Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [305]
The synthskin that substituted for what was seared from his bones itched incessantly, and his body needed to be periodically cleansed and scrubbed of necrotic flesh.
Already he had experienced moments of claustrophobia—moments of desperation to be rid of the suit, to emerge from the shell. He needed to build, or have built, a chamber in which he could feel human again …
If possible.
All in all, he thought: This is not living.
This was solitary confinement. Prison of the worst sort. Continual torture. He was nothing more than wreckage. Power without clear purpose …
A melancholy sigh escaped the mouth grille.
Collecting himself, he stepped through the hatch.
* * *
Commander Appo was waiting in the ready room, the special ops officer who had led the 501st Legion against the Jedi Temple.
“Your shuttle is prepared, Lord Vader,” Appo said.
For reasons that went beyond the armor and helmets, the imaging systems and boots, Vader felt more at home among the troopers than he did around other flesh-and-bloods.
And Appo and the rest of Vader’s cadre of stormtroopers seemed to be at ease with their new superior. To them it was only reasonable that Vader wore a bodysuit and armor. Some had always wondered why the Jedi left themselves exposed, as if they had had something to prove by it.
Vader looked down at Appo and nodded. “Come with me, Commander. The Emperor has business for us on Murkhana.”
Shryne squinted against the golden wash of Murkhana’s primary, which had just climbed from behind the thickly forested hills that walled Murkhana City to the east. By his reckoning he had spent close to four weeks confined with hundreds of other captives to a windowless warehouse somewhere in the city. Hours earlier all of them had been marched through the dark to a red-clay landing field that had been notched into one of the hills and was currently swarming with Republic troops.
On its hardstand sat a military transport Shryne surmised would deliver everyone to a proper prison on or in orbit around some forlorn Outer Rim world. Thus far, though, none of the prisoners had been ordered to board the transport. Instead, a head count was being conducted. More important, the clone troopers were obviously waiting for someone or something to arrive.
When his eyes had adjusted fully to the light, Shryne scanned the prisoners to all sides of him, relieved to find Bol Chatak and her Padawan standing some fifty meters away, among a mixed group of indigenous Koorivar fighters and an assortment of Separatist mercenaries. He called to them through the Force, figuring that Chatak would be first to respond, but it was Starstone who turned slightly in his direction and smiled faintly. Then Chatak looked his way, offering a quick nod.
On their capture at the landing platform, the three of them had been separated. The fact that Chatak had managed to retain her headcloth perhaps explained why her short cranial horns hadn’t singled her out as Zabrak and raised an alert among her captors.
Assuming that the conditions of her captivity had been similar to his, Chatak’s being overlooked made perfect sense to Shryne. Rounded up with hundreds of enemy fighters following the still-puzzling deactivation of Murkhana’s battle droids and other war machines, Shryne had been searched, roughed up, and marched into the dark building that would become his home for the next four weeks—a special torment reserved for mercenaries. Any who hadn’t willingly surrendered their weapons had been executed, and dozens more had died in fierce fights that had broken out for the few scraps of food that had been provided.
It hadn’t taken long for Shryne to grasp that winning the hearts and minds of Separatist fighters was no longer tops on Chancellor Palpatine’s list.
It also hadn’t taken long for him to give up worrying about being found out, since he had been placed in the custody of