by James Luceno
“Right about now that would be a best-case scenario,” Shryne said. “If our comlinks were powerful enough to contact the Temple …”
“But the Temple can contact us,” Starstone said.
“And it might yet,” Chatak said.
“Maybe Passel Argente cut a deal with the Supreme Chancellor to spare Murkhana,” Starstone said.
Shryne glanced at her. “How many more theories are you planning to offer?” he said, more harshly than he meant to.
“I’m sorry, Master.”
“Patience, Padawan,” Chatak said in a comforting voice.
Shryne slipped the comlink back into its pouch. “We need to avoid further engagements with droids or mercenaries. Lightsaber wounds are easy to identify. We don’t want to leave a trail.”
Exiting the building, they resumed their careful climb into the hills.
Everywhere they turned, the streets were crowded with clone troopers, battle droids, and masses of fleeing Koorivar. Before they had gone even a kilometer, Shryne brought them to a halt once more.
“We’re getting nowhere fast. If we ditch our robes, we might have better luck at blending in.”
Chatak regarded him dubiously. “What do you have in mind, Roan?”
“We find a couple of mercenaries and take their robes and headcloths.” He gazed at Chatak and Starstone in turn. “If the troopers can switch sides, then so can we.”
Salvo ended his helmet comlink communication with Murkhana’s theater commanders and joined Climber at what had become the troopers’ forward command base. The other three commandos were searching for the escaped Jedi, but Salvo didn’t want the squad leader out of his sight.
“General Loorne and the two Jedi Knights he arrived with were ambushed and killed,” Salvo shared with Climber. “Apparently no troopers among the Twenty-second staked a claim to the moral high ground.”
Climber let the remark go. “Did you report our actions to High Command?”
Salvo shook his head. “But don’t think I won’t. Like I told you, it depends on whether we’re able to kill them. Just now I don’t want your actions reflecting negatively on my command.”
“Did you learn anything about what prompted the execution order?”
Salvo spent a moment arguing with himself about what he should and should not reveal. “Theater command reports that four Jedi Masters attempted to assassinate Supreme Chancellor Palpatine in his chambers on Coruscant. The reason is unclear, but it appears that the Jedi have been angling from the start to assume control of the Republic, and that the war may have been engineered to help bring that about.”
Climber was stunned. “So Palpatine’s order was put in place because he anticipated that the Jedi might try something?”
“It’s not unusual to have a contingency plan, Climber. You should know that better than anyone.”
Climber thought hard about it. “How does it make you feel, Commander—about what the Jedi did, I mean?”
Salvo took a moment to respond. “As far as I’m concerned, their treachery just adds more enemies to the list. Other than that, I don’t feel one way or another about it.”
Climber studied Salvo. “You know, word among some of the troopers is that the Jedi had a hand in ordering the creation of the Grand Army. Were they figuring we’d side with them when they grabbed control, or would they have turned on us eventually?”
“No way to know.”
“Except they made their move too soon.”
Salvo nodded. “Even now, troopers and Jedi are battling it out inside the Temple on Coruscant. Thousands are believed dead.”
“I’ve never been to Coruscant,” Climber said, breaking a brief silence. “Closest I ever came was training on one of the inner worlds of that system. You’ve been there?”
“Once. Before the start of the Outer Rim Sieges.”
“Who would you rather be serving, Commander—Palpatine or the Jedi?”
“That’s outside the scope of the part we were created to play, Climber. When this war ends, we’ll be sitting pretty. I wouldn’t have thought so even twelve hours ago, but now, with the Jedi out of the picture, I suspect we’re in for a promotion.”
Climber glanced at the sky. “Going to be dark soon. Puts our search teams at high risk of being ambushed by Seps.”
Salvo shrugged. “More than a hundred seeker droids have been deployed. Shouldn’t be hard to find three Jedi.”
Climber blew his breath out in derision. “You know as well as I do that they’re too smart to be caught.”
“Granted,” Salvo said. “By now, they’re probably wearing bodysuits and armor.”
Eat,” Shryne said, forcing some of the rations he had taken from his utility belt on a distracted Olee Starstone. “We don’t know when we’ll have another chance.”
Several hours had passed since they had fled the ambush site, and they’d traveled clear across the city to an empty warehouse close to the access ramps of the northernmost of the landing platform bridges. It was midnight, and they were attired in the garb of three mercenaries they had taken by surprise behind the Argente Tower.
Shryne continued. “There may come a point when we’ll have to get rid of our comlinks, beacon transceivers, and lightsabers. Being taken prisoner could be our way off Murkhana.”
“Should we use Force influence?” Starstone said.
“That might work on a couple of troopers at a time,” Shryne said, “but not an entire platoon, much less a full company.”
Chatak eyed her Padawan with clear intent. “It’s a matter of surviving until the Republic is victorious.”
Shryne had a ration pack lifted to his mouth when his beacon transceiver began to vibrate. He fished the device from the deep pocket of the Koorivar robe and regarded it in silence.
“Could be troopers, tapping into our frequencies,” Chatak said.
Shryne studied the beacon’s small display screen. “It’s a coded burst-transmission from the Temple.”
Chatak hurried to his side to peer over his shoulder. “Can you decipher it?”
“It’s not a simple Nine Thirteen,” Shryne said, referring to the code the Jedi used to locate one another in emergency situations. “Give me a moment.” When the burst-transmission began to recycle, he turned to Chatak in stark incredulity. “The High Council is ordering all Jedi back to Coruscant.”
Chatak was dumbfounded.
“No explanation,” Shryne said.
Chatak stood up and paced away from him. “What could have happened?”
He thought about it. “A follow-up attack on Coruscant by Grievous?”
“Perhaps,” Chatak said. “But that doesn’t account for the clone troopers’ disloyalty.”
“Maybe there’s been a universal clone trooper revolt,” Starstone suggested. “The Kaminoans could have betrayed us. All these years, they could have been in league with Count Dooku. They could have programmed the troopers to revolt at a predetermined time.”
Shryne was glancing at Chatak. “Does she ever stop?”
“I haven’t been able to find the off switch.”
Shryne moved to the nearest window and watched the night sky.
“Republic starfighters will be setting down on the landing platform by late morning,” he said.
Chatak joined him at the window. “Then Murkhana is won.”
Shryne turned to face her. “We have to reach the platform. The troopers have their orders, and now we have ours. If we can seize a transport or starfighters, we may yet be able to return to Coruscant.”
Throughout the long night and morning, explosive light strobed through the warehouse’s arched windows as Republic and Separatist forces clashed at sea and in the air. The battle for the landing platform raged well into the afternoon. But now the Separatist forces were in full retreat, streaming across the two intact bridges, leaving the platform’s defense to homing spider droids, hailfire weapons platforms, and tanks.
By the time the Jedi managed to reach th
e more northern of the pair of bridges, the wide avenue was so closely packed with fleeing mercenaries and other Separatist fighters they could scarcely make any headway against the flow. A crossing that should have taken an hour required more than three, and the sun was low on the horizon when they reached the end of the bridge.
They were just short of the platform itself when a succession of powerful explosions took out the final hundred meters of the span and split the massive hexagon into thirds, sending hundreds of clone troopers, mercenaries, and Separatist droids plummeting into the churning water.
Shryne knew that the Separatists were responsible for the explosions. Before too long, munitions planted under the final bridge would be detonated, as well. By then, though, there would be no stopping the Republic onslaught.
While mercenaries shouldered past him in a frenzy, Shryne surveyed the forest of bridge pylons left exposed by the explosions, calculating their distance from one another and the odds of accomplishing what he had in mind.
Finally he said: “Either we frog-leap for the platform or we head back into the city.” He looked at Starstone. “You decide.”
Her blue eyes sparkled and she put on a brave face. “Not a problem, Master. We leap for it.”
Shryne almost grinned. “Right. One at a time.”
Chatak put her arm around her Padawan’s shoulder. “Let’s just hope no clone troopers are watching.”
Shryne gestured to his pilfered outfit of robe and headcloth. “We’re just a bunch of very agile mercs.”
Chatak took the lead, with Starstone right on her heels. Shryne waited until they were halfway along before following. The first few leaps were easy, but the closer he got to the platform, the greater the distance between the pylons, many of which had been left with jagged tops. On his penultimate jump, he nearly lost his balance, and on his final leap for the edge of the platform his hands arrived well in front of his feet.
A last-moment grab from Starstone was all that saved him from a plunge into the waves.
“Remind me to mention this to the Council, Padawan,” he told her.
The platform was being hammered, but not past the point of utility. On one fractured section gunships were beginning to land, along with a vanguard flight of troop transports. Elsewhere, battle droids were being flattened by magpulse busters, then picked off before they had a chance to reactivate by V-wings and ARC-170s performing lightning-fast strafing runs.
With night falling, the Jedi wove through firefights and fountaining explosions, using their captured blasters rather than their lightsabers to defend themselves against teams of clone troopers and commandos, though without killing any.
They came to a halt at a ruined stretch of permacrete, at the far end of which a squadron of starfighters was touching down.
“Can you pilot a ship?” Shryne asked Starstone in a rush.
“Only an interceptor, Master. But without an astromech droid I doubt I could fly one to Coruscant. And I’ve never even seen the cockpit of a V-wing.”
Shryne considered it. “Then it’ll have to be an ARC-one-seventy.” He pointed to a bomber that was just landing, probably to refuel. “That’s our ship. It’s our best bet, anyway. Enough chairs for the three of us, and hyperspace-capable.”
Chatak watched the crew for a moment. “We may have to stun the copilot and tail gunner.”
Shryne was on the verge of moving when he felt the beacon transceiver vibrate again, and he pawed it from the deep pocket of the robe.
“What is it, Roan?” Chatak asked while he was staring in stupefaction at the device. “What?” she repeated.
“Another coded burst from the beacon,” he said without moving his gaze from the screen.
“Same order?”
“The opposite.” Eyes wide, he looked up at Chatak and Starstone. “All Jedi are ordered to avoid Coruscant at all costs. We’re to abandon whatever missions we’re involved in, and go into hiding.”
Chatak’s mouth fell open.
Shryne made his lips a thin line. “We still need to get off Murkhana.”
They double-checked their blasters and again were on the verge of setting out for the starfighter when every Separatist droid and war machine on the landing platform abruptly began to power down. At first Shryne thought that another droid buster had been delivered without his being aware of it. Then he realized his mistake.
This was something different.
The droids hadn’t simply been dazzled. They had been deactivated, even the hailfires and tanks. Red photoreceptors lost their glow, alloy limbs and antennas relaxed, every soldier and war machine stood motionless.
At once, a full wing of gunships dropped out of the noon sky, releasing almost a thousand clone troopers, riding polyplast cables to the platform’s ruined surface.
Shryne, Chatak, and Starstone watched helplessly as they were almost instantly surrounded.
“Capture is infinitely preferable to execution,” Shryne said. “It could still be our way out.”
Closest to the ragged edge of the platform, he allowed his blaster, comlink, beacon transceiver, and lightsaber to slip from his hands into the dark waters far below.
PART II
THE EMPEROR’S EMISSARY
The Star Destroyer Exactor, second in a line of newly minted Imperator-class naval vessels, emerged from hyperspace and inserted into orbit, its spiked bow aimed at the former Separatist world of Murkhana. At sixteen hundred meters in length, the Exactor, unlike its Venator-class predecessors, was a product of Kuat Drive Yards, and featured gaping ventral launching bays rather than a dorsal flight deck.
Moved by gravity rather than by their ion drives, the carcasses of Banking Clan and Commerce Guild warships were grim reminders of the Republic invasion that had been launched in the concluding weeks of the war. Murkhana, however, had fared far better than some contested worlds, and the Corporate Alliance elite had decamped for remote systems in the galaxy’s Tingel Arm, taking much of the planet’s wealth with it.
In his quarters aboard the capital ship now under his personal command, Darth Vader, gloved and artificial right hand clamped on the hilt of his new lightsaber, knelt before a larger-than-life hologram of Emperor Palpatine. Only four standard weeks had elapsed since the war had ended and Palpatine had proclaimed himself Emperor of the former Republic, to the adulation of the leaders of countless worlds that had been drawn into the protracted conflict, and to the sustained acclaim of nearly the entire Senate.
Palpatine wore a voluminous embroidered robe of rich weave, the cowl of which was raised, concealing in shadow the scars he had suffered at the hands of the four treasonous Jedi Masters who had attempted to arrest him in his chambers in the Senate Office Building, as well as other deformations resulting from his fierce battle with Master Yoda in the Rotunda of the Senate itself.
“This is an important time for you, Lord Vader,” Palpatine was saying. “You are finally free to make full use of your powers. If not for us, the galaxy would never have been restored to order. Now you must embrace the sacrifices you made to bring this about, and revel in the fact that you have fulfilled your destiny. It can all be yours, my young apprentice, anything you wish. You need only have the determination to take it, at whatever cost to those who stand in your way.”
Palpatine’s disfigurements were really nothing new; nor was his deliberate, vaguely contemptuous voice. The Emperor had used the same voice to procure his first apprentice; to ensnare Trade Federation Viceroy Nute Gunray in facilitating his dark designs; to persuade Count Dooku to unleash a war; and finally to seduce Vader—former Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker—to the dark side, with the promise that he could keep Anakin’s wife from dying.
Few among the galaxy’s trillions were aware that Palpatine was also a Sith Lord, known by the title Darth Sidious, or that he had manipulated the war in order to bring down the Republic, crush the Jedi, and place the entire galaxy under his full control. Fewer still knew of the crucial role Sidious’s current apprentice ha
d played in those events, having helped Sidious defend himself against the Jedi who had sought his arrest; having led the assault on the Jedi Temple on Coruscant; having killed in cold blood the half dozen members of the Separatist Council in their hidden fortress on volcanic Mustafar.
And who there had suffered even more gravely than Palpatine.
Down on one knee, his black-masked face raised to the hologram, tall, fearsome Vader was wearing the bodysuit and armor, helmet, boots, and cloak that both camouflaged the evidence of his transformation and sustained his life.
Without revealing his distress at being unable to maintain the kneeling posture, Vader said: “What are your orders, Master?”
And asked himself: Is this poorly designed suit the source of my distress, or is something else at work?
“Do you recall what I told you about the relationship between power and understanding, Lord Vader?”
“Yes, Master. Where the Jedi gained power through understanding, the Sith gain understanding through power.”
Palpatine smiled faintly. “This will become clearer to you as you continue your training, Lord Vader. And to that end I will provide you with the means to increase your power, and broaden your understanding. In due time, power will fill the vacuum created by the decisions you made, the acts you carried out. Married to the order of the Sith, you will need no other companion than the dark side of the Force …”
The remark stirred something within Vader, but he was unable to make full sense of the feelings that washed through him: a commingling of anger and disappointment, of grief and regret …
The events of Anakin Skywalker’s life might have occurred a lifetime ago, or to someone else entirely, and yet some residue of Anakin continued to plague Vader, like pain from a phantom limb.
“Word has reached me,” Palpatine was saying, “that a group of clone troopers on Murkhana may have deliberately refused to comply with Order Sixty-Six.”
