Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [51]
And the man who lay crumpled at his feet didn’t look like Shadowspawn at all anymore: his shaven head was streaked with blood that still leaked from the hundreds of tiny puncture wounds left by the crystal filaments inside the Moon Hat. Behind the blood, his skin was dark as stimcaf, and when he lifted his face, his eyes were a wholly extraordinary shade of vivid blue. “Kill me,” he croaked. “Skywalker, you have to kill me …”
“You don’t need to be killed,” Luke said. “You need to be rescued.”
“Too late … too late for that …” He spoke with an accent Luke hadn’t heard before, and his voice bore not the slightest resemblance to the faux-Vader rumble of Shadowspawn. “Kill me, and kill yourself … if you don’t, you’ll become me …”
“You wouldn’t be the first guy to be wrong about what I’m going to become.” Luke dropped to one knee beside him. “Who are you?”
“Call me … Nick. I thought you …” He coughed weakly, and forced an unsteady smile. “Are you related to Anakin Skywalker? He’d have … smoked me without a second thought.”
“Yeah, well,” Luke said with a slightly unsteady smile of his own, “I’m not the man he was.”
“Too bad … could use a guy like him right about now …”
“But all we’ve got is us. Can you get up?”
“Sure, kid, sure. Someday.” He twisted his head to look back down along the rock bridge to the tunnel’s mouth, where the clustered stormtroopers still stood with their blasters slung. “They’re not shooting. Why aren’t they shooting?”
Luke squinted at them consideringly for a moment, then shrugged. “Maybe it’s because I won.”
“What?”
“How much do you remember? You ordered them to serve me, if I defeated you.”
“Oh, I remember … ’s just that—” He shook his head. “Wasn’t … exactly me.”
“I figured that out,” Luke said dryly. “But if we’re lucky, they haven’t.” He stood, and pointed the blade of his lightsaber at the two closest troopers. “You and you—come out here and assist this man. That’s an order.”
Without even an instant’s hesitation or so much as an exchange of glances, the two troopers shouldered their weapons and marched out onto the rock bridge. Luke murmured, “It can’t be this easy …”
“Got that right,” the erstwhile Lord Shadowspawn—Nick—said. “Listen—that headgear. You gotta understand. It’s a device—a machine—Sith alchemy—”
“There really is such a thing as Sith alchemy? That wasn’t part of the act?”
“Look at my head, Skywalker. That blood look like an act to you?” He shut his eyes and gathered strength with a deep breath. “There are … crystals implanted in my brain. That headgear concentrates the Dark—what you call the Force—so that Cronal … Blackhole … can use me like a puppet. He can see through my eyes, hear with my ears … the more Force-touch you have, the more he can do with you. That’s why he made me into Shadowspawn …”
Luke blinked. “Those other officers—the Moon Hats—”
“They’re none of them exactly volunteers,” Nick said. “Minor-league Force-sensitives. That’s what the raids have really been after. He kidnaps them, puts them through the surgery, slaps the headgear on ’em, and then they not only become his puppets but also his eyes and ears. And hands. And mouth.”
“They’re all innocent?”
“Most are. Some are like me.” Nick tilted his head. “It’s been a while since I was innocent of anything.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that.”
“After five years of war, you’re still not sure? Maybe you haven’t been paying attention.” He waved a hand. “Forget it. Blackhole and me—we tangled while he was … uh, recruiting … out in the Outer Rim. I chased him till he caught me.”
“You chased him?”
“Him and others. Got my own reasons … to hate