Star Wars_ Labyrinth of Evil Part 24

"Dooku!" young Skywalker said, as if his tone of voice should suffice to send shivers down the backbones of his opponents. "Show yourself!"

Rooms distant, Dooku merely spread his hands in a gesture of greeting, and aimed his words at the holoprojector's microphone.

"Stand not amazed, young Jedi. Is this not the way you had your first glimpse of Lord Sidious?"

Instead of replying, Ken.o.bi touched Skywalker on the arm, and the two of them began to scan the hall, no doubt in an attempt to locate him through the Force.

"You won't find me, Jedi - - "

"We know you're here, Dooku," Ken.o.bi said suddenly - - and with irksome audio distortion. "We can sense you."

Dooku sighed in disappointment. They weren't hearing him. Worse, the video feed was also becoming hopelessly corrupted. More through the Force than the holocam feed he saw them moving toward the very doorway he had taken to reach the control room.

Exceptional, he thought. Despite his mastery of the Quey'tek technique for hiding oneself in the Force, they had located him! Ah, well then, time to entertain them, in observance of Sidious's wishes.

Plucking his comlink from his belt, Dooku's right thumb leapt across the small touch pad. Heralded by the sound of metallic footfalls, fifty infantry droids crowded into the archive hall through two opposing doorways, perpendicular to the one through which the Jedi had entered.

"- - beginning to... things almost as much... I hate sand," Skywalker was saying to his former mentor as he raised his lightsaber over one shoulder.

Ken.o.bi spread his legs and brought his blade directly in front of him.

"Then... sweep up."

Touched by their camaraderie, Dooku smiled to himself. Darth Sidious had his work cut out for him if he ever expected to turn Skywalker to the dark side.

He thumbed a final comlink key. And with that, the droids leveled their blaster rifles at the Jedi and opened fire.

Yoda surrendered himself to the current of the Force. Sometimes, when the current was swift and steadfast, he could see through the eyes of his fellow Jedi, almost as if they were the Temple's remote sensors. And sometimes when the current was especially forceful, when it surged as if descending from great heights, he could hear the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn, as clearly as if he were still alive.

Master Yoda, he might say, we still have much to learn. The Force remains a code only partially deciphered. But another key has been found. We will become stronger than we have ever been...

Today was not one of those days. Today the current was interrupted by eddies and whirlpools, hydraulic traps whose roar overpowered the voices Yoda sought to hear. Today the current was not pellucid, but muddied by red soil eroded from distant sh.o.r.es, treacherous with obstacles, tainted.

Though he was scarcely aware of it, his eyelids were squeezed tight, his eyeb.a.l.l.s dancing beneath as if incapable of focusing on any one thing.

He had an image of himself drawing aside a veil only to find another, and another beyond that. The dark side frustrated his every effort to see clearly. The experience was still something new to him. Even though he'd had centuries to grow accustomed to foreboding, he had lived far longer without it. The dark side never completely disappeared - - it scratched at the surface like an insect crawling across a transparisteel panel - - and he had been able to sense its incremental increases in strength when the Jedi erred, or when the Republic erred, and soon the two were hand in hand.

Drawn into the mistakes of the Republic, the Jedi had been. But knowingly, and sometimes with full complicity. Allowed the dark side to take root, the Jedi had. Allowed arrogance to infect the Order, the Jedi had. A priority, holding on to power had become. Inflated by their own conquests, the Jedi became.

Some Jedi believed that Yoda wasn't aware of these things, or that he hadn't done enough to stem the tide of the dark side. Some believed that the Council had acted improperly or, worse, ineptly. What they failed to understand was that, once rooted, the growth of the dark side was inexorable, and could only be reversed by the one born to restore balance.

Yoda was not that one. Aged, experienced, diplomatic, informative, brilliant with a lightsaber... Yes, all of these things. And not unacquainted with the power of the dark side.

For that reason he understood just how dangerous this new Sith Lord was.

He hadn't had a sense of that danger until he had fought Dooku on Geonosis. Then he understood. In self-exile for a thousand years, the Sith had not merely been waiting for an appropriate time to reemerge and exact revenge, but for the birth of one strong enough to embrace the dark side fully and become its dedicated instrument.

This was Sidious: powerful enough to hide in plain sight. Powerful enough to instruct his apprentice, Dooku, to expose him, and still remain hidden from the Jedi. And as arrogant as the Jedi. Convinced that his way was the one and only way. Did he know about Skywalker? Surely he did. What better way to ensure total victory than by killing or corrupting the Chosen One? Even if not that One, someone so strong in midi-chlorians...

Someone birthed by the Force itself, Qui-Gon would have said - - never a doubt that Anakin's mother might have been lying.

The boy had no father. None I choose to remember. None I would honor with that t.i.tle.

The Sith were aware of Skywalker. How would he react when they tried finally to ensnare him?

Yoda's eyes snapped open. A disturbance in the Force - - of such magnitude that he had been hurled from the current. At his thought command, the window shutters in his quarters opened, and he gazed out on Coruscant, over the plain of The Works and beyond.

Something was wrong with the sky. Behind gathered clouds turned red and gold by noxious smoke: a lightstorm. Pulsing light, brighter than the waning rays of Coruscant's sun. Movement, as well; outside Coruscant's busy envelope, not seen but sensed.

An attack.

The Sith Lord's response to his being chased? Was it possible?

He perceived Mace running down corridors in the Temple; then turned as Mace rushed through the doorway.

At the same instant, a flaming Republic ship streaked past the Temple's crowning spires and crashed violently in the heart of The Works.

"Tiin, Koon, Ki-Adi-Mundi, and some of the others are on their way up the well," Mace said. "I sent Sta.s.s Allie to a.s.sist Shaak Ti in guarding Chancellor Palpatine."

Yoda nodded sagely.

"Well trained the Supreme Chancellor's Red Guards are. But display due concern for his safety, the Jedi must."

"Reports from naval command are garbled," Mace continued. "It's clear that the attack caught the home fleet by surprise. Groups of Separatist ships managed to penetrate the envelope before the fleet had time to engage. Now, by all accounts, our vessels are holding the line."

Yoda adopted an expression that mixed anger and bafflement.

"Monitoring hypers.p.a.ce reversion points, our commanders weren't?"

Mace's eyes narrowed.

"The Separatist fleet jumped from the Deep Core."

"Secret, those routes were. Known to us and few others." Yoda looked at Mace. "Unrestricted access to the archives, Dooku had. Access enough to erase all mentions of Kamino. Access enough to learn of explorations in the Deep Core."

Mace went to the window wall and stared at the sky.

"Dooku isn't leading this attack. Obi-Wan confirmed that he is on Tythe."

"Revealed, the importance of Tythe is. To draw into the Outer Rim additional Jedi."

"Maybe Palpatine will heed the Council's warnings next time."

"Improbable. But as you say: perhaps."

Mace swung back to Yoda.

"It's Grievous. But he can't be planning to occupy Coruscant. There aren't enough battle droids in the entire galaxy for that."

"Desperate he is," Yoda said, more to himself. "It's not in his programming."

Yoda looked up.

"Not Grievous - - Sidious."

Mace took a moment to answer.

"If that's true, then we're closer to finding him than we thought. Still, he can't believe we'd call off the search now."

"Demoralize Coruscant, Grievous will. Harry those who live in the heights and who wield power. Send them fleeing for safer havens, the attack will.

Disrupt the Senate."

Mace paced in front of the windows.

"This will only encourage Palpatine to triple the size of the clone army, construct more and more starships and fighters, strike at more worlds.

With the Senate crippled, no one will oppose him."

"Modulate, this war does. Recall every available Jedi, we must."

"The HoloNet is down," Mace said. "Surface communications are distorted by the defensive shields."

Yoda nodded.

"Use the beacon, we will."

40.

In the wake of the erratic and mostly unintelligible messages that had reached 500 Republica regarding the Separatists' surprise attack, Dyne had considered the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt to be the safest place on Coruscant. But now that the team had discovered a possible finish to the long trail they had followed from The Works, the building's vast underground seemed the most dangerous place to be. With a battle raging in s.p.a.ce, and notwithstanding Mace Windu's command to the contrary, Dyne had been tempted to suspend the search for Sidious's lair and report back to the Intelligence division, as he had ordered the other a.n.a.lysts to do. But as ARC commander Valiant had pointed out, the search team's objective was as important to the war as the actions of the ships that were protecting Coruscant.

So, while the team waited for Intelligence to deliver additional probe droids, a search of the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt had begun - - admittedly superficial and somewhat desultory, but only in response to the seeming impossibility of the task. Electronically tethered to the probe droids, Dyne and the commandos had performed imagings of some of the part.i.tions and walls, and investigated numerous unlit hollows and recesses. The bas.e.m.e.nt became a kind of microcosm for the entire war, with everyone on the team contributing separate skills. Only the interpreter droid, TC-16, was at a loss for something to do.

Five Hundred Republica hadn't sustained any follow-up jolts. Dyne had learned that the initial jolts had owed not to bombardment, but to the fall of ships destroyed at the edge of s.p.a.ce. With thousands of cargo and pa.s.senger vessels arriving at Coruscant at any given moment, he could scarcely imagine the chaos upside. Secondary shocks that had rocked the huge building had been traced to the firing of plasma weapons concealed in 500 Republica's cake of a crown. Several hours into the cursory search, Dyne had been struck by the possibility that certain Coruscanti - - perhaps the Sith Lord himself - - could be helping to coordinate the attack. With HoloNet transmissions jammed and surface communications sabotaged by the defensive shields, he had theorized that the probe droids might be able to home in on exchanges occurring on eccentric frequencies. He was as astonished as anyone when the hovering probe droids had led the team right back to where they had begun the search: where the footprints of their as-yet-unidentified quarry ended.

The source of the unusual frequency was determined to be directly beneath them. The droids had discovered further that the ferrocrete floor panel thought to have been the end of the trail was actually a movable platform, not unlike a turbolift, but powered hydraulically rather than by antigrav repulsor. The search for a hidden control panel, such as had been detected at the niche, hadn't come to anything. But by broadcasting sounds - - both within and outside the range of human hearing - - the probe droids had ultimately conjured a response from the platform.

Following what had sounded like a debate, the probe droids had chirped and bleated at the panel a second time. Issuing a resolved click, the panel had descended a couple of centimeters, then come to a halt.

Dyne recalled wondering where the platform's shaft could lead. Unlike many of Coruscant's tallest buildings, 500 Republica did not rely on the support of earlier structures for its foundation, but was solid almost all the way down to bedrock. Or at least was thought to be. This far below Coruscant's civilized crust, there remained areas as unfamiliar as the surfaces of some distant worlds.

Dyne had decided to contact Mace Windu at the Jedi Temple for advice on how to proceed. But when his repeated attempts failed, he and Valiant had made a command decision to carry on without the Jedi.

Ground imaging scans had already shown the shaft to be fifty meters deep.

Four meters in diameter, the panel was large enough to accommodate the entire team, including the interpreter droid.

Definitely the most dangerous place to be, Dyne thought as he wedged himself among the commandos. The probe droids chirped instructions to the panel, and it began to drop.

Slower than would have been the case had it answered to a repulsorlift.

The wall of the circular shaft was ancient ceramacrete, cracked and stained in places.

"If anyone's down here," Dyne said to Valiant, "they're probably aware we're on the way."

The commandos didn't need to be told. Weapons enabled, they hurried to firing positions the moment the platform came to a rest.

Ribboned with conduits and crowded with ancient machinery, the dismal s.p.a.ce bore some resemblance to the tunnels and rooms they had pa.s.sed through and explored since leaving The Works. But this one, Dyne told himself, was an archaeologist's dream. Probably a maintenance node for buildings that had stood here in Coruscant's dim past.

Twenty meters ahead of them, flickering light lanced from around the edges of a large metal door. Dyne sent the droids to investigate, then studied the processor's data screen.

"One flesh-and-blood behind the door," he whispered to Valiant. "Readings also indicate the presence of droids."

He looked at the ARC.

"It's your call, Commander."

Valiant regarded the door.

"We've come this far. I say we go in like we own the place."

Dyne's heart began to race.

"Find, fix, finish."

41.

In what had served as the archive room for LiMerge Power's plasma facility, droid parts were piling up so fast and so high that Obi-Wan and Anakin could scarcely see Dooku's wavering holoimage any longer. The business of destroying infantry droids - - for that's precisely what the confrontation had come down to - - was beginning to take a toll on Obi-Wan. The decapitations and amputations were no longer as surgical as they had been when Dooku had first unleashed the droids.

The slices that halved his spindly opponents and the thrusts that pierced chest plastrons had lost some of their initial accuracy. Neither he nor Anakin was relying on lightsabers only. Calling on the Force, they hurled whatever could be lifted from the floor or yanked from the walls. Force-pushing four droids to the floor, hewing half a dozen more with his flashing blade, Anakin leapt from Obi-Wan's side, landed on the head of a perplexed droid, and began to race toward the far side of the hall, using other heads as stepping-stones.

But for every droid either of them destroyed, five more would appear, creating an impenetrable barrier between them and the doorway through which Dooku had certainly disappeared moments before they had arrived.

"Dooku!" Anakin snarled through clenched teeth. "I will kill you!"

"Control your rage, Anakin," Obi-Wan managed to say between breaths.