As he lay within his healing trance, the man called Starkiller experienced more shades of past and future. Nothing resolved itself as clearly as the visions he'd had before, but he caught the face of his mother and father, his many enemies and few friends. Kazdan Paratus, twisted by madness; Shaak Ti, passing rueful wisdom; Marris Brood, shaken by a mercy as unexpected for her as it had been for him. He saw Juno climbing a snow-laden slope in the night, and he saw Master Kota in ferocious battle against the same armored foe who'd kidnapped Juno from Salvation.
He sensed it when Kota died. Yet even that, strangely, felt like the giving of a gift.
In uncounted time the visions faded, reality returned, and the Force released Starkiller from its healing embrace. When he rose from the bed his weariness and even pain were gone. So, too, was doubt. He knew what had to be done.
His only regret was that he wasn't able to explain it to Juno. He couldn't now; even if they both survived this she might never understand and never forgive him. He prayed their love would endure what came next, but either way, he had to follow the path the Force had laid out for him.
Maybe this was what it meant to be a Jedi, like his father before him.
Starkiller found them in the droid laboratory: Juno, PROXY, Darth Vader. The three beings who'd most shaped his life were all gathered in one place. There was an unhappy truce between them but the truce endured, because in the corridors beyond, walled off by stone, a common enemy waited.
There were also reasons to be sad. Juno explained what had happened to the Imperial freighter, Krevkee, and the remaining Rebel soldiers. Yet PROXY, puppet turned puppet-master, had one extra body remaining, and this one had prepped the remaining starships for takeoff and stood ready to assist them in crossing the perilous, airless bridge over the mining shaft.
"I will do my part in this chassis as well," PROXY explained. "Seeing as that I do not require oxygen to function, both of my bodies will attempt to block the clone on the bridge. Granted, my proxy is armed only with a blaster, but this form, I believe, is well-equipped to defend itself."
With a flicker of light, PROXY assumed the familiar form of Starkiller himself. In his fist burned a blue and very real lightsaber blade.
"That looks convincing," Juno said.
"It will not fool the dark apprentice," Vader rumbled. "His eyes may be deceived, but the Force will not fail him."
"We don't have to trick him, we just have to confuse him for a second," said Starkiller. "Every one counts when you're running out of air."
"Do you think a mere machine will stop him? He has slain dozens of such droids in his training. As have you."
Before Starkiller could argue, PROXY interjected, "I am fully aware that I will face a formidable foe. Indeed, the only reason I escaped our previous encounter was because I had you both at my side. While I of course hope to survive this encounter, I do not expect it."
The droid faced death with such assurance it ached Starkiller's heart. For as long as he could remember, PROXY had been his companion. They'd sparred together, crossed the galaxy together, switched sides together, even died together, only to be born again, each with haunting questions about the purpose of his existence.
And, it seemed, they'd even found answers together.
"Do not regret, Master," PROXY told him with Starkiller's own face, his own voice. "In our journeys I have become more than I ever dreamed of being. I hope I have allowed you do say the same."
Something caught in his throat; he swallowed hard. "Of course you have, PROXY."
"Then there is nothing more to add." The holo-shroud winked off. So did the lightsaber. With the disguise gone, Starkiller noticed the second cylinder attached to a magnetic clamp on PROXY's waist. He brushed the weapon clipped to his own belt, which left no doubt about the spare.
"I will not trust our victory to a droid," Darth Vader said. "And I will not face the enemy unarmed."
"Tough," Juno snarled. "You're mad if you think we're-"
"No," Starkiller said. "Give him the lightsaber."
"You can't be serious." Her look was half shock, half suspicious glare.
He couldn't explain what the Force had shown him. Not to her, not to Vader. Not here and now, anyway. Neither would understand. "Everyone needs to be armed to fight that clone. We could only get him to a standstill last time."
"And the moment we beat him, Vader will stab you in the back, just like he always does."
Vader didn't even try to defend himself. Starkiller said, "I'll deal with that when it happens. PROXY, give him the lightsaber."
Even the droid hesitated. "Is that… an order, Master?"
"Yes. It is."
Juno flinched like he'd struck her. PROXY's voice trembled. "I see. Very well, Master. I obey."
Without anyone reaching for it, the lightsaber left PROXY's waist and flew into Darth Vader's hand. The Sith Lord tapped its trigger and extended the red blade. Starkiller put a hand on his own weapon, but he knew he wouldn't need it yet. Vader shut it off and lowered it to his side.
"The enemy awaits," he said simply.
But no one moved. They only stared at one another, each one contemplating destiny in relation to the other. It was PROXY who finally said, "I am ready to open the doors on your command."
"Then let's get to it," Juno said dryly. She already had his pistol in hand.
They walked down the corridor in a line: PROXY, Starkiller, Vader, Juno with a gun on his back. Starkiller skipped ahead to squeeze astride the droid.
"I'm sorry I had to order you back there," he said, "but trust me, please."
"I trust you of course, Master. It is Vader I do not trust."
"I understand. I just…" Starkiller trailed off. He didn't know what he was trying to say. He just didn't want his last moments with PROXY to be upset by misunderstanding.
"There is nothing to apologize for," the droid told him. "I have decided my mission and I will execute it. However, a curiosity remains. Though I have lost my core programming, Master... I have found that a part of me regrets that I will never succeed in killing you."
Starkiller smiled. "You can't have everything."
"Indeed. But I believe I have had… enough. I am satisfied."
"Me too, PROXY," he whispered. "Me too."
The door stood before them, a sleek metal slab walling them off from the outside void. He dared reach out with the Force to feel the dark apprentice, also stirring in the nearby corridor. As soon as they opened their door, so would he.
They stood before the threshold. PROXY triggered his holo-shroud, becoming the perfect visual replica of Starkiller himself. Next came Darth Vader, red blade in his hand. Starkiller and Juno lingered behind him. He moved his spare hand to squeeze hers, leaned close and whispered, "Are you ready?"
Doubt and softness had disappeared from her. It was time to fight or die, as Vader had taught her, too. She raised her blaster, pointed it dead ahead of her, and said, "Ready."
"Okay, PROXY," Starkiller raised his voice. "Do it."
-{}-
When his targets sprung into motion, so did the dark apprentice. With the Force he shoved the carved slab of door outward. Wind rushed him from behind as the corridor's remaining atmosphere was flushed into the empty shaft. The dark apprentice allowed himself to be carried through the gap, onto the walkway beyond. All the while he lifted the door-slab ahead of him to use as a shield and weapon.
He'd sensed Vader and Starkiller approaching, but not the droid. A naked PROXY model stood in front of the main corridor's sealed door, blaster rifle in hand, pumping red bolts. The dark apprentice knew his air was limited; each second counted. He shifted his twin lightsabers and batted the bolts back. Three shots in quick succession were reflected to their source and the droid crumpled.
It had taken just a second, but each one counted. As he raced for the tunnel door the dark apprentice was intercepted, as he knew he'd be. First came Vader, red saber blazing in hand. Then came his pathetic twin, leaping high from the left-branch catwalk to the spot behind him. Starkiller landed with a clatter, swinging fast and hard, even before Vader reached him on his opposite flank.
But it wasn't Starkiller. There was no Force emanating from his opponent; it was another damned droid. The dark apprentice sneered and caught, in the corner of his eye, the real Starkiller and his blond woman sprinting for the main tunnel. The blonde ran ahead; Starkiller faltered, looked back, undecided whether to go with his woman or join his maker in this final battle.
The dark apprentice didn't have the luxury of waiting. Air was running out; he was already feeling dazed by deprivation and heat. He swung the door-slab like he'd tossed around those droid-parts earlier. Starkiller barely dodged it; it spun around to hit the PROXY droid. Metal clashed on metal. The blue lightsaber cut the slab in two but the debris moved with such force that it knocked PROXY off the edge of the walkway, dropping both into the abyss below.
The dark apprentice felt a flash of triumph, then pain. Dazed and distracted, he'd allowed Vader to slid through his defenses and score a slash across his shoulder. He snarled, lunged, knowing he had to get inside, into air, in the next few seconds.
Amazingly, Vader flew off his feet, away from the killing thrust, into the main corridor. His black-armored body clattered on the interior floorplates; Starkiller and his woman stood deeper inside. The door began to close before them.
The dark apprentice was almost done. He summoned the Force desperately and used its power to dash ahead, reaching the door before it closed. He stuck one arm through to keep it from sealing. As soon as he did, Vader's blade cut it through the wrist.
If there had been air left in his lungs, the dark apprentice would have screamed. Instead he used his fear and pain and anger for one last spurt of power. He shoved against the sliding motion of the door, pushing it open just wide enough for him to throw his body inside the corridor.
The door finally sealed behind him. Air vents roared overhead, pumping in atmosphere to replace what was lost. The dark apprentice rolled onto his back just in time to catch Vader's downward thrust with his remaining saber. Then, still powered by fear and pain and anger, he reared his hips upward, slammed both boots into Vader's stomach, and send his maker flying down the debris- and body-strewn hallway.
Immediately he leaped to his feet. So did Vader. They threw themselves together and the battle was joined once more.
-{}-
Starkiller could feel Juno's fierce recrimination as they ran down the corridor, skipping and sometimes stumbling over bodies as they made their way for the hangar. She didn't speak it, but she didn't have to.
You could have left him to die. It would have been so easy. Just seal the door and leave Vader and the dark apprentice to battle each other until one slew the other and oxygen loss defeated the victor. So simple, and it would have honored PROXY's sacrifice.
But Starkiller couldn't allow that. He would explain it to Juno, he had to. But not yet.
He only started to doubt when he saw that the dark apprentice had slipped inside the hallway and renewed his battle with Vader. He felt the dark ferocity of their struggle and it chilled him to the core. All the black feelings his Master had taught him to unleash were coming from them in torrents. Darkness clashed with darkness, and it seemed impossible that light could escape from either of them.
But it would. Starkiller had seen that. He knew it. Vader was the fulcrum, and destiny demanded he survive the day.
Starkiller and Juno had a head start for the hangars, but the passage was long and littered with ruin. All the while the sounds of Vader and the dark apprentice seemed to chase them. When they were almost at the end of the passage, the door to the hangar foyer in sight, Juno gave a yelp and tripped over the body of a stormtrooper. She fell hard; her knee cracked painfully into the deck. Starkiller called on the Force to pull her upright but those three seconds were a critical delay.
As soon as they started running, Vader's body was thrown down the hall like a missile. Juno barely dodged and Starkiller was taken in head and shoulder, spun, and knocked into the wall. Vader himself collided with the door, dropped to the deck, and struggled to stand.
And like a second missile, the dark apprentice flew through the air and dropped on his master, hacking savagely. The doors sensed their motion and opened stupidly before them, allowing the fight spilled into the foyer. Starkiller pushed himself upright, then lunged at the clone's exposed back. He was stopped just short of striking distance. The man twisted and a burst of Force lightning crackled from the stub of his lost hand. Starkiller was thrown to the far end of the foyer.
As soon as he landed, Juno was there. As she tugged him to his feet they watched Vader and the dark apprentice continue their battle. The foyer, too, was scarred by earlier combat. The door to the central hangar was bent outward thanks to the detonation of the Imperial freighter. The nearest set of doors, he recalled, led to the smaller hangar with the Y-wing. The further one, outside which Vader and his too-perfect apprentice fought, contained Rogue Shadow.
He started toward them but Juno tugged his shoulder. "Leave them, dammit."
"But the Shadow-"
"We'll take the Y-wing. PROXY said it's ready to fly."
Starkiller knew not to argue. And perhaps, he thought, it was better this way.
They rushed into the small hangar, leaving the two duelists behind, though Starkiller could still feel their ripples of mutual fury in the Force. Juno quickly went to the panel by the door and commanded the armored gate in the ceiling to open. As they clambered up the ladder into the Y-wing's topside, he asked, "Can you pilot this thing?"
"I've done it a couple times. Easy to fly but slower than a Hutt in a bog."
"Would you rather have a TIE fighter?"
"I'd rather a ship with a cloaking device and karking weapons. But this will have to do."
This was a two-seater, he saw, with separate sections for the pilot and rear-facing would-be gunner, though this craft seemed to have swapped out its top turret for a sensor suite. Juno immediately dropped into the pilot's seat and yelped as she landed on a waiting white pilot helmet.
"How considerate," she grumbled as she fumbled the thing out from beneath her.
Before she put it on, Starkiller knelt on the Y-wing's hull, leaned into her cockpit, and kissed her once. It was warm, dry, and short, but he tried to make it last forever.
When he pulled back her eyes were fluttering. Smiling sheepishly she said, "Save that for when we're home free."
"You got it," Starkiller said. He smiled back, then darted for the gunner's chair. He wanted to leave Juno with that smile, just as he clung to his last sight of her.
He still felt the battle raging as Juno fired the repulsors and pushed them out of the landing bay. Those rose through the hangar mouth, through the atmospheric shield, until they were low over the craggy airless surface of Shenandor Prime.
"Are the Imperials nearby?" he asked her.
Her voice was slightly scratchy over the Y-wing's internal comm. "Not close to the hot zone. Not yet."
She banked the Y-wing back toward the base. They could see the great circular plunge where there had once been a dome, as well as the ripped-open mouth of the central hangar. And, as they finished their low circle, they could see the third set of hangar doors opening. Far beneath them, Rogue Shadow sat in its berth while twin red lightsabers clashed around its base.
Starkiller could feel that battle all the more clearly now. Darth Vader and his too-perfect apprentice battled on, and the Dark Lord was losing. Vader was old, tired, betrayed, abandoned, undone by his own evil schemes. The dark apprentice was young and unfettered by anything save rage and avarice. And in his Force-presence Starkiller felt the trace of something he'd only experienced once before, on the Death Star, when he'd died the worst of his many deaths. Yet this power was not coming from the clone; rather it was being passed to him across endless lightyears from the final author of the galaxy's darkness.
Yes, that explained everything.
"Damn it all, I wish this thing had guns," Juno said.
So it had come to this. "Don't worry," Starkiller said. "I'll take care of it."
"Wait, what are you-"
He pulled the manual release lever and commanded the lid of his cockpit to open. Over the sudden roar of air he called, "I'm sorry, Juno. I'm sorry."
She might have been shouting at him; in the Force she screamed desperation, anger, and (yes) betrayal. He wished he could explain it all to her, but there was no time. At least she would survive. He would live whatever moments he had left with that solace.
Starkiller swallowed a last gulp of fleeting air, then threw himself off the Y-wing's hull. He barely had to call on the Force to direct his fall into the open hangar bay. Instead, he summoned its power after he passed through the atmospheric envelope to soften his landing on the back of the Rogue Shadow.
Vader and the dark apprentice were so locked into mortal combat that neither recognized his presence. For a moment he stood there, aware of Juno circling desperately above while two foul powers clashed below. He saw Vader weaken beneath the dark apprentice's continual attacks. From the cut-off stub of his arm he summoned more lightning that racked across Darth Vader's body, and Starkiller cringed with the memory of his Master's final end at the Emperor's hands.
That awful, beautiful, necessary end.
Starkiller jumped off the back of the Rogue Shadow. The dark apprentice sensed him just in time to throw another volley of Force lightning at him, but Starkiller was prepared for it. He endured the sizzling pain and collided with the dark apprentice, slipping his blade into the flesh beneath the clone's right rib.
The dark apprentice rolled away screaming. He reared onto his knees and threw a lightning-burst, which Starkiller caught on his saber.
Behind him, Darth Vader staggered to his feet. Deep voice hoarse with shock he asked, "Why?"
"Because you're not what you think you are," Starkiller said, and threw himself at the dark apprentice.
Saber met saber. More lightning burned his body but Starkiller endured it and refused to give in to the hateful powers he'd been taught to use. Even if he'd wanted to, he couldn't have; he'd moved so far beyond the darkness he couldn't even call on it. As he battled he drained himself of all the dark emotions that had haunted him since his father's murder. Purges and purified, he battled out of vision, understanding, and empathy.
Empathy for Darth Vader, who'd paid unto Galen Marek all the sins inherited from his own Master, because those were the only things he had to give. Empathy for what Vader had been, would be, and craved to be with an inner fire so secret he hid it even from himself.
And empathy, too, for the snarling, wrathful mirror-image of himself. Even when the dark apprentice scorched him with fire and plunged a red lightsaber blade into his stomach, rending his healing wound with an even deeper one. They were two echoes of the same man, but while the dark apprentice had inherited only Galen Marek's grief and anger, Starkiller had been gifted with his so-called weaknesses like compassion and hope.
More than anything, he'd retained Juno: love for her, love from her. With that to guide the way he'd gained a deeper understanding of the Force than the dark apprentice, blinded by darkness and seduced by the Emperor's promises, could never imagine.
When Starkiller thrust his saber into the dark apprentice's chest he grieved for the man who might have been.
Spite drained from the dark apprentice's face. His head bowed toward Starkiller's. His eyes watered in pain and confusion. He simply couldn't believe he had failed.
In that moment, Starkiller felt that external power withdraw from the dark apprentice. The Emperor was abandoning him in his final moment because he was no longer useful.
The clone's eyes closed. His body tipped forward; Starkiller caught it against his own. His leg ached and his stomach burned with creeping fire.
And then with a greater agony as a red pushed through his spine. Abandoned by his true Master, the dark apprentice was facing death the only way he knew how: mindless spite.
He hooked his handless arm around Starkiller's back to hold him close and his face contorted for one last paroxysm of rage. Lighting surged across all his body and leaped to his twin, wrapping them both in a corona of hate.
Starkiller held the embrace and endured the pain. He moved his free arm to drape the dark apprentice's shoulders. Dimly, he sensed that his opposite had never experienced even this small gesture of compassion. Starkiller could give that much, at the end.
As ample experience had proved, dying brought out the best in him.
Darth Vader was still behind him, watching light and dark mirrors embrace with incomprehension.
"Go!" Starkiller shouted and called what Force he could to shove Vader toward Rogue Shadow's lowered ramp.
He staggered for the entrance, but the Dark Lord called back, "I do not understand!"
So much to explain. No way to speak the words. As pain wracked his body, Starkiller called, "One day you'll be freed… by your real son!"
With his last burst of rage, the dark apprentice summoned a flash of power that leaped far from his body. The hangar's interior lights sparked and crashed into darkness. The energy fields sealing in the atmosphere shuddered and died.
Air soared upward into the void, pulling spar equipment with it. Starkiller hadn't the strength to resist. Still wrapped in fatal embrace, the two apprentices were swept up through the hangar mouth and into the blackness beyond. There was not far to go; Shenandor Prime had its own pull, and as the propelling gust dissipated gravity tugged their flying bodies back to airless earth.
They tumbled down but tumbled slowly. As darkness rose from the edge of his vision to swallow everything, Starkiller saw the thrust trails of two distinct starships flaring into the distance. The one who'd made him and the one who'd remade him, both safe.
It was accomplished. Finally, at long last, he gave up Galen Marek's ghost.