Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II by Sean Williams Read Free Book Online

his first real targets, apart from PROXY droids. Only when he had proven himself capable had the Dark Lord deemed him worthy of combat with him.
    Starkiller orbited Cato Neimoidia once, safe in Darth Vader’s TIE fighter, and simply stared. He had been down a pit on Kamino for thirteen days, and in Vader’s clutches for what felt like a lifetime. He had forgotten what sunlight looked like. He had forgotten what it felt like to be a free agent. There was so much he had forgotten, and so much that was slowly coming back to him.
    Juno.
    She felt strangely close, even though he had no reason to suspect that she was nearby. In his mind, she was coming clearer with every hour. He couldn’t believe that she had almost slipped away. Oh, he understood it well enough. He knew all about Darth Vader’s mind games and the power of the dark side. He had lived with it, and prospered from that, too, in his original lifetime. He could exert his will over others in order to get what he wanted, but he didn’t doubt that… didn’t doubt that Vader had almost succeeded in driving every last memory of the woman Starkiller had loved from his mind.
    Now she was back, and it seemed incomprehensible to him that she had ever gone away. Even when he had lost everything in his former life, when every last hope of victory had been taken from him, he had thought of her. His demise had meant nothing compared with the knowledge that she had escaped safely from the Emperor’s deadly space station.
    Then… death. And revival. And forgetting, powerlessness, and fear.
    But now he was back. Nothing could stand between him and Juno. Nor for long, anyway. With her ahead of him, leading him on, he felt stronger than ever.
    From the depths of his memory, he heard the murdered Jedi Master Shaak Ti: ” You could be so much more. “
    Then his own voice, speaking not to her, but to Juno, in another place, another time: “The Force is stronger than anything we can imagine. We’re the ones who limit it, not the other way around. “
    Starkiller breathed deeply and closed his eyes. His mind was just one speck in the endlessly shifting sea that was the galaxy. He felt the eddies and currents of the combined life force of every living thing sway through him-and with only a small effort he detached himself from himself and joined that flow, seeking the one he needed.
    The roar of a crowd filled his mind. Movement scattered his mental vision, made it hard to make our anything specific. Was that fluttering wings, or banners? He couldn’t quite tell. Figures that might have been beings glowed blue all around him. Above him hung a giant eye, staring downward.
    Are you still with me, Kota?
    His vision shifted, became red-tinged-deeply red, as though someone had cut the throat of a giant beast and drained it onto the ground. Something snarled. Something roared. There was a flurry of limbs, a wild rush of violent intent.
    “It’s all in your mind, boy, ” said Kota from his memory.
    Green light flashed. More blood. Severed limbs fell onto the dirt. The crowd roared.
    General Rahm Kota, leaning back on his heels, breathing heavily, surrounded by a ring of corpses. How long had he been fighting now? Six days? Seven? Fatigue was taking its toll. With every wave he came closer to making a mistake-and when that happened, it would all finally be over.
    Starkiller opened his eyes. His lips were pressed into a thin line.
    “Hold on, old man, ” he whispered, and brought Darth Vader’s TIE fighter smoothly our of orbit.
    The Imperial forces on Cato Neimoidia were clustered around one particular bridge city suspended over a deep sinkhole that led an unfathomable distance into the planet’s crust. Why? Perhaps the local dictator liked to throw his prisoners off the edge so they would serve as examples to their friends. Starkiller didn’t care. He wasn’t going over the edge. He was coming for just one thing: to rescue General Kota, or at the very least learn from him where