by Sean Stewart
of the room into Yoda's horny feet, running in electric streams through his legs
and trunk, the fire in his eyes, the Force gathered at the tip of his wooden
sword like caged lightning, and when he lifted his foot and stamped it back down
into a wide ready stance, you could feel the whole Temple shake.
Tap, drop, tip.
No, it would be interesting to see Yoda again. Like revisiting one's
childhood home. Not that Dooku intended to get caught up in nostalgic sentiment.
Sitting here with the fate of millions in his hands, subordinates begging for
orders, victims begging for mercy: naturally it was tempting to remember those
earlier, comparatively carefree days, when he was a boy dreaming of the lives he
was going to save, instead of counting his corpses by the thousands. Funny to
think he had ever been so young that a single life seemed precious.
But he was all grown up now, and past such sentiment; no longer a boy to be
ordered around.
Except by Sidious, of course.
Ventress's words came circling back into his head. How can he let you live? .
. . He will use you up . . . Talking to get herself out of trouble, of course;
but by the stars she had chosen her dodge shrewdly. One thing you could say for
Asajj: her instinct for where to drive the knife home was impeccable.
You must stand too much in his sun, Count.
Dooku glanced at the holomonitors grouped on his desktop, many scenes vying
for his attention: a view of the battle on Omwat; a panning shot of the
devastation on Honoghr, six months after the toxic catastrophe there—part of
General Grievous's proposal to step up use of bioweapons in the Outer Rim
campaigns; a holo-feed from the Senate chamber of the Republic; an urgent
interrupt showing a small ship coming hard into Vjun orbit, chased by two
interceptor craft from the high-orbital pickets; real-time updates from the
troops that had followed Yoda and his children into the caves; and a battery of
surveillance views from the château itself: front grounds, main hall, servants'
entrance, and the hallway outside this study.
The Count didn't like surprises.
Tap, drip, tap! Rain coming harder now, knocking against the windows.
He reached forward to magnify the view of the incoming ship his fighters were
chasing, then stopped, examining his hand. The stupid thing was shaking again.
The warm feeling on his skin intensified, like a blush of shame, and the
trembling got worse. It was strangely as if he was afraid. His rational mind was
quite calm, but for some reason his body was responding as if he were a
schoolboy on the edge of speaking to a beautiful girl: fear and shame and
longing and hope all jumbled madly together.
Tap, tap!
At last the Count realized that wasn't the sound of rain. He whirled around
to stare out his study window. Perched impossibly on the thin ledge outside,
five stories above the ground, Master Yoda was rapping on the glass with his
stick. Rain was running down the furrows of his wrinkled face, and he was
grinning like a gargoyle.
A Hoersch-Kessel Chryya-class modified very fast courier dropped through
Vjun's atmosphere like a thunderbolt, with two Trade Federation pickets in hot
pursuit. Hot being the operative word, as the pilot of the Chryya seemed to have
skipped the unit on atmospheric braking in flight school. Instead of burning off
speed in a long, shallow series of loops in the upper atmosphere, the very fast
courier was coming down at a suicidally steep angle. Her thermal scalings were a
deep, ominous, throbbing orange. A trail of superheated air and burning
atmospheric particulates streamed behind her like a comet's tail.
One of the pursuing picket ships shot overhead into the distance, not daring
to keep to that impossibly steep reentry angle. The other, glowing bright red,
stayed doggedly on the Chryya, firing short bursts from her forward cannon that
failed to hit their mark. The sky screamed as the ships tore it in half like
flimsiplast. The Chryya jerked and twisted gleefully through the hail of
incoming fire, swiveled her top-mounted laser to point straight aft, and let go
with one continuous stream of fire.
For a long moment the picket ship's forward deflectors held.
When the end came, it wasn't the energy blast punching through her armor that
killed her; it was the sheer ambient heat that reached the hull's melting point.
For one eternal instant the ship's edges seemed to blur and run, hurtling toward
the ground like a burning drop of blood. The pilot tried to pull out of the
dive, but the enormous g forces tore the melting frame apart, and the ship
dissolved, smacking into the ruined city of Bitter End like a fiery snowball.
A couple of kilometers away, the Chryya settled daintily on the ground one
hundred meters from Yoda's abandoned B-7.
"What was that?" Obi-Wan Kenobi said, unbuckling himself from the turret
cannon gunner's chair. "I thought you were going to get us shot. Then I was sure
you were going to get us incinerated. Then I was positive you were going to
crash."
Anakin bounced out of the pilot's chair, grinning. "Just a little thing I
like to call-"
"Showing off?"
"Showing off! It's not just about winning, Master. Federation attack droids
coming in two files from the B-Seven landing sight: six, seven, eight of them,"
he added carelessly, glancing at the Chryya's tactical monitor. "It's about
winning with style." He put his hand on the lightsaber at his side and prepared
to launch himself out the Chryya's forward hatch. "Ready?"
"No!" Obi-Wan dropped back into the turret gunner's chair and used the
Chryya's laser cannon to blow holes through three of the attack droids hurrying
down the path toward them before the others scrambled madly for cover. "All
right. Now I'm ready."
Anakin drew two blasters from the gun locker by the forward hatch. "I love
this planet. It's just steeped in the Force. I could feel it the moment we
touched the atmosphere. I'm usually a good pilot—"
"Great pilot," Obi-Wan admitted.
"—But here it was like the ship's hull and my skin were the same thing. I
could feel exactly how much heat she could take, how much torque, how many rolls
. . ."
"Clearly you weren't using the Force to commune with my stomach." Obi-Wan,
still looking a little green, picked up a blaster rifle and a couple of
concussion grenades.
"The difference between Coruscant and here is like the difference between
swimming in fresh water and in the ocean. I feel so buoyant."
Anakin tapped the hatch lock and launched himself outside with a towering
leap. Bright glares of blasterfire sparkled around the hatch, but he was
through, twisting in the air, a blaster in each hand, firing as he went, one,
two, three, four shots—two droids holed through their video sensors, running
blindly across the hillside, sparks shooting from their scrambled sensor arrays.
Anakin hung in the air for an impossibly long time, let himself fall at last
into a shoulder roll, two more shots at a droid trying to sneak up behind him,
taking off its weapon hand and
blowing out a knee, and then he was standing,
perfectly balanced, with the blaster pistols steaming in the thin Vjun rain. "I
could walk on water," he said.
The droids began to retreat—a swift, efficient action for those still
undamaged, though the two Anakin had blinded were stumbling and weaving around
the terrain, emitting high-pitched shrieks that sounded like unnatural yelps of
mechanical pain. Obi-Wan followed Anakin into the open, using his lightsaber to
deflect a few blaster bolts sent at him by the retreating droids.
"Why are they making that noise?" Anakin asked.
"Echolocation. It's a last-ditch backup directional sense—they're squeaking
like hawk-bats, trying to make an active sonar graph of the terrain." Anakin
gave him a look. "I'm not joking," Obi-Wan said. "It was in one of the latest
updates."
"Must have missed that one," Anakin murmured, watching the blinded droids
clang into one another as they staggered back after their fellows.
"Come on. Let's see if they've got Yoda and the Padawans over there."
They ran after the retreating droids, stopping just long enough at the B-7 to
make sure there were no Jedi captives there.
The droids scrambled up a hillside and withdrew into the mouth of a cave.
"What do you think?" Obi-Wan asked, passing over a pair of electrobinoculars.
The two of them were now lying flat behind a little mossy ridge, looking up at a
dark slash, like a wound in the venomous green hillside above. They could see
light sparkling on the tips of blaster rifles from droids lying flat in the
cave's mouth.
Anakin considered. "Long run uphill to get to the cave's mouth. No cover.
They'd be firing down at us from a shielded position. Kind of a killing field,
when you get right down to it."
"That's sort of what I thought."
Anakin unclipped a dimpled sphere from his belt and hurled it uphill.
"Wait!" Obi-Wan said, too late. Anakin had already used the Force to guide
the concussion grenade into the cave's mouth, where it detonated with a deep,
flat sound, like a sound tube dropped from the top spire of the Jedi Temple
hitting the stone pavement below.
One heartbeat. Two.
Metal debris blasted out of the cave mouth like confetti. A moment later,
Obi-Wan felt a deep, percussive thud shaking the ground beneath his belly. Then
another. Then more. The sound of falling stone roared out of the cave mouth,
followed by a huge exhalation of dust, puffing from the opening like a giant's
dying breath.
"Great," Obi-Wan said. "The caverns are collapsing on themselves."
Whole sections of the hillside buckled and slumped, going soft and dark like
bruised fruit under the thin skin of Vjun moss. The rumbling sounds of crashing
stone went on and on. The ground buckled as whole patches of the hill tipped
slowly in on themselves and folded into the dirt.
The smile slowly drained from Anakin's face.
"I'm not sure a grenade was the best idea," Obi-Wan remarked.
"You don't suppose Yoda was in there, do you?" Anakin asked. "And the
Padawans?"
"You better hope not." Seeing the young man's stricken face, Obi-Wan
relented. "I'm sure we would have felt it in the Force if Yoda had been killed.
But next time, think a little bit longer before rearranging the landscape, would
you?"
"Yes, Master," Anakin said. Technically he was no longer Obi-Wan's Padawan,
but he tended to slip back into sounding like one when he was acutely aware of
having screwed up. "What next?"
Obi-Wan got to his feet. "Next, I think we . . . ugh!" he said, staring down.
His Jedi robes were stained green, as if with the juice of some poisonous fruit,
and where he had been lying on the Vjun moss, made damp with the planet's
faintly acid rain, the thread was already beginning to rot.
"I know. I can feel my skin beginning to burn from the drizzle," Anakin said.
"What a horrible planet," Obi-Wan remarked. "I'd hate to be the minister for
tourism here." He pointed to a magnificent manor house perhaps a kilometer
inland, white stone bordered with blood red. "I think we head there. It looks to
be about Count Dooku's style, and wherever Dooku is, Yoda will be close at
hand."
Usually the Force only helped Scout predict her enemies' moves when they were
face-to-face, but the air of Vjun was rich even for her, and a prickling
premonition had danced over her skin seconds before the caves started to
collapse. "Fidelis! Get us out of here!" she'd said, and the droid, responding
to the urgent tone of command, had grabbed her belt and hauled her along. They
pelted down a long, thin passageway at top speed. Then came the first explosion,
a dull crack like blasters close at hand, followed by a rumbling thunder that
did not fade but grew louder as the caves behind them began to crumble.
They stared at one another as the still air of the cavern suddenly began to
puff and quarter, like a crazy wind. The floor of the passage shook beneath
their feet. "Uh-oh," Scout whispered.
"Keep running!" Fidelis shouted. "We're almost there!" Moving swiftly in the
gloom, he raced through another passage, carrying Scout so high and fast her
feet missed the floor for steps at a time.
A rumble, a roar, a deafening crash. "One of the lakes has slid!" Fidelis
said. Scout was still trying to puzzle out what he meant when a wall of water
dropped suddenly on top of them. Some fissure must have opened up in one of the
great underground pools, and what had once been a quiet and predictable little
lake was suddenly a moving waterfall that dropped from above, smacking Scout's
head against the droid's metal side so hard it made her ears ring.
"Master!" the droid cried. In the strobing flare of Whie's lightsaber, Scout
could see him in flashes, knocked down by the sudden rush of water and swept
back along the passageway. There was another titanic crash as the roof collapsed
on the cavern they had just abandoned.
Fidelis threw Scout clear and darted back into the passage, which had now
become a temporary riverbed. The current was driving Whie toward the edge of a
newly created waterfall that thundered down into the abyss. Whie's pale face
strobed up out of the freezing water and he stretched out a hand, grabbing for a
bump in the rock to hold on to against the river pushing him to his death.
Ignoring the shock of the freezing water and the ringing in her head, Scout
summoned all the strength she could and added her will to Whie's own, using the
Force to pin his hand to that rock.
A few seconds later the danger was past. The pool of water had emptied, the
current went slack, and Fidelis had reached his Master. The droid picked him up
and carried him forward. Enormous relief flowered in Scout's chest.
"Thanks," Whie gasped.
"For what?"
"I felt you grab me. The rock was too slippery, I tried for it but I was
slipping off. Then you grabbed me, and I held on." He smiled, gasping, face wet
and bruised. "So, thanks for saving my life. Even if I am a pompous arrogant
show-off."
"Yeah, well—you're my arrogant show-off," Scout growled. She was flushin
g
with pleasure. "That's what Jedi do for each other."
The ground shook under their feet again, and somewhere uncomfortably close a
few hundred more metric tons of rock collapsed onto itself. "Come on!" Fidelis
said.
He pushed them forward along the passageway, past one side cave, a second,
turning in at the third. Then along another thin fissure, so narrow Scout had to
turn sideways to make it through, and suddenly there were flagstones underfoot.
They were in a dark passageway, like an empty sewer. A few moments later, a
door.
Fidelis pulled it open. "Quickly!" Brightness lanced out, dazzling to their
dark-adjusted eyes, as the droid pushed them inside and closed the door behind
them.
Blinking in the sudden light, Whie realized they were not in a dusty cellar
or dungeon, but in a comfortably appointed room, with hangings on the walls and
a fire crackling in a carved fireplace. There was a fine carpet on the floor,
tapestried with a woodland scene in a border of crimson and cream.
It was the room from his dream.
It was the room from his dream, only there were six assassin droids waiting
for them with weapons at the ready, and standing behind them, beside the door
they had just stumbled through, was Asajj Ventress. "Master Malreaux," she said
lazily. "Welcome home."
11
As long as anyone could remember, Yoda had spent most of his time in the Jedi
Temple with the very young. Playing with them at ages two and
three—hide-and-seek, dodge-bolt, Force tag. The early rambling lessons in the
garden where he taught them the secret lives of vegetables, the irresistible
burst of shoots, and flowers playing dress-up; clustering them around to watch
an orb-spider weave its web, or a bee bumble its way into a mass of blossoms.
When the first combat training started, with falls and rolls and footwork
games, Yoda led them. For one thing, he was just their size. The first touch of
genuine combat Dooku could remember was playing a game called push-feather with
the Master. The point of the game was to become aware of even the faintest,
tiniest changes in pressure and balance, and to learn to counter one's
opponent's force not by blocking with greater force of one's own, but by turning
the opponent's energy back on him or her.
