Running lightly around the base of the tower, he approached the first clutch of sentries from behind. A judicious use of telekinesis triggered a life-support alarm a dozen clone tubes along, prompting a quick inspection by the stormtroopers. While they were distracted, he ran up the stairs they had been guarding, to the next platform.

There he put the thought into the mind of another trooper that he had heard a disturbance some distance away. The moment he and his fellows were busy, Starkiller crept past them, too. The Force absorbed all sound of his movement and shrouded his form in shadow. He didn't just fade into the background: he became the background.

Before long, though, the guards became suspicious. They were of course in constant contact via their helmet comlinks, and a plethora of false alarms was itself unlikely to be innocent. So Starkiller turned the screws a little tighter, creating half-seen phantoms in the minds of the troopers that literally ran circles around them. Pressure hoses exploded with the force of grenades when Starkiller blocked them from afar. Clone tubes opened unexpectedly, spilling disoriented, half-minded bodies across the decks.

By the time he had reached the summit of that rower, the storm- troopers were in utter disarray, and he hadn't used his lightsabers once.

Chapter 21