Book 0 - The Dark Lord Trilogy Page 3

  Oh, but it is personal, Anakin told himself while he watched Obi-Wan, Cody, and four troopers disappear into the turbolift.

  It was personal because of what Nute Gunray had done to Naboo thirteen years ago.

  It was personal because of Gunray’s hiring of Jango Fett to assassinate Padmé three years ago—first with a bomb planted on her ship, then with the pair of kouhuns a changling had inserted into Padmé’s Senatorial quarters on Coruscant.

  The woman Anakin loved above all else. His wife. The deepest though brightest of his secrets. Even Obi-Wan didn’t know, for that would have created problems.

  Finally, it was personal because of all that had occurred on Geonosis: the mock trial, the sentencing, the executions that were to have taken place in the arena …

  Even if he could put all that aside, as Obi-Wan plainly wanted him to do, it was personal because Gunray had aligned himself with Dooku and the Separatists, and the war they had planned from the start had brought ruin to a thousand worlds.

  The deaths of the Separatist leaders was the only solution now. It had always been the solution, despite objections by certain members of the Jedi Council, who still believed in peaceful resolutions. Despite the Senate’s attempts to bind the hands of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, so that corrupt politicians could continue to turn a profit. Line the pockets of their shimmersilk cloaks with kickbacks from the immoral corporations that funded the war machine. Supplying both sides with weapons, ships, whatever was needed to extend the conflict.

  It made Anakin’s blood boil.

  Yes, just as Yoda had sensed after Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan had freed him from slavery on Tatooine and brought him to the Jedi Temple, he had a lot of anger in him. But what Yoda failed to realize was that anger could be a kind of fuel. In peaceful times Anakin might have been able to bridle his rage, but now he relied on it to drive him forward, to transform him into the person he needed to be.

  Cut off the head.

  Twice he might have been able to kill Dooku himself had Obi-Wan not held him back. But he didn’t hold that against his former Master. For all his skills, Anakin still looked to Obi-Wan for guidance.

  On occasion.

  As he and the four troopers were exiting the grotto, the tip of his boot sent some object skittering across the floor. On the fly he used the Force to call the thing to his left hand and realized that it was Obi-Wan’s rebreather, which must have fallen from its utility pouch during the brief exchange with the unseen battle droids. But no matter; Obi-Wan was probably already in the lower levels of the redoubt, where there would be little need for the device.

  Opening one of the pouches on his belt, Anakin wedged the rebreather inside.

  He urged the troopers on, and they stayed close on his heels.

  Upward: following burrows, ramps, and shafts used only by droids. Through processing and shipment areas, through hatcheries filled with squealing grubs. Upward: into the citadel’s gleaming middle levels. Through rooms large as starship docking bays filled floor to ceiling with … stuff. A boundless collection of junk, ritual gifts, impulsive purchases. Thousands of faddish devices never to be used but too prized as possessions to be thrown out, donated, handed down, or destroyed. More technology than existed on entire worlds, hoarded, stacked, piled about, crammed into every available space.

  Anakin could only shake his head in wonder. In Mos Espa, on Tatooine, he and his mother had lived simply, and never wanted for anything.

  His grin was short-lived.

  Anger and despair made him grit his teeth.

  Upward: until they reached the citadel’s semicircular projection of launching bays, which overlooked the surrounding lake and a ridge of forested mountains.

  Anakin brought his team to a halt. One of the commandos held up his hand, palm outward, then tapped the side of his helmet to indicate an incoming transmission. The commando listened, then spoke to Anakin with hand signals.

  Gunray’s party is nearby.

  “They’re testing escape vectors for the shuttle by lowering the defensive shield and launching decoys,” the commando said quietly. “Turbolaser fire has allowed several of the decoys to get past our blockade and reach orbiting core ships.”

  The muscles in Anakin’s jaw bunched. “Then we have to act quickly.”

  No one contested when Anakin held point position. The commandos accepted without question that body armor and imaging systems were primitive compared to the power of the Force. They moved vigilantly through a maze of elegant corridors, abandoned in a rush, strewn with belongings dropped during flight.

  Approaching an intersection, Anakin made a halting gesture with his left hand.

  He listened for a moment; heard from around the corner the telltale heavy footfalls of super battle droids. The commando to Anakin’s left nodded in confirmation, then extended a finger-thin holocam around the corner and activated his gauntlet holoprojector. Noisy images of Nute Gunray and his entourage of elite officers formed in midair. Hurrying down the corridor, tall headpieces bobbing, rich robes aswirl, safeguarded front and rear by burly battle droids.

  Anakin motioned for silence, and was just about to step into the intersecting corridor when a banged-up silver protocol droid appeared from across the hall, raising its hands in delighted surprise.

  “Welcome, sirs!” it said loudly. “I can’t tell you how good it is to find guests in the palace! I am TeeCee-Sixteen and I am at your service. Nearly everyone has left—because of the invasion, of course—but I’m sure that we can make you comfortable, and that Viceroy Gunray will be most pleased—”

  One hand clamped over TC-16’s small rectangle of vocabulator, a commando yanked the droid to one side, but it was too late. Anakin leapt around the corner in time to see the Neimoidians set off at a run, red-eyed, flat-nosed Gunray casting a nervous glance over his shoulder.

  As for the super battle droids, they had about-faced and were marching stiff-legged in Anakin’s direction. Catching sight of him, their right arms elevated, twisted downward, locked into firing position.

  And the corridor began to fill with blaster bolts.

  Qui-Gon Jinn hadn’t believed in baiting, Obi-Wan thought as he and the commandos rode the turbolift to the fortress’s lowest level. Baiting implied a certain amount of advance planning, and Qui-Gon had no patience for that. He took situations as they came, throwing back his shoulders and striding boldly to the center of things, relying as much on his instincts as his lightsaber to deal with the consequences. It must have been difficult for him to have served under a methodical master such as Dooku, consummate planner, consummate duelist.

  Now a Sith.

  But that made sense, of a sort.

  The desire to dominate and control.

  For a time the same issues had stood at the center of Obi-Wan’s conflicts with Anakin. Clearly Anakin was as strong in the Force as any Jedi who had ever sat on the Council. But as Obi-Wan had told him time and again, the essence of being a Jedi didn’t hinge on attaining mastery of the Force, but on attaining mastery over oneself. Someday Anakin would come to accept that, and then he would be truly unstoppable. Qui-Gon had had the insight to recognize it more than a decade earlier, and Obi-Wan felt duty-bound to his former Master to help Anakin fulfill his destiny.

  His faith in Anakin had grown so strong that he had become Anakin’s staunchest defender to those on the Council who had grown apprehensive about the young man’s prowess, and uncomfortable with his confidential, almost familial relationship with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. If Obi-Wan was, as Anakin sometimes said, the father he never had, then Palpatine was his wise uncle, adviser, mentor in the ways of life outside the Temple.

  Obi-Wan understood that Anakin envied him for having been appointed to the Council. But how could he not, having been all but anointed “the Chosen One,” continually bolstered by Palpatine’s praise, driven to prove to his former Master that he could be the perfect Jedi Knight.

  On countless occasions Anakin’s bold actions had
allowed them to prevail against seemingly impossible odds. But just as often it had been Obi-Wan’s circumspection that had pulled them back from the brink. Whether foresight was something innate in Obi-Wan or the result of his continuing fascination with the unifying Force—the long view—Obi-Wan couldn’t say. What he could say was that he had learned to trust Anakin’s instincts.

  On occasion.

  He wouldn’t have been able to go on playing the bait, otherwise.

  “The next stop is ours, General,” Cody said from behind him.

  Obi-Wan turned, watched Cody slam a new blasterpack into his DC-15, heard the familiar whine of the weapon’s repower mechanism.

  Reflexively, he placed his thumb on the lightsaber’s activator button.

  “How do you want to handle this, sir?”

  “You’re the master of warcraft, Commander. I’ll follow your lead.”

  Cody nodded, perhaps grinning beneath his helmet. “Well, sir, our mandate is a simple one: Kill as many of the enemy as possible.”

  Obi-Wan recalled a conversation he had had on Ord Cestus with a clone trooper named Nate, regarding analogies between the Jedi and the clones: the former ushered by midi-chlorians to serve the Force; the latter, grown and programmed to serve the Republic.

  But the analogies ended there, because the troopers never paused to consider possible repercussions of their actions. Tasked, they executed their orders to the best of their abilities, whereas lately, even the most forceful Jedi knew moments of doubt. Qui-Gon had always criticized the Council for being too authoritative, and for cultivating inflexible methods of teaching. He saw the Temple as a place where candidates were programmed to become Jedi, instead of a place were beings were allowed to grow into Jedihood. Qui-Gon was no stranger to what the Jedi referred to as “aggressive negotiations,” which typically involved lightsabers more than diplomacy. But Obi-Wan wondered what he would have had to say about the war. He recalled, as if yesterday, Dooku’s taunt on Geonosis that Qui-Gon would have joined Dooku in championing the Separatist cause.

  As soon as the turbolift came to rest, two commandos tossed concussion grenades into the corridor beyond. Right and left, battle droids were blown against the walls and ceiling. Obi-Wan knew, because the corridor quickly became a torrent of blaster bolts. He, Cody, and the others threw themselves into the horizontal hail. Repeating blasters roared to life. Staccato bursts made short work of the droids, but reinforcements were already appearing.

  Two commandos fell to fire while Obi-Wan’s team was making its way down the corridor in the direction of the citadel’s packing and shipping rooms. Halfway there, they encountered the contingent of super battle droids the Neimoidians had sent to root out the infiltrators.

  Comparing the spindly infantry droid to the black-bodied super battle droid was like comparing a Muun to a champion shock-ball player. Quick decapitations weren’t possible because the droid’s head was all but buried in and fused to its broad torso. Heavy-gauge armor protected long arms and legs. Monogrip hands were suited only for gripping and firing high-energy dispersal blasters.

  “Looks like they’ve taken the bait, General!” Cody said while he, Obi-Wan, and two commandos fought their way into a side room.

  “Another successful action! Now we just have to survive it!”

  Cody pointed to the entrance to a second room, opposite their present position.

  “Through there,” he said. “A second bank of turbolifts on the far side.” He tapped Obi-Wan on the shoulder. “You first. We’ll provide cover. Go!”

  Obi-Wan shot for the room, deflecting bolts and mangling two super battle droids that stood in his way. The room beyond was stacked with coffin-sized repulsorlift shipping containers, constructed of some lightweight alloy. Treaded labor droids were moving additional containers into the room from an adjacent packaging area. Without warning, a battle droid appeared in the entrance. Obi-Wan glanced at the wall-mounted mechanism that operated the sliding doors. Adopting a defensive stance, he did just as he had done in the grotto, returning the first of the droid’s blaster bolts, and sending the second caroming around the room in a path calculated to disable the door apparatus.

  Things might have gone as planned had a labor droid not entered the room at an inopportune moment, guiding a levitated shipping container behind him. Ricocheting from the floor, the deflected bolt passed completely through the container before it struck the door mechanism. The pair of sliding doors attempted to close, but the crippled container was now in the way, so they began to cycle through attempts to repocket themselves, close, repocket themselves …

  Each time they opened, a battle droid would squeeze into the room, firing away, forcing Obi-Wan back toward the entry-way through which he had originally come, where a brutal firefight was still raging between commandos and super battle droids.

  While all this was occurring, something else was afoot. Strands of some gauzy white substance were beginning to drift from the holed shipping container.

  Obi-Wan realized instantly what the substance was.

  Taking one hand from the hilt of lightsaber, he began to fumble for the rebreather pouched on his belt, only to find it empty.

  “Stars’ end,” he cursed, more in disappointment than anger.

  Already beginning to feel woozy.

  Sirs, this a terrible mistake!” TC-16 inserted into a brief pause in the firefight.

  “Keep him quiet,” Anakin snapped at the commando closest to the droid.

  “But, sirs—”

  A second commando glanced at Anakin and motioned down the corridor behind them. “Six infantry droids advancing. We’re going to be caught in a crossfire.”

  Anakin gave his head a quick shake. “Wrong. Follow me—and bring the droid.”

  A muffled sound of dismay escaped TC-16’s vocabulator.

  Fury clouded Anakin’s eyes. Lightsaber held high in his crooked right arm, he whirled into the intersecting corridor. No need to use the Force, as many Jedi said, for he was never anywhere but fully in the Force. He called instead on his anger, bringing images to mind to fuel his rage. It wasn’t difficult, with so many to choose from: images of a Tusken Raider camp on Tatooine, Yavin 4, the defeat at Jabiim, Praesitlyn …

  Blue blade flashing, he cut a swath through the super battle droids, opening their burnished carapaces with diagonal slashes, cutting off blaster arms, hobbling the droids by deflecting bolts into their hermetically sealed knees. Scarcely letting a shot get past him, so that the commandos following in his wake could concentrate their fire on the ones Anakin only wounded.

  Their enemies fell aside, almost as if surrendering.

  Focused on the route Gunray and his lackeys had taken, Anakin raced through corridors, rounding corners without slowing down, sprinting for the launching bay at the far end of the final corridor. Confronted with an iris-hatch blast door, he thrust his glowing blade into the metal as if it were living flesh. Lips drawn back over his teeth, he tried to force the lightsaber to burn a fast circle in the door. He brought his will to bear on the task, but the lightsaber could accomplish only so much, even in the hands of a powerful Jedi.

  Withdrawing the blade, he stepped back from the door and moved his hands through a Force pass, willing the iris portal to open. The door shuddered but remained sealed. Screaming through gnashed teeth, he tried again.

  When the commandos finally caught up with him, he spun to them.

  “Blow the door!”

  A commando hurried forward to place magnetic charges against the alloy. Anakin paced behind him, waiting. Another commando had to tug him to a safe distance.

  The charges blew, and the portal yielded. Anakin charged through the irising seal even before it had opened fully.

  The launching bay was littered with containers, articles of clothing, objects the Neimoidians hadn’t had time or space to take with them.

  The shuttle was gone.

  Wisps of vapor swirled about, and the air smelled faintly of fuel. Anakin ran to the
platform’s forward-curving edge, eyes scanning Cato Neimoidia’s light-riddled night sky for some sign of the fleeing ship. The palace’s defensive shield had been deactivated. Thick packets of crimson light lanced from laser cannon batteries on the slopes below.

  Anakin’s teammates joined him at the brink, one with a hand vised on TC-16’s upper left arm.

  “What type of ship is it?” Anakin demanded of the droid.

  TC-16 tipped his head to one side. “Ship, sir?”

  “The shuttle—Gunray’s shuttle. What model?”

  “Why, I believe it was a Sheathipede-class, sir.”

  “Haor Chall Engineering Sheathipede-class transport shuttle,” one of the commandos explained. “Design is based on the soldier beetles. Upraised stern, bow ramp, clawfoot landing gear. Gunray’s named it the Lapiz Cutter.”

  A second commando spoke up, signaling that he was receiving commo.

  “General. From Commander Dodonna’s flagship: more than sixty shuttles and landing craft launched from the redoubt. Thirteen destroyed, eighteen seized. An unknown quantity have managed to dock aboard Trade Federation core ships and open-ring Lucrehulk carriers. Additional shuttles are still in the envelope.”

  Anakin turned through a circle, gloved hand gripped on the lightsaber pommel, the other balled into a fist. A conduit nearby took the brunt of his anger. Cleaved by the blade, it fell in pieces to the landing platform’s seamless floor. Anakin began to pace again, then stopped, yanking a commando around by his shoulder.

  “Comm forward command. I want my ship and astromech droid flown here immediately. One of the ARC-one-seventy pilots can fly it.”

  The commando nodded, relayed the message, then said: “FCC will comply, sir. You’ll have your starfighter soonest.”

  Anakin returned to the lip of the platform, blowing his breath into the night. The battle appeared to be winding down, except within him. Not until he had Gunray in his grip—

  “General Skywalker,” a commando said from behind him. “Urgent from Commander Cody. He and General Kenobi are pinned down on level one.”