Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (15 page)

Many people say he is the best star pilot in the galaxy, but that's merely talk, born of the constant HoloNet references to his unmatched string of kills in starfighter combat. Blowing up vulture droids and tri-fighters is simply a matter of superior reflexes and trust in the Force; he has spent so many hours in the cockpit that he wears a Jedi starfighter like clothes. It's his own body, with thrusters for legs and cannons for fists.

What he is doing right now transcends mere flying the way Jedi combat transcends a schoolyard scuffle.

He sits in a blood-spattered, blaster-chopped chair behind a console he's never seen before, a console with controls designed for alien fingers. The ship he's in is not only bucking like a maddened dewback through brutal coils of clear-air turbulence, it's on fire and breaking up like a comet ripping apart as it crashes into a gas giant. He has only seconds to learn how to maneuver an alien craft that not only has no aft control cells, but has no aft at all.

This is, put simply, impossible. It can't be done.

He's going to do it anyway.

Because he is Anakin Skywalker, and he doesn't believe in impossible.

He extends his hands and for one long, long moment he merely strokes controls, feeling their shape under his fingers, listening to the shivers his soft touch brings to each remaining control surface of the disintegrating ship, allowing their resonances to join inside his head until they resolve into harmony like a Ferroan joy-harp virtuoso checking the tuning of his instrument.

And at the same time, he draws power from the Force. He gathers perception, and luck, and sucks into himself the instinctive, preconscious what-will-happen-in-the-next-ten-seconds intuition that has always been the core of his talent. And then he begins.

On the downbeat, atmospheric drag fins deploy; as he tweaks their angles and cycles them in and out to slow the ship's descent without burning them off altogether, their contrabass roar takes on a punctuated rhythm like a heart that skips an occasional beat. The forward attitude thrusters, damaged in the ship-to-ship battle, now fire in random directions, but he can feel where they're raking him and he strokes them in sequence, making their song the theme of his impromptu concerto.

And the true inspiration, the sparkling grace note of genius that brings his masterpiece to life, is the soprano counterpoint: a syncopated sequence of exterior hatches in the outer hull sliding open and closed and open again, subtly altering the aerodynamics of the ship to give it just exactly the amount of sideslip or lift or yaw to bring the huge half cruiser into the approach cone of a pinpoint target an eighth of the planet away.

It is the Force that makes this possible, and more than the Force. Anakin has no interest in serene acceptance of what the Force will bring. Not here. Not now. Not with the lives of Palpatine and Obi-Wan at stake. It's just the opposite: he seizes upon the Force with a stark refusal to fail.

He will land this ship.

He will save his friends.

Between his will and the will of the Force, there is no contest

=Part Two=

SEDUCTION

The dark is generous, and it is patient.

It is the dark that seeds cruelty into justice, that drips contempt into compassion, that poisons love with grains of doubt.

The dark can be patient, because the slightest drop of rain will cause those seeds to sprout.

The rain will come, and the seeds will sprout, for the dark is the soil in which they grow, and it is the clouds above them, and it waits behind the star that gives them light.

The dark's patience is infinite.

Eventually, even stars burn out.

=8=

Fault Lines

Mace Windu hung on to the corrugated hatch grip beside the gunship's open troop bay with one hand, squinting into the wind that whipped his overcloak behind him. His other hand shaded his eyes against the glare from one of the orbital mirrors that concentrated the capital planet's daylight. The mirror was slowly turning aside now, allowing a band of twilight to approach the gunship's destination.

That destination, a kilometer-thick landing platform in the planet's vast industrial zone, was marked with a steeply slanting tower of smoke and vapor that stretched from the planet's surface to the uppermost reaches of the atmosphere, a tower that only now was beginning to spread and coil from its tiny source point to a horizon-spanning smear across the stratospheric winds.

The gunship roared over the bottomless canyons of durasteel and permacrete that formed the landscape of Coruscant, arrowing straight for the industrial zone without regard for the rigid traffic laws that governed flight on the galactic planet; until martial law was officially lifted by the Senate, the darkening skies would be traveled only by Republic military craft, Jedi transports, and emergency vehicles.

The gunship qualified as all three.

Mace could see the ship now-what was left of it-resting on the scorched platform far ahead: a piece of a ship, a fragment less than a third of what once had been the Trade Federation flagship, still burning despite the gouts of fire-suppression foam raining down on it from five different ships and the emergency-support clone troops who surrounded it on the platform.

Mace shook his head. Skywalker again. The chosen one.

Who else could have brought in this hulk? Who else could have even come close?

The gunship swung into a hot landing, repulsors howling; Mace hopped out before it could settle, and gave the pilot an open-palm gesture to signal him to wait. The pilot, faceless within his helmet, responded with a closed fist.

Though, of course, the pilot wasn't faceless at all. Under his armored helmet, that clone pilot had a face that Mace Windu remembered all too well.

That face would always remind him that he had once held Dooku within his grasp, and had let him slip away.

Across the platform, an escape pod hatch cycled open. Emergency crews scrambled with an escape slide, and a moment later the Supreme Chancellor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Anakin Skywalker were all on the deck beside the burning ship, closely followed by a somewhat battered R2 unit that lifted itself down on customized maneuvering rockets.

Mace strode swiftly out to meet them.

Palpatine's robes were scorched and tattered at the hem, and he seemed weak; he leaned a bit on Skywalker's shoulder as they moved away from the ship. On Skywalker's other side, Master Kenobi seemed a touch the worse for wear himself: caked with dust and leaking a trickle of blood from a scalp wound.

Skywalker, by contrast, looked every bit the HoloNet hero he was supposed to be. He seemed to tower over his companions, as though he had somehow gotten even taller in the months since Mace had seen him last. His hair was tousled, his color was high, and his walk still had the grounded grace of a natural fighter, but there was something new in his physicality: in the way he moved his head, perhaps, or the way the weight of Palpatine's arm on his shoulder seemed somehow to belong there ... or something less definable. Some new ease, new confidence. An aura of inner power.

Presence.

Skywalker was not the same young man the Council had sent off to the Outer Rim five standard months ago.

"Chancellor," Mace said as he met them. "Are you well? Do you need medical attention?" He gestured over his shoulder at the waiting gunship. "I have a fully equipped field surgery-"

"No, no, no need," Palpatine said, rather faintly. "Thank you, Master Windu, but I am well. Quite well, thanks to these two."

Mace nodded. "Master Kenobi? Anakin?"

"Never better," Skywalker replied, looking as if he meant it, ad Kenobi only shrugged, with a slight wince as he touched his scalp wound.

"Only a bump on the head. That field surgery must be needed elsewhere."

"It is." Mace looked grim. "We don't have even a preliminary estimate of civilian casualties."

He waved off the gunship, and it roared away toward the countless fires that painted red the approach of night.

"A shuttle is on its way. Chancellor, we'll have you on the Senate floor within the hour. The HoloNet has already been notified that you will want to make a statement."

"I will. I will, indeed." Palpatine touched Mace on the arm.

"You have always been of great value to me, Master Windu Thank you."

"The Jedi are honored to serve the Senate, sir." There might have been the slightest emphasis on the word Senate. Mace remained expressionless as he subtly moved his arm away from the Chancellor's hand. He looked at Obi-Wan. "Is there anything else to report, Master Kenobi? What of General Grievous?"

"Count Dooku was there," Skywalker interjected. He had a look on his face that Mace couldn't decipher, proud yet wary-even unhappy. "He's dead now."

"Dead?" He looked from Anakin to Obi-Wan and back again. "Is this true? You killed Count Dooku?"

"My young friend is too modest; he killed Count Dooku." Smiling, Kenobi touched the lump on his head. "I was . . . taking a nap."

"But ..." Mace blinked. Dooku was to the Separatists what Palpatine was to the Republic: the center of gravity binding together a spiral galaxy of special interests. With Dooku gone, the Confederacy of Independent Systems would no longer really be a confederacy at all. They'd fly to pieces within weeks.

Within days.

Mace said again, "But . . ."

And, in the end, he couldn't think of a but.

This was all so astonishing that he very nearly-almost, but not quite-cracked a smile.

"That is," he said, "the best news I've heard since . . ." He shook his head. "Since I can't remember. Anakin-how did you do it?"

Inexplicably, young Skywalker looked distinctly uncomfortable; that newly confident presence of his collapsed as suddenly as an overloaded deflector, and instead of meeting Mace's eyes, his gaze flicked to Palpatine. Somehow Mace didn't think this was modesty. He looked to the Chancellor as well, his elation sinking, becoming puzzlement tinged with suspicion.

"It was . . . entirely extraordinary," Palpatine said blandly, oblivious to Mace's narrowing stare. "I know next to nothing of swordplay, of course; to my amateur's eye, it seemed that Count Dooku may have been ... a trace overconfident. Especially after having disposed of Master Kenobi so neatly."

Obi-Wan flushed, just a bit-and Anakin flushed considerably more deeply.

"Perhaps young Anakin was simply more . . . highly motivated," Palpatine said, turning a fond smile upon him. "After all, [Dooku was fighting only to slay an enemy; Anakin was fighting to save-if I may presume the honor-a friend."

Mace's scowl darkened. Fine words. Perhaps even true words, but he still didn't like them.

No one on the Jedi Council had ever been comfortable with Skywalker's close relationship with the Chancellor-they'd had more than one conversation about it with Obi-Wan while Skywalker had still been his Padawan-and Mace was less than happy to hear Palpatine speaking for a young Jedi who seemed unprepared to speak for himself. He said, "I'm sure the Council will be very interested in your full report, Anakin," with just enough emphasis on full to get his point across.

Skywalker swallowed, and then, just as suddenly as it had collapsed, that aura of calm, centered confidence rebuilt itself around him. "Yes. Yes of course, Master Windu."

"And we must report that Grievous escaped," Obi-Wan said. "He is as cowardly as ever."

Mace accepted this news with a nod. "But he is only a military commander. Without Dooku to hold the coalition together, these so-called independent systems will splinter, and they know it." He looked straight into the Supreme Chancellor's eyes. This is our best chance to sue for peace. We can end this war right now."

And while Palpatine answered, Mace Windu reached into the Force.

To Mace's Force perception, the world crystallized around them, becoming a gem of reality shot through with flaws and fault lines of possibility. This was Mace's particular gift: to see how people and situations fit together in the Force, to find the shear planes that can cause them to break in useful ways, and to intuit what sort of strike would best make the cut. Though he could not consistently determine the significance of the structures he perceived-the darkening cloud upon the Force that had risen with the rebirth of the Sith made that harder and harder with each passing day-the presence of shatterpoints was always clear.

Mace had supported the training of Anakin Skywalker, though it ran counter to millennia of Jedi tradition, because from the structure of fault lines in the Force around him, he had been able to intuit the truth of Qui-Gon Jinn's guess: that the young slave boy from Tatooine was in fact the prophesied chosen one, born to bring balance to the Force. He had argued for the elevation of Obi-Wan Kenobi to Mastership, and to give the training of the chosen one into the hands of this new, untested Master, because his unique perception had shown him powerful lines of destiny that bound their lives together, for good or ill. On the day of Palpatine's election to the Chancellorship, he had seen that Palpatine was himself a shatterpoint of unimaginable significance: a man upon whom might depend the fate of the Republic itself.

Now he saw the three men together, and the intricate lattice of fault lines and stress fractures that bound them each to the other was so staggeringly powerful that its structure was beyond calculation.

Anakin was somehow a pivot point, the fulcrum of a lever with Obi-Wan on one side, Palpatine on the other, and the galaxy in the balance, but the dark cloud on the Force prevented his perception from reaching into the future for so much as a hint of where this might lead. The balance was already so delicate that he could not guess the outcome of any given shift: the slightest tip in any direction would generate chaotic oscillation. Anything could happen. Anything at all.

And the lattice of fault lines that bound all three of them to each other stank of the dark side.

He lifted his head and looked to the sky, picking out the dropping star of the Jedi shuttle as it swung toward them through the darkening afternoon.

"I'm afraid peace is out of the question while Grievous is at large," the Chancellor was saying sadly. "Dooku was the only check on Grievous's monstrous lust for slaughter; with Dooku gone, the general has been unleashed to rampage across the galaxy. I'm afraid that, far from being over, this war is about to get a very great deal worse."