I didn't want to die like this. Not like this.
There are good, glorious deaths — for the Motherland, for Stalin, in bed with a gorgeous supermodel whose legs go on forever and whose chest is as firm as a drum.
And then there are stupid, idiotic deaths.
Like mine.
Allow me to introduce myself — my name is Egor Frayev, I'm twenty-one years old, a law student.
My dreams: to build a career as a corporate lawyer, live in my own mansion, wake up in bed with young beauties, never marry until old age, and at the very end — knock up some pretty girl and peacefully pass into the next world.
My assets: a bunk in a six-person dorm room, a couple dozen rubles in my bank account.
Oh, and I was killed by an electric shock in the dormitory shower.
I'll be honest — it's a dubious pleasure, being electrocuted. I think I even saw the droplets of water on my body boil and instantly vanish into steam. Kind of like Revan in the Emperor's throne room, when Vitiate roasted the legendary Jedi alive in his own armor with Force lightning. Or in Episode VI, when Palps fried the younger Skywalker — steam was practically pouring off him, like he was drying up on the spot.
Like a battering ram to the chest, I was thrown from the shower door clear to the far wall, slammed into the tile so hard all the air left my lungs. My head cracked against the wall, and I felt my eyes closing, a heat spreading through my chest as if someone had poured molten metal into my diaphragm. I wanted to scream from the pain, but not a single sound came out of my mouth. Then came cold and darkness.
Tenebrous take you, why did this have to happen to me?
***
"LIVE!"
Not a request — a command.
A voice devoid of emotion. Not a single trace of pleading. A direct order, not open for discussion. Vibrations from that disembodied bass stirred my consciousness.
I couldn't feel my arms or legs. Only endless floating, as if I were falling from a great height into an abyss. I was surrounded by impenetrable darkness — cold, deeply unsettling. Viscous — I was sinking into it like quicksand. I wanted to answer the voice, but I couldn't, because I was drowning in the dark.
Was this it — the afterlife? Heaven or Hell? Reward or punishment?
The more questions I asked myself, the more panic rose in me. I was scared. Very scared. I've always hated ending up in situations beyond my control. And here, frankly, I didn't even know where I was or what was happening to me.
As had happened hundreds of times before, fear gave way to anger. Raw, searing anger, instantly flaring into rage. An abstract, all-consuming rage.
I was furious. No answers to my questions, plus this incomprehensible state — was I falling, or being dragged down…
Gradually, I realized who the object of my rage was.
The dormitory superintendent. A pathetic, wizened old man with perpetually greasy fat lips, oily eyes, and lecherous jokes. Back in my first year I'd heard rumors that he'd ruined a couple dozen freshman girls, making trouble for the ones who wouldn't "put out" for him. As far as I knew, he was always wandering the floors, eyeing the female students. But there'd never been a single case of him actually doing anything in the dorm.
And a week ago I'd told him about the exposed wires — the plumbers had been fixing the drain and had wrecked everything they could get their hands on. As a result, our shower had bare live wires, and the girls' shower had stopped working entirely. The guys from the room next door had even offered to fix it — but no, he wouldn't allow it.
Suddenly it hit me. Pashka, my roommate, had mentioned that the girls on our floor now had to go down to the first floor to shower. And right next to the women's shower was the superintendent's room…
The previous superintendent had been a kindly old lady, and there'd never been any issues, but now… I'd bet money that pervert was in no hurry to fix anything, just so the girls would keep wandering past his room. Though I wouldn't be surprised if he was spying on them in the shower.
What an animal! I died because of some geriatric pervert! He ought to be strung up by the balls and skinned alive for that. I'm not even sure they'll lock him up once they figure out what happened. We've got such a humane state, don't we.
Son of a bitch!
That's exactly why I'm all for despotism. Palpatine, in his Empire, achieved an order the galaxy hadn't seen since the days of Vitiate — the ancient Sith Emperor.
But that's all just fairy tales, as my stepfather used to tell me.
"You'll never amount to anything with this garbage!" he'd yell whenever he caught me rewatching Star Wars or playing games set in that universe.
I never knew my biological father — he vanished long before I was born. My mother spoke of him reluctantly, and my stepfather…
For a moment it felt like the hatred at just the thought of my stepfather gave me enough strength to blow up a star.
If there was one person on this earth I hated with every fiber of my being, it was my stepfather.
I never called him by name, never addressed him as anything but "stepfather." I hated the man who turned my life into hell.
He came into our lives when I was five. For sixteen long years I endured his abuse, his beatings, his mockery of my awkward — tall but painfully thin — build, my congenital nearsightedness, my scoliosis…
They say strong character is forged in the crucible of family hardship.
All I learned was how to hate. If I brought home a C, he'd beat me half to death. Everything was fair game — fists, feet, belts. He didn't accept any grade below "excellent." I wasn't even allowed a "good," because that counted as failure. And failures had to suffer.
And I suffered. For every single failure. I remember in seventh grade I placed in an Olympiad among ninth-graders. Well — "placed." An honorable third. I came home with the certificate. A couple of hours later I was rushed to intensive care — "fell down the stairs." Though I remember perfectly well that the "stairs" were my stepfather's fists. A few times he even used his police baton on me — he served proudly in the police force.
For that same reason, nobody ever so much as raised an eyebrow at my repeated hospitalizations for fractures and internal injuries.
Over sixteen years I came to hate absolutely everything about him — from his fingernails to his foul breath.
That hatred stayed with me the whole time. Even after I ran away from home at eighteen and enrolled in law school in a neighboring city. None of my family knew where I was studying, and frankly, they didn't care — they had their own child together, after all. What did my stepfather, or the woman who indulged him — the one I called my mother — care about me?
I grew up angry at the world. Like a wolf cub, I hated my family. And I hated the people around me.
When you've had to rely only on yourself since childhood, you stop putting any value on things like friendship or caring for others. Only your own goals matter. And who cares how they're achieved.
Some call it selfishness. Some call it charisma. I don't give a damn either way.
I call it my life, my style. I live for myself and by myself. And the rest of the world can shove its notions of morality and etiquette and all that garbage where the sun doesn't shine.
Part of me understood you shouldn't treat people as expendable. But I'd immediately talk myself out of that feeling.
Who were the people around me, anyway? Losers. Just like me. Would any of them come to my aid if I were getting mugged? No. Would any of them donate me a kidney? No.
None of them deserved more of my attention than was strictly necessary to achieve my goals.
My stepfather taught me that only certain people deserve attention — important figures, ones capable of solving problems. Whiners and snivelers are slaves, the kind whose backs the powerful have always wiped their boots on, and always will.
And if you don't want to spend your whole life on your knees, you have to climb over the heads of the less fortunate all the way to the top. Climb high enough that the opinions and wants of the crowd below stop mattering to you.
"If you want to sit around and do nothing, you'd better be sitting very high up," my stepfather used to lecture me.
In Star Wars, I found my escape. The struggle between Good and Evil, the eternal conflict that so many significant figures had wrestled with one way or another… Vitiate, Revan, Vader, Yoda, Dooku, Windu… Those are just the first names that come to mind… There are actually hundreds, thousands of them — characters from the books, the films, the games, and everything else that universe has spawned…
I'd thought a hundred times about what my life would look like if I ended up in Star Wars. Would I become a Jedi? No, unlikely. A Sith? That has its downsides too. Those guys have their own complications — the Force especially, which isn't always easy to get a handle on…
But if I had it — any time, any circumstances — I would build my own Empire. Like Vitiate, I'd rule it for thousands of years, sidestepping every crisis of succession. Law and order under a totalitarian regime, clear rules, clear laws, harsh punishments. A state worth being proud of. Whereas the Republic… a typical shit-ocracy that had, admittedly, produced no shortage of decent people who could have made the galaxy better, but—
"THAT IS INTERESTING."
That voice again — I'd nearly forgotten about it. Chills ran through me once more. My nonexistent body seemed to regain its shape for just a moment. I could even feel the rough, sandstone-like floor tiles of the shower beneath me…
What was happening? Maybe that voice would answer me? But where was it? Where was its owner? Somewhere in the darkness? I needed to find him — he was clearly no stranger to this place.
For some reason I got the impression the owner of the voice was very close. I just had to part the darkness a little, and there he'd be…
A mental touch against the darkness rewarded me with a jolt of pain. Once again it felt like I'd been electrocuted. But far stronger than the first time. And even the aftereffects were different from before. For a moment I felt my arms and legs again, the coolness of the tile beneath me…
"YES!" The voice picked up a hint of emotion. "AGAIN!"
Honestly, touching that thing again was a dubious pleasure at best. I had no idea how I'd managed it the first time, but now—
"AGAIN!!!"
The voice crushed down on me like a press. Strange sensation — not feeling your own body, yet fully aware you're being flattened like under a steamroller. And squeezed tighter and tighter. With no chance whatsoever to escape.
It became clear the voice had unilaterally decided who was in charge here. And it sure wasn't me calling the shots. Fine. Let's see where this goes.
In the blink of an eye, I touched the darkness again. Through that icy contact, I felt the darkness pour into me. Cold flowed into my body in thick, viscous waves. And with it came back the sensation of having a body at all. Arms, legs, head… The numbness spreading through me was enough to bend me double, and a groan tore its way out of my throat.
"GET UP!"
The voice seemed to kick me in the ribs. The momentary sense that my back was pressed against something solid was abruptly replaced by a thousand tiny pinpricks as my face met sand as hot as a griddle.
"Argh — ptooey!" I snapped my eyes open, spitting out the scorching sand that had gotten into my mouth, forcing my head to the side with an effort.
Wait — sand? I was in the shower!
The viscous, icy dark dissolved as if it had never existed. I was lying on my back, feeling — even through my thick clothing — the coarse grains of sand digging into the back of my head, my body, my legs…
Heat like an oven… Even the faint breeze brought no relief. The instant it touched my face, agony flared, as if someone had sliced half my face off with red-hot metal.
With an incoherent groan I jerked away like from a blow, rolling off in the opposite direction from where the pain had come. Pushing off the sand with my feet, blind to where I was crawling since my eyes still couldn't find focus — feeding my brain nothing but a blurry, pale-blue smear — I tried to put as much distance as possible between myself and wherever I'd woken up. My heart threatened to burst out of my chest, and my mind was unraveling under the flood of terror and pain washing over me in waves, sometimes fainter, sometimes stronger, driving me half-mad. Like a red-hot needle jammed into the base of my skull, these vague sensations of someone else's distant pain burned through my mind from the inside.
I couldn't hear my own movements, the rustle of the sand, birdsong.
Nothing at all. As if I'd been born deaf, and—
The very next second I regretted ever thinking about hearing.
A piercing shriek, like a circular saw screaming through a lumber mill, tore into my brain, replaced a second later by a thunderclap of monstrous force. Dozens, hundreds of howls at every pitch, unnervingly close to blaster fire, rang out all around me. But my eyes still refused to obey. I couldn't see what was happening, what this whole delusion around me even was. And that terrified me.
The sound of something screeching close by made me snarl with rage. What kind of joke was this supposed to be? First I'd suffered through my own private torment in that viscous void, and now the darkness had given way to some incomprehensible farce. Was this some kind of trial? Was I a lab rat? To hell with all of you!
I felt the rage that had been building inside me, fed by fear, burst outward. Like a monstrous tidal wave, something surged out of me in every direction, spreading in an instant, sowing destruction. I didn't feel that whatever this vague something was doing caused me any pain. But I heard the screech of crumpling metal, the crackle of shorting wires…
The moment that something left me, the anger drained away. Along with it went nearly all my strength, and I lay motionless on my back on the scorching sand.
A second passed, then two, before I realized the blue haze in front of my eyes was starting to sharpen. I could already tell I was looking up at a sky, threaded with a few wisps of high, thin cloud…
Then a blue figure with delicate features filled the sky above me. Seeing me, she smiled, baring two rows of sharp, predatory teeth. But the blue creature didn't lunge for my throat or start tearing me apart. Instead she extended an elegant blue hand, which I grabbed automatically with my own.
With a strength that such a slight, beautiful creature had no business possessing, she hauled me to my feet. A faint hum near my legs made me glance down at the source, which turned out to be the white-blue blade of a lightsaber.
"Are you all right?" Aayla Secura rested a steadying hand on my shoulder, helping me take my first step toward the cluster of Jedi converging at the center of the Petranaki arena. Surrounded by hundreds of thousands of battle droids, the Jedi — no more than a couple of dozen left, battered but unbroken — were listening to Count Dooku's voice as he addressed them from his box…
His words were far too familiar for me to bother paying attention.
With an absent stare I wandered my gaze over the well-known faces of the Star Wars universe, characters who'd just survived a massacre. Dozens of Jedi bodies lay in shapeless heaps among the ranks of battle droids.
Hundreds of thousands of blasters were trained on the center of the arena, waiting for the former Jedi's command to finish off the intruders on sovereign Geonosis…
And among them was me… some nobody, killed by an electric shock in a shower.
If fate has a sense of humor, it's a pretty twisted one.
***
Hallucinations? Some cosmic joke?
What was all this?
I wouldn't call myself a hardcore Star Wars fan, but I'm deeply into it. Grabbed me as a kid and never let go.
So it wasn't hard to figure out exactly which period I'd landed in… the very start of the Clone Wars.
Long story short: ten years had passed since the Trade Federation's attempt to occupy the planet Naboo. That attempt had gone off without a hitch right up until a former slave named Anakin Skywalker got involved. There he was, standing maybe three meters away from me, devouring his precious senator with his eyes.
So — recently, that same senator, Padmé Amidala, had nearly been assassinated. The Jedi got pulled into investigating the incident, and it all ended with an illegal intrusion — first Obi-Wan Kenobi, then Amidala and Skywalker — onto the infamous planet Geonosis, which had seceded from the prosperous and oh-so-just (yeah, right) Republic. Pure espionage, essentially. But those are just details.
The Jedi Council had sent two hundred of its members here. They'd run straight into the Separatists' mechanized army. After a short, vicious battle, every Republic survivor found themselves staring down the barrels of droid blasters.
"Are you all right, Knight Dougan?" the blue-skinned Twi'lek asked. Secura was still holding me up, practically the only thing keeping me from collapsing. Between the exhaustion crashing over me and the shock of everything happening, I'll admit I wasn't standing too steadily.
I stood at the center of the Jedi, all of them bristling toward the enemy, one arm slung over Secura's shoulder while she gripped me around the waist, keeping me from sprawling into the sand.
Around me hummed the multicolored blades of Jedi lightsabers. A dozen members of the Order stood frozen, ready to spring into battle the instant Windu finished his exchange with Count Dooku.
"I'm… cough, cough… fine," I managed. My chest ached fiercely, where the dirty white tunic bore scorch marks from a blaster bolt. Had I been shot?
"You bought us time," the blue-skinned woman went on. "If we survive this, promise you'll teach me that technique."
"Whatever you say," I wheezed, having absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
My skull felt packed with cast iron. Like I'd downed an enormous amount of alcohol. And taken a solid blow to the head on top of it. My body wasn't cooperating, but when I raised a hand in front of my eyes, at least I noted it was still human. That was something. Feeling around my head, I confirmed the absence of tentacles, horns, growths, or anything of the sort. Long, shoulder-length black hair, a burn wound across my right cheekbone, a few old scars on that same side of my face, short stubble…
Judging by what I could see and feel, I clearly wasn't in my own body. I'm a redhead, and there's no way I'd mistake my number-six buzzcut and long ponytail for this. And the scars…
"…Well then," Dooku's Force-amplified voice reached me. "I'm sorry, old friend."
With unsettling synchronicity, the battle droids leveled their weapons at the surviving Jedi. Me included…
Secura muttered something under her breath — clearly a curse, in a language I didn't recognize. Still gripping me around the waist with one hand, she ignited her white-blue blade with the other, bracing to defend herself.
"Look!" Amidala's sharp, urgent cry drew everyone's attention to the gunships descending straight onto the heads of Geonosians and Jedi alike. Higher up, the triangular silhouettes of Acclamators were dropping altitude, ready to disgorge streams of white-armored troopers bred on the rain-soaked world of Kamino.
Two or three gunships touched down directly in the arena, hosing the droid ranks with beams of searing energy. Within seconds a droid-free perimeter had formed around the Jedi, though the survivors didn't rush the mechanical enemy blades-first — they held their ground instead, deflecting the occasional stray blaster bolt that came their way.
The moment the gunships' hulls settled onto the arena sand, I felt someone grab my other arm. Secura and another Jedi — Eeth Koth — took hold of me under the arms and hauled me toward the nearest gunship, its troop bay already yawning open in invitation.
Once inside, I felt the clones' rough hands drag me like a sack of potatoes to the far end of the bay, clearing room for the Jedi rapidly piling in. Secura was the only one I recognized… a couple of other vaguely familiar faces, but I couldn't place their names…
"Taking off!" the Twi'lek barked at the pilot, and the same instant the gunship shot skyward.
My stomach leapt straight into my throat, and the urge to vomit wasn't far behind. Strangely, though, nothing came up, even after a couple of thoroughly unpleasant minutes. A nasty feeling — being turned inside out with nothing to actually throw up…
Outside, the battle raged on — the whistle of colorful cannon fire, black plumes of smoke blooming from explosions. Our gunship, along with half a dozen others, banked hard, peeling away from the arena.
The weakness wouldn't let go of me. My head kept buzzing, my mouth was bone-dry. My arms and legs wouldn't obey me. I sat there in the back of the bay like a discarded doll, left entirely to myself.
So. Quick recap of the day.
I died back on Mother Earth. I was reborn in a galaxy far, far away.
I'd landed in the body of a Jedi — the clothes I was wearing said as much, and so did the fact that Secura had mentioned some Force technique I'd apparently used…
And on top of that, if I closed my eyes and focused on what was happening, I could feel hundreds of thousands of tiny lights of life all around me. Like little warm fireflies, wrapping me in a cocoon of their warmth. And as a distant echo, I could feel some of those lights going out…
"DO YOU WANT TO LIVE?"
The voice rang out right by my ear, sepulchral. I flinched, goosebumps crawling across my entire body. The temperature around me dropped noticeably, as if someone had switched off the sun. And cut me off from those lights of life.
"DO. YOU. WANT. TO LIVE?"
This time the voice broke the question apart, syllable by syllable. Like talking to an idiot. But maybe that was exactly what let it sink in — this voice was coming from inside my head. Not somewhere nearby, but as if it were my own thoughts. Except if these were my thoughts, I wouldn't be asking myself something so obviously stupid. Of course I wanted to live!
But the voice stayed silent. Strange. Hadn't it heard me? I repeated the thought. Still no answer. What was wrong? Had I said something incorrectly? Not put enough conviction behind it? What the hell was going on?
Suddenly I looked up and saw an elongated silver projectile, bristling with stabilizer fins, streaking toward the cockpit.
A missile.
No more than five meters separated us. How long would it take to cover that distance? A second? Two? Damn it all — the last seconds of my life! What the hell kind of joke was this? I'd just died, been resurrected here, and now I was about to die again?
I wanted to live so badly it hurt. And since I'd been lucky enough to land in this universe, I didn't just want to survive — I wanted to be a Force-user! I wanted to fly starships! I wanted my own lightsaber! Damn it, I wanted so much!
"WHAT DO YOU WANT TO LIVE FOR?"
One second. The missile had grown large enough now that I could make out the point of its warhead. Death seemed to be stalking me personally.
But there was still that voice, still asking its questions. And apparently only I could hear it — the Jedi and clones around me hadn't so much as flinched. So this was mine alone. And for some godforsaken reason, the voice had decided this was the moment to play games with me.
You bastard! You're still asking if I want to live?
Anger started to fill me, slowly curdling into rage. The situation hardly called for a chat with an imaginary friend, but this unknown something had decided to toy with me, interrogate me. You're inside my head! Go on, then — look at my memories! Poverty. Living hand to mouth. Working from dawn to dusk just to keep from starving. A corrupt government and a country falling to pieces. I don't want to go back there! I want to live here! To be master of my own fate and do whatever the hell I please, for my own sake!
"TRITE."
A fraction of a second.
Trite? Go to hell!
Rage, like a small reactor churning inside my body, began to consume my entire being. I felt like I was catching fire, and I understood that right now — maybe for the only time in my life — I was the one steering my own future. And more than that: I really was a Force-user. This heat flooding my body could be nothing else. God, what a rush it was to feel the Force's power!
It hit me that I'd felt this same heat before, lying there on the arena floor. So I could tap into the Force by sinking into my own anger? That was the path of the Dark Side.
To hell with it. Dark Side, Light Side — I wanted to live, and if it meant diving headfirst into the darkness, then that's exactly what I'd do.
I let the anger fill me completely. I became the anger itself. As if I'd been incomplete before, and had only now found the missing piece. Indescribable power! But that power was like fire trapped in a sealed room — it scorched me, burned through me, but couldn't break free of my body. I felt like I understood everything, knew everything, could destroy that missile a thousand different ways, and yet all that power stayed locked up inside me. I couldn't find any way to let it out.
Since birth, every choice had been made for me. What to wear. What school to attend. What hobbies I was allowed. Any objection I ever raised got crushed flat.
Enough. I was my own master now. I was in another world — a world where every chain could be broken, if you wanted it badly enough. And I wanted it. I would never again bow to circumstance. From now on, I would decide.
My decisions were mine alone. And I alone would live with the consequences. So — voice — if you weren't going to help me, then get the hell out of my sight before I smeared you across this world like a thin pancake. If what I was feeling right now really was the Force, then I wanted more of it. More power. More strength. I WANTED TO BE HERE. That was my desire, and I didn't owe you, some disembodied idiot, any explanation for it.
One meter separated us.
I saw the shadow of terror sweep across Secura's face as she spotted the missile too. The other Jedi were only just lifting their heads toward the danger, but she'd already seen it. And understood. I watched her reach for the Light Side, and I knew, somehow, that she wouldn't make it in time.
I saw her beautiful body, that unnatural color. Her lovely face, her lekku, the seductive curve of her figure.
I'd never felt attraction — not to aliens, but honestly not even to non-European women; even Asian women, or women from the Caucasus, had barely registered with me before. And here, a fraction of a second from death, I found myself thinking I wouldn't mind seeing her without her clothes either.
Too bad Jedi aren't allowed that.
Ha — the nonsense that crawls into your head right before you die.
"A MAN CAN HAVE ANYTHING…"
Some scene stirred in my memory… I'd heard these words somewhere before!
I watched the missile's nose cone punch through the cockpit canopy, shattering the transparent material into a thousand fragments.
A fraction of a second, and I'd sink into oblivion, carrying with me the memories of this wonderful world. And the memory of my brush with the Force.
"…IF HE IS WILLING TO SACRIFICE."
A metronome started ticking in my head, counting down the last fractions of a second of my life.
"I'm ready!" The words tore free from my cracked lips before the missile's casing split open, unleashing the full force of its payload.
I felt the moment the blade drove into my flesh, tearing it open, sinking deep into muscle…
And in that same instant, the power that had been slumbering inside me broke free.
As if in slow motion, I watched the Force tear itself out of me — a blue-violet mass bursting from my chest, streaking forward to overtake the missile.
The Force swept through the compartment without harming a soul. Jedi and clones alike froze in place as its currents washed over the missile, vaporizing it millimeter by millimeter, reducing it to a shower of sparks. A second later, the missile was gone, leaving behind a gaping hole in the cockpit canopy.
Secura and the others seemed to freeze solid. The temperature around us plummeted, washing over me in a wave of cold. But that cold was condensing toward a single point — the cockpit, where the blue-violet mass of Force hung suspended in the air.
With a soft pop, it dissolved, taking on a human shape.
And the face that emerged was one I knew. In another life, I'd read about this man's monstrous cruelty, his cunning, his power. About his impossible longevity and his strategic mind.
He was tall, broad, sheathed in armor. A small, snarling predator's head sat on his chest plate, like something bursting free of a human ribcage. Even in death, he hadn't lost an ounce of his majesty.
An intelligent, unreadable face framed by beard and mustache. And eyes the burning blue of ice — Emperor Valkorion.
"We need to talk," said the Force ghost, in that same familiar, disembodied, emotionless voice. "Apprentice."