The Last Command Read online

  And for an overview of that domain …

  She turned to her left, gazing over the railing of the walkway into the huge open space that faced the throne. Floating there in the darkness, a blaze of light twenty meters across, was the galaxy.

  Not the standard galaxy hologram any school or shipping business might own. Not even the more precise versions that could be found only in the war rooms of select sector military headquarters. This hologram was sculpted in exquisite and absolutely unique detail, with a single accurately positioned spot of light for each of the galaxy’s hundred billion stars. Political regions were delineated by subtle encirclements of color: the Core systems, the Outer Rim Territories, Wild Space, the Unknown Regions. From his throne the Emperor could manipulate the image, highlighting a chosen sector, locating a single system, or tracking a military campaign.

  It was as much a work of art as it was a tool. Grand Admiral Thrawn would love it.

  And with that thought, the memories of the past faded reluctantly into the realities of the present. Thrawn was in command now, a man who wanted to re-create the Empire in his own image. Wanted it badly enough to unleash a new round of Clone Wars if that would gain it for him.

  She took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. The words echoed around the chamber, pushing the memories still further away. “If it’s here, it’ll be built into the throne.”

  With an obvious effort, Skywalker pulled his gaze away from the hologram galaxy. “Let’s take a look.”

  They headed down the ten-meter walkway that led from the turbolift into the main part of the throne room, walking beneath the overhead catwalk that ran across the front edge of the hologram pit and between the raised guard platforms flanking the stairway. Mara glanced at the platforms as she and Skywalker walked up the steps to the upper level, remembering the red-cloaked Imperial guards who had once stood there in silent watchfulness. Beneath the upper-level floor, visible between the steps as they climbed, the Emperor’s monitor and control area was dark and silent. Aside from the galaxy hologram, all of the systems up here appeared to have been shut down.

  They reached the top of the steps and headed across toward the throne itself, turned away from them toward the polished rock wall behind it. Mara was looking at it, wondering why the Emperor had left it facing away from his galaxy, when it began to turn around.

  She grabbed Skywalker’s arm, snapping her blaster up to point at the throne. The massive chair completed its turn—

  “So at last you have come to me,” Joruus C’baoth said gravely, gazing out at them from the depths of the throne. “I knew you would. Together we will teach the galaxy what it means to serve the Jedi.”

  CHAPTER

  26

  “I knew you would be coming to me tonight,” C’baoth said, rising slowly from the throne to face them. “From the moment you left Coruscant, I knew you would come. That was why I set this night for the people of my city to attack my oppressors.”

  “That wasn’t necessary,” Luke told him, taking an involuntary step backward as the memories of those near-disastrous days on Jomark came rushing back to him. C’baoth had tried there to subtly corrupt him to the dark side … and when he’d failed at that, he’d tried to kill Luke and Mara both.

  But he wouldn’t be trying that again. Not here. Not without the Force.

  “Of course it was necessary,” C’baoth said. “You needed a distraction to gain entrance to my prison. And they, like all lesser beings, needed purpose. What better purpose could they have than the honor of dying in the service of the Jedi?”

  Beside him, Mara muttered something. “I think you have that backwards,” Luke said. “The Jedi were the guardians of peace. The servants of the Old Republic, not its masters.”

  “Which is why they and the Old Republic failed, Jedi Skywalker,” C’baoth said, jabbing a finger toward him in emphasis. “Why they failed, and why they died.”

  “The Old Republic survived a thousand generations,” Mara put in. “That doesn’t sound like failure to me.”

  “Perhaps not,” C’baoth said with obvious disdain. “You are young, and do not yet see clearly.”

  “And you do, of course?”

  C’baoth smiled at her. “Oh, yes, my young apprentice,” he said softly. “I do indeed. As will you.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Mara growled. “We aren’t here to get you out.”

  “The Force does not rely on what you think are your goals,” C’baoth said. “Nor do the true masters of the Force. Whether you knew it or not, you came here at my summons.”

  “You just go ahead and believe that,” Mara said, motioning to the side with her blaster. “Move over there.”

  “Of course, my young apprentice.” C’baoth took three steps in the indicated direction. “She has great strength of will, Jedi Skywalker,” he added to Luke as Mara moved warily over to the throne and crouched down to examine the armrest control boards. “She will be a great power in the galaxy which we shall build.”

  “No,” Luke said, shaking his head. This was, perhaps, his last chance to bring the insane Jedi back. To save him, as he had saved Vader aboard the second Death Star. “You aren’t in any shape to build anything, Master C’baoth. You’re not well. But I can help you if you’ll let me.”

  C’baoth’s face darkened. “How dare you say such things?” he demanded. “How dare you even think such blasphemy about the great Jedi Master C’baoth?”

  “But that’s just it,” Luke said gently. “You’re not the Jedi Master C’baoth. Not the original one, anyway. The proof is there in the Katana’s records. Jorus C’baoth died a long time ago during the Outbound Flight. Project.”

  “Yet I am here.”

  “Yes,” Luke nodded. “You are. But not Jorus C’baoth, You see, you’re his clone.”

  C’baoth’s whole body went rigid. “No,” he said. “No. That can’t be.”

  Luke shook his head. “There’s no other explanation. Surely that thought has occurred to you before.”

  C’baoth took a long, shuddering breath … and then, abruptly, he threw his head back and laughed.

  “Watch him,” Mara snapped, eyeing the old man warily over the throne’s armrest. “He pulled this same stunt on Jomark, remember?”

  “It’s all right,” Luke said. “He can’t hurt us.”

  “Ah, Skywalker, Skywalker,” C’baoth said, shaking his head. “You, too? Grand Admiral Thrawn, the New Republic, and now you. What is this sudden fascination with clones and cloning?”

  He barked another laugh; and then, without warning, turned deadly serious. “He does not understand, Jedi Skywalker,” he said earnestly. “Not Grand Admiral Thrawn—not any of them. The true power of the Jedi is not in these simple tricks of matter and energy. The true might of the Jedi is that we alone of all those in the galaxy have the power to grow beyond ourselves. To extend ourselves into all the reaches of the universe.”

  Luke glanced at Mara, got a shrug and puzzled look in return. “We don’t understand, either,” he told C’baoth. “What do you mean?”

  C’baoth took a step toward him. “I have done it, Jedi Skywalker,” he whispered, his eyes glittering in the dim light. “With General Covell. What even the Emperor never did. I took his mind in my hands and altered it. Re-formed it and rebuilt it into my own image.”

  Luke felt a cold shiver run through him. “What do you mean, rebuilt it?”

  C’baoth nodded, a secret sort of smile playing around his lips. “Yes—rebuilt it. And that was only the start. Beneath us, down in the depths of the mountain, the future army of the Jedi even now stands in readiness to serve us. What I did with General Covell I will do again, and again, and again. Because what Grand Admiral Thrawn has never realized is that the army he thinks he is creating for himself he is instead creating for me.”

  And suddenly Luke understood. The clones growing down in that cavern weren’t just physically identical to their original templet. Their minds were identical, too, or close
enough to be only minor variations of the same pattern. If C’baoth could learn how to break the mind of any one of them, he could do the same to all the clones in that group.

  Luke looked at Mara again. She understood, too. “You still think he can be saved?” she demanded grimly.

  “I need no one to save me, Mara Jade,” C’baoth told her. “Tell me, do you really believe I would simply stand by and allow Grand Admiral Thrawn to imprison me this way?”

  “I didn’t think he’d asked your permission,” Mara bit out, stepping away from the throne. “There’s nothing here for us, Skywalker. Let’s get out of here.”

  “I did not grant you permission to leave,” C’baoth said, his voice suddenly loud and regal. He raised his hand, and Luke saw that he was holding a small cylinder. “And you shall not.”

  Mara gestured with her blaster. “You’re not going to stop us with that,” she said with thinly veiled contempt. “A remote activator has to have something to activate.”

  “And so it does,” C’baoth said, smiling thinly. “I had my soldiers prepare it for me. Before I sent them outside the mountain with the weapons and orders for my people.”

  “Sure.” Mara took a step back toward the stairs, throwing a wary glance at the ceiling above her as her left hand found the guardrail that separated the raised section of the throne room from the lower level. “We’ll take your word for it.”

  C’baoth shook his head. “You won’t have to” he said softly, pressing the switch. In the back of Luke’s mind, something distant and very alien seemed to shriek in agony—

  And suddenly, impossibly, he felt a surge of awareness and strength fill him. As if he were waking up from a deep sleep, or stepping from a dark room into the light.

  The Force was again with him.

  “Mara!” he snapped. But it was too late. Mara’s blaster had already wrenched itself from her grip and been flung back across the room; and even as Luke leaped toward her C’baoth’s outstretched hand erupted into a brilliant blaze of blue-white lightning.

  The blast caught Mara square in the chest, throwing her backward to slam into the guardrail behind her. “Stop it!” Luke shouted, getting in front of her and igniting his lightsaber. C’baoth ignored him, firing a second burst. Luke caught most of it on his lightsaber blade, grimacing as the part he missed jolted through his muscles. C’baoth fired a third burst, and a fourth, and a fifth—

  And then, abruptly, he lowered his hands. “You will not presume to give me commands, Jedi Skywalker,” he said, his voice strangely petulant. “I am the master. You are the servant.”

  “I’m not your servant,” Luke told him, stepping back and throwing a quick look at Mara. She was still pretty much on her feet, clutching the guardrail for support. Her eyes were open but not fully aware, her breath making little moaning sounds as she exhaled between clenched teeth. Laying his free hand on her shoulder, wincing at the stink of ozone, Luke began a quick probe of her injuries.

  “You are indeed my servant,” C’baoth said, the earlier petulance replaced now by a sort of haughty grandeur. “As is she. Leave her alone, Jedi Skywalker. She required a lesson, and she has now learned it.”

  Luke didn’t answer. None of her burns seemed too bad, but her muscles were still twitching uncontrollably. Reaching out with the Force, he tried to draw away some of the pain.

  “I said leave her alone,” C’baoth repeated, his voice echoing eerily across the throne room. “Her life is not in danger. Save your strength rather for the trial that awaits you.” Dramatically, he lifted a hand and pointed.

  Luke turned to look. There, silhouetted against the shimmering galaxy holo, stood a figure dressed in what looked like the same brown robe C’baoth was wearing. A figure that seemed somehow familiar …

  “There is no choice, my young Jedi,” C’baoth said, his voice almost gentle now. “Don’t you understand? You must serve me, or we will not be able to save the galaxy from itself. You must therefore face death and emerge at my side … or you must die that another may take your place.” He lifted his eyes to the figure and beckoned. “Come,” he called. “And face your destiny.”

  The figure moved forward toward the stairs, unhooking a lightsaber from his belt as he came. With the blaze of light from the hologram behind him, the figure’s face was still impossible to make out.

  Luke stepped away from Mara, a strange and unpleasant buzzing pressure beginning to form against his mind. There was something disturbingly familiar about this confrontation. As if he were about to face someone or something he’d faced once before …

  Abruptly, the memory clicked. Dagobah—his Jedi training—the dark side cave Yoda had sent him into. His brief dreamlike battle with a vision of Darth Vader …

  Luke caught his breath, a horrible suspicion squeezing his heart. But no—the silent figure approaching him wasn’t tall enough to be Vader. But then who …?

  And then the figure stepped into the light … and, too late, Luke remembered how that dream battle in the dark side cave had ended. Vader’s mask had shattered, and the face behind it had been Luke’s own.

  As was the face that gazed emotionlessly up at him now.

  Luke felt himself moving back from the steps, his mind frozen with shock and the buzzing pressure growing against it. “Yes, Jedi Skywalker,” C’baoth said quietly from behind him. “He is you. Luuke Skywalker, created from the hand you left behind in the Cloud City on Bespin. Wielding the lightsaber you lost there.”

  Luke glanced at the weapon in the clone’s hands. It was his, all right. The lightsaber Obi-wan had told him his father had left for him. “Why?” he managed.

  “To bring you to true understanding,” C’baoth said gravely. “And because your destiny must be fulfilled. One way or another, you must serve me.”

  Luke threw a quick glance at him. C’baoth was watching him, his eyes glowing with anticipation. And with madness.

  And in that moment, the clone Luuke struck.

  He leaped to the top of the stairway, igniting his lightsaber and slashing the blue-white blade viciously toward Luke’s chest. Luke jumped to the side, whipping his own weapon up to block the attack. The blades came together with an impact that threw him off balance and nearly tore the lightsaber from his grip. The clone Luuke jumped after him, lightsaber already swinging to the attack; reaching out to the Force, Luke threw himself backwards, flipping over the guardrail and onto one of the raised guard platforms rising from the lower part of the throne room floor. He needed time to think and plan, and to find a way past the distraction of the buzzing in his mind.

  But the clone Luuke wasn’t going to give him that time. Stepping to the guardrail, he hurled his lightsaber downward at the base of the platform Luke was standing on. It wasn’t a clean hit—the blade probably sliced through only-half of the base—but it was enough to throw the platform into a sudden tilt. Reaching out again to the Force, Luke did another backflip, trying to reach the overhead catwalk that spanned the throne room five meters behind him.

  But the distance was too great, or else his mind too distracted by the buzzing to properly draw on the Force. The back of his knee hit the edge of the catwalk, and instead of landing on his feet he flipped over to slam into it on his back.

  “I did not wish to do this to you, Jedi Skywalker,” C’baoth’s voice called out. “I do not wish it still. Join me—let me teach you. Together we can save the galaxy from the lesser peoples who would destroy it.”

  “No,” Luke said hoarsely, grabbing a support strut and pulling himself up as he fought to catch his breath. The clone Luuke had retrieved his lightsaber now, and was starting down the stairs toward him.

  The clone. His clone. Was that what was causing this strange pressure in his mind? The close presence of an exact duplicate that was itself drawing on the Force?

  He didn’t know, any more than he knew what C’baoth’s purpose was in throwing the two of them together. Obi-wan and Master Yoda had both warned him that killing in anger or hatred wou
ld lead toward the dark side. Would killing a clone duplicate of himself do the same thing?

  Or had C’baoth meant something entirely different? Had he meant that killing his own clone would drive Luke insane?

  Either way, it wasn’t something Luke was anxious to find out firsthand. And it occurred to him that he really didn’t have to. He could drop off the far side of the catwalk, get to the turbolift he and Mara had come up on, and escape.

  Leaving Mara here to face C’baoth alone.

  He raised his eyes. Mara was still leaning against the guardrail. Possibly not fully conscious. Certainly in no shape to travel.

  Setting his teeth together, Luke pulled himself to his feet. Mara had asked him—begged him—to kill her rather than leave her in C’baoth’s hands. The least he could do was to stay with her to the end.

  Whether it was her end … or his.

  The explosion drifted up from the cavern below like a distant thunderclap, clearly audible and yet curiously dampened. “You hear that, Chewie?” Lando asked, leaning back to throw a cautious look over the edge of their work platform. “You suppose something down there blew up?”

  Chewbacca, his hands full of cables and leads as he dug in and around the support lattice of the equipment column, growled a correction: it hadn’t been one large explosion, but many simultaneous small ones. Small blasting disks, or something of equally low power. “You sure?” Lando asked uneasily, peering at the cloning tanks on the balcony one level beneath where they were working. This didn’t sound like any normal malfunction.

  He stiffened. Thin wisps of smoke could be seen now, rising lazily into the air above the nutrient pipes feeding into the tops of the cloning tanks. A lot of wisps of smoke, and they seemed to be rising in a reasonably regular pattern. As if something in each cluster of Spaarti cylinders had blown up …

  There was the muffled clink of metal on metal behind him. Lando twisted around, to find Threepio stepping gingerly from the bridge onto the work platform, his head tilted to look down into the cavern. “Is that smoke?” the droid asked, sounding like he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.