Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 01_ Betrayal - Aaron Allston [193]
He paused and activated his lightsaber, listening.
He sensed the Dark Jedi coming long before he heard him.
Vader felt a presence slipping through doors and drawing closer. A sensation of melting ice shivered down what remained of his back, and he seized it: a little precious sliver of fear to be picked up and used. No—caution. His armor was not indestructible, and he was facing a Jedi this time. And he was still less than he had been when he was wholly flesh and blood.
Vader stepped out onto the lawn, clear of the trees, and waited like bait.
He didn’t have to wait long. He knew the man was there, watching him, for nearly a minute before he moved from a doorway out into the sunlight. Suddenly, to Vader’s right, another door opened and two women came out chatting with flimsi cups in their hands. They both looked at Vader, and then at his lightsaber, and rushed back inside, slamming the door after them.
That second was enough. The Dark Jedi took his lightsaber hilt in both hands and jerked his arms apart, releasing two beams, a red one in his left hand and a white one in the other. Vader had a brief thought that it was a marvelous piece of theatrics until the man came at him whirling the sabers slowly like a juggler preparing to perform with clubs. And the white blade whisked so close to his helmet that he had his own lightsaber raised and blocking it before he even had time to think.
“Cuis, Lord Vader,” said the man. “Nothing personal, believe me.”
Vader matched him step for step in the standoff as they circled each other. Nothing personal. Perhaps Cuis thought that an ice-cold act would intimidate him. But it was anger and all the other brutal emotions that would win the fight. Vader lunged.
My Master wants me dead.
He brought his saber down hard in a straight arc and Cuis blocked it with both of his, rasping them straight down its length as if sharpening a metal blade. Vader withdrew and sliced upward, then feinted to the left, wrong-footing the Jedi, who leapt back against the trunk of one of the trees. Vader made a double lunge on his right leg, dipping under the swirling twin beams.
He needed to force Cuis into a confined space to deny him the advantage of two lightsabers. There had once been a boy called Anakin who could have done that with sheer technique, but he was forgotten, and the transformed man that was Vader opted for sheer power and began a fast, furious slashing assault, slicing through a tree trunk as Cuis dodged behind it.
My Master forced me to live and now he wants me dead.
The trunk creaked and toppled and Cuis deflected the weight of branches with the Force. It bought Vader a second. He used it to send Cuis’s white beam spinning into the fountain, clattering down the wet stones. As Cuis’s remaining lightsaber flew from his left to his right hand, Vader intercepted it, jerking it high into the air and using the Force to throw it to the other side of the courtyard, out of reach.
Cuis leapt high and saved his legs form a savage low sweep, but his opponent had him backed up almost into the angle of the walls. Vader couldn’t match Cuis’s agility, so instead he reached out with his left hand: the Force seized Cuis’s throat.
It gave Vader a familiar and painful jolt of recognition. He shut out what he knew was a memory. Instead he concentrated on using a wholly unexpected surge of rage and hatred to flood the gap it left and overwhelm it. Cuis staggered back against the wall, struggling against Vader’s remote, crushing grip with his own Force power. Then he sank to his knees, shaking with the effort. Vader forced him lower, and lower.
He could have killed him in that instant.
He relaxed his grip enough to let Cuis suck in a rattling gasp of air and held him there, suddenly aware of faces that appeared