Vader vs Shryne

"Yes," Vader said, raising his blade somewhat, "I am your worst rival." Lightsaber grasped in both hands, Vader took a single forward step and performed a lightning-fast underhand sweep that almost knocked Forte's lightsaber from Shryne's grip. Spinning, Shryne regained his balance and raced forward, feinting a diagonal slash from the left, then twisting the blade around to the right and surging forward. The blade might have gotten past Vader's guard, but instead it glanced off the back of his upraised left hand, smoke curling from the black glove. Shryne countered quickly with an upsweep to Vader's neck, but Vader spun to the right, his blade held straight out in front of him as he completed a circle, nearly cutting Shryne in half.

Folding himself at the waist, Shryne skittered backward, parrying a rapid series of curt but powerful slashes. Backflipping out of range, he twisted his body to the right, set the blade over his right shoulder, and rushed forward, hammering away. Vader deflected the blows without altering his stance or giving ground, but in the process left his lower trunk and legs unprotected.

In a blink Shryne dropped into a crouch and pivoted through a turn. For an instant it seemed that the blade was going to pass clear through Vader's knees, but Vader leapt high, half twisting in midair and coming down behind Shryne. Shryne rolled as Vader's crimson shaft struck the floor at the spot he had just vacated. Scrambling to his feet, Shryne hurled himself forward, catching Vader in the right forearm.

Snarling, Vader took his left hand from the lightsaber hilt to dampen sparking at the site of what should have been a wound. Astonishment eclipsed Shryne's follow-up attack.

"I know you don't have a heart," he said, taking stalking steps, "but I didn't realize that you're all droid."

Vader may have been about to reply when packets of blinding light speared through the balcony, opening holes ten meters across. The great wroshyr shook as if struck by the frill force of a lightning storm, and branches and leaves rained down on what was left of the deck. With a loud splitting sound, a large section of the rim broke away, taking Vader's shuttle with it.

"There goes your ride home," Shryne said when he could. "Guess you're stuck here with me." Vader was a good distance away, one hand and one knee pressed to the floor, his blade angled away from him. Slowly he stood to his full height, leaves falling around him, black cloak flapping in the downdrafts. Then, with determined strides, he advanced on Shryne, sweeping his blade from side to side.

"I wouldn't have it any other way."

Shryne took a quick look around.

With most of the tier behind him blown away, and gaping holes elsewhere, he began to back toward the hollowed trunk of the tree.

"Almost seems like your own people are trying to kill you, Vader," he said. "Maybe they don't like the idea of a Sith influencing the Emperor."

Vader continued his resolute march. "Trust me, Shryne, the Emperor couldn't be more pleased." Shryne cast a quick glance over his shoulder. They were entering an enormous interior space of wooden ramps, walkways, bridges, and concourses. "He doesn't have enough experience with your kind."

"And you do?"

"Enough to know that you'll turn on him eventually." Vader loosed what could have been a laugh.

"What makes you think the Emperor won't turn on me first?"

"Like he turned on the Jedi," Shryne said. "Although I suspect that was mostly your doing." Five meters away, Vader stopped short. "Mine?"

"You convinced him that with you by his side, he could get away with just about anything." Again, Vader's exhalation approximated a laugh. "It's thinking like that that blinded the Jedi to their fate." He raised his sword. "Now it's time for you to join them." Vader closed the distance between them in a heartbeat, slashing left and right with potent vertical strokes, narrowly missing Shryne time and again, but destroying everything touched by the blade. No whirling now; no windmilling or deft lunges. He simply used his bulk and size to remain wedded to the floor. It was an old style, the very opposite of what was said to have been Dooku's style, and Shryne had no defense against it.

If I could see his face, his eyes, Shryne found time to think. If he could knock that outsize helmet from Vader's head.

If he could lance his lightsaber through the control panel on Vader's chest That was the key! That was the reason for Vader's antique style—to protect his center, as Grievous had been forced to do. If he could only get to that control panel ..

Shryne's slashing strike to Vader's lower left leg, owing as much to luck as to skill, released another shower of sparks.

Vader's enraged response was Shryne's only assurance that he was fighting a living being. Whatever had happened to Vader, by accident or volition, he had to be more flesh-and-blood than cyborg, or he wouldn't have raged or been able to call on the Force with such intensity. High up in the smoke-filled latticelike room, they stood facing each other on a suspension bridge that linked two fully enclosed walkways, the gloom cut by shafts of explosive light from the continuing attack on Kachirho.

Shryne's determination to thrust his lightsaber into the control box Vader wore on his chest had forced the Sith to adopt a more defensive style that had left his limbs vulnerable. Throughout the fight that had taken them up the room's wooden ramps, Vader had kept his crimson blade straight out in front of him, manipulating it deftly with wrists only, elbows pressed tightly to his sides. Only when Shryne left him no choice did he shuffle his feet or leap.

"Artificial limbs and body armor seem a curious choice for a Sith," Shryne said, poised for Vader's riposte to his lucky strike. "Belittling to the dark side."

Vader adjusted his grip on the sword and advanced. "No more than throwing in with smugglers denigrates the Force, Shryne."

"Ah, but I saw the light. Maybe it's time you did."

"You have it backward."

Shryne was steeling himself for a lunging attack when, abruptly, Vader halted and withdrew the blade into the lightsaber's hilt.

Before Shryne could begin to make sense of it, he heard a creaking sound from below, and something flew at him from one of the ramps. Only a last-instant turn of his sword kept the object from striking him in the head.

It was a plank—ripped from a ramp they had taken to the bridge.

Shryne gazed in awe at unreadable Vader, then began to race toward him, blade held high over his right shoulder.

He didn't make half the distance when a storm of similar planks and lengths of handrail came whirling at him. Vader was using his dark side abilities to dismantle the ramps!

Surrendering to the guidance of the Force, Shryne swung his lightsaber in a flurry of deflecting maneuvers—side-to-side, overhead, low down, behind his back—but the floorboards were coming in larger and larger pieces, from all directions, and faster than he could parry them. The butt end of a board struck him on the outer left thigh. The face of a wide plank slammed him across the shoulders. Wooden pegs flew at his face; other speared into his arms. Then a short support post hit him squarely in the forehead, knocking the wind out of him and dropping him to his knees. Blood running into his eyes, he fought to remain conscious, extending the lightsaber in one shaking hand while clamping the other on the bridge's handrail. Five meters away Vader stood, his hands crossed in front of him, lightsaber hanging on his belt.

Shryne tried to keep him in focus.

Another board, whirling end-over-end, came out of nowhere, hitting him in the kidneys. Reflexively the hand that was grasping the railing went to the small of his back, and he lost balance. Trying but failing to catch himself, he fell through space.

Give in the wooden floor saved his life, but at the expense of all the bones in his left arm and shoulder.

Above him Vader jumped from the bridge, dropping to the floor with a grace he hadn't displayed before and alighting just meters away.

Ignoring the pain in his shattered limb, Shryne began to propel himself in a backward crawl toward the opening through which he and Vader had entered the wroshyr's trunk, a hot wind howling at him, whipping his long hair about.

The balcony was gone. Fallen.

There was nothing between Shryne and the ground but gritty air filled with burning leaves. Far below, Wookiees were being herded onto the landing platform. The forests were in flames Vader approached, drawing and igniting his Sith blade.

Shryne blinked blood from his eyes; lifted his lightsaber hand only to realize that he had lost the sword during his fall. Slumping back, he loosed a ragged, resigned exhalation.

"I owe you a debt," he told Vader. "It took you to bring me back to the Force."

"And you to firm my faith in the power of the dark side, Master Shryne." Shryne swallowed hard. "Then tell me. Were you trained by Dooku? By Sidious?" Vader came to a halt. "Not by Dooku. Not yet by Sidious."

"Not yet," Shryne said, as if to himself "Then you're his apprentice?" His eyes darted right and left, searching for some means of escape. "Is Sidious also in league with Emperor Palpatine?" Vader fell silent for a moment, making up his mind about something. "Lord Sidious is the Emperor." Shryne gaped at Vader, trying to make sense of what he had said. "The order to kill the Jedi—"

"Order Sixty-Six," Vader said.

"Sidious issued it." Pieces to the puzzle Shryne had been grappling with for weeks assembled themselves. "The military buildup, the war itself . . . It was all part of a plan to eliminate the Jedi order." Vader nodded. "All about this." He gestured to Shryne. "About you and me, you could say" Shryne's stomach convulsed, and he coughed blood. The fall hadn't only broken his bones, but ruptured a vital organ. He was dying. Backing farther out the opening, he gazed into the night sky, then at Vader.

"Did Sidious turn you into the monstrosity you've become?"

"No, Shryne," Vader said in a flat voice. "I did this to myself—with some help from Obi-Wan Kenobi."

Shryne stared. "You knew Obi-Wan?"

Vader regarded him. "Haven't you guessed by now? I was a Jedi for a time." Shryne let his bafflement show. "You're one of the Lost Twenty. Like Dooku."

"I am the twenty-first, Master Shryne. Surely you've heard of Anakin Skywalker. The Chosen One."

Shryne sprawled in the wroshyr's cavernous opening, the wind tugging at his clothing, blood trickling from the corners of his mouth, clearly struggling with the revelation he had been granted. Vader stood over him, his right hand resting on the hilt of the lightsaber, though he had no intention of drawing it from his belt again. One strong gust could topple Shryne to his final resting place. It is enough to let him die knowing that the order was betrayed by one of its own. More important, Vader's bloodlust had been appeased; replaced by self-possession of a sort he had never before experienced. It was as if he had crossed some invisible threshold to a new world. He could feel the power of the dark side surging through him like an icy torrent. He felt invulnerable in a way that had nothing to do with his durasteel prostheses, his suit of armor and gadgets, which now seemed little more than an outfit. And it had taken a Jedi—yet another Jedi—to usher him over that threshold. He gazed down at Shryne, emblematic of the defeated Jedi order, as Obi-Wan should have been. He recalled the way Dooku had gazed down at him on Geonosis, and the way Anakin had gazed down at Dooku in the General's quarters aboard the Invisible Hand.

Someday he would gaze down at Sidious in the same way. After he took an apprentice, perhaps. Someone with the same rebellious spirit that Shryne demonstrated.

Shryne coughed weakly. "What are you waiting for, Skywalker? Strike me down. You're only killing a Jedi."

Vader planted his fists on his hips. "Then you do accept the truth."

"I accept that you and Palpatine are a perfect match—" Shryne began, when without warning an immense explosion turned a small region of the western sky bright as day. Eclipsing stars, a roiling ball of fire blossomed high over Kashyyyk, expanding and expanding until the vacuum of space suffocated it. When Vader looked at Shryne again, the Jedi appeared to be grinning.

"Would that be one of your ships? Your Interdictor cruiser, maybe?" He coughed blood and a laugh.

"They've escaped you again, haven't they "

"If so, they will be found, and killed."

Shryne's expression suddenly changed, from smug to almost rapturous.

"I've seen this," he uttered, mostly to himself. "I envisioned this . . ." Vader pressed closer to hear him. "Your death, you mean."

"An explosion bright as a star," Shryne said. "A forest world, intrepid defenders, escaping ships, and

. . . you, I think, somehow at the center of it all." His bloodstained lips formed themselves into a sublime smile, and a tear ran from his right eye. "Skywalker, it won't matter if you find them. It won't matter if you find and kill every Jedi who survived Order Sixty-Six. I understand now . . . the Force will never die."

Vader was still gazing down at Shryne's inert body when several stormtroopers emerged from one of the Wookiees' ingenious turbolifts and hurried over to him.

Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, PART IV