Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II by Sean Williams Page A

flying. Metal squealed. Transparisteel shattered. The roar of the Gorog filled the air. Starkiller clutched a console as the skybox lurched again, tipping the floor steadily closer to vertical.
    “You fool, ” cried the potentate, spread-eagle on the floor. “You’ve killed us all!”
    Starkiller peered warily out the nearest window. It was immediately clear what had happened. The Gorog had arrested its fall by catching hold of the skybox with one hand, and now it was trying to climb to safety. In doing so, however, it was steadily destroying the skybox itself.
    The gold throne broke free from its restraints and slid toward the shattered viewport. It scooped up the potentate as it went, dragging him down with its considerable mass. He clutched at the floor but could do nothing to arrest his fall. He screamed as he went out the window and fell straight into the Gorog’s gaping mouth.
    The tiny meal galvanized what was left of the Gorog’s facility to reason. It looked up into the skybox, seeing it for the first time as a container, not simply something to hang on to. It saw the shining of the energy weapons that had stung it. With its free hand, it lunged for them, but succeeded only in bringing down still more of the structure. There was no way now to avoid falling. It knew that in the depths of its deranged mind. With the last of its strength it lunged again, and caught its enemy at last.
    “Kota!” Starkiller shouted as the Gorog ripped the Jedi general from the skybox and dragged him down with it.
    “Turn away, boy, ” he heard Kota saying in his mind. “Get on with your mission. There are some things you aren’t ready to face. “
    He blinked. The words were another memory, not an instruction from the falling general. He wasn’t going to take orders from the past-especially when he hadn’t followed them the first time around.
    There’s nothing I can’t face. Starkiller thought.
    He let go of the console and took a running jump through the shattered window.
    It was surprising just how far the Gorog had already fallen toward the gaping mouth of the sinkhole, but he refused to be discouraged. He dived in a straight line, using the Force to propel him through the whipping wind. He remembered with perfect clarity his former self’s plummet to the surface of the incomplete Death Star, and hard on the heels of that memory came the sensation of
    Juno’s lips against his. Longing for her filled him, driving him downward even faster.
    The stench of the Gorog’s fear and rage came heavily on the air as he approached it. The beast was tumbling. The fist containing Kota flashed once in front of him, then a second time. The general was slashing at the fingers holding him pinned, to little effect. Starkiller had to get him free before Kota’s strength gave out and he was crushed to a pulp.
    Selecting his point of landing with as much care as he was able, Starkiller came down on the creature’s back, close enough to one of the duranium anchors to take hold of it. He braced himself with both feet against the spine, ignoring the way the world was spinning around him. The Gorog didn’t know he was there. It wouldn’t be expecting an attack from this side.
    He took a deep breath, reaching deeper into the Force than he had before. He had never journeyed to the center of a planet, where the molten metal raged and burned under pressure hard enough to make diamond out of dust, but he imagined something much like that. This time, he wanted to do more than just enrage the Gorog. He could feel the web of veins thudding a panicky bear beneath the skin. He concentrated on that beat, on the rapid pulsing of life that would be extinguished when it reached the bottom of the sinkhole. Why wait that long, when Kota’s life was at stake as well?
    For a moment, he faltered. He had never killed anything this big before.
    But it was just one life, and it stood between him and his goal. He had no choice.
    Instead of a wild crackle of