by James Luceno
An Order that would not negotiate. Would not mediate.
An Order that would enforce.
The survivors of the Jedi Order would become the Sith Army.
The Fist of the Empire.
And that Fist would become a power beyond any Jedi’s darkest dreams. The Jedi were not the only users of the Force in the galaxy; from Hapes to Haruun Kal, from Kiffu to Dathomir, powerful Force-capable humans and near-humans had long refused to surrender their children to lifelong bound servitude in the Jedi Order. They would not so refuse the Sith Army.
They would not have the choice.
Dooku frowned down at the holoimage. Kenobi and Skywalker were going through more low-comedy business with another balky turbolift—possibly Grievous having some fun with the shaft controls—while battle droids haplessly pursued.
Really, it was all so …
Undignified.
“May I suggest, Master, that we give Kenobi one last chance? The support of a Jedi of his integrity would be invaluable in establishing the political legitimacy of our Empire.”
“Ah, yes. Kenobi.” His Master’s voice went silken. “You have long been interested in Kenobi, haven’t you?”
“Of course. His Master was my Padawan; in a sense, he’s practically my grandson—”
“He is too old. Too indoctrinated. Irretrievably poisoned by Jedi fables. We established that on Geonosis, did we not? In his mind, he serves the Force itself; reality is nothing in the face of such conviction.”
Dooku sighed. He should, he supposed, have no difficulty with this, having ordered the Jedi Master’s death once already. “True enough, I suppose; how fortunate we are that I never labored under any such illusions.”
“Kenobi must die. Today. At your hand. His death may be the code key of the final lock that will seal Skywalker to us forever.”
Dooku understood: not only would the death of his mentor tip Skywalker’s already unstable emotional balance down the darkest of slopes, but it would also remove the greatest obstacle to Skywalker’s successful conversion. As long as Kenobi was alive, Skywalker would never be securely in the camp of the Sith; Kenobi’s unshakable faith in the values of the Jedi would keep the Jedi blindfold on Skywalker’s eyes and the Jedi shackles on the young man’s true power.
Still, though, Dooku had some reservations. This had all come about too quickly; had Sidious thought through all the implications of this operation? “But I must ask, my Master: is Skywalker truly the man we want?”
“He is powerful. Potentially more powerful than even myself.”
“Which is precisely,” Dooku said meditatively, “why it might be best if I were to kill him, instead.”
“Are you so certain that you can?”
“Please. Of what use is power unstructured by discipline? The boy is as much a danger to himself as he is to his enemies. And that mechanical arm—” Dooku’s lip curled with cultivated distaste. “Revolting.”
“Then perhaps you should have spared his real arm.”
“Hmp. A gentleman would have learned to fight one-handed.” Dooku flicked a dismissive wave. “He’s no longer even entirely human. With Grievous, the use of these bio-droid devices is almost forgivable; he was such a disgusting creature already that his mechanical parts are clearly an improvement. But a blend of droid and human? Appalling. The depths of bad taste. How are we to justify associating with him?”
“How fortunate I am”—the silk in his Master’s voice softened further—“to have an apprentice who feels it is appropriate to lecture me.”
Dooku lifted an eyebrow. “I have overstepped, my Master,” he said with his customary grace. “I am only observing, not arguing. Not at all.”
“Skywalker’s arm makes him, for our purposes, even better. It is the permanent symbol of the sacrifices he has made in the name of peace and justice. It is a badge of heroism that he must publicly wear for the rest of his life; no one can ever look at him and doubt his honor, his courage, his integrity. He is perfect, just as he is. Perfect. The only question that remains is whether he is capable of transcending the artificial limitations of his Jedi indoctrination. And that, my lord Count, is precisely what today’s operation is designed to discover.”
Dooku could not argue. Not only had the Dark Lord introduced Dooku to realms of power beyond his most spectacular fantasies, but Sidious was also a political manipulator so subtle that his abilities might be considered to dwarf even the power of the dark side itself. It was said that whenever the Force closes a hatch, it opens a viewport … and every viewport that had so much as cracked in this past thirteen standard years had found a Dark Lord of the Sith already at the rim, peering in, calculating how best to slip through.
Improving upon his Master’s plan was near to impossible; his own idea, of substituting Kenobi for Skywalker, he had to admit was only the product of a certain misplaced sentimentality. Skywalker was almost certainly the man for the job.
He should be; Darth Sidious had spent a considerable number of years making him so.
Today’s test would remove the almost.
He had no doubt that Skywalker would fall. Dooku understood that this was more than a test for Skywalker; though Sidious had never said so directly, Dooku was certain that he himself was being tested as well. Success today would show his Master that he was worthy of the mantle of Mastery himself: by the end of the coming battle, he would have initiated Skywalker into the manifold glories of the dark side, just as Sidious had initiated him.
He gave no thought to failure. Why should he?
“But—forgive me, Master. But Kenobi having fallen to my blade, are you certain Skywalker will ever accept my orders? You must admit that his biography offers little confidence that he is capable of obedience at all.”
“Skywalker’s power brings with it more than mere obedience. It brings creativity, and luck; we need never concern ourselves with the sort of instruction that Grievous, for example, requires. Even the blind fools on the Jedi Council see clearly enough to understand this; even they no longer try to tell him how, they merely tell him what. And he finds a way. He always has.”
Dooku nodded. For the first time since Sidious had revealed the true subtlety of this masterpiece, Dooku allowed himself to relax enough to imagine the outcome.
With his heroic capture of Count Dooku, Anakin Skywalker will become the ultimate hero: the greatest hero in the history of the Republic, perhaps of the Jedi Order itself. The loss of his beloved partner will add just exactly the correct spice of tragedy to give melancholy weight to his every word, when he gives his HoloNet interviews denouncing the Senate’s corruption as impeding the war effort, when he delicately—oh, so delicately, not to mention reluctantly—insinuates that corruption in the Jedi Order prolonged the war as well.
When he announces the creation of a new order of Force-using warriors.
He will be the perfect commanding general for the Sith Army.
Dooku could only shake his head in awe. And to think that only days earlier, the Jedi had seemed so close to uncovering, even destroying, all he and his Master had worked for. But he should never have feared. His Master never lost. He would never lose. He was the definition of unbeatable.
How can one defeat an enemy one thinks is a friend?
And now, with a single brilliant stroke, his Master would turn the Jedi Order back upon itself like an Ethrani ourobouros devouring its own tail.
This was the day. The hour.
The death of Obi-Wan Kenobi would be the death of the Republic.
Today would see the birth of the Empire.
“Tyranus? Are you well?”
“Am I …” Dooku realized that his eyes had misted. “Yes, my Master. I am beyond well. Today, the climax—the grand finale—the culmination of all your decades of work … I find myself somewhat overcome.”
“Compose yourself, Tyranus. Kenobi and Skywalker are nearly at the door. Play your part, my apprentice, and the galaxy is ours.”
Dooku str
aightened and for the first time looked his Master in the eyes.
Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the Sith, sat in the General’s Chair, shackled to it at the wrist and ankle.
Dooku bowed to him. “Thank you, Chancellor.”
Palpatine of Naboo, Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, replied, “Withdraw. They are here.”
THE WAY OF THE SITH
The turbolift’s door whished open. Anakin pressed himself against the wall, a litter of saber-sliced droid parts around his feet. Beyond appeared to be a perfectly ordinary lift lobby: pale and bare and empty.
Made it. At last.
Anakin’s whole body hummed to the tune of his blue-hot blade.
“Anakin.”
Obi-Wan stood against the opposite wall. He looked calm in a way Anakin could barely understand. He gave a significant stare down at the lightsaber in Anakin’s hand. “Anakin, rescue,” he said softly. “Not mayhem.”
Anakin kept his weapon right where it was. “And Dooku?”
“Once the Chancellor is safe,” Obi-Wan said with a ghost of a smile, “we can blow up the ship.”
Anakin’s mechanical fingers tightened until the grip of his lightsaber creaked. “I’d rather do it by hand.”
Obi-Wan slipped cautiously through the turbolift’s door. Nothing shot at him. He beckoned. “I know this is difficult, Anakin. I know it’s personal for you on many levels. You must take extra care to be mindful of your training here—and not only your combat training.”
Heat rose in Anakin’s cheeks. “I am not—” your Padawan anymore snarled inside his head, but that was adrenaline talking; he bit back the words and said instead, “—going to let you down, Master. Or Chancellor Palpatine.”
“I have no doubt of that. Just remember that Dooku is no mere Dark Jedi like that Ventress woman; he is a Lord of the Sith. The jaws of this trap are about to snap shut, and there may be danger here beyond the merely physical.”
“Yes.” Anakin let his blade shrink away and moved past Obi-Wan into the turbolift lobby. Distant concussions boomed throughout the ship, and the floor rocked like a raft on a river in flood; he barely noticed. “I just—there has been so much—what he’s done—not just to the Jedi, but to the galaxy—”
“Anakin …,” Obi-Wan began warningly.
“Don’t worry. I’m not angry, and I’m not looking for revenge. I’m just—” He lifted his lightsaber. “I’m just looking forward to ending it.”
“Anticipation—”
“Is distraction. I know. And I know that hope is as hollow as fear.” Anakin let himself smile, just a bit. “And I know everything else you’re dying to tell me right now.”
Obi-Wan’s slightly rueful bow of acknowledgment was as affectionate as a hug. “I suppose at some point I will eventually have to stop trying to train you.”
Anakin’s smile broadened toward a soft chuckle. “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever admitted it.”
They stopped at the door to the General’s Quarters: a huge oval of opalescent iridiite chased with gold. Anakin stared at his ghostly almost-reflection while he reached into the room beyond with the Force, and let the Force reach into him. “I’m ready, Master.”
“I know you are.”
They stood a moment, side by side.
Anakin didn’t look at him; he stared into the door, through the door, searching in its shimmering depths for a hint of an unguessable future.
He couldn’t imagine not being at war.
“Anakin.” Obi-Wan’s voice had gone soft, and his hand was warm on Anakin’s arm. “There is no other Jedi I would rather have at my side right now. No other man.”
Anakin turned, and found within Obi-Wan’s eyes a depth of feeling he had only rarely glimpsed in all their years together; and the pure uncomplicated love that rose up within him then felt like a promise from the Force itself.
“I … wouldn’t have it any other way, Master.”
“I believe,” his onetime Master said with a gently humorous look of astonishment at the words coming out of his mouth, “that you should get used to calling me Obi-Wan.”
“Obi-Wan,” Anakin said, “let’s go get the Chancellor.”
“Yes,” Obi-Wan said. “Let’s.”
Inside a turbolift pod, Dooku watched hologrammic images of Kenobi and Skywalker cautiously pick their way down the curving stairs from the entrance balcony to the main level of the General’s Quarters, moving slowly to stay braced against the pitching of the cruiser. The ship shuddered and bucked with multiple torpedo bursts, and the lights went out again; lighting was always the first to fail as power was diverted from life support to damage control.
“My lord.” On the intraship comm, Grievous sounded actively concerned. “Damage to this ship is becoming severe. Thirty percent of automated weapons systems are down, and we may soon lose hyperspace capability.”
Dooku nodded judiciously to himself, frowning down at the translucent blue ghosts slinking toward Palpatine. “Sound the retreat for the entire strike force, General, and prepare the ship for jump. Once the Jedi are dead, I will join you on the bridge.”
“As my lord commands. Grievous out.”
“Indeed you are, you vile creature,” Dooku muttered to the dead comlink. “Out of luck, and out of time.”
He cast the comlink aside and ignored its clatter across the deck. He had no further use for it. Let it be destroyed along with Grievous, those repulsive bodyguards of his, and the rest of the cruiser, once he was safely captured and away.
He nodded to the two hulking super battle droids that flanked him. One opened the lift door and they marched through, pivoting to take positions on either side.
Dooku straightened his cloak of shimmering armorweave and strode grandly into the half-dark lift lobby. In the pale emergency lighting, the door to the General’s Quarters still smoldered where those two idiotic peasants had lightsabered it; to pick his way through the hole would risk getting his trousers scorched. Dooku sighed and gestured, and the opalescent wreckage of the door silently slid itself out of his way.
He certainly did not intend to fight two Jedi with his pants on fire.
Anakin slid along the bank of chairs on one side of the immense situation table that dominated the center of the General’s Quarters’ main room; Obi-Wan mirrored him on the opposite side. Silent lightning flashed and flared: the room’s sole illumination came from the huge curving view wall at its far end, a storm of turbolaser blasts and flak bursts and the miniature supernovae that were the deaths of entire ships.
A stark shadow against that backdrop of carnage: the silhouette of one tall chair.
Anakin caught Obi-Wan’s eye across the table and nodded toward the dark shape ahead. Obi-Wan replied with the Jedi hand signal for approach with caution, and added the signal for be ready for action.
Anakin’s mouth compressed. Like he needed to be told. After all the trouble they’d had with the turbolifts, anything could be up here by now. The place could be full of droidekas, for all they knew.
The lights came back on.
Anakin froze.
The dark figure in the chair—it was Chancellor Palpatine, it was, and there were no droids to be seen, and his heart should have leapt within his chest, but—
Palpatine looked bad.
The Chancellor looked beyond old, looked ancient like Yoda was ancient: possessed of incomprehensible age. And exhausted, and in pain. And worse—
Anakin saw in the Chancellor’s face something he’d never dreamed he’d find there, and it squeezed breath from his lungs and wiped words from his brain.
Palpatine looked frightened.
Anakin didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t imagine what to say. All he could imagine was what Grievous and Dooku must have done to put fear on the face of this brave good man—
And that imagining ignited a sizzle in his blood that drew his face tight and clouded his heart and started again the low roll of thunder in his ears: thunder from Aargonar. From Jab
iim.
Thunder from the Tusken camp.
If Obi-Wan was struck by any similar distress, it was invisible. With his customary grave courtesy, the Jedi Master inclined his head. “Chancellor,” he said, a calmly respectful greeting as though they had met by chance on the Grand Concourse of the Galactic Senate.
Palpatine’s only response was a tight murmur. “Anakin, behind you—!”
Anakin didn’t turn. He didn’t have to. It wasn’t just the clack of boot heels and clank of magnapeds crossing the threshold of the entrance balcony; the Force gathered within him and around him in a sudden clench like the fists of a startled man.
In the Force, he could feel the focus of Palpatine’s eyes: the source of the fear that rolled off him in billows like vapor down a block of frozen air. And he could feel the even colder wave of power, colder than the frost on a mynock’s mouth, that slid into the room behind him like an ice dagger into his back.
Funny, he thought. After Ventress, somehow I always expect the dark side to be hot …
Something unlocked in his chest. The thunder in his ears dissolved into red smoke that coiled at the base of his spine. His lightsaber found his hand, and his lips peeled off his teeth in a smile that a krayt dragon would have recognized.
That trouble he was having with talking went away.
“This,” he murmured to Palpatine, and to himself, “is not a problem.”
The voice that spoke from the entrance balcony was an elegant basso with undernotes of oily resonance like a kriin-oak cavernhorn.
Count Dooku’s voice.
“General Kenobi. Anakin Skywalker. Gentlemen—a term I use in its loosest possible sense—you are my prisoners.”
Now Anakin didn’t have any troubles at all.
The entrance balcony provided an appropriate angle—far above the Jedi, looking down upon them—for Dooku to make final assessments before beginning the farce.
Like all true farce, the coming denouement would proceed with remorseless logic from its ridiculous premise: that Dooku could ever be overcome by mere Jedi. Any Jedi. What a pity his old friend Mace couldn’t have joined them today; he had no doubt the Korun Master would have enjoyed the coming show.
