LOTF: Resurgence/Chapter 9

As the lift made its way to the lowest level of the facility, the alarms stopped, leaving the team in the dark blue light of the lift. Hans tried to use the lift's controls to change its course to no avail; the lift was being pulled down with the Force. Stepping back from the controls, Hans looked at each of the others, who all exchanged knowing glances and raised their weapons at the lift's door, expecting the worst. At long last, they felt the soft thud of the lift reaching the bottom floor, and the door quickly slid open.

As it opened, Decien quickly let out a burst in the Force, knocking the group off their feet and their weapons out of their hands. He entered the lift, raised his arms, and pulled Hans, Cade, Asura, and Praxon off the ground with the Force. They were unable to move from his grip as he carried them behind him into a new room. The room was wide, and like the lift, mostly dark but illuminated by deep blue lights. Empty stasis tubes (five for each side) and computer consoles lined the left and right walls of the room, where several Stormtroopers and Sumad stood silently at attention, as well as Qorbin, chained up with multiple soldiers guarding him. Qorbin was silent, though awake. The computers all hummed in sync, their sound constantly audible under Decien's footsteps towards the end of the room. At the end was another terminal with multiple large screens above and a large, cylindrical black machine with tubes circling around it. As Decien reached it, Sumad barked out an order to the troopers to restrain the four prisoners, and Stormtroopers approached them, two of them for each prisoner, and grabbed them as Decien dropped them to their feet. After pressing a few buttons, the machine began to whirr and spin actively, and Decien stepped away from the controls to speak to the prisoners face-to-face. First, he approached Hans.

"I've heard a thing or two about you. Hans Cerrano, the politician's son turned insurgent. Tell me, when did you last see Berloc?"

Hans pushed against his captors, but to no avail. "I'll take you down," he vowed, "No matter what it takes."

Decien's smug grin increased ever so slightly. "Me?" He inquired. "You haven't even finished off the first person you swore to kill." He moved on to Praxon. "And you, what even are you now? Man? Machine? I've done you a favor, jamming that droid's transmissions. You've lost yourself. Don't you remember the times before, where you didn't have a little voice in there telling you what to do? Or do you not even care?"

Praxon didn't speak, his robotic eye coldly observing Decien. They stood there for a brief moment, and Decien let out an exasperated sigh, moving on to Asura. "Asura Tyuki. How much death have you seen in the last six years? Don't you wish you could go back to the simplicity of before? Do you even still believe in your cause, your leader? I feel the doubt within you."

Asura defiantly gazed back into his prying green eyes. "If it meant men like you roamed this galaxy unchecked, I would never go back. That's our mission, you scum. To protect the innocent from you."

"How's that working out for you?" Decien countered. He proceeded to move on to Cade. "And you... You could be so much more. Did you know Yula had a vision about you?"

Cade didn't even raise his head to give his eerily calm reply. "Where is she?"

"You already know-- I can feel it. That's right, Cade: I killed her." Decien bragged.

Cade raised his head, with rage in his eyes, and violently threw his captors against the wall behind him. He then struck at Decien with his right fist, but the Inquisitor caught his hand in an impact that shook the room. Cade stood here a moment in shock, then Decien punched him squarely across the face with his other hand, sending Cade to the ground, still conscious. The guards picked him up again. At last, Qorbin weakly spoke. "You will never break them, Decien."

Decien turned to face him. "Need I even list your failures? Perhaps if you'd been a better Master, you would never have been captured."

"Tell me, child, do you even remember why I was captured?"

He frowned. "I wasn't part of it."

Qorbin laughed. "Perhaps if you had a better Master, you wouldn't need your memory wiped."

"What? What are you talking about?" Decien could sense the truth in Qorbin's words, but not their meaning. "Should I remember you?"

Qorbin refused to speak, instead merely smugly grinning at the sudden exposure of a weakness in Decien's other flawless persona. Decien quickly tried to regain control of the situation.

"Disregarding this senile Master's foolish attempts of mockery, I'm sure you're all wondering, why are we all here?" Decien began to make his way back to the machine's terminal. The terminal's screens now activated, displaying images of the destroyed temple on Umbara, the Carlac village, and the Dathomirian temple. "It was much simpler at first. You see, I didn't understand what the Binding was yet. I just wanted the key to eternal life, and all I needed was Ganner Slarwalker to find it."

The screens displayed burnt journals, with the name "Ganner Slarwalker" highlighted while the rest of the writings were darkened out. "Did you know Arek Saris kept notes? So, naturally, after reading this and seeing his body (rather impressive, really), I figured, 'I have to meet this Jedi.' Spent ages digging until I realized we'd captured his Master already, and from there it was really only a matter of time until you came."

He showed the security footage of Quesh, of the group's reaction to his first meeting with them. "But then you didn't bring him along. Why not? I had to know, so I followed you." He showed them Carlac, Ganner's coffin, his body. "You led me right to truth. He had died. At the time, I wasn't sure how, but Darth Massikus hadn't made himself known either, so I had to assume there was a draw."

"Enough," Praxon interrupted. "Why do all this?"

"Relax, relax," Decien assured him. "I understand your impatience, but I'm getting there. Where was I? Oh, right-- Carlac. I found his journals, too. I learned just what he had done on Umbara and what he'd seen on Korriban and Dathomir. Trust me," he warned, "We're all in for a lot."

He deactivated the screens as the machine continued on, beeping and spinning and flashing, increasing in the intensity of its distractions.

"It was easy from there," he said. "I went to Dathomir. You went to Dathomir. I wasn't even planning on that bit, I was just going to get the answers on my own, but then Yula Ardinn did something quite unexpected, something of which the concept I doubt even you understand: She became a Keeper of the Binding. A protector of the knowledge, cursed with the secret to immortality."

"No..." Qorbin whispered. "You monster!" Cade yelled, pushing again to no avail against the Stormtroopers holding him back.

Decien, chuckling, continued, his voice dripping with confident arrogance more and more. As he spoke, he left the terminal for the final time. "Oh, yes! I tortured her, made her wish for death, and I'll admit, she never broke. But in the end, when death consumed her, I stole everything from her mind. I heard the unspoken secrets of your little conspiracies. I saw Yula Ardinn reunited with Ganner in a cave on Carlac. I smelt the ashes of the village burning. I felt the impact of his's death. And I inherited the title that was given to Yula. I am Decien, the last Keeper of the Binding."

"We will destroy you," Asura promised. "No matter how long it takes."

"Perhaps," Decien agreed, "But it won't be me you'll need to destroy."

"Sequencing complete. Ready for genetic compilation."

"What is that, Decien?" Hans angrily inquired.

"Ganner Slarwalker was the greatest weapon to be forged by this generation. There is no doubt. He was flawless in all aspects as a warrior but one-- the Jedi teachings. Even in the most desolate of times, he allowed himself to be restrained by the teachings of an obsolete group. It's why he died. But, as you all very well know, death is not the end for us."

Suddenly, one by one, each of the ten activated, being quickly filled with an intense light, making the internal workings impossible to discern, and lighting Decien from behind.

"The Empire has done research into the cloning of Jedi. At this moment, every subject we've tested has had a defect of some sort. But hidden in the Dark Side of the Force is the perfect counter to this-- a method through which the bodies could be merged, rooting out the weaknesses and leaving only the strengths."

In sync, each of the stasis tubes suddenly darkened again, leaving everyone in the room blinded by a moment by the darkness, their eyes needing to adjust to the sudden shift in light. Everyone in the room gazed at the creations within the tubes, eyes closed, breathing in sync with each other. "You're insane," Cade whispered. In each tube was a clone of Ganner Slarwalker, aged around twenty-five. They each had his same short, brown hair, and pale skin, and, most likely, the deep blue eyes he'd inherited from his mother. They were all dressed in synthetic robes, decorated in gray and white all the way from head to toe.

Decien looked around at each clone, and spread his arms out, gathering power. "Insane?" He retorted. "I'm the only person in this room with any idea of what's going on."

Decien reached out in the Force, feeling the imperfections and weaknesses of each of the clones. Their minds were all in shambles, but their physical defects, the most important aspect (for their minds were not the ones that mattered anyways), would easily be rooted out. Mentally, Decien prepared himself for an undertaking of greater power than he had ever experienced, and began to create the perfect clone of Ganner Slarwalker. As he worked in the realm of the mind and the Force, the physical world entered a similar state of havoc. The glass on each tube shattered as Decien let forth bursts of lightning connecting them all. The clones, floating towards Decien, began to slowly spin around Decien, then faster, then faster, becoming distortions. Decien opened his eyes.

Silence fell, as did he to the floor, and raising his head, he found his eyes meeting with those of the perfect clone of Ganner Slarwalker. The clone, bearing no memories, then stood up and looked around him, taking in every detail but not understanding any of it. His lips moved in the faintest resemblances of speech, though he knew no words. He slowly began to walk towards the prisoners, reaching out to them. "Ganner! Stop him!" Cade begged.

Levitating them with the Force, Decien quickly threw multiple shards of the broken glass of the stasis tubes at the clone, impaling him repeatedly with the fragments as he fell to the ground. Now it was Qorbin who broke free and tried to attack Decien, but was still too overcome by his own injuries, and collapsed at his feet. He was promptly swept up again. "Stop me?" Decien mocked Cade. "Nothing can stop me now." He reached down and pulled a long shard of glass from the ground, studied his own reflection in it curiously, and plunged it into is chest. He coughed up blood and quickly removed the glass. Decien wasn't certain how close to death he would need to be to return a spirit of Ganner's caliber, so he had decided to go farther than Yula had with Talzin's resurrection (Talzin had been assisting her anyways, whereas Decien was alone in seeking out Ganner's spirit among the dead). Thus began the Binding.

Through the clone, Decien opened the link between himself and the dead, pushing against the Force as he rose into the air. For a brief moment, like the calm before a hurricane, he felt nothing. Then, all at once, he was assailed by innumerable spirits. Infinite voices, screaming out in unending pain, grabbing him and trying to pull him in as he waded through the sea of the dead. The onslaught was much more than Yula had faced, and Decien found himself barely holding on to his sanity. The ritual was not to be performed by the weak, but Decien was not weak. After what felt like an eternity, he felt something familiar, a presence he'd become acquainted with as of late within the crystal of a lightsaber. Ganner. He pulled, grasping his spirit little by little and dragging him in and slowly the other voices were drained out until at last, Ganner's soul was within him.

He saw Ganner, and he saw for the first time the true untapped power within him. He knew with certainty that Ganner could be so much more to the Empire. However, at the same time, he felt Ganner looking back. His spirit assailed Decien, threatening to take over Decien's body instead of the one meant for him. Ganner pushed with all his might, but Decien would not give in. He was the last Keeper of the Binding, and he would not fail here. He threw Ganner out of his body as powerfully as he possibly could, sending his consciousness into the clone. The impact of the Binding was such that a bright burst of pure energy was shot forth from Decien and Ganner, knocking everyone else on the room off their feet and sending them hurtling into the walls. At last, when it was possible to see within the chamber again, Ganner Slarwalker, now healed by the Binding, knelt in front of Decien. He took a breath in, and opened his eyes. He stared directly forward through Decien's chest, unmoving.

"Rise," Decien commanded.

His eyes unshifting, Ganner Slarwalker stood up. Behind him, Asura grabbed a fallen Stormtrooper's blaster and quickly fired off three shows. Without so much as flinching, Ganner extended his right arm, palm facing backwards, and each shot vanished as though impacting an invisible shield. Asura fired until the blaster was empty to no avail; when she ran out she charged straight at Decien only for Ganner to swiftly spin and strike her in the gut, sending her to the ground. "Did I forget to mention that all the clones were fitted with cerebral chips programmed to obey my every command?"

"It's not enough," Cade muttered defiantly as he slowly stood up again, propped up against the wall. "He's still in there."

"Is that so?" Decien replied, inspecting Ganner, who unwaveringly looked down at Asura. Decien unclipped Yula's lightsaber from his belt, activated it, and handed it to Ganner. He studied it, looking into its yellow light and getting a feel for the weapon. Decien lightly probed Ganner's mind to make sure nothing was wrong, and, finding no proof, gave another order.

"Kill everyone else in this room," he ordered. Everyone else in the room immediately panicked, scrambling to get up and grab blasters. Sumad began firing on Ganner, who deflected the shots back into his chest. Sumad gasped as the light in his dark eyes faded, but was dead before he hit the floor. He paused. "Good," Decien praised him. "Now kill your friends."

Ganner's grip tightened on his saber as though to move it, but he stood frozen again by an unseen and unfelt force.

"Kill them!" Decien commanded.

However, instead, Ganner quickly spun around and Decien felt the danger in the Force just in time to activate his own lightsaber and deflect a gray barrage of lightning that shot out of Ganner's hand. As Ganner ceased that attack, he swifty moved forward, slashing at Decien with Yula's lightsaber. Decien blocked that, too, with his own lightsaber and the two blades clashed against each other as each man stared into the other's eyes. In Decien's there was surprise; in Ganner's, determination.

"You studied the Shadow Assassins, did you not?" Ganner asked. Decien pushed him back, and the two began a furious dance of blades, neither gaining a definite edge over the other, as Antimatter Squadron quickly began to make their way to the lift.

"You should've known they can hide their presence in the Force." Decien internally chastised himself for having not prepared for that, but dismissed it; he needed to stay focused. Even now, Ganner was unreadable, as if his mind was absolutely blank. Their duel continued as deflected blades destroyed countless pieces of machinery and cloning tubes. At one point, Ganner tore the console off the main terminal and threw it at Decien, who sliced it in half. As the two pieces parted in front of him, Decien suddenly found himself facing no one, then was thrown against the cloning machine with immense strength. Had he not shielded his body with the Force, the impact could have very easily killed him. Instead, it left him dazed and unable to balance. Ganner quickly grabbed him by the throat and pinned him to the cloning machine. Decien tried to speak, but his air was blocked off.

"And, if you'd studied me, you would know I can't be controlled." Ganner pulled his saber back, preparing to stab Decien in the heart, as in the corner of his eye, Decien's hands touched the cloning machine and a purple spark flew between them. Instantly, the machine exploded in a bright red flash, the heat throwing Ganner across the room and into the lift where Antimatter Squadron and Qorbin were waiting. Hans and Asura grabbed him as Cade quickly closed the door. As it slid shut, Ganner glimpsed Decien lying on the ground, severely burnt across the back of his body, but still looking up, focused on Ganner.

Not one for wasting time, Hans began planning as soon as the door closed. "All right, Ganner, can you cover our escape?"

"Yes," he replied, surprised by how unfazed Hans was. At the same time, Praxon's link with DX-245 was reestablished. DX-245 was currently waiting at the controls of the hangar, which was now littered with a large number of dead Stormtroopers. Praxon, as fast as he could think, relayed the situation to DX-245, receiving his status update in turn. The hangar was secure, and the Fortune Destroyer was ready to go. "Praxon, status?" Hans asked. "We're clear," he responded.

They made it to the hangar, where DX-245 met the rest of the group and Ganner stayed back as the rest of the group made their way onto the Destroyer. "Get going with out me," He told Hans, looking at the numerous TIE Interceptors lining the hangar. "I'll take one of these and catch up." He watched as Praxon helped Qorbin onto the ship, and finally the ship's ramp began to raise itself.

Behind him, he heard the loud groans of metal tearing apart. He turned to see Decien, lightsaber drawn, blood dripping down his body as he panted heavily but refused to back down. Suddenly, the Fortune Destroyer's lower cannons turned and began to fire on Decien. As he deflected the shots, Ganner took advantage of the momentary opening to raise the hatch of the nearest Interceptor with the Force and jump in, closing the hatch as he buckled in and flipped switches as fast as he could (fortunately the TIE Interceptor's controls were somewhat similar to the Delta-7's he'd learned to fly as a Jedi.)

As Ganner and Antimatter Squadron began to lift off the ground, Ranulph spoke to Ganner, communicating directly to his ship. "Ganner, it's Ranulph. This is risky, but you're going to need to jump to hyperspace as soon as we get out of the hangar or we'll never clear this station's defenses. Lock in a route to Dantooine and get ready..."

The Destroyer began moving forward out of the hangar, with the Interceptor close behind as the mounted cannon still fired on Decien, keeping him at bay until at last, the Destroyer had penetrated the shield and quickly blasted off into space. The rapid output from the ship's engines impacted the shield, sending a strong seismic wave through the facility. Ganner quickly accelerated and behind him, Decien leapt towards the ship, building his power for his final, desperate move.

Decien reached out at the ship but grasped nothing as Ganner passed through the force field and immediately initiated his hyperdrive. With the last of his energy, Decien discharged a furious burst at the Interceptor as he fell, which immediately struck the ship before it launched off in a random direction nowhere close to that which the Destroyer had taken. Landing on the ground of the hangar, Decien finally let unconsciousness take him.