Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (37 page)

A boy.

A child, no more than ten years old, swinging a lightsaber whose blade was almost as long as he was tall. More blasterfire came from inside, and a whole platoon of clones came pelting toward the landing deck, and the ten-year-old was hit, and hit again, and then just shot to rags among the bodies of the troopers he'd killed, and Bail started backing away, faster now, and in the middle of it all, a clone wearing the colors of a commander came out of the smoke and pointed at Bail Organa. "No witnesses," the commmander said. "Kill him."

Bail ran.

He dived through a hail of blasterfire, hit the deck, and rolled under his speeder to the opposite side. He grabbed on to its pilot's-side door and swung his leg onto a tail fin, using the vehicle's body as cover while he stabbed the keys to reinitialize its autorouter. Clones charged toward him, firing as they came.

His speeder heeled over and blasted away.

Bail pulled himself inside as the speeder curved up into the congested traffic lanes. He was white as flimsiplast, and his hands were shaking so badly he could barely activate his comm.

"Antilles! Organa to Antilles. Come in, Captain!"

"Antilles here, my lord."

"It's worse than I thought. Far worse than you've heard. Send someone to Chance Palp-no, strike that. Go yourself. Take five men and go to the spaceport. I know at least one Jedi ship is on the ground there; Saesee Tiin brought in Sharp Spiral late last night. I need you to steal his homing beacon."

"What? His beacon? Why?"

"No time to explain. Get the beacon and meet me at the Tantive. We're leaving the planet."

He stared back at the vast column of smoke that boiled from the Jedi Temple.

"While we still can."

Clone Wars have always been, in and of themselves, from their very inception, the revenge of the Sith.

They were irresistible bait. They took place in remote locations, on planets that belonged, primarily, to "somebody else." They were fought by expendable proxies. And they were constructed as a win-win situation.

The Clone Wars were the perfect Jedi trap.

By fighting at all, the Jedi lost.

With the Jedi Order overextended, spread thin across the galaxy, each Jedi is alone, surrounded only by whatever clone troops he, she, or it commands. War itself pours darkness into the Force, deepening the cloud that limits Jedi perception. And the clones have no malice, no hatred, not the slightest ill intent that might give warning. They are only following orders.

In this case, Order Sixty-Six.

Hold-out blasters appear in clone hands. ARC-170s drop back onto the tails of Jedi star fighters. AT-STs swivel their guns. Turrets on hovertanks swung silently.

Clones open fire, and Jedi die.

All across the galaxy. All at once.

Jedi die.

Order Sixty-Six is the climax of the Clone Wars.

Not the end-the Clone Wars will end some few hours from now, when a coded signal, sent by Nute Gunray from the secret Separatist bunker on Mustafar, deactivates every combat droid in the galaxy at once-but the climax.

It's not a thrilling climax; it's not the culmination of an epic struggle. Just the opposite, in fact. The Clone Wars were never an epic struggle. They were never intended to be.

What is happening right now is why the Clone Wars were fought in the first place. It is their reason for existence. The

Kenobi never saw it coming.

Cody had coordinated the heavy-weapons operators from five different companies spread over an arc of three different levels of the sinkhole-city. He'd served under Kenobi in more than a dozen operations since the beginning of the Outer Rim sieges, and he had a very clear and unsentimental estimate of just how hard to kill the unassuming Jedi Master was. He wasn't taking any chances.

He raised his comlink. "Execute."

On that order, T-21 muzzles swung, shoulder-fired torps locked on, and proton grenade launchers angled to precisely calibrated elevations.

"Fire."

They did.

Kenobi, his dragonmount, and all five of the destroyer droids he'd been fighting vanished in a fireball that for an instant outshone Utapau's sun.

Visual polarizers in Cody's helmet cut the glare by 78 percent; his vision cleared in plenty of time to see shreds of dragon-mount and twisted hunks of droid raining into the ocean mouth at the bottom of the sinkhole.

Cody scowled and keyed his comlink. "Looks like the lizard took the worst of it. Deploy the seekers. All of them."

He stared down into the boil of the ocean mouth.

"I want to see the body."

C-3PO paused in the midst of dusting the Tarka-Null original on its display pedestal near his mistress's bedroom view wall, and used the electrostatic tissue to briefly polish his own photoreceptors. The astromech in the green Jedi starfighter docking with the veranda below-could that be R2-D2?

Well, this should be interesting.

Senator Amidala had spent the better part of these predawn hours simply staring over the city, toward the plume of smoke that rose from the Jedi Temple; now, at last, she might get some answers.

He might, too. R2-D2 was far from the sort of sparkling conversationalist with whom C-3PO preferred to associate, but the little astromech had a positive gift for jacking himself into the motherboards of the most volatile situations . . .

The cockpit popped open, and inevitably the Jedi within was revealed to be Anakin Skywalker. In watching Master Anakin climb down from the starfighter's cockpit, 3PO's photoreceptors captured data that unexpectedly activated his threat-aversion subroutines. "Oh," he said faintly, clutching at his power core. "Oh, I don't like the looks of this at all ..."

He dropped the electrostatic tissue and shuffled as quickly as he could to the bedroom door. "My lady," he called to Senator Amidala, where she stood by the broad window. "On the veranda. A Jedi starfighter," he forced out. "Has docked, my lady."

She blinked, then rushed toward the bedroom door.

C-3PO shuffled along behind her and slipped out through the open door, making a wide circle around the humans, who were engaged in one of those inexplicable embraces they seemed so fond of.

Reaching the starfighter, he said, "Artoo, are you all right?

What is going on?"

The astromech squeaked and beeped; C-3PO's autotranslator interpreted: nobody tells me anything.

"Of course not. You don't keep up your end of the conversation."

A whirring squeal: SOMETHING'S WRONG. THE FACTORS DON'T BALANCE.

"You can't possibly be more confused than I am."

YOU'RE RIGHT. NOBODY CAN BE MORE CONFUSED THAN YOU ARE.

"Oh, very funny. Hush now-what was that?" The Senator was sitting now, leaning distractedly on one of the tasteful, elegant bistro tables that dotted the veranda, while Master Anakin stood above her. "I think-he's saying something about a rebellion-that the Jedi have tried to overthrow the Republic! And-oh, my goodness. Mace Windu has tried to assassinate Chancellor Palpatine! Can he be serious?"

I DON'T KNOW. ANAKIN DOESN'T TALK TO ME ANYMORE.

C-3PO shook his cranial assembly helplessly. "How can Master Windu be an assassin? He has such impeccable manners."

LIKE I TOLD YOU: THE FACTORS DON'T ADD UP.

"I've been hearing the most awful rumors-they're saying the government is going to banish us-banish droids, can you imagine?"

DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU HEAR.

"Shh. Not so loud!"

I'M ONLY SAYING THAT WE DON'T KNOW THE TRUTH.

"Of course we don't." C-3PO sighed. "And we likely never will."

"What about Obi-Wan?"

She looked stricken. Pale and terrified.

It made him love her more.

He shook his head. "Many of the Jedi have been killed."

"But . . ." She stared out at the rivers of traffic crosshatching the sky. "Are you sure? It seems so ... unbelievable ..."

"I was there, Padme. It's all true."

"But . . . but how could Obi-Wan be involved in something like that?"

He said, "We may never know."

"Outlawed . . . ," she murmured. "What happens now?"

"All Jedi are required to surrender themselves immediately," he said. "Those who resist . . . are being dealt with."

"Anakin-they're your family-"

"They're traitors. You're my family. You and the baby."

"How can all of them be traitors-?"

"They're not the only ones. There were Senators in this as well."

Now, finally, she looked at him, and fear shone from her eyes.

He smiled.

"Don't worry. I won't let anything happen to you."

"To me?"

"You need to distance yourself from your . . . friends ... in the Senate, Padme. It's very important to avoid even the appearance of disloyalty."

"Anakin-you sound like you're threatening me . . ."

"This is a dangerous time," he said. "We are all judged by the company we keep."

"But-I've opposed the war, I opposed Palpatine's emergency powers-I publicly called him a threat to democracy!"

"That's all behind us now."

"What is? What I've done? Or democracy?"

"Padme-"

Her chin came up, and her eyes hardened. "Am I under suspicion?"

"Palpatine and I have discussed you already. You're in the clear, so long as you avoid . . . inappropriate associations."

"How am I in the clear?''

"Because you're with me. Because I say you are." She stared at him as if she'd never seen him before. "You told him."

"He knew."

"Anakin-"

"There's no more need for secrets, Padme. Don't you see? I'm not a Jedi anymore. There aren't any Jedi. There's just me." He reached for her hand. She let him take it. "And you, and our child."

"Then we can go, can't we?" Her hard stare melted to naked appeal. "We can leave this planet. Go somewhere we can be together-somewhere safe."

"We'll be together here,''' he said. "You are safe. I have made you safe."

"Safe," she echoed bitterly, pulling her hand away. "As long as Palpatine doesn't change his mind."

The hand she had pulled from his grasp was trembling.

"The Separatist leadership is in hiding on Mustafar. I'm on my way to deal with them right now."

"Deal with them?" The corners of her mouth drew down. "Like the Jedi are being dealt with?"

"This is an important mission. I'm going to end the war."

She looked away. "You're going alone?"

"Have faith, my love," he said.

She shook her head helplessly, and a pair of tears spilled from her eyes. He touched them with his mechanical hand; the fingertips of his black glove glistened in the dawn.

Two liquid gems, indescribably precious-because they were his. He had earned them. As he had earned her; as he had earned the child she bore.

He had paid for them with innocent blood.

"I love you," he said. "This won't take long. Wait for me."

Fresh tears streamed onto her ivory cheeks, and she threw herself into his arms. "Always, Anakin. Forever. Come back to me, my love-my life. Come back to me."

He smiled down on her. "You say that like I'm already gone."

Icy salt water shocked Obi-Wan back to full consciousness. He hung in absolute blackness; there was no telling how far underwater he might be, nor even which direction might be up. His lungs were choked, half full of water, but he didn't panic or even particularly worry; mostly, he was vaguely pleased to discover that even in his semiconscious fall, he'd managed to hang on to his lightsaber.

He clipped it back to his belt by feel, and-using only a minor exercise of Jedi discipline to suppress convulsive coughing-he contracted his diaphragm, forcing as much water from his lungs as he could. He took from his equipment belt his rebreather, and a small compressed-air canister intended for use in an emergency, when the breathable environment was not adequate to sustain his life.

Obi-Wan was fairly certain that his current situation qualified as an emergency.

He remembered . . .

Boga's wrenching leap, twisting in the air, the shock of impacts, multiple detonations blasting both of them farther and farther out from the sinkhole wall . . .

Using her massive body to shield Obi-Wan from his own troops.

Boga had known, somehow . . . the dragonmount had known what Obi-Wan had been incapable of even suspecting, and without hesitation she'd given her life to save her rider.

I suppose that makes me more than her rider, Obi-Wan thought as he discarded the canister and got his rebreather snugged into place. I suppose that makes me her friend. It certainly made her mine.

He let grief take him for a moment; grief not for the death of a noble beast, but for how little time Obi-Wan had had to appreciate the gift of his friend's service.

But even grief is an attachment, and Obi-Wan let it flow out of his life.

Good-bye, my friend.

He didn't try to swim; he seemed to be hanging motionless, suspended in infinite night. He relaxed, regulated his breathing, and let the water take him whither it would.

C-3PO barely had time to wish his little friend good luck and remind him to stay alert as Master Anakin brushed past him and climbed into the starfighter's cockpit, then fired the engine and blasted off, taking R2-D2 goodness knows where-probably to some preposterously horrible alien planet and into a perfectly ridiculous amount of danger-with never a thought how his loyal droid might feel about being dragged across the galaxy without so much as a by-your-leave . . .

Really, what bad happened to that young man's manners?

He turned to Senator Amidala and saw that she was crying.

"Is there anything I can do, my lady?"

She didn't even turn his way. "No, thank you, Threepio."

"A snack, perhaps?"

She shook her head.

"A glass of water?"

"No."

All he could do was stand there. "I feel so helpless . . ."

She nodded, looking away again, up at the fading spark of her husband's starfighter.

"I know, Threepio," she said. "We all do."

In the underground shiplift beneath the Senate Office Building, Bail Organa was scowling as he boarded Tantive IV. When Captain Antilles met him at the top of the landing ramp, Bail nodded backward at the scarlet-clad figures posted around the accessways. "Since when do Redrobes guard Senate ships?"