The Death of Darth Vega
As the Shadowlaw coasted in its orbit around Coruscant, the Sith Lord
gazed out from the wide window of his quarters across the vast darkness of the
galaxy. The tiny pinpricks of stars and
the planet systems that populated them all brought a sinister smile to his
face; for the plans had been set in motion for centuries and soon -- so very,
very soon -- all of it would belong to him.
Nothing would stand in his way; nothing could stand in his way. Not
the Galactic Empire, not his ignorant rival, Darth Vader; not even the Emperor
himself. The Emperor: a guise that the
entire galaxy bought into. Darth Sidious
had conjured an amazing trick, but to rule the galaxy would require far more force than the mere existence of dual
personalities. Vega had foreseen
multiple outcomes of Sidious’ rise to power; all of them ended in his
death. The most prominent of these
visions were his end at the hands of the Skywalkers. But Vega was impatient and to wait several
more decades for Skywalker the Lesser to grow into his role as the Last of the
Jedi would be to leave his goals in the hands of abstract ideas such as fate
and destiny. Vega’s fate and destiny
were of his own design; meticulously plotted and calculated like a sculptor that
etched his finest work out of stone.
Even the arrival of Vader’s secret apprentice had been weaved into Vega’s
elaborate tapestry. No, not even Darth
Sidious himself could stand in Vega’s way of Galactic Conquest.
Starkiller
arrived on the Shadowlaw with an
impact that rocked the massive vessel. Once
inside, he navigated through the ship with the greatest of ease thanks to
schematics provided by Proxy pre-op. The
opposition he faced within the confines of the ship went down just as easily,
his green hued lightsaber sliced through flesh and droid alike. Not even a blaster bolt touched him or singed
the fabric of his tattered suit.
Unbeknownst to him, Darth Vega had rendered his defense droids moot and
had plagued his private soldiers with an acute case of exhaustion: a loss to
the Sith Lord, but a necessary one.
Starkiller unleashed a spherical
concentration of kinetic force at the sealed durasteel blast doors that could
only belong to the quarters of the Jedi he had been assigned to kill. His Master had given him explicit
instructions of not leaving anything to chance; that this Jedi must not survive
under any circumstances. The impact of
his hidden projectile bent the doors at the center and unhinged one from their
collective frame. Inside he could see
the Jedi clearly: he stood facing a massive window with his back towards
Starkiller. He wore a black cloak
secured at the shoulders by two guards, and a bright red cap atop his head that
suggested a militant order about him.
When he spun around to greet Starkiller, his appearance sent a shock
wave through the Force that rocked every nerve ending in Starkiller’s
body. It wasn’t the vibrant, red uniform
that he wore, or the metallic wrist guards that adorned it; nor was it the
winged skull on the face of his cap – the same symbol that Starkiller had seen
on the hull of the ship—or the pure whiteness of his eyes that felt absent of all life and
consciousness. It was the smile that
split the man’s face into two separate halves and the teeth that showed behind
his lips. It was vile, sinister; the smile
not of a Jedi, but of something dark and evil.
And though he had never met Darth Sidious and had never witnessed his
Master’s masked face bare a smile, Starkiller knew that the smile belonged to a
Sith Lord.
“You’re no Jedi,” Starkiller stated
bluntly.
“Nor are you,” the man said and then
something inexplicable happened.
The man no longer stood at the
window behind an ornate desk. He stood
directly in front of Starkiller, a mere yard away. In the cloud of chaotic confusion that clouded
Starkiller’s mind, the questions of what just happened and how is that possible
sparked like lightning before a storm.
Teleportation technology, although attempted, was impossible and
certainly unfeasible for an organic being.
Yet, that’s what Starkiller had just witness, for no one – not Jedi nor
Sith – could move so fast that without blinking, the young Sith apprentice
could have not seen it. In a manner of
seconds all of these thoughts passed through Starkiller’s mind before his instincts
took control of his body and ignited the youth’s lightsaber. It sparked to life and filled the darkened
room with a vibrant green ambiance. He
then struck out at the supposed Jedi with a similar technique he had used to enter
the room. The wave of Force energy
pushed the man in red back to the window where he hit it with a thumping
thud. The window cracked and
spider-webbed from the impact and Starkiller charged. He beckoned the Force to assist his movement
and was upon the man in a single leap and his saber fell fast to split the man
in half.
Yet it didn’t.
The green blade of his saber was
held at bay mere inches from the man’s face by a lightsaber of his own. One that defied everything that Starkiller
knew about the weapons and further defied everything he knew about the inner
workings of the universe itself. Its
blade was a void; devoid of all light, yet emitted an eerie, violet glow that
clashed against the green glow of his own weapon and illuminated those vacant,
dead eyes of his opponent.
Starkiller leapt backwards, his mind
full of questions, and watched the man in red rise to his feet. The stillness in the air between the two
provided Starkiller with the opportunity to reach out into the Force for some
kindle that would ignite the fire of understanding his conscious mind had
denied him. He found nothing. No, less than nothing. An entity of negative space: a void of an
unnatural manipulation of the Force itself; a hole torn into the fabric of
reality. Whomever – whatever – this man
was, he simply shouldn’t have been; his very existence an impossibility.
Once to his feet, the man in red
tore the black cloak free and tossed it away.
His saber, that dark horrible thing, ignited again and he launched
himself at Starkiller: the duel had become official.
Darth
Vega toyed with the apprentice of his rival for the better part of an
hour. He dodged and parried; deflected
and countered as the deadly dance of the duel progressed. His intentions were never to kill the
apprentice, but to challenge him in a manner that even Vader couldn’t
imagine. To increase the emotional
charge of the duel for the apprentice he even allowed the youth to land several
strikes against the armor on his shins, forearms and shoulders. The armor had been molded from an ore that,
once solidified from its liquid state, became near indestructible. Thus the apprentice’s saber did no damage and
left no marks. Then, it seemed, that the
music had ended and the dance was over.
It was time for Darth Vega to end this charade.
The
duel had exhausted Starkiller. His
muscles and joints ached and it seemed as though the Force itself had ceased to
provide him with any sort of support.
This man, whatever he was, was far more powerful than the two Jedi he
had previously faced and defeated and the void-like aura that surrounded this
being told him that the man even surpassed his Master in sheer power. Perhaps even the Emperor himself.
His lightsaber had grown too heavy
to wield with one hand, as his preferred style required of him. He took a traditional two handed stance for
his next flurry of attacks. All of which
he thought to be futile – and proved to be – as he felt death as it crept
closer and closer still as time passed on.
The duel’s conclusion approached fast and surely his opponent knew it as
well. Him with the vile weapon; him with the vile smile; him with the veil of
mystery that seemed to bastardize all in existence.
Still, better to die at the hands of
the enemy than to return to his Master in shame.
Then it happened.
The man in red spun around
violently, his dark saber making a grand arc through the air, and left himself
open. In less time than it took for him
to blink, Starkiller flipped the saber in the palm of his hand to his preferred
style and jammed the blade into the man in red’s chest to the hilt before the
man’s own foul weapon finished its path.
The intense heat of Starkiller’s green blade cauterized the wound and
let no blood flow freely. The opponent
dropped his weapon, which went dead as soon as it hit the floor, and fell to
his knees. Starkiller waited until all
traces of life left the man in red’s face before he withdrew his weapon. From the hole in the man’s chest erupted an
ethereal violet flame that consumed the entirety of him and left a pile of ash
and burning hot metal in his place. When
Starkiller touched the black lightsaber, it, too, was reduced to ash.
He stopped and stared in amazement
with thoughts roaring in his head.
Perhaps this whole ordeal had been nothing more than a figment of his
imagination. Or perhaps it was an
ancient trial concocted by the Sith and implored upon him by the Dark Lord that
was his Master. He accepted that and
agreed with himself with a silent nod that this was merely another test that
Darth Vader had set upon him. It was the
most logically satisfying resolution to the problem, the mystery, that his mind
could conjure up.
He deactivated his weapon and set out
to finish the task at hand.
“What happened in there?” Juno
Eclipse asked when he returned to his own ship, the Rogue Shadow.
“I…” Starkiller paused, his thoughts
were blank on the subject. “I don’t
remember. I remember boarding the ship
and now this. Everything is a blank.”
Juno stared at him. Her eyes and the expression on her face told
him everything he would want to know.
“I’m not crazy,” he said. He dismissed any further conversation and
went to Proxy. “Detonate it.”
The Shadowlaw erupted in a burst of immense flames then went black in
the vacuum of space as Juno pulled the Rogue
Shadow away. It was true, what he
told his pilot. There was a hole in his
memory between the time he entered the Shadowlaw
and when he departed. All that remained
in his mind’s eye of the event was the image of a terrible smile.
