The Force Unleashed Read Online Free PDF

favored. Realizing he couldn't penetrate it, Kota backed off and
    tried a different style-slow, deliberate, with sudden and devastatingly quick
    strikes. These, too, the apprentice parried, and when the old man's guard looked to
    be slipping, he offered strikes of his own.
    The duel raged all across the control center, which shook and rattled as the
    facility around it broke apart. The apprentice ignored everything else-Juno's voice,
    the wildly fluctuating gravity, the never-ending explosions, the rising temperature
    of the floor beneath him-in order to concentrate solely on this one vital battle.
    Kota wouldn't beat him, but could he beat Kota? He had to. He would rather go down
    with the ship than break off and admit failure. Darth Vader's secret apprentice knew
    which fate would await him if he did.
    The general was wily and strong and possessed some moves the apprentice had never
    seen before. But he was older and willfully ignorant of the dark side of the Force.
    He attempted his charge attack two more times, obviously hoping to force a mistake
    or wear out his opponent, but it was he who started to show the effects of the duel,
    he who took hits. Soon his cloak was a smoking rag and one of his shoulder pads was
    glowing red-hot.
    The apprentice pressed harder, feeling victory and the attainment of his full power
    approaching. Soon the Jedi's lightsaber-and head-would be his. Then he truly would
    be worthy of his Master's praise!
    He caught the general in a choke hold and maintained his grip even though it turned
    partially back on him. He had been ready for this; his lungs were full. The general,
    however, clutched at his throat with one hand while barely managing to parry with
    the other. The apprentice let the fire in his lungs fuel his lust for triumph. Even
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    as darkness crowded around the edges of his vision, he sent objects hurtling at
    Kota's legs and face, battling him on all fronts.
    Finally a fragment of smoking debris struck the general's knees from behind. With a
    cry of frustration, the flailing Jedi went down, his face purple and eyes bulging.
    The apprentice relented slightly, letting them both have a little air, but before
    Kota could scramble to his feet he was on him, pressing down on their locked
    light-sabers, which sizzled just millimeters from their faces.
    Kota strained but couldn't force the red blade away. In his blue eyes the apprentice
    saw not cleansing hatred, but regret. Even at the end, Kota clung to his weak Jedi
    ways.
    "Vader thinks"-the old man gasped-"he's turned you. But I can sense your future-and
    Vader isn't part of it!"
    The apprentice urged the lightsabers even closer to Kota's face.
    Sweat beaded on the Jedi Master's forehead. "I sense-I sense only ..." A look of
    shock and confusion passed over his face. "Me?"
    The apprentice forced Kota's own lightsaber down into his eyes.
    And suddenly-as though in a vision from out of time, exactly the sort of vision the
    apprentice sought in the fire of his red blade-Kota's face became that of another
    man, a man with dark hair and strong features, features not dissimilar to the
    apprentice's own.
    The general cried out in pain-and in that cry the apprentice thought he heard a man
    shouting, "Run!"
    He flinched away, blinking furiously, wondering if Kota in his desperate extremity
    had concocted some new and insidious Jedi mind trick. But his head seemed clear of
    intrusion, and the general seemed to be thinking of anything but attack. Blinded and
    agonized, he scrabbled backward, his lightsaber slipping from his fingers and
    dropping with a dead thud to the deck. A blast of telekinesis erupted from him,
    shattering every viewport in the command center and sending the apprentice flying. A
    raging wind swept past them, sucking out the smoke and shrapnel of their duel. Kota,
    too, was sucked out and fell with a fading cry into the atmosphere below. Or had he
    leapt?
    The apprentice let