PROXY as he lunged forward, lightsaber in two hands, aiming to spear his enemy in the ribs. The dark apprentice saw it coming and slammed his back hard against the wall, tucking in his stomach so the lightsaber merely burned against his abdominal armor.
Starkiller's overeager thrust had left him off-balance. He tried to withdraw but the dark apprentice was faster. His lowered arm snapped up; suddenly a red blade buzzed between Starkiller's arms, angling upward toward his chin. Starkiller snapped his head and body back, avoiding the lethal stab, but the dark apprentice twisted his wrist to the right. Starkiller barely managed to extricate his arm before losing it, but he couldn't prevent the knee that snapped upward and took him in the diaphragm, stealing all breath and keeling him over.
Pain fed back to Vader through their tenuous Force-bond, slowing the Sith Lord's response. The dark apprentice Force-shoved Vader back to the platform's edge, blocked a retaliatory strike by PROXY with his right-hand blade, and with his left-
-one downward, diagonal slice cut into Starkiller's abdomen. Hot pain rose from beneath his lungs; it felt like his heart was on fire. The only relief was the blackness welling around his vision, promising the relief of oblivion.
He'd died before, but it was never easy. He tried to hold on, tried to fight back pain and blackness both, tried to rise for PROXY's sake.
For Juno's.
But it was too much. Pain won him over, then darkness conquered pain. Starkiller's last sight was the black boots of his twin as he collapsed on the deck.
-{}-
When she saw him fall Juno cried out in agony, but she knew what she had to do.
She'd known it since the moment Starkiller threw himself off the bridge to battle the dark apprentice on the lower platforms. She'd known it when she ushered all the other Rebel troops into the main trunk corridor and when PROXY threw himself—his real self—down the shaft to help his master. She'd even told the droid what she'd do if things got bad and warned him to be ready.
She prayed PROXY remembered that. Still standing on the left branch of the Y-bridge, Juno reached into her pocket and triggered the detonator for the charges placed around the dome above.
The explosion had been designed to push the ceiling outward, and so it did. The great metal dome was blasted off its seams, exposing the red-tinted black of Shenandor's night sky. Immediately air from the shaft began to rush up into the surface void. The doors to three corridors leading off the shaft slammed shut; an emergency protocol Juno had forgotten about, and with panic she realized she might have doomed them all to airless death.
But there was plenty oxygen in the depths of the shaft and it kept howling up. In the planet's low gravity it even threatened to pick Juno off her feet and she held tight to the catwalk railing, watching through a flurry of her own blond hair as PROXY scooped up Starkiller's prone body and leaped upward, propelled by rushing air and his strong metal legs back to the bridge.
As for Darth Vader and the dark apprentice, she'd happily let them die, but as soon as she and PROXY started for the main corridor, the black-armored, white-faced body of Starkiller's twin landed at the center of the bridge, blocking their path. A split-second later Vader leaped up as well and the two black figures resumed their clash of sabers, even as the great tunnel began to empty of air around them. Juno could feel the mighty wind-rush slowing; it no longer threatened to lift her off her feet and suck her into the void, which meant the shaft was close to empty of air.
And the path to safety was still blocked.
She did the only thing she could. To PROXY she yelled, "Go back! Go back!" For the thinning oxygen her own words sounded muffled and distant.
PROXY knew what to do. With Starkiller slung over one metal shoulder he stamped over to the left branch corridor's sealed door. He must have been patched directly into the base's computer because the door opened obligingly before him. The droid rushed in first, followed by Juno. She spun around as she went though and caught on last glimpse of the battle. Vader summoned a massive Force-push and knocked the dark apprentice off the walkway.
Let them both die, she told herself. She turned to the wall control panel, slammed it, commanded it to close. She heard the door hiss shut behind her and staggered over to PROXY, who was laying Starkiller down on the ground.
Then the door's motors ground noisily to a halt. She looked back to the door and saw it caught halfway to closing by a black-gloved hand.
Juno acted on instinct. She grabbed her blaster and began firing, but the blue lightsaber that peeked through the door frame deflected her bolts, forcing her to duck. Darth Vader's massive black body scraped through the closing portal. As soon as he was through the door slammed shut, cutting off his cape, sealing off the airless shaft.
Trapping them with Darth Vader.
With an agonized scream, Juno hefted her blaster and kept firing. This time Vader raised his hand to catch her shots. Bolt after bolt sparked and fizzled to nothing in his palm but Juno kept shooting, kept screaming, desperate to banish the nightmare standing impervious before her.
It was PROXY who knocked her blaster down. "It will do no good," the droid's too-calm voice said.
"No!" Juno tried to wrestle it back up, the metal hand held hers. "No… This is his fault, all of it..."
"Yes," Vader said. "All of it." In the deep, fearsome voice she heard regret and something more. Was it shame?
She looked at the weapon in his hand and snarled, "That's Starkiller's lightsaber. Give it back!"
"Very well." With the slightest motion Vader tossed the lightsaber away. It rolled to her feet, but she knew that as long as Vader lived he was himself a weapon.
"I will need it yet," the Dark Lord said, "when we attempt to leave this place."
"Tough." Never taking her eyes off Vader, Juno crouched, picked up the lightsaber, and stuffed it beneath her belt.
"We have a mutual enemy," Vader persisted. "We cannot leave until it is destroyed."
"That thing outside? It got thrown down, suffocated. It's dead."
"No," Vader said with grim assurance. "It still lives."
Juno almost asked what it was. But the truth of that clone meant the truth about Starkiller and she wasn't ready to hear that; at least, not from Vader.
The Sith Lord looked at Starkiller's prone body. "Can he be saved?"
Juno's breath scraped with tears; she couldn't speak. PROXY said, "He lives, but his life signs are faint. I believe there is a medical room accessible from this corridor."
"Then use them."
"Why?" Juno snarled. "After all you've done to us, done to him, now you want to help him? You expect us to trust you?"
"Even you, Juno Eclipse, are not as foolish as that." Vader was totally still a black statue blocking their only escape. "At this moment, we both need the same thing. The man you call Starkiller must live."
"But why?" Juno croaked. She felt trapped in a nightmare that could never make sense.
Slowly, as though pained, the Dark Lord admitted, "Without him, I can never be free."