Star Wars_ Revenge Of The Sith Part 4

One touch blew his canopy and he sprang from the c.o.c.kpit, flipping upward to stand on the wing. Battle droids opened fire instantly, and Anakin's lightsaber flashed. "Artoo, locate a computer link."

The little droid whistled at him, and Anakin allowed himself a tight smile. Sometimes he thought he could almost understand the droid's electrosonic code. "Don't worry about us. Find Palpatine. Go on, I'll cover you."

R2 popped out of its socket and bounced to the deck. Anakin jumped ahead of it into a cascade of blasterfire and let the Force direct his blade. Battle droids began to spark and collapse.

"Get to that link!" Anakin had to shout above the whine of blasters and the roar of exploding droids. "I'm going for Obi-Wan!"

"No need."

Anakin whirled to find Obi-Wan right behind him in the act of slicing neatly through the braincase of a battle droid.

"I appreciate the thought, Anakin," the Jedi Master said with a gentle smile. "But I've already come for you."

This, then, is Obi-Wan and Anakin: They are closer than friends. Closer than brothers. Though Obi-Wan is sixteen standard years Anakin's elder, they have become men together. Neither can imagine life without the other. The war has forged their two lives into one.

The war that has done this is not the Clone Wars; Obi-Wan and Anakin's war began on Naboo, when Qui-Gon Jinn died at the hand of a Sith Lord. Master and Padawan and Jedi Knights together, they have fought this war for thirteen years. Their war is their life.

And their life is a weapon.

Say what you will about the wisdom of ancient Master Yoda, or the deadly skill of grim Mace Windu, the courage of Ki-Adi-Mundi, or the subtle wiles of Shaak Ti; the greatness of all these Jedi is unquestioned, but it pales next to the legend that has grown around Ken.o.bi and Skywalker.

They stand alone.

Together, they are unstoppable. Unbeatable. They are the ultimate go-to guys of the Jedi Order. When the Good Guys absolutely, positively have to win, the call goes out.

Obi-Wan and Anakin always answer.

Whether Obi-Wan's legendary cleverness might beat Anakin's raw power, straight up, no rules, is the subject of schoolyard fist-fights, creche-pool wriggle-matches, and pod-chamber stinkwars across the Republic. These struggles always end, somehow, with the combatants on both sides admitting that it doesn't matter.

Anakin and Obi-Wan would never fight each other.

They couldn't.

They're a team. They're the team.

And both of them are sure they always will be.

=2=.

DOOKU.

The storm of blasterfire ricocheting through the hangar bay suddenly ceased. Cl.u.s.ters of battle droids withdrew behind s.h.i.+ps and slipped out hatchways.

Obi-Wan's familiar grimace showed past his blade as he let it shrink away. "I hate it when they do that."

Anakin's lightsaber was already back on his belt. "When they do what?"

"Disengage and fall back for no reason."

"There's always a reason, Master."

Obi-Wan nodded. "That's why I hate it."

Anakin looked at the litter of smoking droid parts scattered throughout the hangar bay, shrugged, and snugged his black glove. "Artoo, where's the Chancellor?"

The little droid's datajack rotated in the wall socket. Its holoprojector eye swiveled and the blue scanning laser built a ghostly image near Anakin's boot: Palpatine shackled into a large swivel chair. Even in the tiny translucent blur, he looked exhausted and in pain-but alive.

Anakin's heart thumped once, painfully, against his ribs. He wasn't too late. Not this time.

He dropped to one knee and squinted at the image. Palpatine looked as if he'd aged ten years since Anakin had last seen him. Muscle bulged along the young Jedi's jaw. If Grievous had hurt the Chancellor-had so much as touched him-The hand of jointed durasteel inside his black glove clenched so hard that electronic feedback made his shoulder ache.

Obi-Wan spoke from over that shoulder. "Do you have a location?"

The image rippled and twisted into a schematic map of the cruiser. Far up at the top of the conning spire R2 showed a pulsar of brighter blue.

"In the General's Quarters." Obi-Wan scowled. "Any sign of Grievous himself?"

The pulsar s.h.i.+fted to the cruiser's bridge.

"Hmm. And guards?"

The holoimage rippled again, and transformed into an image of the cruiser's General's Quarters once more. Palpatine appeared to be alone: the chair sat in the center of an arc of empty floor, facing a huge curved viewing wall.

Anakin muttered, "That doesn't make sense.''''

"Of course it does. It's a trap."

Anakin barely heard him. He stared down at his black-gloved fist. He opened his fist, closed it, opened it again. The ache from his shoulder flowed down to the middle of his bicep-And didn't stop.

His elbow sizzled, and his forearm; his wrist had been packed with red-hot gravel, and his hand-His hand was on fire.

But it wasn't his hand. Or his wrist, or his forearm, or his elbow. It was a creation of jointed durasteel and electrodrivers. "Anakin?"

Anakin's lips drew back from his teeth. "It hurts."

"What, your replacement arm? When did you have it equipped with pain sensors?"

"I didn't. That's the point."

"The pain is in your mind, Anakin-"

"No." Anakin's heart froze over. His voice went cold as s.p.a.ce. "I can feel him."

"Him?"

"Dooku. He's here. Here on this s.h.i.+p."

"Ah." Obi-Wan nodded. "I'm sure he is."

"You knew?"

"I guessed. Do you think Grievous couldn't have found Palpatine's beacon? It can hardly be accident that through all the ECM, the Chancellor's homing signal was in the clear. This is a trap. A Jedi trap." Obi-Wan laid a warm hand upon Anakin's shoulder, and his face was as grim as Anakin had ever seen it. "Possibly a trap set for us. Personally."

Anakin's jaw tightened. "You're thinking of how he tried to recruit you on Geonosis. Before he sent you down for execution."

"It's not impossible that we will again face that choice."

"It's not a choice." Anakin rose. His durasteel hand clenched and stayed that way, a centimeter from his lightsaber. "Let him ask. My answer is right here on my belt."

"Be mindful, Anakin. The Chancellor's safety is our only priority."

"Yes-yes, of course." The ice in Anakin's chest thawed. "All right, it's a trap. Next move?"

Obi-Wan allowed himself a bit of a smile of his own as he headed for the nearest exit from the hangar bay. "Same as always, my young friend: we spring it."

"I can work with this plan." Anakin turned to his astromech.

"You stay here, Artoo-"

The little droid interrupted him with a wheedling whirr.

"No arguments. Stay. I mean it."

R2-D2's whistling reply had a distinctly sulky tone.

"Listen, Artoo, someone has to maintain computer contact; do you see a datajack anywhere on me?"

The droid seemed to acquiesce, but not before wheeping what sounded like it might have been a suggestion where to look.

Waiting by the open hatchway, Obi-Wan shook his head. "Honestly, the way you talk to that thing."

Anakin started toward him. "Careful, Master, you'll hurt his feelings-" He stopped in his tracks, a curious look on his face as if he was trying to frown and to smile at the same time.

"Anakin?"

He didn't answer. He couldn't answer. He was looking at an image inside his head. Not an image. A reality.

A memory of something that hadn't happened yet.

He saw Count Dooku on his knees. He saw lightsabers crossed at the Count's throat.

Clouds lifted from his heart: clouds of Jabiim, of Aargonar, of Kamino, of even the Tusken camp. For the first time in too many years he felt young: as young as he really was.

Young, and free, and full of light.

"Master ..." His voice seemed to be coming from someone else. Someone who hadn't seen what he'd seen. Hadn't done what he'd done. "Master, right here-right now-you and I . . ."

"Yes?"

He blinked. "I think we're about to win the war."

The vast semisphere of the view wall bloomed with battle. Sophisticated sensor algorithms compressed the combat that sprawled throughout the galactic capital's...o...b..t to a view the naked eye could enjoy: cruisers hundreds of kilometers apart, exchanging fire at near lightspeed, appeared to be practically hull-to-hull, joined by pulsing cables of flame. Turbolaser blasts became swift shafts of light that shattered into prismatic splinters against s.h.i.+elds, or bloomed into miniature supernovae that swallowed s.h.i.+ps whole. The invisible gnat-clouds of starfighter dogfights became a gleaming dance of shadowmoths at the end of Coruscant's brief spring.

Within that immense curve of computer-filtered carnage, the only furnis.h.i.+ng was one lone chair, centered in an expanse of empty floor. This was called the General's Chair, just as this apartment atop the flags.h.i.+p's conning spire was called the General's Quarters.

With his back to that chair and to the man shackled within it, hands folded behind him beneath his cloak of silken armor-weave, stood Count Dooku.

Stood Darth Tyra.n.u.s, Lord of the Sith.

He looked upon his Master's handiwork, and it was good.

More than good. It was magnificent.

Even the occasional tremor of the deck beneath his boots, as the entire s.h.i.+p shuddered under enemy torpedo and turbolaser blasts, felt to him like applause.

Behind him sounded the initiating hum of the intras.h.i.+p holocomm, which crackled into a voice both electronic and oddly expressive: as though a man spoke through a droid's electrosonic vocabulator. "Lord Tyra.n.u.s, Ken.o.bi and Skywalker have arrived."

"Yes." Dooku had felt them both in the Force. "Drive them toward me."

"My lord, I must express once more my objections-"

Dooku turned. From his commanding height, he stared down at the blue-scanned holoimage of Invisible Hand's commander. "Your objections have been noted already, General. Leave the Jedi to me."

"But driving them to you also sends them directly toward the Chancellor himself. Why does he remain on this s.h.i.+p at all? He should be hidden. He should be guarded. We should have had him outsystem hours ago!"

"Matters are so," Count Dooku said, "because Lord Sidious wishes them so; should you desire to press your objections, please feel at liberty to take them up with him."

"I, ah, don't believe that will be necessary . . ."

"Very well, then. Confine your efforts to preventing support troops from boarding. Without their pet clones to back them up, no Jedi is a danger to me."

The deck shuddered again, more sharply, followed by a sudden s.h.i.+ft in the vector of the cruiser's artificial gravity that would have sent a lesser man stumbling; with the Force to maintain the dignified solidity of his posture, the effect on Dooku was confined to the lift of one eyebrow. "And may I suggest that you devote some attention to protecting this s.h.i.+p? Having it destroyed with both you and me aboard might put something of a cramp in the war effort, don't you think?"

"It is already being done, my lord. Does my lord wish to observe the progress of the Jedi? I can feed the security monitors onto this channel."

"Thank you, General. That will be welcome."

"Gracious as ever, my lord. Grievous out."

Count Dooku allowed himself a near-invisible smile. His inviolable courtesy-the hallmark of a true aristocrat-was effortless, yet somehow it seemed always to impress the common rabble. As well as those with the intellect of common rabble, regardless of accomplishment or station: like, for example, that repulsive cyborg Grievous.

He sighed. Grievous had his uses; not only was he an able field commander, but he would soon make a marvelous scapegoat upon whom to hang every atrocity of this sadly necessary war. Someone had to take that particular fall, and Grievous was just the creature for the job. It certainly would not be Dooku.

This was, in fact, one purpose of the cataclysmic battle outside.