Palpable

By, Frank Hunter

Starkiller lifted the urn off the mantle with some strain. It was heavy: much more weight than he expected from a cremated corpse. Of course, its occupant was no ordinary corpse. There was probably more inside than just earthly remains. And he was sure the urn was more than it seemed too...

Darth Vader had been stocking his fortress on Vjun with relics of the Dark Side as of late. It wasn't a new fascination, but one that had been set into high gear more recently. Vader made sure that, while Starkiller did his bidding, the boy never knew too much about what he sought, but he had still been able to piece some ideas together by the nature of the objects themselves. A bundle of manuscript pages on Ambria. A medallion on Yavin IV. A cracked Sith holocron in space, actually orbiting a white dwarf star (oh, that one had been fun). All of it pointed toward the same thing. Vader was trying to learn some deep secret of the Dark Side. Something he wanted with a relentless passion. And all of it had just meant more and more legwork for Starkiller. Endless really, over the last…

Spast, had it been a year? A year of hunting down relics, running wild goose chases, and slaughtering ignorant collectors and dealers for Vader's gratification, And he was never satisfied either. Even for this, Starkiller knew he would not receive a word of praise. He'd tracked the urn through myriad backhanded sales and thefts, planet to planet, and finally to the Corellian home of this wealthy socialite who had a fleeting fascination with collecting ancient Sith artifacts. He must have been completely oblivious of their true nature because he had the poor taste to use them as home decorations. A lot of strange pieces of battle armor and trinkets were present there, but the urn was the only thing that seemed to still radiate any sort of power. It deserved to be separated from its foolish owner, and it would. He now lay in two pieces on his own sitting room floor. His collecting days were over.

The poor bastard should have known that anyone who traffics in the history of the Force gets found out sooner or later. If it hadn't been Starkiller, it would have been one of the Emperor's spies instead.

Starkiller hefted the urn across the massive chamber and set it down by a looming floor-to-ceiling window that looked out on the Corellian sunset. Beautiful sights like that sunset never really caught his eye, even less so when he was on assignment. The job had to come first.

He pulled his communicator from his pocketand raised it to his lips. "PROXY, do you read?"

A slight crackle of static greeted him. "Yes, Master! I am very relieved to hear your voice. It's been several hours, and I was beginning to worry…"

PROXY worried? That was probably one of Vader's best jokes. Sometimes Starkiller wished that he didn't know about PROXY's true motivations.

"Well don't worry yourself. I'm fine, and I've got the item."

"Excellent news, Master!" came the over-enthusiastic response. "Shall I be expecting you back in Coronet soon?"

Starkiller reflexively shook his head. "No, I've got a small problem. The object is heavier than we thought. I can't go dragging it around the city. I need a pick-up here."

The communicator met him with a slight delay, and then, "I'm afraid that isn't possible, Master. Lord Vader gave us very strict orders to use only this docking bay. He doesn't want the ship drawing attention."

Starkiller scowled and began rationalizing, but PROXY continued. "However, I can come and pick up the item myself. I don't suppose I would have any trouble carrying it back to Coronet?"

That made sense. "No, I don't suppose you would."

"I can leave now and meet you shortly."

"Alright PROXY, but hurry. I don't like sticking around here any longer than I have to.

"Oh Master, causing you discomfort would be most regrettable." The communicator clicked silent.

Starkiller replaced it into his pocket and turned to regard the sunset. It shouldn't be more than thirty minutes for PROXY to make the trip, and he doubted CorSec would have heard the brief scuffle on a private estate this large. He could stand to wait a little while.

But of course things were never that easy.

The urn radiated dark energy as though it were still alive. It drew Starkiller's eyes to itself again and again, pulling him with a will of its own. Each time he tried to ignore the pull, the next time he grew even more intrigued. Why shouldn't he look, anyway? With all the effort he put in to procure it? With everything he did to keep it safe and keep its acquisition a secret? Why the hell didn't he deserve a little look at its occupant's secrets, and a little information on what Darth Vader was up to?

He caught himself reaching out for it, and ripped himself away. The secrets of the Dark Side were tempting, but the punishment he'd face at the hands of Vader was much worse. There would be time to reveal secrets one day, when he and his Master joined forces and took the mantle of Dark Lord of the Sith from Palpatine, the old fool who deceitfully held it. They'd take his title and his throne, and on that day Starkiller would be free to view any secrets he wished. On that day, he would truly be Sith.

He turned to distract himself out the window once more, and not an instant too soon.

The glow outside was turning purple and intensifying quickly. It was a curious phenomenon, and Starkiller squinted at it and tried for a moment to determine what in nature would cause it. A moment was all he had to comprehend that that shade of violet was not natural. It was the glow of a lightsaber, and it was getting closer. Following that instant of recognition, the blade's wielder came crashing through the window with the violet lightsaber aimed at Starkiller's head.

Shards of glass rained down on the boy causing several little nicks in the exposed back of his neck, but he didn't let it slow him down. His reflexes kicked in, and he sprung into a butterfly maneuver that tossed his body up and over the deadly stream of purple energy. In the air he snatched and ignited his own weapon and slapped the attacker's blade aside before dropping to his feet at the ready, his crimson blade held in its comfortable, back-handed grip.

The attacker landed almost clear across the room by the mantel where Starkiller had first found the appearance was that of a young woman. She was adorned with fiery red hair and emerald green eyes, and sported a solid black jumper. She was, in a world, beautiful, but Starkiller wouldn't be fooled. He had half been expecting this, as he always was.

"That's a cute new program PROXY, but knock it off. We don't have time for this now, and I need you functional for the trip."

The woman smirked. "PROXY? That's Lord Vader's specialized training droid, is it not?"

Starkiller's eyes went wide. PROXY neveractually hide his identity when he ran a training module. He just adopted an image and a fighting syle. This wasn't him.

"Who are you?" he asked incredulously. The fear in his voice echoed around the cavernous room.

The woman only smiled again. "Your destiny."

She lunged back across the room, hurtling furniture in a single bound. Starkiller, intent on not being caught off guard again, jumped inward himself.

The two lightsabers clashed in the center of the room and sent sparks into the air with the impact. The combatants fell to the ground and didn't lose a second. The woman took another swing at Starkiller's head, forcing him into a quick parry.

Who was she? A Jedi, maybe? Could she have been a Jedi Knight from before the Purge? How had she found him here?

The woman attacked with sequences that Starkiller had never seen before. Her training didn't mirror any of the lost Jedi Masters in PROXY's databank. She was aggressive and fierce, and to make matters worse, that cursed urn seemed to be going out of its way to distract him.

Galen… came the voice of the urn. He only heard it in his head, but it might as well have been on a loudspeaker. It wasthe voice of pure temptation.

The woman forced Starkiller backward onto a red leather sofa and brought her blade overhead for the killing stroke. He called on the Force to aid an immediate roll to his right side. The woman's blade passed through the piece of furniture like a warm knife through butter.

Starkiller flipped himself backward over what was left of the sofa, and reached with the Force to grab one of the split halves and throw it at the woman in a scored a lucky strike and threw her off balance. The wooden fixture slammed into her side, but she held her ground. Starkiller prepared to jump in over it and press his advantage.

Galen. Come now…

The blasted urn threw off his footing. He was lucky not to trip face-first onto the floor as one leg almost stepped out for it. The woman recovered quickly from the strike angry and reached her free arm out to her side. All the artifacts and decorations that christened the far wall of the room were lifted from their places, and with a twitch of her arm they were propelled straight toward Starkiller. He didn't have a prayer of dodging them all, and cast up a hurried Force shield to try and dull the impact of jagged metal and duraplast. It still hit him like a wave.

Galen. I await…

"Leave me alone!" Starkiller shouted at the urn.

"Oh come now, boy," the woman said tauntingly. She thought he was pleading with her. "You didn't really think you could just track down the secrets of the Dark Side for your master and no one would notice, did you?"

Spast. She really knew.

"How long have you been following me?"

"Long enough."

Starkiller lowered his poor excuse for a Force shield and took up a battle stance once more.

"There is an easy way out of this for you," the woman told him. She stood relaxed with her arms at her sides, her lightsaber crossed before her legs.

"What's that?"

That smile again. "Surrender to me. Confess everything you've been doing, everything you've stolen, and who you've stolen it for. Do this, and you may yet keep your life."

An image crossed his mind of spending the rest of his days in some reinforced cell, or even worse in cryostasis. He wasn't sure if this was his own paranoia at work or residual telepathy from the woman herself, but he knew that he'd rather be dead.

"Don't do me any favors," he told her through gritted teeth.

She shrugged. "It's your cremation."

Galen, submit…

He felt the next attack building and had no idea of how he would ward it off with the drawing voice of the urn in the back of his mind. He almost conceded to the possibility of death when he heard the more tangible voice off to his side.

"Master! It appears you require some manner of assistance."

He shot a look at the shattered window and saw PROXY perched beside the urn.

The woman pressed Starkiller's moment of distraction and threw her lightsaber from her hand. It flew straight at him, and he only narrowly managed to swat it aside. She leaped into the air and the blade returned to her mid-jump. Her former pattern of fierce attacks resumed as soon as her feet were again planted again. Starkiller's fatigued arms threw up a new feeble screen of defense as the battle waged. He knew he'd have only one chance to make it out of this.

"PROXY!" he yelled over the clashes of energy. "Grab the urn, and get it back to the ship!" He jumped over a Teras Kasi style leg sweep and failed to sever the woman's leg on his way back down.

The droid cocked its head. "I believe I could be more useful to you through a direct form of assistance." Its hand hovered over its own lightsaber.

"Damn it PROXY, get that forsaken thing out of here!"

With no more hesitation, PROXY grabbed the urn and jumped out of the broken window, making speed for the city in the distance. The voice that had been calling Starkiller's mind began to weaken, and soon faded away to nothing. Clarity returned to his thoughts and he found that he could focus the Force into his movements once more.

An uppercut came straight at him and he angled his blade to deflect the shot off to the side. He needed to channel an emotion to feed him strength, as Vader had taught him. Anger was the emotion readily available.

He let his anger grab hold of him. Anger at this woman for following him, and catching him off guard. Anger at Vader for endangering his life in this way. Anger at PROXY for not following instructions. The anger flooded into him, and the Dark Side filled him up. It began to replace the fatigue in his muscles and augmented his power.

He launched into his first offensive of the fight, criss-crossing his crimson blade before his chest and pushing forward. The blade, he knew, would strike the woman at angles odd to her. Vader had told him that most opponents would not be comfortable fighting his reverse-Shien style, and this fight confirmed it. As he took the offensive, his attacker was thrown off guard. He forced her back until she tripped over a coffee table, then he released the Force in a push that tossed her across the room like a rag doll. Her back slammed into the brick fireplace, dislodging the broken mantel. She fell to the ground and though she recovered her footing, it was a moot point. Starkiller reached out and ensnared the fireplace, pulling the bricks apart. In an instant, they rained down upon her with crushing weight.

Starkiller took a few heavy breaths. He'd have to make sure he killed her. She could not be allowed to report back to whoever she called master. He could not afford to be revealed.

But she was not yet finished.

The bricks were repulsed apart by the Force and Starkiller shielded himself from the few that flew his way. The woman rose again with fury in her green eyes. Her lightsaber lay beside her, dinged and damaged. She raised her arms toward him instead.

Lightning erupted from her fingertips in a raw display of Force energy that Darth Vader had never before showed him, never prepared him for. Maybe he didn't know how.

Starkiller dropped his own lightsaber, which de-ignited on the floor, and threw his arms out to absorb the blast. He felt the sheer power of it swimming over him and, oh, he liked it. This was a glorious new technique, one he'd now have to practice on his own.

The anger and Dark Side energy that fueled him made him very sensitive to the new Force technique the woman was using. As a few moments passed, he tried redirecting some of the bolts back her to gain the upper hand.

She saw what he was doing, and had none of it. The woman had a world of experience with Force lightning and was not going to be poisoned by her own medicine. She increased her efforts into the maelstrom and, in turn, Starkiller increased his own efforts at reflection. The Force storm grew around them. Furniture and ornaments began to melt and light ablaze as the room turned into its own hell.

The volatile energy amplified for as long as it could. Finally, as the two began to grow exhausted by the power they were trying to control, it ignited. The Force storm exploded outward, throwing the two combatants backward in different directions and reducing the room to rubble. Starkiller's head hit a wall and he had time for one more flare of anger at his pain before he drifted to blackness.

Starkiller awoke to the sound of electronic static and a familiar voice emanating from his pocket.

"Master? Are you still alive?"

He groaned and clutched his aching head in one hand. Vision returned to him and he saw the extent of the damage to the mansion in a blurry stream of consciousness. It was decimated.

"Master, are you there?"

As he regained feeling in his arm, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the communicator. "I'm here, PROXY."

"Master!" the droid exclaimed. "I was afraid that harlot had robbed me of my primary function!"

Harlot? The woman!

He made his way slowly to his feet and scanned the room. His attacker was nowhere in sight.

He crossed to the middle of the chamber and picked up his lightsaber from where he'd dropped it. It was, miraculously, not damaged.

With the Force he began to clear away some of the bigger piles of debris, but the body was nowhere to be found. Had she fled while he was out?

That didn't not bode well for him, he thought. She would report back and expose him. There could be a bounty on his head, or even an arrest warrant for him depending upon the woman's employer, but that was trivial. The main concern was that, if she had found him once, she, or others like her, could very well find him again.

He would have to redouble his future efforts at stealth.

"Your display of power at the mansion has forced us to bend the rules a little," PROXY went on. "The Rogue Shadow is outside awaiting your pickup, but I suggest you move quickly. CorSec is likely to be along any moment."

The droid was right, it was time to go. He took one last look around for the missing woman but was forced to step outside alone.

The Rogue Shadow was settled in a low hover, and Starkiller leaped up into the open docking bay. PROXY awaited inside with the urn. The doors closed behind him and the ship engaged its cloaking device. Its pilot of the week began a course back to Darth Vader's fortress on Vjun.

"I trust you'll be wanting to make a full report to Lord Vader immediately," PROXY said. "I'm prepared to channel him and you can inform him about…"

"No!" Starkiller cut him off. "PROXY, if Vader finds out we've been compromised, we're both gonna be scrap."

"But Master, the trouble at the mansion…"

"There was no trouble," he said quickly. "We're not going to say a word, and what Vader doesn't know won't hurt us."

Ihis eyes drifted once more to the urn. "Hopefully Vader will be preoccupied enough with this new toy that he won't really care for the details anyway. The rest we'll deal with as it comes up."

"As you wish, master."

Galen, see me… came the voice of the urn again.

Starkiller sighed. This was going to be a long flight.

Back aboard her own ship, the mystery woman collapsed into the pilot's chair. She had been lucky to escape that catastrophe with her life. Her target's Force adeptness had magnified exponentially as the fight went on. She hadn't expected him to be so strong, and as soon as the Force storm erupted, her self-preservation instincts kicked in. Better to get some kind of report back to her master then to let all the information die with her.

Though she'd really been hoping to capture him alive…

Next time, she thought She punched her private access codes into the holodeck, and before long an image flickered to life. It was a hooded figure, skin wrinked and twisted and eyes yellow and terrifying. A familiar face.

"My Emperor," the woman spoke solemnly and nodded her head. "Your Hand reports."

"Mara Jade," the Emperor regarded her. "I trust you bear good news."

She swallowed. "It could be better, my Lord."

"Speak."

Mara took a moment to collect her thoughts, before giving her report. "I caught up with the subject on Corellia. I caught him stealing the cremated remains of Darth Zannah, an ancient Sith Lord, from a wealthy collector here."

The Emperor nodded as though he'd expected this. "Yes."

"I'm sorry my Emperor. He escaped and took the urn. I could not stop him. He was very powerful."

She paused. She'd expected some words of chastise, some verbal lashing, but it didn't come. The Emperor remained silent.

She continued. "But based on the identity of his droid, his style of combat, and his ship's trajectories…my Lord, I believe he's been moving between Vjun and Kuat. I strongly believe he is operating under the command of Lord Vader."

Another moment of silence filled her to the brim with tension, before the room was filled with an incredibly unexpected sound: the Emperor's cackling laughter.

She was confused. "My Lord?"

"Good! Very good, my Hand. This can work nicely into my plans. Lord Vader's drive for immortality has been admirable, but he has grown predictable. His motives solidify his guilt."

Mara shook her head, speechless.

"Summon Lord Vader to Coruscant immediately, and then return for your next assignment. You have done well."

"Th…thank you, my Emperor," she said, and the hologram faded out.

Mara was left in utter confusion, but apparently that was alright. Her day was not yet over, though. She'd have to make that call on her way off-planet. She hated speaking to Vader, especially when acting as an intermediary between him and the Emperor. He made it uncomfortable for her. And, of course, her lightsaber would need to be repaired before she returned to Coruscant.

Well, that's why hyperspace wasn't instantaneous. So things could get done. Might as well buckle down and do them. After all, it wouldn't pay for such a Hand to be empty.