Starkiller fought as he had never fought before. Clones-his clones, nightmarishly imperfect but powerful all the same- pressed in on all sides. Darth Vader's vile conditioning had a profound hold on their immature psychologies. The desire to kill consumed their thoughts. It was all they radiated. Together they could easily have turned on their creator and overpowered him. Instead they were driven to destroy their own.

Nor their own. Just him. Whether he was the original Starkiller, as Kota believed, or simply the best copy to dare didn't matter. He was their target, and they used every power they possessed to bring him down.

On Kashyyyk he had fought a vision of himself, and won.

On Dagobah, he had seen other versions of him, and spared them.

On Kamino, the choice was taken from him. He had to fight if he was to live, and he had to live in order to save Juno. Thought didn't enter into it. The Force rushed through him, and his lightsabers moved as though of their own accord.

His clones screamed as he cut them down.

It quickly became apparent that the first to rush in were the wildest and weakest both. In their eagerness to do battle, they didn't stop to plan their strategies. What they possessed in speed, they lacked in forethought. He was armed and they were not, so for being headstrong beyond all reason these brutish beings paid the ultimate price.

The next wave either learned from the fate of the first or had enough innate caution to stand back a moment and observe the way he fought. They came at him from all sides, using telekinesis to try to knock him off balance on the blood-slicked floor. He was too fast for them, leaping over their heads and attacking from be- hind, slashing at their overdeveloped shoulders and hunched backs without remorse.

Moving out of the center of the ring of converging clones brought him into contact with the third wave, the most cunning he had encountered so far. Long-armed and long-fingered, with blackened, blistering skin, these employed lightning when attacking him, and then by devious means. They would wait until he was distracted and attack him from behind, or come at him from three directions at once, or even use one of their fellow clones as an impromptu conductor. Deadly currents crackled and sparkled around him, kept barely at bay by the judicious application of a Force shield. Sometimes a lucky strike caused him pain, but he fought through it, found the source, and put the attack quickly to an end.

From above came the sound of lightsabers activating, and he braced himself for another, more dangerous onslaught. These, the most normal looking of all the clones, spun, slashed, hacked, and stabbed at him from all sides, one-handed, two-handed, with all possible variations of lightsaber combat styles. Red-eyed and hate- filled, they fought each other, too, and the ones who had come before. There were no allies, just a sea of individuals.

And yet... Confidence, determination, intelligence, and cunning-combined with physical strength and agility-the clones possessed every attribute he did, in greater or lesser degrees. He saw in their faces the same confusion he felt. They were all clones, so who was he to stand out from among them? What special qualities set him apart?

Who was Starkiller, in this mass of faces and bodies?

A desperate rage built up inside him. What if what he felt was nothing but a lingering imprint left behind by the first Starkiller? Did he cling to his feelings with all the more desperation because deep down he knew they were counterfeit? "The memories of a dead man, " Vader had called them, blaming them for the torment and confusion he had felt. "They will fade, " Vader had promised, but they had not. Did the other clones experience the same hopes and fears? Were their experiences any less worthy than his?

"Destroy what he created... hate what he loved... he strong... " That was the command Vader had given him, on threat of death. But who was the deliverer of that death? Wasn't he the one delivering to the clones the very fate that he had feared? Had they all been given the same ultimatum?

"You will receive the same treatment as the others. "

Death by lightsaber, at his own hand. Perhaps this macabre free-for-all was Vader's way of weeding out the imperfect stock. The last one left standing would be considered the perfect Starkiller, the one who would rake his place at Vader's side. Perhaps that was his plan.

"You have faced your final test, " Vader had told a victorious version of himself in the vision he had received on the Salvation. Maybe the vision he had received on Dagobah had warned him of a very real trial, nor the metaphorical one he had imagined it to be.

The dark side awaited his call. But if this was his final test, then he would not fail. There was too much riding on it. If he gave in to temptation and became Darth Vader's apprentice once more, then it was clear from the vision that Juno would die. She was the whole reason he had escaped, and then returned. He would not turn his back on that, even to survive.

He sought strength from within himself, and pushed outward with all his might. Clones went flying. The empty rubes from which they had emerged shattered into millions of pieces. Platforms buckled and fell with reverberant crashes. The interior of the cloning tower rang as though struck with a giant hammer. Every muscle in his body shook with the effort of it.

The echoes faded, and he felt a peculiar kind of quiet descend.

The air was misted red, and every surface was slick with blood. He tasted it on his tongue and smelled it in his nose. His blood. A veritable ocean of it.

He maintained a defensive pose, breathing rhythmically and deeply, regaining his strength. The tips of his lightsabers shook. He had never felt so exhausted, at every level of his being. He felt simultaneously cleansed and poisoned.

Nothing moved. Slowly, incredulously, he began to believe that it was over.

They were all dead. He had destroyed every last one of them. He was the only one left-of the many Darth Vader had created to do his bidding.

Chapter 23