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What duty he owed himself, he didn't know. He hadn't realized that there had even been a him to think of outside his relation ship with Darth Vader. He had imagined himself simply made, somehow, one of his Master's stranger biological experiments, with no parents and no home but the one he remembered. What if the visions he had endured were real and he had had a family, here on Kashyyyk? How did that affect his place in Vader's schemes? Did it change everything, or nothing?
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Juno called on the comlink to ask him if he was all right. He said he was. She asked if he was sure. He said he was. She sounded hurt by his terseness, but he couldn't help that. He was so full of emotion-confusion and doubt, and dismal certainty and hope as well-that he couldn't cope with her feelings on top of it. He was trying his best not to feel at all.
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"How do you cope with him when he's like this?" she asked the droid.
PROXY didn't need to ask who she was talking about. "I usually fight him. That seems to help. Would you like me to..."
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Somehow, though, Juno worried him much more. His Master had trained him extensively in the arts of violence and deception. Women were a topic on which he knew nothing at all.
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The apprentice couldn't hide a smile. "Oh, don't worry. Kota's angry. But I think he wants to be able to yell at you in person."
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The imbalance that had tipped Mans Brood against the Jedi had also turned what had probably once been a noble beast into an insatiable monster.
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Light, dark, Shaak Ti had tried to tell him, they are just directions.
We're always moving, he thought, toward the dark or toward the light. It's impossible to stand still. Some, like Darth Vader and the Emperor, had been descending through the dark side for so long that the light must have become a faint and distant memory. Some hovered eternally in the gray, never entirely choosing a side. There were, in fact, no actual sides, just the direction in which one happened to be moving. It was all relative.
Coming to that understanding gave him a new kind of strength. When Sith betrayed one another, it wasn't because they were enemies. Their paths had simply diverged. So fighting Maris wasn't turning his back on the dark side. She was simply in his way, like so many other people before him.
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The uniform his Master had given him on the Empirical now stank of rancor blood, and always would, no matter how he scrubbed at it.
Старкиллер сам чистит свою одежду.)
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With that, the hologram did dissolve and PROXY returned to his normal appearance and size. , "Ugh," the droid said with a shudder. "I hate being him."
The apprentice stood, deep in thought, and nodded. "I think he does, too."
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He encountered only one working droid and that was literally on its last legs. It swayed in circles on its sole working limb, whispering a single phrase of ancient machine code over and over again. Its blank photoreceptors stared at him but saw nothing.
Feeling sorry for it, he drew his lightsaber and sliced it in two. Spraying sparks, briefly, it fell dead to the bottom of the sewer, out of its mechanical misery at last.
Определённо у Старкиллера особые отношения с дроидами. :)
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Be quick, he told himself. That was the solution. Don't think too much about anything. Let your instincts guide you.
His instincts weren't doing a very good job on any other aspects of his life, but at least he was still alive. He felt safe trusting them once again, in the service of his distant Master.
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I am my Master's weapon, he thought. I lay waste to all that stands in his path. But where is the power in that? There are levels of mastery beyond the simple act of killing that Darth Vader has never taught me. One must be able to control without applying lethal force; otherwise there will soon be nothing left to control. It takes more than a really big stick to own the galaxy.
Fear, he decided. That was the key. People were afraid of his Master and the Emperor above him. If he was ever to rule as they did, he would have to learn that art himself. But from whom? Ami to what end? If Darth Vader taught him those secrets, he might rise up against his Master and wrest control of the galaxy from him. The teachings of the Sith-such as he had been exposed to, anyway-had little to say about limiting the desire for power. There could be no such limits. They were expressly forbidden.
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It looked like a death's-head, a ghastly mask not dissimilar to hi Master's, but one molten like lava. This could well be the end of everything, he thought distantly. Of him, of his plans, of his feelings for Juno, and of the boy called Galen who had lost a father a long time ago and whose grief had already been effectively erased
But his name had survived, and names had power. The apprentice clutched at it with desperation, needing to regain control of the Star Destroyer lest it tear itself apart and disperse the impact. He needed to find his focus again, to ignore the feeling of dissolution eating at the edges of his self, and to tip the balance of power back toward him.
Galen had stood up to Darth Vader as little more than a child Galen had wrested the lightsaber from a Dark Lord of the Sith and stood bravely in the face of death. Galen may have been ground down by years of training and darkness since, but was he truly gone-or had he just gone into hiding until the opportunity came to emerge back into the light?
Are you there, Galen? I need your help!
No answer came.
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She had felt furious at both of them. What was it about men that led them to agonize in silence, or to talk circles so tightly around the truth that they stifled it?
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Darth Vader strode through the doorway as though he owned the world. The squad of stormtroopers at his back obviously thought he did, too.
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She half laughed, half wept at her insane optimism as she hurried down the narrow stairwell to the Imperial hordes below.
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She could see his grief visibly turning to anger as he realized just how he had been played for a fool by his Master. It was difficult to put herself entirely in his shoes, but their lives did have several points of overlap: a disapproving father figure who had ultimately betrayed them; a sense of duty that had led them to commit acts they now knew were wrong; an increasingly uncertain future ahead of them.
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But now he understood. When he had turned to Juno at the base of the cliff and told her his name, it had been him telling her, not the ghost of his former self. Galen had ignored his summons on Raxus Prime because he was already there. He had possessed the strength to do what he needed to do. He always had. It was Galen as much as Darth Vader's apprentice who had invoked the thought of Juno to make him strong. They were one and the same person.
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His belly felt full of hydrogen at the thought of what had to happen next.
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They had just passed through a field keeping a thin atmosphere wrapped loosely around the massive structure. For the slaves, he assumed.
Вот интересная деталь: во время строительства ЗС вокруг неё был тонкий слой атмосферы для рабов.
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Their particular job, it seemed, was to keep an eye on a string of twenty slaves walking in chains from one location to another along the trench floor, and they performed it with the bare minimum of diligence while discussing the possibilities of promotion that would arise when the station was fully operational.
Штурмовики не самые старательные ребята.)))
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Sirens added a constant counterpoint, putting the apprentice's teeth on edge.
Аналогично, Гален, аналогично.
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With a Wookiee ahead and a Wookiee behind, the apprentice had plenty of time to get used to their smell. Or so he would have thought.
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That he might never know struck him as the greatest tragedy of all. How could one man's life simply disappear? How could another man, even Darth Vader, take a child and completely remold him, removing all traces of his former life and keeping the only part he wanted-the ability with the Force that he carefully nurtured and guided toward the dark side, in order that it might one day serve his own design? It didn't seem possible, and yet it was. He, who had once been Galen, son of a Jedi Knight on Kashyyyk, was proof of that.
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The port led into another shaft that was very dangerous, a point conveyed by vigorous flashing hand signals and fingers drawn numerous times across the throat. He couldn't tell exactly what the threat was, but he assured them both that he would be careful.
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WHEN HE REACHED THE TOP of the laser tube, he realized that his conception of the Death Star's weapons system hadn't been nearly grand enough. The laser he had been observing was just one of eight tributary lasers that would merge into one shockingly destructive beam. Carefully timed pulses down each of the eight channels would create a force capable of destroying any ship that he could think of. Possibly even a planet. He felt ill at the thought. Misinformation, slavery, and torture clearly weren't enough to keep the masses in line, so the Emperor was going to resort to genocide. If he wasn't stopped soon, there'd be no one left alive but him, cackling maniacally in the empty halls of Coruscant.
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"I understand you now," he said, still trying to goad his former Master into breaking his concentration. "You killed my father and kidnapped me from Kashyyyk, not just to be your apprentice, but to be a son to you. Was that how your father treated you?"
The intensity of Darth Vader's attack redoubled. "I have no father."
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The two came closer together until they were face-to-mask.
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Darth Vader's helmet had been ripped away by the blast. Beneath was the face of the man who had stolen and enslaved him, a pathetic, hairless thing covered in wrinkles and old scar tissue. Only the eyes showed the slightest signs of life: blue and full of pain, they stared up at him with undisguised weariness.
Интересно, почему синие глаза. Или Вейдер по ходу битвы переключился в Энакина? Странно.
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He shook his head, feeling the Emperor's influence sliding off him like oil. What had he been thinking? He didn't want to return to the dark side after everything he had been through. He had seen what it did, in Maris Brood, on Felucia, and in the eyes of Darth Vader. He didn't even want to kill his Master, now that he saw him humbled and at his mercy. That was where it had all started, he now realized. When Darth Vader had killed Galen's father and Galen had snatched the lightsaber from his hand, his intention had been solely to avenge his father's death. That had been what Vader had seen in him all those years ago, not just that he was strong with the Force-and that was why Galen had blotted out the person he had once been. He had taken that first step down the path of the dark side all on his own, before he had been subjected to Vader's cruel tutelage. He had to retract it now or submit to the dark side forever.
Murdering Darth Vader would accomplish nothing. Saving his friends might change the course of history.
Seen in that light, the decision was surprisingly easy.
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A squadron of stormtroopers ran into the room, led by a limping Darth Vader.
Я ржала-ржала, а потом пересмотрела катсцену - там действительно подбегают штурмовики во главе с ковыляющим лысым Вейдером XD
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"No!" the apprentice cried, dropping his defenses to strike one last time at the Imperials. Energy surged through him. He felt as though a star had blazed to life in his chest. Driven by concern for his friends rather than himself, he embraced the Force completely, utterly, and was rewarded with strength that made his efforts with the dark side look like those of a child. His nerves were on fire. Streamers of light radiated from his skin. His bones glowed like radiant lava.
He saw rather than felt the massive shock wave that consumed a large portion of what remained of the observation dome. A glowing bubble of fire tore the stormtroopers to shreds and engulfed Vader and the Emperor. Shrapnel filled the air like dust caught in the beam of the Death Star's powerful laser.
Tossed like a leaf, the Rogue Shadow fled in haste, ramp snapping shut on its precious cargo.
The apprentice felt himself leaving his body again. Or was his body leaving him this time? He felt ripped apart by the energy that had flowed through him. Every cell was in shock; every fiber shook. The fire on his face possessed no heat at all. His limbs felt as distant as the farthest arms of the galaxy. He was amazed there was enough left of him to think at all.
Weakened by the blast, the dome's supports gave way. It collapsed into the superlaser dish, triggering a series of conventional explosions.
И отдельно ещё вот это:
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Rescuing a blind old man was one thing; proving his worth to a fellow teenager-even one with Leia Organa's obvious abilities-was only marginally more difficult.
Но Старкиллер-то здесь не тинейджер. Это 2 ДБЯ. Вейдер нашёл Галена Марека в 18 ДБЯ, и уже тогда ему на вид было лет 5-6, не меньше. То есть сейчас ему должно быть уже немного за двадцать. Так что это было очень странно.
