Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor Part 13

A recorded voice came from R2-D2's speaker. "What if whoever shows up isn't a Jedi?"

The Aeona-image answered, "Then we take their ship and leave 'em to the Melters. Saves having to kill them ourselves."

Han snarled something that would have been a curse if it had come out in words as he whirled, drew the KYD, and squeezed the trigger just as the emitter centered on Aeona's forehead.

It made a dry click.

"Say, you are fast." She grinned at him. "Sorry about the blaster-somebody must have pulled the power cell. So I guess it wasn't exactly a fair trade after all, huh?"

She drew his beloved BlasTech and leveled it at Han's face. "This next trade won't be exactly fair either," she said. "Because I also really like your ship."

CHAPTER 10.

Deep in darkness, lingering in the shadow cast by the holoeditor's imaging screen that was the chamber's only light, an old, old man practiced his Luke Skywalker impression.

"Listen to me, Blackhole or Shadowsp.a.w.n or whoever you are," he murmured, forcing his leathery mouth to shape the rounded vowels and mushy consonants of Skywalker's barbarous Outer Rim accent. "I'm a Jedi, but I never had time for all the training some of the old Jedi were supposed to get... No, no no. Not geht. Almost git-really, barely a vowel at all. G't."

The old, old man sighed. To spend the balance of a human lifetime pretending to be a half-educated rube .. . ultimately, the reward would be worth the sacrifice, of course, and no one would ever know his private humiliation, but still...

Perhaps after a decade or two ruling the reborn Empire, he could allow himself to slowly "pick up" a properly civilized mode of speech, but until then he'd have to keep up the pretense. Perhaps the only thing that could undermine his ultimate victory would be to have these Rebel sc.u.m notice that their pet Jedi had suddenly begun talking as if he'd been educated on Coruscant by way of Dromund Kaas.

A desiccated finger stretched forth to key the holoeditor and run the recording back two minutes, so that he could study again every slightest detail of Skywalker's bearing, his walk, his gestures, the angle of his head, every faintest twitch of his eyebrows. This was critical to the old, old man's plans; these few recordings, taken from the holocameras embedded in the stygium armor of his black stormtroopers, and from the concealed recorders in the Cavern of the Shadow Throne, were all he had with which to study the real Luke Skywalker.

Yes, there were all those numberless holothrillers-and studying them had been a useful preparation, especially in creating the theatrical Shadowsp.a.w.n persona and devising the stage dressings of the Shadow Throne-but the computer-generated Farmboy Hero depicted by these holothrillers would convince none but the ignorantly credulous fans who devoured such preposterously contrived tripe.

When Luke Skywalker emerged from the Battle of Mindor, no one must even suspect that this legendary Jedi hero was only a sh.e.l.l: a living, breathing life-support system for the mind of this old, old man.

This old, old man who once had been known to a select few as Lord Cronal, director of Imperial Intelligence... and to many, many unfortunate enemies of the Empire as Blackhole, the Emperor's Hand .. . and who would, after today, be known to the entire galaxy as Luke, the First Skywalker Emperor.

Cronal's rise to power had started with a vision: a vision of the Dark.

More than a vision, in fact; more than a simple prophecy, or precognition. To the Nightsisters of Dathomir, it was the Heartshadow. Other Force users had other names for it.

But Cronal called it simply Darksight.

Deep in the area ignorantly described by the Old Republic, and later the Empire, as the "Unknown Regions," there was a vast cloud of dust and rock and interstellar gas that pulsed with a b.l.o.o.d.y and forbidding scarlet glow as it radiated away the energy of twelve stellar cl.u.s.ters within. This was the Perann Nebula; the twelve cl.u.s.ters that it surrounded were known collectively as the Nihil Retreat. The absolute rulers of the Nihil Retreat, dreaded masters of darkmagicks beyond the grasp of even the Sith, were the Sorcerers of Rhand.

The Sorcerers of Rhand were the only family Cronal would ever know. The Rhandites had plucked him from the arms of the nameless woman who had borne him, and had forged him as a weapon is forged, awakening his insight, refining his will, opening his mind to the One Truth: Only power is real, and the only real power is the power to destroy. Existence is fleeting. Destruction is eternal.

Every child was born waiting for death. Civilizations fell, and their very ashes were swallowed by time. The stars themselves burned out. Destruction, on the other hand...

Destruction was the will of the universe.

Some called it entropy, and tried to quantify and constrain it with the laws of thermodynamics. Some expressed it with a simple poetic declarative: Things fall apart. Some even tried to dismiss it with a joke: Anything that can go wrong will. But it was not a joke, or poetry; it was not science, nor was it subject to any law.

It was the Way of the Dark.

Destruction was easy... and permanent. When a being was killed, everything he or she would have ever done or possessed, seen or felt, was murdered. And that murder made a permanent change in the structure of the universe-it emptied the universe of an entire life, and left behind only a void.

That void was the foundation of truth.

That was why the Jedi and the Sith would remain forever locked in their pointless battle: because all their philosophy of light versus dark, of service versus mastery, was as meaningless as the whistle of wind through desert rocks. Service and mastery were equally futile, even illusory, in the face of the One Truth. All the endless Jedi vs. Sith nattering of "the dark side of the Force" blinded them one and all to the bare reality that there was nothing but the Dark.

The Dark was not a side of the Force, and it was no mere portion of reality. It was reality. The Sorcerers of Rhand had never spoken of the Force, and Cronal was to this day unsure whether they would have had any understanding of how the Force was viewed and spoken of in the rest of the galaxy. To the Rhandites, it was only the Dark, and the only pertinent feature of the Dark was that it would respond to the will of a properly trained being, so long as that being's will was in line with the Way of the Dark.

It was the Dark that set world against world, nation against nation, sibling against sibling, child against parent. It was the Dark that brought pestilence and starvation, hatred and war. The Dark was the hidden energy of the cosmos itself: that which pressed galaxy away from galaxy, star away from star until finally each and every world would fade within its own private black hole, moving too swiftly from its neighbors for their light to overtake it.

This was why Cronal had chosen the code name Blackhole: because he had willed himself to become an event horizon of the Dark. And of all the powers the Dark granted its adepts, the greatest was Darksight. It was Darksight that had led Cronal far from the Nihil Retreat, beyond the Perann Nebula and out of the Unknown Regions altogether, in search of the truth of his visions. It was Darksight that had led him to Dromund Kaas, where he had easily infiltrated and come to dominate that pack of pathetic, self-deluded fools who styled themselves Prophets of the Dark Side.

Imagine, to waste one's brief foray in life, the fleeting bright instant between the infinite dark before and the eternal dark beyond, in mere study-in trying to learn to use the "dark side of the Force" to merely predict the future.

With Darksight, Cronal could create the future. He was familiar, in concept, with the pale shadow-imitation of Darksight that had supposedly been employed by some exceptional Jedi and certain among the Sith-the pathetic conjuror's trick they called battle meditation. Through ma.s.sive concentration and expenditure of energy, they claimed to subtly influence the course of a single combat, or, for the most powerful among them, an engagement of greater forces, like armies in collision or fleet-to-fleet battles.

They claimed that their simplistic Force powered visualization of a desired outcome would subtly shift probabilities and grant them luck, that it would inspire their allies and demoralize their enemies. Of course, these claims could never be proven, or disproven; any charlatan might simply take credit for any random victory, or ascribe a defeat to the will of the Force-or a supposedly more powerful Force-user practicing his or her own "battle meditation" in service to the opposite side...

Battle meditation. Idiots.

Anyone trained by the Rhandites could have told them: any and all battles, all wars, the very concept of battle itself, served but a single end. Their only function was destruction. Only by setting one's will upon pure destruction could victory be achieved.

When your will was fixed steadily upon the Way of the Dark, the Dark itself became your partner in all that you did.

Cronal was living proof of this truth. It was Cronal's Darksight that had attracted the attention of Palpatine and brought Vader to Dromund Kaas; even Kadann, the fool who pretended to be the Supreme Prophet of the Dark Side, never suspected how entirely his order served not some fantasy of Sith power, but the Dark itself.. . because Cronal had made it so. Palpatine had plucked Cronal from the Prophets and set him apart from even the other elite Emperor's Hands, for Palpatine had been swift to recognize that his was a gift that transcended mere prophecy. Any fool with a trace of ability could see echoes of the future-Palpatine himself was rather good at it-but Cronal's ability transcended mere prophecy as hyperdrive transcends the wings of a shadowmoth.

Palpatine had been impressed with the "accuracy" of Cronal's "predictions"... yet not even the great Darth Sidious had ever suspected that Cronal's predictions were accurate not because Cronal had seen the future, but because he had chosen that future.

That exact future.

He had decided, and his choice had molded all of history to his will.

That was the power of Darksight: to search among all the possible futures for the one that best suited your own desire and the Way of the Dark... and then to map each step that must be taken to bring you to that future, and bring that future to you.

But to make it happen, you had to bind your desire to the Dark, and dream only of destruction.

Palpatine had been a fool. He had thought he could make the Dark serve him, instead of the opposite. In the days of the Old Republic, before he had revealed his Sith ident.i.ty, Palpatine literally could not fail. Every blind flailing gesture of every Jedi who'd set himself against him had turned to his advantage, and even the sheerest accidents of fortune had served his goal... because that goal had been the destruction of the Jedi Order, and the death of the Republic. He'd served the Dark unknowingly, all the while believing that the Dark was only a means to an end, a tool to help him destroy his enemies and clear his path to absolute power.

What he'd never understood was that destruction was his power. As soon as he'd turned his will to rulership, to building instead of destroying, he had forsaken the Way of the Dark... and everything had begun to go wrong for him. Where before he could not fail, now he'd had no chance of succeeding, because when you turn your back on the Dark, the Dark turns its back on you.

Only days after the Battle of Yavin, Cronal had cast his mind deep into the void, seeking the future of the young Rebel pilot who had destroyed the Death Star, and had found him as an older, more seasoned man, dressed in dark robes-and bearing a lightsaber.

Kneeling before the Emperor, to swear his allegiance to the dark side.

My fate... will be the same as my fathers.

Which was when Cronal finally understood who Darth Vader was, and saw the terrible flaw that would bring the Order of the Sith to its ultimate destruction. A destruction that Cronal not only was determined to survive, but was certain he could transform into an eternal victory for the Dark.

And, not incidentally, eternal life for himself.

Near to eternal, anyway; as long as a single living thing struggled and suffered and fed the Dark with killing and dying, Cronal would be here. His ultimate sacrifice to the Dark would be the survival of his consciousness until the heat death of the Universe... when he would be joined forever with the final oblivion of all that had ever been. All that will ever be.

He would be the last.

Slowly, subtly, through the months and years from Yavin to Endor, Cronal had served his vision. A delicate balance had had to be meticulously maintained, to navigate the intricacies of the relation-ship between Palpatine and Vader... to inculcate a rivalry with the half-mechanical terror that Palpatine had elevated to the rank of Lord of the Sith. For all his undoubted physical power, Vader had never been more than a blunt instrument, with no real understanding of the truth of the Dark, nor of the uses of real power. He had been, all in all, only a thug with a lightsaber... and, as it proved, a weakhearted, emotionally crippled, impulsively treasonous thug at that.

Though Vader could never have been Cronal's equal in coursing the mazy paths of dark power, it had served Cronal's purpose to pretend jealousy-even to appear to fail, more than once, and to openly bridle under Vader's supposed authority, so that Palpatine had begun to suspect that Cronal might deliberately sabotage the monster's operations. Thus it was that he had persuaded-subtly, oh-so-delicately, so that the Emperor believed to the day of his death that it had all been his own idea-that Cronal could better serve the Empire from afar, away from Coruscant, away from the prying optical receptors of Vader's ridiculous helmet. Away from the entirely too keen vision, both physical and mystic, of Palpatine himself.

Out among the forgotten fringes of the galaxy, Cronal had appeared to merely bide his time, running minor operations through his private networks of agents, while in truth he had devoted his life to searching out forgotten lore of the ancient Sith and other supposed masters of the Dark. If they had done so much damage even with their limited understanding of the Dark, how much greater destruction might be wrought by one who knew all their secrets, and also knew the One Truth?

He traveled in secret, deep into the Unknown Regions, following his Darksight vision to worlds so ancient that even legend had no memory of them. Among the drifting moon trees that flowered in the interstellar s.p.a.ce of the Gunninga Gap, he was able to discover and a.s.semble sc.r.a.ps of the Taurannik Codex, which had been destroyed in the Muurshantre Extinction a hundred millennia before; arcane hints in that forbidden tome led him to the Valtaullu Rift and the shattered asteroid belt that once had been the planet-sized Temple of Korman Lao, the Lord Ravager of the long-vanished race of demon-worshipping reptoids known as the Kanzer Exiles. The lore in the Temple fragments gave him the knowledge he needed to capture the corrupt spirit essence of Dathka Graush, to rip it free from its resting place in Korriban's Valley of Golg, to eventually extract and consume even the most secret lore of Sith alchemy that the ancient tyrant had carried to his grave.

And that ancient Sith alchemy had given him the knowledge to forge a device to control the living crystal that formed the structure of Mindorese meltma.s.sif...

Because the Emperor had once confided in him that the transference of the spirit to another was a pathway to the ultimate goal of a Sith: to cheat death. Of course, he had been thinking of clones, but Cronal's plans were more ambitious; if such a feat was possible, he determined that he would perform it-and not to a mere clone body, either. After all, his own body had never been strong, and his service to the Dark had eaten away what little strength he'd had until he could no longer stand-until he could no longer feed himself, or even breathe without the life-support functions built into his gravity chair. Why should he settle for exchanging his flawed and failing body for another of the same model, every bit as certain to fail?

No. His devotion to the Way of the Dark had shown him a path to power greater than Palpatine could have ever dreamed: to transfer his consciousness permanently into a body that was young, that was healthy and handsome in a way Cronal had never been. A body more powerful in the Force than Vader, potentially more powerful even than Palpatine. The body of a true hero, beloved by all right-thinking citizens in the galaxy as the very symbol of truth and justice . ..

He would not simply turn Luke Skywalker to the service of the Dark. Why should he? Luke Skywalker served the Dark already, without ever guessing; he had powers of destruction that humbled even the Death Star.

No: Cronal would become Luke Skywalker, and serve the Dark himself.

Reclining in his life-support chamber, Cronal shut down the holoeditor. He had enough material already to persuasively make the case to the Republic as to why the stormtroopers would release him, even serve him, once he had become Skywalker. This was why his top commanders were all clones; he was counting on their conditioned obedience to even the most outrageous orders. Then the galaxy-wide release of his own little reality holodrama would make him-that is, Luke-even more famous, even more beloved, as the hero who had stood alone against the mad warlord Shadowsp.a.w.n and single-handedly ended his reign of terror...

He actually found himself getting a bit giddy. He cackled softly as he indulged a fleeting fantasy of allowing Skywalker to awaken in the Flection Center, so that Cronal could spend his last moments in this decaying body gloating, and boasting, and explaining to Skywalker every last detail of his fiendish plan.

That would be in character, wouldn't it?

It's what "Shadowsp.a.w.n" would do, at any rate... but, sadly, it was not to be. However amusing it might have been, the risk was too great. Darksight, however powerful, was not perfect.

There was, after all, that slight issue about his puppet Shadowsp.a.w.n surviving the climax of Cronal's little holothriller. That punch to the forehead... it was all wrong. The final blow should have been delivered with the blade of Skywalker's lightsaber. That was how Cronal had planned it. How he had seen it.

The lesson was clear: something could still go wrong. No more time would he waste in rehearsal. He must finish this. Now.

He closed his eyes and drove his mind into the Dark.

First he set his will upon the hairline web of meltma.s.sif he'd grown within his own body: an ultrafine network that replicated his nervous system like a shadow cast in mineral crystals. Then he reached forth his hand in the darkness of his life-support sh.e.l.l and stroked the control that would lower the Sunset Crown from its compartment behind his headrest. Once the Sunset Grown was in place upon his head, he no longer had need of controls. He had no need of hands, or mouth, or eyes.

The Sunset Crown was his great achievement, the device that had been the object of his long quest into the depths of Sith alchemy; it was a transmitter, a transformer, that worked via the Force instead of electromagnetism. It converted his disciplined will into a signal that could interact directly with the unique electrochemical structure of meltma.s.sif... and with the alien beings who used meltma.s.sif as an anchor, a physical form to localize their energy-based consciousness, even as a human nervous system anch.o.r.ed and localized the energy-based consciousness called the human mind.

He had used this device to create the p.a.w.ns, those mind-locked technozombies who had become Cronal's eyes and mouths and hands; the p.a.w.ns were not only a conduit for his orders, but a necessary stepping-stone on his path toward self-transformation. Each p.a.w.n had been chosen because he or she could touch the Dark-what the ignorant Jedi and the deluded Sith called being "Force-sensitive"-and because their wills could be utterly controlled by his own, through the Sunset Crown's influence over the crystals of meltma.s.sif seeded within their skulls. On his command, their wills would align with his own and provide the added boost to his own Dark-touch necessary to make the transfer of his consciousness permanent.

When his mind awakened the power of the Sunset Crown, it sent his consciousness outward, an expanding sphere of will. When it touched the crystals in the meltma.s.sif that lined every tunnel, every chamber, every nook and cranny of his entire vast base, the crystals resonated with the frequency of his desire, like a sounding board the size of the surrounding volcanic dome. He became the base, and the base became him; all within the base registered in the part of his brain that had once only registered his kinesthetic sense of his body position.

Throughout the base, his thirty-nine most Force-powerful p.a.w.ns instantly dropped what they were doing and converged on the Election Center, where Luke Skywalker already lay embedded in the hardened stone of the primary p.a.w.ning Table, his lightsaber buried in the rock beside him.

The fortieth, and most powerful, p.a.w.n was already there: his puppet Shadowsp.a.w.n, having unexpectedly survived the climax of Cronal's little holothriller, had been delivered to the same chamber. When this was all over, Cronal intended to discover exactly why the deadman interlock in "Shadowsp.a.w.n"'s Crown had failed to activate, but until then, there was no reason to simply discard him; he had a great deal of Force potential-worth ten of the others-and so Cronal had simply directed that "Shadowsp.a.w.n" 's Crown be recovered and replaced. Adding him to the p.a.w.ns for the focusing would substantially accelerate both the neurocrystalline interpenetration and the consciousness transfer itself.

#Unlike what occurred during the standard p.a.w.ning process that Cronal had painstakingly developed, Skywalker had not had his hair Hash-burned away, had not had his skull opened and crystals implanted in his brain. No neurosurgery, not for Skywalker, nothing that might leave a suspicion-arousing scar.

He lay wholly within the meltma.s.sif, buried alive with not even a breathing tube. Well, semi-alive: in full thanatizine II suspension, he-had at least another hour before he would next need to take a breath. Before that breath would come, the combined power and perception Cronal channeled through the p.a.w.ns would have induced the meltma.s.sif surrounding Skywalker's body to pierce his skin with invisibly fine needles of living crystal... they would enter through every pore, through his mouth and his nose, his ears, his tongue... and with the arcane powers he had ripped from the spirit of the ancient King of the Sith, Cronal would shape those crystals within Skywalker's body as he had shaped the ones in his own: into a webwork mirror of the young Jedi's nervous system.

Then Cronal would simply close his eyes and pour forth his consciousness like water into a waiting jug. With a twist of will-for thanatizine II only affected the organic body and would have no effect upon the crystalline neuroweb-he would liquefy the meltma.s.sif of the p.a.w.ning Table and arise, quite literally, a new man. When he opened his eyes again, those eyes would be blue.

And he would extend his hand, and the Force would answer his call, bringing Skywalker's lightsaber-no, Cronal's lightsaber-up from the same meltma.s.sif, because what was a Jedi without the Jedi weapon?

And should anything go wrong, well...

Should anything at all go wrong, the last living Jedi-the last being in the galaxy that Cronal would ever have any reason to fear-was already buried alive; all that Cronal might need to change in that description would be the word alive.

CHAPTER 11.

Lando stood at the forward viewscreens of the Remember Alderaan's bridge, watching as the battle cruiser's A-wing squadrons mopped up the last of the marauding interceptors that had been attacking the Slash-Es. He nodded-the Mandalorians were proving to be every bit as good as their reputation claimed-and turned to the Remember Alderaan's commander. "Well done, Captain," he said. "Recall all fighters and initiate search and rescue. And see to it that when Lord Mandalore lands, he receives my compliments and grat.i.tude, as well as my urgent request for the honor of his company at his earliest convenience."

The captain nodded. "As the general orders."

Lando turned to the ComOps officer. "Get me a secure channel with Commander Antilles of Rogue Squadron."

"Um, subs.p.a.ce is heavily jammed, General..."

"Okay," Lando said with an agreeable smile that somehow didn't look the slightest bit friendly. "Now that we've got that straightened out, get me a secure channel with Captain Antilles."

The ComOps officer swallowed and turned back to his console. "Yes, sir."

"And when you get that channel," Lando said crisply, coming to a snap decision, "tell him I'm waiting for him in the Deck Seven fighter bay."

"Sir."

"Tell him that I've been waiting. Remind him that I don't like waiting. And let Lord Mandalore know where we are." He spun and headed for the turbolift. He jabbed a finger at C-3P0, who had been inconspicuously eavesdropping by an engineering console. "You. With me."

"Me? Really? But, but, General Calrissian..."

"Now," Lando said as he pa.s.sed.

"That's a bit brusque, isn't it?" C-3P0 nonetheless shuffled into the turbolift after him. "Please, General Calrissian, you do seem, if you don't mind my mentioning, just the slightest bit agitated..."