Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [284]
“Trust in this, we always will. Go now; for happy news, your Queen is waiting.”
Bail Organa bowed, and vanished into the corridor.
When Obi-Wan moved to follow, Yoda’s gimer stick barred his way. “A moment, Master Kenobi. In your solitude on Tatooine, training I have for you. I and my new Master.”
Obi-Wan blinked. “Your new Master?”
“Yes.” Yoda smiled up at him. “And your old one …”
C-3PO shuffled along the starship’s hallway beside R2-D2, following Senator Organa who had, by all accounts, inherited them both. “I’m certain I can’t say why she malfunctioned,” he was telling the little astromech. “Organics are so terribly complicated, you know.”
Ahead, the Senator was met by a man whose uniform, C-3PO’s conformation-recognition algorithm informed him, indicated he was a captain in the Royal Alderaan Civil Fleet.
“I’m placing these droids in your care,” the Senator said. “Have them cleaned, polished, and refitted with the best of everything; they will belong to my new daughter.”
“How lovely!” C-3PO exclaimed. “His daughter is the child of Master Anakin and Senator Amidala,” he explained to R2-D2. “I can hardly wait to tell her all about her parents! I’m sure she will be very proud—”
“Oh, and the protocol droid?” Senator Organa said thoughtfully. “Have its mind wiped.”
The captain saluted.
“Oh,” said C-3PO. “Oh, dear.”
In the newly renamed Emperor Palpatine Surgical Reconstruction Center on Coruscant, a hypersophisticated prototype Ubrikkian DD-13 surgical droid moved away from the project that it and an enhanced FX-6 medical droid had spent many days rebuilding.
It beckoned to a dark-robed shadow that stood at the edge of the pool of high-intensity light. “My lord, the construction is finished. He lives.”
“Good. Good.”
The shadow flowed into the pool of light as though the overhead illuminators had malfunctioned.
Droids stepped back as it came to the rim of the surgical table.
On the table was strapped the very first patient of the EmPal SuRecon Center.
To some eyes, it might have been a pieced-together hybrid of droid and human, encased in a life-support shell of gleaming black, managed by a thoracic processor that winked pale color against the shadow’s cloak. To some eyes, its jointed limbs might have looked ungainly, clumsy, even monstrous; the featureless curves of black that served it for eyes might have appeared inhuman, and the underthrust grillwork of its vocabulator might have suggested the jaws of a saurian predator built of polished blast armor, but to the shadow—
It was glorious.
A magnificent jewel box, created both to protect and to exhibit the greatest treasure of the Sith. Terrifying.
Mesmerizing. Perfect.
The table slowly rotated to vertical, and the shadow leaned close.
“Lord Vader? Lord Vader, can you hear me?”
This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever:
The first dawn of light in your universe brings pain.
The light burns you. It will always burn you. Part of you will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew upon your flesh.
You can hear yourself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but you cannot stop it. You can never stop it. You cannot even slow it down.
You don’t even have lungs anymore.
Mechanisms hardwired into your chest breathe for you. They will pump oxygen into your bloodstream forever.
Lord Vader? Lord Vader, can you hear me?
And you can’t, not in the way you once did. Sensors in the shell that prisons your head trickle meaning directly into your brain.
You open your scorched-pale eyes; optical sensors integrate light and shadow into a hideous simulacrum of the world around you.
Or perhaps the simulacrum is perfect, and it is the world that is