by James Luceno
“Forget Obi-Wan,” Palpatine said. “He has no idea how powerful you truly are. Use your power, Anakin. Save the Republic.”
Anakin could see it, vivid as a HoloNet feature: arriving at the Senate with Grievous in electrobonds, standing modestly aside as Palpatine announced the end of the war, returning to the Temple, to the Council Chamber, where finally, after all this time, there would be a chair waiting, just for him.
They could hardly refuse him Mastership now, after he had won the war for them …
But then Obi-Wan shifted on his shoulder, moaning faintly, and Anakin snapped back to reality.
“No,” he said. “Sorry, Chancellor. My orders are clear. This is a rescue mission; your safety is my only priority.”
“I will never be safe while Grievous lives,” Palpatine countered. “Master Kenobi will recover at any moment. Leave him here with me; he can see me safely to the hangar deck. Go for the general.”
“I—I would like to, sir, but—”
“I can make it an order, Anakin.”
“With respect, sir: no. You can’t. My orders come from the Jedi Council, and the Council’s orders come from the Senate. You have no direct authority.”
The Chancellor’s face darkened. “That may change.”
Anakin nodded. “And perhaps it should, sir. But until it does, we’ll do things my way. Let’s go.”
“Sir?” The thin voice of the comm officer interrupted Grievous’s pacing. “We are being hailed by Integrity, sir. They propose a cease-fire.”
Dark yellow eyes squinted through the skull-mask at the tactical displays. A pause in the combat would allow Invisible Hand’s turbolaser batteries to cool, and give the engineers a chance to get the gravity generators under control. “Acknowledge receipt of transmission. Stand by to cease fire.”
“Standing by, sir.” The gunnery officer was still shaking.
“Cease fire.”
The lances of energy that had joined the Hand to the Home Fleet Strike Force melted away.
“Further transmission, sir. It’s Integrity’s commander.”
Grievous nodded. “Initiate.”
A ghostly image built itself above the bridge’s ship-to-ship hologenerator: a young human male of distinctly average height and build, wearing the uniform of a lieutenant commander. The only thing distinctive about his otherwise rather bland features was the calm confidence in his eyes.
“General Grievous,” the young man said briskly, “I am Lieutenant Commander Lorth Needa of RSS Integrity. At my request, my superiors have consented to offer you the chance to surrender your ship, sir.”
“Surrender?” Grievous’s vocabulator produced a very creditable reproduction of a snort. “Preposterous.”
“Please give this offer careful deliberation, General, as it will not be repeated. Consider the lives of your crew.”
Grievous cast an icy glance around his bridge full of craven Neimoidians. “Why should I?”
The young man did not look surprised, though he did show a trace of sadness. “Is this your reply, then?”
“Not at all.” Grievous drew himself up; by straightening the angles of his levered joints, he could add half a meter to his already imposing height. “I have a counteroffer. Maintain your cease-fire, move that hulk Indomitable out of my way, and withdraw to a minimum range of fifty kilometers until this ship achieves hyperspace jump.”
“If I may use your word, sir: preposterous.”
“Tell these superiors of yours that if my demands are not met within ten minutes, I will personally disembowel Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, live on the HoloNet. Am I understood?”
The young officer took this without a blink. “Ah. The Chancellor is aboard your ship, then.”
“He is. Your pathetic Jedi so-called heroes have failed. They are dead, and Palpatine remains in my hands.”
“Ah,” the young officer repeated. “So you will, of course, allow me to speak with him. To, ah, reassure my superiors that you are not simply—well, to put it charitably—bluffing?”
“I would not lower myself to lie to the likes of you.” Grievous turned to the comm officer. “Patch in Count Dooku.”
The comm officer stroked his screen, then shook his head. “He’s not responding, sir.”
Grievous shook his head disgustedly. “Just show the Chancellor, then. Bring up my quarters on the security screen.”
The security officer stroked his own screen, and made a choking sound. “Hrm, sir?”
“What are you waiting for? Bring it up!”
He’d gone as pink as the gunner. “Perhaps you should have a look first, sir?”
The plain urgency in his tone brought Grievous to his side without another word. The general bent over the screen that showed the view inside his quarters and found himself looking at jumbled piles of energy-sheared wreckage surrounding the empty shape of the General’s Chair.
And that—that there—that looked like it could have been a body …
Draped in a cape of armorweave.
Grievous turned back toward the intership holocomm. “The Chancellor is—indisposed.”
“Ah. I see.”
Grievous suspected that the young officer saw entirely too well. “I assure you—”
“I do not require your assurance, General. You have the same amount of time you offered us. Ten minutes from now, I will have either your surrender, or confirmation that Supreme Chancellor Palpatine is alive, unharmed—and present—or Invisible Hand will be destroyed.”
“Wait—you can’t simply—”
“Ten minutes, General. Needa out.”
When Grievous turned to the bridge security officer, his mask was blankly expressionless as ever, but he made up for it with the open murder in his voice.
“Dooku is dead and the Jedi are loose. They have the Chancellor. Find them and bring them to me.”
His armorplast fingers curled into a fist that crashed down on the security console so hard the entire thing collapsed into a sparking, smoking ruin.
“Find them!”
RESCUE
Anakin counted paces as he trotted along the turbolift shaft, Obi-Wan over his shoulder and Palpatine at his side. He’d reached 102—only a third of the way along the conning spire—when he felt the gravity begin to shift.
Exactly the wrong way: changing the rest of the long, long shaft from ahead to down.
He put out his free arm to stop the Chancellor. “This is a problem. Find something to hang on to while I get us out of here.”
One of the turbolift doors was nearby, seemingly lying on its side. Anakin’s lightsaber found his hand and its sizzling blade burned open the door controls, but before he could even move aside the sparking wires, the gravitic vector lurched toward vertical and he fell, skidding along the wall, free hand grabbing desperately at a loop of cable, catching it, hanging from it—
And the turbolift doors opened.
Inviting. Safe. And mockingly out of reach: a meter above his outstretched arm—
And his other arm was the only thing holding Obi-Wan above a two-hundred-meter drop down which his lightsaber’s handgrip now clanked and clattered, fading toward infinity. For half a second Anakin was actually glad Obi-Wan was unconscious, because he wasn’t in the mood for another lecture about hanging on to his lightsaber right now, and that thought blew away and vanished because something had grabbed on to his leg—
He looked down.
It was Palpatine.
The Chancellor hugged Anakin’s ankle with improbable strength, peering fearfully into the darkness below. “Anakin, do something! You have to do something!”
I’m open to suggestions, he thought, but he said, “Don’t panic. Just hang on.”
“I don’t think I can …” The Chancellor turned his anguished face upward imploringly. “Anakin, I’m slipping. Give me your hand—you have to give me your hand!”
And drop Obi-Wan? Not in this millennium.
“Don’t panic,” Anakin repeated. Th
e Chancellor had clearly lost his head. “I can get us out of this.”
He wished he were as confident as he sounded. He had been counting on the artificial gravity to continue to swing until the shaft turned back into a hallway, but instead it seemed to have stopped where it was.
This would be an especially lousy time for the generators to start working right.
He fixed a measuring glance on the open lift doorway above; perhaps the Force could give him enough of a boost to carry all three of them to safety.
But that was an exceedingly large perhaps.
Obi-Wan, old buddy old pal, he thought, this would be a really good time to wake up.
Obi-Wan Kenobi opened his eyes to find himself staring at what he strongly suspected was Anakin’s butt.
It looked like Anakin’s butt—well, his pants, anyway—though it was thoroughly impossible for Obi-Wan to be certain, since he had never before had occasion to examine Anakin’s butt upside down, which it currently appeared to be, nor from this rather uncomfortably close range.
And how he might have arrived at this angle and this range was entirely baffling.
He said, “Um, have I missed something?”
“Hang on,” he heard Anakin say. “We’re in a bit of a situation here.”
So it was Anakin’s butt after all. He supposed he might take a modicum of comfort from that. Looking up, he discovered Anakin’s legs, and his boots—and a somewhat astonishing close-up view of the Supreme Chancellor, as Palpatine seemingly balanced overhead, supported only by a white-knuckled death-grip on Anakin’s ankle.
“Oh, hello, Chancellor,” he said mildly. “Are you well?”
The Chancellor cast a distressed glance over his shoulder. “I hope so …”
Obi-Wan followed the Chancellor’s gaze; above Palpatine rose a long, long vertical shaft—
Which was when he finally realized that he wasn’t looking up at all.
This must be what Anakin had meant by a bit of a situation.
“Ah,” Obi-Wan said. At least he was finally coming to understand where he stood.
Well, lay. Hung. Whatever.
“And Count Dooku?”
Anakin said, “Dead.”
“Pity.” Obi-Wan sighed. “Alive, he might have been a help to us.”
“Obi-Wan—”
“Not in this particular situation, granted, but nonetheless—”
“Can we discuss this later? The ship’s breaking apart.”
“Ah.”
A familiar electrosonic feroo-wheep came thinly through someone’s comlink. “Was that Artoo? What does he want?”
“I asked him to activate the elevator,” Anakin said.
From the distant darkness above came a clank, and a shirr, and a clonk, all of which evoked in Obi-Wan’s still-somewhat-addled brain the image of turbolift brakes unlocking. The accuracy of his imagination was swiftly confirmed by a sudden downdraft that smelled strongly of burning oil, followed closely by the bottom of a turbolift pod hurtling down the shaft like a meteorite down a well.
Obi-Wan said, “Oh.”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time—”
“No need to get defensive.”
“Artoo!” Anakin shouted. “Shut it down!”
“No time for that,” Obi-Wan said. “Jump.”
“Jump?” Palpatine asked with a shaky laugh. “Don’t you mean, fall?”
“Um, actually, yes. Anakin—?”
Anakin let go.
They fell.
And fell. The sides of the turboshaft blurred.
And fell some more, until the gravitic vector finally eased a couple of degrees and they found themselves sliding along the side of the shaft, which was quickly turning into the bottom of the shaft, and the lift pod was still shrieking toward them faster than they could possibly run until Anakin finally got the comlink working and shouted, “Artoo, open the doors! All of them! All floors!”
One door opened just as they skidded onto it and all three of them tumbled through. They landed in a heap on a turbolift lobby’s opposite wall as the pod shot past overhead.
They gradually managed to untangle themselves. “Are … all of your rescues so …” Palpatine gasped breathlessly. “… entertaining?”
Obi-Wan gave Anakin a thoughtful frown.
Anakin returned it with a shrug.
“Actually, now that you mention it,” Obi-Wan said, “yes.”
Anakin stared into the tangled masses of wreckage that littered the hangar bay, trying to pick out anything that still even resembled a ship. This place looked as if it had taken a direct hit; wind howled against his back through the open hatchway where Obi-Wan stood with Chancellor Palpatine, and scraps of debris whirled into the air, blown toward space through gaps in the scorched and buckled blast doors.
“None of those ships will get us anywhere!” Palpatine shouted above the wind, and Anakin had to agree. “What are we going to do?”
Anakin shook his head. He didn’t know, and the Force wasn’t offering any clues. “Obi-Wan?”
“How should I know?” Obi-Wan said, bracing himself in the doorway, robe whipping in the wind. “You’re the hero, I’m just a Master!”
Past Obi-Wan’s shoulder Anakin saw a cadre of super battle droids marching around a corner into the corridor. “Master! Behind you!”
Obi-Wan whirled, lightsaber flaring to meet a barrage of blaster bolts. “Protect the Chancellor!”
And let you have all the fun? Anakin pulled the Chancellor into the hangar bay and pressed him against the wall beside the hatch. “Stay under cover until we handle the droids!”
He was about to jump out beside Obi-Wan when he remembered that he had dropped his lightsaber down the turboshaft; fighting super battle droids without it would be a bit tricky. Not to mention that Obi-Wan would never let him hear the end of it.
“Droids are not our only problem!” Palpatine pointed across the hangar bay. “Look!”
On the far side of the bay, masses of wreckage were shifting, sliding toward the wall against which Anakin and Palpatine stood. Then debris closer to them began to slide, followed by piles closer still. An invisible wave-front was passing through the hangar bay; behind it, the gravitic vector was rotated a full ninety degrees.
Gravity shear.
Anakin’s jaw clenched. This just kept getting better and better.
He unspooled a length of his utility belt’s safety cable and passed the end to Palpatine. The wind made it sing. “Cinch this around your waist. Things are about to get a little wild!”
“What’s happening?”
“The gravity generators have desynchronized—they’ll tear the ship apart!” Anakin grabbed one of the zero-g handles beside the hatchway, then leaned out into the firestorm of blaster bolts and saber flares and touched Obi-Wan’s shoulder. “Time to go!”
“What?”
Explanation was obviated as the shear-front moved past them and the wall became the floor. Anakin grabbed the back of Obi-Wan’s collar, but not to save him from falling; the torque of the gravity shear had buckled the blast doors—which were now overhead—and the hurricane of escaping air blasting from the corridor shaft blew the Jedi Master up through the hatch. Anakin dragged him out of the gale just as pieces of super battle droids began hurtling upward into the hangar bay like misfiring torpedoes.
Some of the super battle droids were still intact enough to open fire as they flew past. “Hang on to my belt!” Obi-Wan shouted and spun his lightsaber through an intricate flurry to deflect bolt after bolt. Anakin could do nothing but hold him braced against the gale; his grip on the zero-g handle was the only thing keeping him and Obi-Wan from being blown out into space and taking Palpatine with them.
“This is not the best plan we’ve ever had!” he shouted.
“This was a plan?” Palpatine sounded appalled.
“We’ll make our way forward!” Obi-Wan shouted. “There are only droids back here! Once we hit live-crew areas, there will be esc
ape pods!”
Only droids back here echoed inside Anakin’s head. “Obi-Wan, wait!” he cried. “Artoo’s still here somewhere! We can’t leave him!”
“He’s probably been destroyed, or blown into space!” Obi-Wan deflected blaster bursts from the last two gale-blown droids. They tumbled up to the gap in the blast doors and vanished into the infinite void. Obi-Wan put away his lightsaber and fought his way back to a grip beside Anakin’s. “We can’t afford the time to search for him. I’m sorry, Anakin. I know how much he meant to you.”
Anakin desperately fished out his comlink. “Artoo! Artoo, come in!” He shook it, and shook it again. Artoo couldn’t have been destroyed. He just couldn’t. “Artoo, do you copy? Where are you?”
“Anakin—” Obi-Wan’s hand was on his arm, and the Jedi Master leaned so close that his low tone could be heard over the rising gale. “We must go. Being a Jedi means allowing things—even things we love—to pass out of our lives.”
Anakin shook the comlink again. “Artoo!” He couldn’t just leave him. He couldn’t. And he didn’t exactly have an explanation.
Not one he could ever give Obi-Wan, anyway.
There are so few things a Jedi ever owns; even his lightsaber is less a possession than an expression of his identity. To be a Jedi is to renounce possessions. And Anakin had tried so hard, tried for so long, to do just that.
Even on their wedding day, Anakin had had no devotion-gift for his new wife; he didn’t actually own anything.
But love will find a way.
He had brought something like a gift to her apartments in Theed, still a little shy with her, still overwhelmed by finding the feelings in her he’d felt so long himself, not knowing quite how to give her a gift which wasn’t really a gift. Nor was it his to give.
Without anything of his own to give except his love, all he could bring her was a friend.
“I didn’t have many friends when I was a kid,” he’d told her, “so I built one.”
And C-3P0 had shuffled in behind him, gleaming as though he’d been plated with solid gold.
Padmé had lit up, her eyes gleaming, but she had at first tried to protest. “I can’t accept him,” she’d said. “I know how much he means to you.”
