Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [47]
“Don’t bother,” Luke said. “I can manage on my own.”
He walked out onto the long, narrow bridge of rock, using his slow progress to breathe himself deeply into Force awareness. He could feel the trap now.
As he neared the end of the bridge, Shadowspawn raised a fist as though to hurl thunderbolts. “You are beaten, Skywalker!”
“Don’t bet your life on it.”
Shadowspawn’s fist hung in the air as if he’d forgotten he’d raised it. “I have done what the vain, arrogant Emperor and his pathetic hound Vader never could! I have defeated Luke Skywalker!”
“Not yet,” Luke said. “Or if it makes you feel better, I can say ‘Do not underestimate my power.’ ”
“I hold your fleet in the palm of my hand—my gravity weapons will destroy this entire system. Not one ship will escape!”
“That’s a problem,” Luke admitted. “But that means none of your ships will escape, either. Which is why I came to see you. Don’t you think that together we might find some, well, less-lethal solution?”
“You came here,” Shadowspawn intoned, “to kill me.”
Luke spread his hands. “I told your troopers outside that I’m hoping to end the day with nobody else dying.”
“In this—” Shadowspawn finally lowered his fist and rested it on the hilt of his scabbarded sword. “—you are doomed to disappointment.”
“You don’t want to do that.”
“Your Jedi tricks mean nothing to me!”
“No—no, I mean it.” Luke frowned. “You really don’t want to do that. I can feel that you don’t.”
He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Blackhole—that is you, isn’t it? What’s going on? Why the playacting?” He glanced around—in the Force, he could feel eyes upon him, many eyes, more than the company of stormtroopers on the ledge behind him. “Are you recording this?”
“Fool!” Shadowspawn thundered as he drew forth his sword. “Kneel, or die!”
The blade was huge, a hand wide and half again longer than Luke’s lightsaber, and it appeared to have been cut from faceted crystal, like a single vast diamond. As Shadowspawn pulled it free from the scabbard, it kindled with a scarlet glare, as though it had gathered to itself the light of the lava pool below. It was, Luke mused, the same color as Vader’s. Was that why this all felt, well, staged?
But staged or not, there was a limit to how far Luke was willing to play along.
“Listen to me, Blackhole or Shadowspawn or whoever you are,” he said quietly. “I’m a Jedi, but I never had time for all the training some of the old Jedi were supposed to get. I’ve heard they tried to end conflicts without violence … but that’s something I’m still learning. Do you understand? If you attack me, I will hurt you. If hurting you isn’t enough, I will kill you.”
“You think you can defeat me? Fool! This blade is the product of untold millennia of Sith alchemy! Against such power, your Jedi toy is but a broken reed!”
“Sith alchemy?” Luke squinted at him. “Are you kidding?”
“Come, Skywalker! Summon your blade and fight! Destroy me, and my men will instead serve you!”
Luke blinked. “What?”
“Legions of Shadow! Hear the word of your Lord!” Shadowspawn lifted his blade above his head, and the cavern shivered with the power of his voice. “If this Jedi pup can defeat the Lord of the Shadow Throne, you will be his! Obey his every word as you would my own! Thus is the command of Shadowspawn!”
“Really?” Luke frowned. “So if I beat you …”
“My legions are bred to absolute obedience. They will obey my command until their deaths, or my own … when they will serve the command of Luke Skywalker, instead.”
And from the Force, Luke got the distinct feeling that Shadowspawn was actually, inexplicably, telling the truth.
Luke extended his right hand. From far back in the cavern, on the ledge at the tunnel’s mouth, green fire crackled and spat from his lightsaber as it wrenched itself from the Moon Hat’s grip and rose into the air. It whirled and spun and soared through the