Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II by Sean Williams Page A

there was anything remotely educational about this spectacle.
    “Kota!” he cried.
    The aging general raised his head, searching for the source of the voice over the baying of the crowd. “It can’t be… “
    Starkiller ran out into the center of the arena. The crowd howled and hissed.
    From far above came a booming command. “Send out the Gorog!”
    Starkiller came to a halt in front of his second Master.
    “By the Force, ” Kota whispered, staring at him with eyes that no longer worked-thanks to an injury Starkiller himself had delivered-but seemed to see regardless. His exhaustion radiated from his filthy skin like the heat of a sun. He was battered and weary and on the verge of collapse. He staggered back, looking almost drunk with fatigue. “I saw you die..
    “You saw me in your future, too. “
    “I did, but…”
    A series of thudding clangs came from a vast gate on the other side of the arena, and the huge metal doors began to open. From the darkness on the other side came a vicious snarl.
    Starkiller turned to face the latest threat.
    “Why don’t you sit this one out, General?”
    Kota gripped Starkiller’s shoulder and bared his teeth. “Never. I’ve got a score to settle. “
    Something moved on the other side of the gates. Something heavy and bestial and very, very big.
    Starkiller grinned back, although he didn’t know what was funny. He wanted to ask about Juno, but just then wasn’t the time. “You were never very good at taking orders. “
    Our of the darkness thundered a bull rancor, roaring and spraying drool. Starkiller came forward three paces, putting himself squarely between the beast and Kota, feeling nothing but confidence. On Felucia, his former self had defeated just such a beast. This one, he was sure, would prove to be as significant a foe. He raised his lightsaber to strike.
    There was something wrong with the way it was running, though. Its eyes were wide and staring, but they weren’t quire focusing on either Starkiller or Kota, and the light he saw in them wasn’t fury. It was something else, something Starkiller didn’t immediately comprehend.
    “I don’t care whether the restraints have been tested or not, ” boomed the voice a second time. “Open the Gorog gate now!”
    Starkiller recognized the voice as belonging to the potentate who had “welcomed” him on the landing deck, and heard another loud clang. The bull rancor glanced over its shoulder, and Starkiller realized then that it wasn’t running toward him, but away from something else.
    The look in its eyes was fear.
    Through the open gate behind the rancor came a giant hand, attached to an arm as thick as a small cruiser. Each clawed finger was as long as a starfighter. With surprising speed, it reached out and snatched the bull rancor off the floor of the arena, right in front of them, and pulled it screaming back into the darkness. Something crunched, and the screams were cut off. Bones cracked and splintered with a sickening sound. Sinewy tissue stretched and tore.
    The crowd was utterly silent, now. Not a soul moved.
    Starkiller backed up a step, staring up into the shadows in shock. What exactly had he just seen? Was it a hallucination?
    An earsplitting roar came from the darkness, and he braced himself to find out.

CHAPTER 4
    Two days earlier…
    Dac’s moon, Juno very quickly discovered, was as unexciting as its name suggested. It was a gray, airless rock tidally locked to the waterworld it orbited, so its back side pointed endlessly outward at the stars. Juno had spent several hours watching those stars-and the faint specks that indicated ships traveling to and from the Mon Calamari system-waiting for the Organa operative she was slowly beginning to believe wasn’t coming at all.
    “I have completed my scan of Dac’s traffic control, ” PROXY told her. “There is no mention of a ship or ships intercepted on suspicion of anything related to the Rebel Alliance. “
    She irritably tapped the