by James Luceno
At the time, no one had paid much attention to Vos’s remarks, because Vos seemed to have been seduced by the dark side and lost to the Order. The rendezvous was considered to have been only that: an out-of-the-way meeting place. Of greater interest to the Jedi and Republic Intelligence was the fact that Dooku had managed to arrive at and depart Coruscant without detection.
“Holoimages of the interior coming in,” Valiant said.
Mace lowered the macrobinoculars and shifted his gaze to the field holoprojector. Dazzled by diagonal lines of static, the 3-D images were of forlorn rooms, stretches of dark corridor, vast empty spaces.
“The building appears to be completely abandoned, General. No signs of droids or living beings—other than varieties common to similar manufacturing slums.”
“Abandoned, perhaps, but not forgotten,” Captain Dyne said from behind Valiant. “The building’s live. It has power and illumination.”
“Doesn’t mean much,” Mace said. “Many structures in this district were self-powered, often by dangerous, highly unstable fuels.” He gestured broadly. “They’re still belching smoke.”
Dyne nodded. “But this one shows periodic and recent use of power.”
Mace turned to Valiant. “All right, Commander. Give the go-ahead.”
From behind and to both sides of the observation post, LAATs lifted off into the smoke-filled sky, doorway gunners traversing their repeating blasters and commandos standing ready to deploy from the gunship’s troop bay. Elsewhere, AT-TEs and other mobile artillery vehicles began to lumber across the debris-filled urbanscape toward the target.
Valiant turned to the troopers who made up Aurek Team.
“The building is a free-strike zone. You are to consider anyone we find inside to be hostile.” He slammed a fresh power pack into his short-stocked blaster. “Troopers: find, fix, finish!”
No matter how often he heard it, the grunting, communal response to the ARC’s rallying cry continued to disturb Mace on some level. Although it was probably no different from what the clone troopers heard when the Jedi said to one another, May the Force be with you.
He swung and waved a signal to Shaak Ti.
“I’ll ride with Aurek Team. You have Bacta.”
As beautiful as a flower, as deadly as a viper, Shaak Ti was the Jedi Master one wanted by one’s side in chaotic circumstances. Graced with the ability to move quickly through crowds or tight spots, she was often the first to wade into close-quarter engagements, her striped montrals and lengthy head-tail alert to distances, her blue lightsaber quick to find its mark. She had proved instrumental in the defense of Kamino and Brentaal IV, and Mace was glad to have her with him now.
Aurek Team’s gunship was already packed with commandos and Padawans by the time he clambered inside. Lifting off, the LAAT/i aimed straight for the summit of the building. The strategy was to work from the top down, in the hope of flushing hostiles out through the lowest levels, where infantry and artillery units were already taking up firing positions around the buttressed base. The entire area was undermined with tunnels that had been used for transporting workers, droids, and materials. While it wasn’t possible to monitor every entrance and egress, many of the principal tunnels that opened on the building’s sub-basements had been outfitted with sensors capable of detecting droids or flesh-and-bloods.
No functioning docking bay large enough to accommodate a gunship had been discovered. The commandos had advocated blowing a gaping hole in the side of the superstructure, but engineers feared that an explosion of the strength required could very well collapse the entire structure. Instead the LAAT/i carried the team to the largest of the blown-out windows below the summit, and hovered there while everyone was inserted.
Leaping the gap, Mace activated his lightsaber and instructed the Padawans to follow suit.
Weapons raised to their chests, the commandos spread out in fire-and-maneuver squads and began to move deeper in the building, checking out each room and alcove before declaring any level secure. Mace’s blade glowed amethyst in the gloom. Stretching out with the Force, he could feel the presence of the dark side. The only explanation for Quinlan Vos not having felt it was that he, too, had gone dark.
Yoda had warned Mace that the dark side might cloud his mind to certain rooms and passageways—places that the Sith Lords didn’t want Mace to discover—but he felt alert in all ways. Besides, that was what the commandos were for.
They worked their way down and down, without encountering resistance or finding anything of interest.
“Quiet as a tomb, General,” Valiant said when the top ten levels had been secured.
Mace studied the 3-D map displayed by the ARC’s wrist gauntlet projector.
“Inform Bacta Team that we will rally with them in designated sector three.”
Valiant was about to speak when his comlink toned.
“Commander, this is Bacta Team leader,” a voice said. “We have a functioning docking gate on level six that shows evidence of recent use. And, sir, wait until you get a look at the landing zone.”
The floor that served as a landing area was scarcely large enough for a gunship, but it gleamed as if scrubbed and polished daily by custodial droids. Parallel to the long sides of the rectangle were banks of slender blue illuminators.
“Everyone stay exactly where you are,” Captain Dyne said when Mace and the rest of Aurek Team appeared at the mouth of a corridor that intersected the docking bay at its lengthwise centerpoint.
Deployed in a circle formation, Shaak Ti and the Padawans who had entered with Bacta were clustered in the middle of the floor.
Thirty meters to Mace’s right, Dyne and two other Intelligence officers were interpreting the data being sent to them by several probe droids meandering with design throughout the room, some of them misting the floor with a highly volatile substance.
The well-lubricated vertical docking gate was open, revealing an oval of blackened sky.
“A Huppla Pasa Tisc sloop occupied this docking bay less than two standard weeks ago,” Dyne said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “The arrangement of its landing gear and aft boarding ramp match the footprint of the Punworcca 116-class that launched from Geonosis during the battle there.”
“Dooku’s ship,” Mace said.
“A reasonable supposition, Master Windu,” Dyne said loudly. After several moments of gazing at the monitor screens of his equipment and conferring with his associates, he added: “The floor reveals traces of two beings who were here contemporaneous with the sloop.”
Green light from one of the drifting droids played across the alloy floor panels. Dyne directed the droid to concentrate on certain areas, and studied the data again.
“The first being exited the sloop and walked to this point.” He indicated an area close to the open gate. “Taking into consideration trace impressions and the length of the being’s stride, I would hazard that being one stands one hundred and ninety-five centimeters in height, and was wearing boots.”
It was Dooku! Mace thought.
The droid focused its lights on another area, and Dyne continued.
“Here, being one met with being two, lighter in weight, perhaps shorter in stature, and wearing—” Dyne consulted what Mace assumed to be some sort of database. “—what can best be described as soft-soled footwear or slippers. This unknown being came from the direction of the building’s east turbolifts, and accompanied … Dooku—for all intents and purposes—to a balconied niche above the docking gate. Following the same route, the pair returned to the docking bay and separated: Dooku to his ship; our unknown quarry, presumably to the turbolifts.”
Tasking the probe droids to track the prints of the second being, Dyne began to trail them, waving for Mace, Shaak Ti, and the commandos to follow.
“Single file behind me,” Dyne cautioned. “No straying out of line.”
Mace and Shaak Ti took the point, with the Padawans and commandos strung out behind. By the time the two Jedi Masters cau
ght up with Dyne and his droids, the Intelligence analyst was standing at the door to a dated turbolift.
“Verified,” Dyne said, grinning in self-satisfaction. “Being two used the turbolift.”
Turning to the wall, he pressed his gloved right hand to the call stud. When the summoned car appeared, he affixed a scanner to the control pad inside.
“The car’s memory tells us that it arrived from sub-basement two. If we fail to discover evidence of our unknown quarry there, we’ll have to work our way back up, one level at a time, until we do.”
The turbolift was just roomy enough for Dyne, his associates, Mace, Shaak Ti, the two team commanders, and two probe droids. Comlinking troopers outside the building, Valiant ordered them to make their way to sub-basement two, but forewarned them to stay clear of the east turbolift and any nearby corridors or tunnels.
The probe droids were first to exit the car when it stopped, misting the corridor in both directions. One of the droids hadn’t gone five meters before it stopped in midflight and began playing its detection lights across the floor.
“Footprints,” Dyne said with enthusiasm. “We’re still on track.”
Stepping carefully from the car, he followed the probe droids to the entrance of a wide tunnel. After the droids had disappeared inside and returned, Dyne swung to Mace, who was waiting with everyone else at the base of the turbolift.
“The prints end here. From this point on the unknown used a vehicle—certainly a repulsorlift of some sort, although the droids aren’t detecting any phantom emissions.”
Mace and Shaak Ti joined Dyne and his teammates at the tunnel entrance.
Shaak Ti peered into the darkness. “Where does it lead?”
Dyne consulted a holomap. “If we can trust a map that’s older than any of us, it connects to tunnels all over The Works—to adjacent buildings, to the foundries, to a onetime landing field … There must be a hundred branches.”
“Forget the branches,” Mace said. “What’s at the far end of this one?”
Dyne called up a series of displays and studied them in silence. At last, he said: “The principal tunnel leads all the way to the western limit of the Senate District.”
Mace walked two meters into the darkness, and ran his hand down the tunnel’s tiled wall.
Hundreds of Senators are now under the influence of a Sith Lord called Darth Sidious, Dooku had told Obi-Wan on Geonosis.
Turning to face Shaak Ti and the clone commanders, Mace said: “We’re going to need more troops.”
In the Supreme Chancellor’s Senate Office Building chambers, Yoda sat staring across the desk at Palpatine, silhouetted against the long window that overlooked western Coruscant. How many Supreme Chancellors had he sat with in this office and others like it? he asked himself. Half a hundred now. But why with this one did discussion so often skirt the edge of confrontation—especially when the topic turned to the Force. As ineffectual a leader as he was, Finis Valorum had tried to comport himself as if he placed the Force above all. With Palpatine, the Force was not placed last. It wasn’t even on the agenda.
“I understand your concerns entirely, Master Yoda,” he was saying. “More important, I am sympathetic to them. But the Outer Rim sieges must continue. Despite what you may think—and notwithstanding the extraordinary powers the Senate has deemed fit to bestow on me these past five years—I am one voice in a welter. At long last the Senate is galvanized to end this destructive conflict, and it will not permit me to stand in the way.”
“Exhort me, you need not, Supreme Chancellor,” Yoda said.
Palpatine smiled dryly. “I apologize if I sounded sermonizing.”
“Galvanized by your State of the Republic address, the Senate was.”
“My address was a reflection of the spirit of the times, Master Yoda. What’s more, I spoke from my heart.”
“Doubt you, I do not. But too soon, your encouragements came. Celebrates imminent victory, Coruscant does, when far from ended the war is.”
Palpatine’s frown contained a hint of warning, of malice. “After three years of fear, Coruscant craves relief.”
“Agree with you, I do. But how from the seizure of Outer Rim worlds is relief sustained? Too many new fronts, the Senate urges us to open. Too dispersed the Jedi are, to serve effectively. A reasonable strategy, we lack.”
“My military advisers would not be pleased to hear you categorize their strategy as irrational.”
“Need to hear it, they do. Say it to them, I will.”
Palpatine paused to consider the remark, then leveled a hard gaze. “Master Yoda, forgive my frankness, but if the Jedi are indeed too widely scattered to coordinate the sieges, then the burden will have to fall to my naval commanders.”
Yoda compressed his lips and shook his head. “Answer foremost to the Jedi, our troopers do. Forged an alliance with them, we have. Forged in fire, this fidelity has been.”
Palpatine sat upright, as if struck. “I’m certain I misconstrue your meaning, but you almost make it sound as if our army was created for the Jedi.”
“Not true,” Yoda snapped. “For the Republic, and none other.”
Appeased, Palpatine said: “Then perhaps the clones can be trained to respond to others, as well as they respond to the Jedi.”
Yoda made a glum face. “Trained the troopers can be. But wrong this strategy remains.”
“May I ask that you think back to Geonosis? Do you not agree that we erred then by not pursuing the Separatists?”
“Unprepared, we were. New, the army was.”
“Granted. But we are prepared now. We have the Confederacy on the run from the inner systems, and I will not allow us to repeat the mistake we made at Geonosis.”
“No, a different mistake we make now.”
Palpatine interlocked his fingers. “This is the wisdom of the Council?”
“It is.”
“Then you will challenge the Senate’s decision?”
Yoda shook his head. “Sworn by oath to uphold you, we are.”
Palpatine spread his hands. “That does not instill confidence, Master Yoda. If it’s nothing more than an oath, then you are duty-bound to reconsider.”
“Reconsidered we have, Supreme Chancellor.”
“You imply no threat, I trust.”
“No threat.”
Palpatine forced a fatigued exhale. “As I’ve told you on many occasions, I do not have the luxury of seeing this world through the Force. I see only the real world.”
“No problem there would be, if the ‘real world,’ all there was.”
“Unfortunately, we who are not attuned to the Force have that on Jedi authority only.”
Yoda wagged his forefinger at Palpatine. “To end this war, more we will have to do than defeat Grievous and his army of war machines. More we will have to do than seize remote worlds.”
“These Sith to whom you keep referring.” Palpatine fell silent in thought, then said: “When you were believed killed at Ithor, Master Windu said as much to me.”
“More attentive to his concerns, were you?”
Palpatine regarded him. “A skilled duelist you are.”
“When need be, Supreme Chancellor.”
“You never fully described what went on between you and Count Dooku on Vjun. Was he at all inclined to return to the Order—to the side of the Republic?”
Yoda allowed his sadness to show. “From the dark path, no returning there is. Forever, the direction of your life it dominates.”
“That may make Dooku difficult to rehabilitate.”
Yoda raised his gaze. “Captured, he will never be. Die fighting, he will.”
“This Darth Sidious, as well—should Dooku be found and killed?”
Yoda’s eyes fidgeted. “Difficult to say. Deprived of an apprentice, Sidious may withdraw—to preserve the Sith.”
“One person is all that’s required to preserve the Sith traditions?”
“Traditions they are not. The dark side, it is.�
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“Then what if you should find Sidious first, and kill him? Would Dooku’s power increase?”
“Only Dooku’s determination. Different it will be, because a Sith late he has become.” Yoda shook his head. “Hard to know if Dooku a true Sith is, or simply with the power of the dark side infatuated.”
“And General Grievous?”
Yoda made a gesture of dismissal. “More machine than alive, Grievous is—though more dangerous for it. But without Dooku’s or Sidious’s leadership, collapse the Separatists will. Bound together by the Sith they are. Mortared by the dark side of the Force.”
Palpatine leaned forward with interest. “Then the Council is of the opinion that we must kill the leadership—that this war is more a battle within the Force?”
“United we are in that matter.”
“You are persuasive, Master Yoda. You have my word that I will bear this conversation in mind when I meet with the Senate to discuss our campaigns.”
“Relieved, I am, Supreme Chancellor.”
Palpatine reclined in his chair. “Tell me, how goes the hunt for Darth Sidious?”
Yoda leaned forward for emphasis. “Coming closer to him, are we.”
In a forward hold of Grievous’s flagship, Dooku watched the cyborg general duel with his elite MagnaGuards, three of his trophy lightsabers in constant motion, parrying thrusts of the guards’ pulse-weaponed staffs, slicing the recycled air a hairbreadth from the expressionless faces of his opponents, incapacitating arm and leg servos when he could. Grievous was a force to be reckoned with, to be sure, but Dooku deplored his habit of collecting lightsabers. It had merely bothered him that Ventress and lesser combatants such as the bounty hunter Aurra Sing had adopted the foul practice. Grievous’s habit struck Dooku as the worst kind of profanation. Even so, he was not about to discourage the practice. The more Jedi that could be dispatched, the better.
