Star Wars the Force Unleashed

Chapter 1 The life of Darth Vader's secret student took a strange and deadly turn the day his Master first spoke of General Rahm Kota. He'd had no warning that a moment of such significance was approaching. During his nightly meditations, kneeling on the metal floor of his chamber while construction droids built the Executor, unaware of his existence, he had seen no visions in the pure, angry red of the lightsaber that he held like a burning brand in front of his eyes. Although he had stared until the world vanished and the dark side flowed through him in a bloody tide, the future had remained closed. Nothing, therefore, prepared him for the sudden deviation from the day's punishing and unpredictable exercises. His Master was not a patient teacher; neither was he a talkative one. He preferred action to debate, just as he preferred recrimination to reward. Never once in all the days they had sparred together, with lightsaber, telekinesis, or suggestion, had the Dark Lord offered a single word of encouragement. And that was as it should be, he knew. A teacher's job was not to drag a student along a single, well-worn path. Rather it was to let the student forge his or her own way through the forest, intervening only when the student was hopelessly lost and needed to be corrected. Even on the wrong paths, he knew, lay some wisdom. What didn't kill him only made him more powerful in the dark side. And there had been many, many times he had thought he might die . . . Breathing heavily after a punishing round of blows, lightsaber lowered in submission, he knelt before his Master and prepared for the killing strike. He could feel the wrath radiating from the Dark Lord like heata visceral, angry heat that brought out his skin in gooseflesh. For a moment that seemed to stretch for years, all he could hear was the regular, implacable respiration that kept the man inside the mask alive. "You were weak when I found you." The voice seemed to come from the far end of a long, deep tunnel. "You should never have survived my training." He closed his eyes. He had heard these words before. They were the closest thing to a bedtime story he'd had as a child. The moral he had taken from them was burned into his mind: Learn . . . or die. Behind his eyelids he pictured again the clean, cleansing heat of the lightsaber. He had brushed his skin against it many times, defying the pain, and taken numerous small wounds while dueling with his Master. He imagined that he knew what the blade would feel like when it struck him down. Part of him longed for it. The lightsaber drifted so close to his neck that he could smell his hair burning. "But now, your hatred has become your strength." The lightsaber retreated. With a hiss it deactivated. "At last, the dark side is your ally." He didn't dare nod or look up. What was this? Some new ruse to lure him into overconfidence and failure? His Master's next words made his heart trip a beat. "Rise, my apprentice." Apprentice. So he had always thought himself, but never before had it been said aloud! And that strange motion with the lightsaber . . . Could he possibly have just been knighted? His lightsaber retracted. It was all he could do to balance on knees that felt suddenly made of rubber. The black shape looming over him was unreadable, limned with crimson from the light of the star shining through the wide viewport to their right. Metal, angular, and functional, the space around them was as familiar to him as the scars on the back of his hand, but suddenly, disconcertingly, everything seemed different. The apprentice kept his eyes up and his voice level. "What is your will, my MaWilliams, Sean is the author of 'Star Wars the Force Unleashed ', published 2008 under ISBN 9780345499028 and ISBN 0345499026.