Star Wars_ Labyrinth of Evil Part 27

"How long - - "

"Just for a moment," Mon Mothma said in the same watery tone. "I don't think you struck your head. You were fine after the crash. Then you fainted. Can you move?"

Padme sat up and saw that the skimmer's safety mechanisms had deployed.

Light-headed but unhurt, she brushed her hair from her face. "I can barely hear you."

Mon Mothma regarded her in knowing silence, then extended a hand to help her climb from the craft. "Padme, you have to be careful. Quickly, now."

She nodded. "Crashing wasn't exactly on my agenda."

Mon Mothma hurried her away from the skimmer, to where Bail and C-3PO were hiding behind the blockish pedestal of a modernistic sculpture.

"Master Allie doesn't strike me as someone who will sue for damages," the droid was saying.

Still in a daze, Padme grasped that they had skidded into the plaza that fronted the Emba.s.sy Mall, taking out a large holosign and three news kiosks along the way. Bail's skill had somehow kept them from mowing down pedestrians, who had apparently scattered on first sight of the nose-diving ship. Or perhaps at sight of the craft that had fallen to Separatist fire ahead of the skimmer - - a military police vehicle, similar to a Naboo Gian speeder, tipped on its side against the facade of the mall and belching smoke. Sprawled on the plaza close to the vehicle were the charred corpses of three clone troopers. Reality rea.s.serted itself in a rush of deafening noise, flashing light, and acrid smells.

From nearby came anguished moans and terrified screams; from the tiered heights above the plaza, distant discharges of artillery.

Higher still, plasma bolts raked the sky; fire bloomed, detonations thundered. Padme saw a smear of blood on Bail's cheek.

"You're hurt - - "

"It's nothing," he said. "Besides, we have more to worry about."

She followed his grim gaze, and understood immediately why Coruscanti were fleeing the pedestrian skybridge that linked the mall to the midlevel entrances of the Senate Hospital. Five Vulture droids had alit on the far side of the span and reconfigured to patrol mode. Four-legged gargoyles, with heads deployed forward and sensor slits red as arterial blood, they were striding through Hospital Plaza, sowing destruction.

Their four laser cannons were aimed downward, but from paired launchers in their semicircular fuselage flew torpedoes aimed at air taxis, craft attempting to dock at the hospital's emergency platforms, the tunnel entrances to the Senate shelters... Republic LAATs had dropped from the Senate Plaza to engage the three-and-a-half-meter-tall droids but were maintaining a wary distance just now, pilots and gunners clearly worried about adding energy weapons or EMP missiles to the chaos.

"Xi Char monstrosities," Mon Mothma said. Padme remembered standing helplessly at the tall windows of Theed Palace, watching squadrons of Vulture fighters fill the sky, like cave creatures loosed on Naboo by darkness...

Caught in the crossfire, pedestrians had raced across the skybridge, hoping to find sanctuary in the Emba.s.sy Mall - - midlevel in the dome-topped Nicandra Counterrevolutionary Signalmen's Memorial Building - - but thick security grates had been lowered over the entrances, leaving crowds of Coruscanti to scramble for whatever cover could be found. Padme felt faint once more. Huddled, frightened, panicked ma.s.ses of Coruscanti were suddenly getting a taste of what the inhabitants of Jabiim, Brentaal, and countless other worlds had faced during the past three years.

Caught up in a war of ideologies, often by dint of circ.u.mstance or location. Caught between the forces of a droid army led by a self-styled revolutionary and a cyborg butcher, and an army of vat-grown soldiers led by a monastic order of Jedi Knights who had once been the galaxy's peacekeepers. Caught in the middle, with no allegiance to either side. It was tragic and senseless, and she might have broken down and cried if her current circ.u.mstances had been different. She felt sick at heart, and in despair for the future of sentient life.

"Palpatine will never live this down," Mon Mothma was saying. "Committing so many of our ships and troopers to the Outer Rim sieges. As if this war he is so intent on winning could never come to Coruscant."

Bail frowned in sympathy. "Not only will he live it down, he'll profit from it. The Senate will be blamed for voting to escalate the sieges, and while we're mired in accusations and counteraccusations of accountability, Palpatine will quietly accrue more and more power.

Without realizing it, the Separatists have played right into his hands by launching this attack."

Padme wanted to argue with him but didn't have the strength. "They're all mad,"

Bail continued. "Dooku, Grievous, Gunray, Palpatine."

Mon Mothma nodded sadly. "The Jedi could have stopped this war. Now they're Palpatine's p.a.w.ns."

Padme squeezed her eyes shut. Even if she managed to summon the strength, how could she respond, when her own husband was one of them - - a general? What had the Jedi gotten Anakin into - - taking him from Tatooine, from his youth, his mother? And yet hadn't she done as much as anyone to encourage him to remain a Jedi; to heed the tutelage of Obi-Wan, Mace, and the others; to perpetuate the lie that was their secret life as husband and wife? She hugged herself. What had she gotten Anakin into? What had she gotten both of them into? Bail's voice snapped her from self-pity.

"They're coming." He aimed a finger across the plaza. "They're coming across the bridge." From somewhere in the Vultures' droid brains had come a revelation that the pedestrian skyway offered a better vantage for targeting buildings and craft to both sides of the kilometer-deep canyon.

More important, the gunships were even less likely to fire on them there, lest they destroy the span and send it plummeting to the busy thoroughfares and mag-lev lines two hundred stories below.

"Perhaps if we throw ourselves on the mercy of the owners of the mall, they will raise the security grate," C-3PO started to say.

Bail looked at Padme and Mon Mothma. "We have to keep those droids on the far side of the bridge, so the gunships can take them out."

Mon Mothma glanced at the overturned military craft. "I see a way to try.

The craft sat scarcely fifty meters from the base of the sculpture.

Without further word, the three of them hurried for it.

"What could I have possibility been thinking?" C-3PO shouted as he watched them search the craft for weapons. "It can never be the easy answer!"

The three humans returned momentarily, carrying three blaster rifles.

"Not much power left," Bail said, checking one of them. "Yours?"

"Low on blaster gas," Padme said.

Mon Mothma ejected the powerpack from hers. "Empty."

Bail nodded glumly. "We'll have to make do."

Hunkering down behind the pedestal, he and Padme took careful aim on the closest of the walking droids. By then three had started onto the skyway, firing at random. Exploding against the facades of buildings above and below, torpedoes sent slabs of durasteel-reinforced ferrocrete avalanching onto plazas, landing platforms, and balconies, burying scores of hapless Coruscanti.

"Be prepared to move as soon as we fire," Bail said. He indicated one of the kiosks that had survived the crashes of both speeders. "There's our first cover."

Padme centered the lead droid in the blaster's targeting reticle and squeezed the trigger. Her initial bursts did little more than catch the droid's attention, but subsequent bolts from both blasters started to score hits on vital components. The droid actually retreated a couple of steps toward Hospital Plaza, only to launch a trio of torpedoes straight across the skyway. Padme and company were already in motion. One torpedo hit the pedestal, blowing it and the sculpture to fragments. A second slagged what was left of Sta.s.s Allie's skimmer. The third detonated against the lowered security grate, blowing a gaping hole into the mall.

Pedestrians to both sides hastened for it, fighting with one another to be first through the smoking maw. Padme thought that one of the Vultures would target them, but in their moment of inattention, the droids had left themselves open to strafing runs by the gunships. Converging beams of brilliant light streaked from the fire dishes of the LAATs' wing - and armature-mounted ball turrets, and staccato bursts erupted from the forward guns. Two droids exploded. One turned to answer the volleys, but not in time. Missiles from the gunships' ma.s.s-drive launchers took off the droid's left legs, then the head, then blew the rest clear across the plaza. The remaining two Vultures skittered onto the skyway to increase their odds of survival.

Bail and Padme laid down steady lines of fire, but the droids were undeterred.

"And I thought the Senate was a battlefield!" Mon Mothma said. The sight of smoke curling from holes in the lead droid's fuselage seemed to invigorate the one behind. Driving Padme and the others in search of new cover with a single torpedo, the droid scurried forward, edging around its stricken comrade and stepping brazenly into the mall plaza, red sensors gleaming. A gunship made a quick pa.s.s, but couldn't find a clear field of fire.

"I'm out," Bail said, dropping his rifle.

Padme checked her weapon's display screen. "Same."

C-3PO shook his head. "How will I ever explain this to Artoo-Detoo?" They broke for cover a final time, hoping to throw themselves through the ragged hole in the still-smoking security grate, but the droid hurried to intercept them; then, in seeming s.a.d.i.s.tic delight, began to back the four of them against the wall of the Nicandra Building. A rage began to build in Padme, born of instincts as old as life itself. She was on the verge of hurling herself against the towering machine, ripping the sensors from its teardrop-shaped head, when the droid came to a sudden halt, obviously in reception of some remote communication. Retracting its head and stiffening its scissor-like legs into wings, it turned and launched itself over the edge of the plaza into the canyon below. The droid on the skyway did the same, even with two gunships in close pursuit.

Padme was first to reach the skyway railing. Far below, the Senate District mag-lev was racing south toward the skytunnel that would take it through the kilometer-wide Heorem Complex and on into the wealthy Sah'c District. The two Vulture droids were swooping down to join ranks with a Separatist gunboat that was already chasing the train.

47.

How had Grievous known to attack 500 Republica? Mace asked himself as the mag-lev rushed at three hundred kilometers per hour toward the skytunnel that would spirit the train from the Senate District. Having boarded the mag-lev at its 500 Republica platform, he, Kit Fisto, Shaak Ti, and Sta.s.s Allie were in the car the Supreme Chancellor's Red Guards had commandeered - - second in a train of some twenty cars. Through a gap in the protective circle the guards had forged, Mace caught a glimpse of Palpatine, his head of wavy gray hair lowered in what might have been anguish or deep concentration.

How had Grievous known? Mace asked himself. Many Coruscanti knew that Palpatine resided in 500 Republica, but the location of his suite was a well-kept secret. More important, how had Grievous known that Palpatine wasn't to be found in either of his offices? Not everything could be traced to Dooku. It was conceivable that Dooku had furnished Grievous with data on hyperlanes that skimmed the outer limits of the Deep Core.

That much, Dooku could have pilfered from the Jedi archives before he left the Order, presumably when he was erasing mentions of Kamino from the data banks. Similarly, Dooku could have supplied Grievous with the orbital coordinates of specific communications satellites and mirrors, or with tactical information regarding the location of dedicated shield generators on the surface.

But Palpatine had only just been elected Supreme Chancellor when Dooku left Coruscant to return to Serenno, and back then, some thirteen years ago, Palpatine had been living in a high-rise tower close to the Senate Building. So how had Grievous known to go to 500 Republica?

Sidious? If it was true that hundreds of Senators had, for a time, been under the Sith Lord's influence, then he may have had access to the highest levels of confidential information. As many on the Jedi Council feared, Sidious's network of agents and a.s.sets might have infiltrated the Republic military command itself. Which suggested that the sneak attack on Coruscant may have been years in the planning! Mace caught another glimpse of Palpatine, insulated by the flowing red robes of his handpicked bodyguards. This was hardly the time to question him about his closest confidants. But Mace would make it his business to find the time later. Briefly, he wondered what had become of Captain Dyne's team.

Surmising that Dyne had called off the search for Sidious shortly after the attack had commenced, Intelligence hadn't dispatched a second search team - - aimed at locating Dyne and Valiant - - until neither of them had been heard from, even after communications had been restored to the Senate District. Shaak Ti hadn't seen them when she and Palpatine's protectors had whisked the Supreme Chancellor through 500 Republica's sub-bas.e.m.e.nt. So had Dyne and the commandos fallen victim to Grievous's attack?

Were they trapped somewhere under a crashed cargo ship or tons of ferrocrete rubble? Yet another ill-timed concern, Mace thought. The mag-lev's other cars were packed cheek-to-jowl with Coruscanti attempting to flee the Senate and Financial Districts. Palpatine's guards would have commandeered the entire train if Palpatine hadn't intervened, refusing to allow it. Shaak Ti had told Mace and Kit about the Supreme Chancellor's earlier reluctance to leave his suite. Mace didn't know what to make of it. But now at least they were on the way to the bunker. The mag-lev line didn't run past the complex, but the first stop in Sah'c was close to a system of skyways and turbolifts that did. Light filtering into the car through the tinted windows dimmed. The mag-lev was entering the Heorem Skytunnel, a broad burrow that accommodated not only the speeding train, but also opposing lanes of autonavigation and free-travel traffic, pa.s.sing through several of the Senate District's largest buildings. Lanes leading south - - away from the district, and off to the right side of the mag-lev - - were crawling with public transports and air taxis.

By contrast, the northbound lanes were almost empty, the result of traffic having been rerouted well before it reached the Senate District.

A blur of light off to the left-hand side of the car caught Mace's eye, and he hurried to the closest window. Streaking southbound in the northbound free-travel lane, two droid fighters were trying to overtake the train. Before Mace could utter a word of warning, cannon fire from one of the twin-winged ships st.i.tched a broken line of holes across the blunt nose of a transport in the autonavigation lane. Instantly the transport exploded, savaging nearby vehicles with shrapnel and nearly rocking the mag-lev from its elevated guide rails. Screams issued from Coruscanti wedged into the cars to the front and rear of Palpatine's.

"Vulture fighters!" Mace told the Jedi and Red Guards. Leaning low at the window, he saw one of the droids climb over the mag-lev, only to descend on the opposite side of the train in the midst of the free-travel lane, initiating a succession of collisions that flung speeders, taxis, and buses all over the skytunnel. Two vehicles careened into the train, only to rebound back into the travel lane, starting a second series of fatal crashes. Racing alongside Palpatine's car, the same droid responsible for the collisions surged into a steep climb and disappeared from view. Not a moment later an earsplitting sound reached Mace from somewhere in the rear of the train and overhead. Behind the tinted gla.s.s, sparks showered down the rounded sides of the car, and the smell of molten metal wafted from the ventilation grilles. A tumult of terrified cries rose from the car directly behind Palpatine's, and hands and feet began to pound against the pa.s.sageway door.

Part of a group of mag-lev security personnel stationed there, a Weequay looked to Mace. "We won't be able to hold them back!"

In turn, Mace whirled to Shaak Ti and Allie. "Move the Chancellor into the forward car!"

Shaak Ti regarded him as if he had lost his mind. "It's packed, Mace!"

"I know that. Find a way!" He gestured for Kit Fisto, and the two of them shouldered through the cl.u.s.ter of security personnel at the rear of the car and activated their lightsabers. Faced with the purple and blue blades, pa.s.sengers on the far side of the door's window began to retreat into the vestibule, battling with those behind them who were attempting to press into the forward car. When there was s.p.a.ce enough in the vestibule, Mace instructed the Weequay to unlock the door. Without hesitation he and Kit dashed through the vestibule and on into the rear car, where most of the mixed-species pa.s.sengers were heaped atop seats to both sides of the wide aisle. Wind howled through the car from a jagged rend that had been opened in the roof, and through which had dropped half a dozen infantry droids.

Mace allowed himself a moment of bewilderment. Since the battle droids couldn't have been delivered by the droid fighters, there had to be a third Separatist craft racing alongside the train. The battle droids opened fire. To many of the pa.s.sengers all but fused to the tinted windows, the situation must have seemed hopeless. Not because the two Jedi couldn't deflect the hail of blaster bolts aimed at them, but because they couldn't deflect them without sending some into or through people in the car. But those pa.s.sengers failed to recognize that one of the Jedi was Mace Windu - - rumored to have single-handedly destroyed a seismic tank on Dantooine and that the other was Kit Fisto, Nautolan hero of the Battle of Mon Calamari. Together they returned some of the sizzling bolts into the advancing droids. Others they sent whizzing through the opening in the roof, managing in the process to catch one of the Vultures in the belly and send it spiraling to its death somewhere below the mag-lev line.

Sparks and smoke whirled through the car, and parts of spindly arms and legs flew about unavoidably, but Mace and Kit called on the Force to control even those. A few Coruscanti were struck, but, against all odds, the Jedi saw to it that none was critically injured. No sooner had the final droid dropped than Mace leapt straight up through the rend, landing in a crouch on the roof of the next car down the line, holding himself in place by the Force with the wind whipping at the back of his shaved skull and coa.r.s.e tunic. Senses on alert, he saw a Separatist craft drop down behind the final car in the line.

Farther away, but quickly making up the distance, flew two Republic gunships. Instinctively he glanced to the right just as the second Vulture droid was rocketing into view. Seeing him, the droid sprayed the roof of the car with cannon fire. Mace turned into the powerful wind and focused all his intention on a front flip that carried him back through the rend. The Vulture veered, positioning itself directly over the laceration its partner had opened, and reorienting its wing cannons. In what would surely have been a futile act, Mace raised his lightsaber. But the expected cannon blast never arrived. Wings clipped and repulsors damaged by missiles fired from the gunships, the Vulture slammed down onto the roof of the speeding train, then rolled out of sight.

Deactivating their blades, Mace and Kit rushed into the forward car, which was now filled with Palpatine's advisers and those pa.s.sengers the Jedi women and Red Guards had relocated from the train's lead car. Mace and Kit continued to squirm forward, arriving in the Supreme Chancellor's car just as the mag-lev was emerging from the skytunnel. The sun was going down, and the tall buildings that rose to the west cast enormous shadows across the city canyon and the busy thoroughfares far below the cantilevered mag-lev line. In the middle of the car, Palpatine stood at the center of the cordon the Red Guards had formed around him. And at a fixed-pane window they had deliberately shattered, Shaak Ti and Sta.s.s Allie were gazing toward the rear of the train.

"Those fighters could easily have derailed us with a torpedo," Shaak Ti said as Mace and Kit approached. Mace leaned partway out the window, eyes searching the canyon.

"And battle droids don't just drop from the sky. There's a third craft."

Kit's bulging black eyes indicated Palpatine. "They want to take him alive."

The words had scarcely left his mouth when something hit the train with sufficient force to whip everyone from one side of the car to the other, then back again. The Red Guards were just regaining their balance when the roof began to resound with the cadence of heavy, clanging footfalls, advancing from the rear of the train.

"Grievous," Mace grumbled. Kit glanced at him. "Here we go again."

Hurrying into the vestibule between the two lead cars, they launched themselves to the roof. Three cars distant marched General Grievous and two of his elite droids, their capes snapping behind them in the wind, pulse-tipped batons angled across their barrel chests. Farther back, clamped by animal-like claws to the roof of the train, was the gunboat from which the frightful trio had been released.

Without pausing, Grievous drew two lightsabers from inside his billowing cloak. By the time they were ignited, Mace was already on and all over the cyborg, batting away at the two blades, swinging low at Grievous's artificial legs, thrusting at his skeletal face. The lightsabers thrummed and hissed, meeting one another in bursts of dazzling light. In a corner of Mace's mind he wondered to which Jedi Grievous's blades had belonged.

Just as the Force was keeping Mace from being blown from the mag-lev's roof, magnetism of some sort was keeping the general fastened in place.

For the cyborg, though, the coherence hindered as much as it helped, whereas Mace never remained in one place for very long. Again and again the three blades joined, in snarling attacks and parries.

As Mace already knew from Ki-Adi-Mundi and Shaak Ti, Grievous was well trained in the Jedi arts. He could recognize the hand of Dooku in the general's training and technique. His strikes were as forceful as any Mace had ever had to counter, and his speed was astonishing. But he didn't know Vaapad - - the technique of dark flirtation in which Mace excelled. To the rear of the car, where Grievous's pair of MagnaGuards had made the mistake of pitting themselves against Kit Fisto, the Nautolan's blade was a cyclone of blazing blue light. Resistant to the energy outpourings of a lightsaber, the phrik alloy staffs were potent weapons, but like any weapon they needed to find their target, and Kit simply wasn't allowing that.

In moves a Twi'lek dancer might envy, he spun around the guards, claiming a limb from both with each rotation: left legs, right arms, right legs...

The speed of the train saw to the rest, ultimately whisking the droids into the canyon like insects blown from the windscreen of a speeder bike.

The loss of his confederates was noted by whatever computers were slaved to Grievous's organic brain, but the loss neither distracted nor slowed him. His sole setting was attack. Successful at a.n.a.lyzing Mace's lightsaber style, those same computers suggested that Grievous alter his stance and posture, along with the angle of his parries, ripostes, and thrusts.

The result wasn't Vaapad, but it was close enough, and Mace wasn't interested in prolonging the contest any longer than necessary. Crouching low, he angled the blade downward and slashed, guiding it through the roof of the car, perpendicular to Grievous's stalwart advance. Mace saw by the surprised look in the cyborg's reptilian eyes that, for all his strength, dexterity, and resolve, the living part of him wasn't always in perfect sync with his alloy servos.

Clearly, Grievous - - onetime courageous commander of sentient troops - - realized what Mace had done and wanted to sidestep, where General Grievous - - current commander of droids and other war machines - - wanted nothing more than to impale Mace with lunging thrusts of the paired blades. Slipping into the gap made by Mace's saber, Grievous's left talon lost magnetic purchase on the roof, and the general faltered.

Mace came out of his crouch prepared to drive his sword into Grievous's guts, but some last-instant firing of the general's cybersynapses compelled the cyborg's torso through a swift half twist that would have sent Mace's head hurtling into the canyon had the maneuver prevailed.

Instead Mace leapt backward, out of the range of the slicing blades, and Force-pushed outward, just at the instant of Grievous's single misstep.

Off the side of the car the general went, twisting and turning as he fell, Mace trying to track the general's contorted plunge, but unsuccessfully. Had he fallen into the canyon? Had he managed to dig his duranium claws into the side of the car or grab hold of the mag-lev rail itself?

Mace couldn't take the time to puzzle it out. One hundred meters away, the gunboat retracted its landing gear and rose from the roof on repulsorlift power. Reckless shots from one of the pursuing gunships obliged the Separatist craft to skew, then dive, with the gunship following close behind. Mace and Kit watched in awe as the two ships began to helix forward around the speeding mag-lev, exchanging constant fire. Climbing away from the train's sharp nose, within which the magnetic controls were housed, the gunboat made as if to bank west, only to bank east at the last instant. By then, however, the gunship - - leading its target west - - had already fired. Drilled by a swarm of deadly hyphens, the mag-lev's control system blew apart, and the entire train began to drop.

48.

In the darkness, buried alive, Anakin stretched out with his feelings. In his mind's eye he saw Padme stalked by a dark, towering creature with a mechanical head, poised at the edge of a deep abyss, her world turned upside down. A surprise attack. Opponents locked in combat. Ground and sky filled with fire, smoke billowing in the air, clouding everything.

Death, destruction, deceit...

A labyrinth of lies. His world turned upside down. He shuddered, as if plunged into liquid gas. One touch would break him into a million shards.

His fear for Padme expanded until he couldn't see past it. Yoda's voice in his ear: Fear leads to anger; anger to hated; hatred to the dark side... He was as afraid to lose her as he was to hold on to her, and the pain of that contradiction made him wish he had never been born. There was no solace, even in the Force.

As Qui-Gon had told him, he needed to make his focus his reality. But how? How?

Qui-Gon, who had died - - even though, to his young mind, Jedi weren't supposed to... Beside him, Obi-Wan stirred and coughed.