Star Wars_ Revenge Of The Sith Part 37

She shook her head.

"A gla.s.s 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?"

Antilles shook his head. "I don't know, sir. I have a feeling there are some Senators whom Palpatine doesn't want leaving the planet."

Bail nodded. "Thank the Force I'm not one of them. Yet. Did you get the beacon?"

"Yes, sir. No one even tried to stop us. The clones at Chance Palp seemed confused-like they're not quite sure who's in charge."

"That'll change soon. Too soon. We'll all know who's in charge," Bail said grimly. "Prepare to raise ship."

"Back to Alderaan, sir?"

Bail shook his head. "Kashyyyk. There's no way to know if any Jedi have lived through this-but if I had to bet on one, my money'd be on Yoda."

Some undefinable time later, Obi-Wan felt his head and shoulders breach the surface of the lightless ocean. He unclipped his lightsaber and raised it over his head. In its blue glow he could see that he had come up in a large grotto; holding the lightsaber high, he tucked away his rebreather and sidestroked across the current to a rock outcropping that was rugged enough to offer handholds. He pulled himself out of the water.

The walls of the grotto above the waterline were pocked with openings; after inspecting the mouths of several caves, Obi-Wan came upon one where he felt a faint breath of moving air. It had a distinctly unpleasant smell-it reminded him more than a bit of the dragonmount pen-but when he doused his lightsaber for a moment and listened very closely, he could hear a faint rumble that might have been distant wheels and repulsorlifts pa.s.sing over sandstone-and what was that? An air horn? Or possibly a very disturbed dragon ... at any rate, this seemed to be the appropriate path.

He had walked only a few hundred meters before the gloom ahead of him was pierced by the white glare of high-intensity searchlights. He let his blade shrink away and pressed himself into a deep, narrow crack as a pair of seeker droids floated past. Apparently Cody hadn't given up yet.

Their searchlights illuminated-and, apparently, awakened-some sort of immense amphibian cousin of a dragonmount; it blinked sleepily at them as it lifted its slickly glistening starfighter-sized head.

Oh, Obi-Wan thought. That explains the smell. He breathed into the Force a suggestion that these small bobbing spheroids of circuitry and durasteel were actually, contrary to smell and appearance, some unexpected variety of immortally delicious confection sent down from the heavens by the kindly G.o.ds of Huge Slimy Cave-Monsters.

The Huge Slimy Cave-Monster in question promptly opened jaws that could engulf a bantha and snapped one of the seekers from the air, chewing it to slivers with every evidence of satisfaction. The second seeker emitted a startled and thoroughly alarmed wheeepwheepwheep and shot away into the darkness, with the creature in hot pursuit.

Reigniting his lightsaber and moving cautiously back out into the cavern, Obi-Wan came upon a nest of what must have been infant Huge Slimy Cave-Monsters; picking his way around it as they lunged and snapped and squalled at him, he reflected absently that people who thought all babies were cute should really get out more.

Obi-Wan walked, and occasionally climbed or slid or had to leap, and walked some more.

Soon the darkness in the cavern gave way to the pale glow of Utapaun traffic lighting, and Obi-Wan found himself standing in a smallish side tunnel off a major thoroughfare. This was clearly little traveled, though; the sandy dust on its floor was so thick it was practically a beach. In fact, he could clearly see the tracks of the last vehicle to pa.s.s this way.

Broad parallel tracks pocked with divots: a blade-wheeler.

And beside them stretched long splay-clawed prints of a running dragon.

Obi-Wan blinked in mild astonishment. He had never entirely grown accustomed to the way the Force always came through for him-but neither was he reluctant to accept its gifts. Frowning thoughtfully, he followed the tracks a short distance around a curve, until the tunnel gave way to the small landing platform.

Grievous's starfighter was still there. As were the remains of Grievous.

Apparently not even the local rock-vultures could stomach him.

Tantive IV swept through the Kashyyyk system on silent running; this was still a combat zone. Captain Antilles wouldn't even risk standard scans, because they could so easily be detected and backtraced by Separatist forces.

And the Separatists weren't the only ones Antilles was worried about.

"There's the signal again, sir. Whoops. Wait, I'll get it back." Antilles fiddled some more with the controls on the beacon. "Blasted thing," he muttered. "What, you can't calibrate it without using the Force?"

Bail stared through the forward view wall. Kashyyyk was only a tiny green disk two hundred thousand kilometers away. "Do you have a vector?"

"Roughly, sir. It seems to be on an orbital tangent, headed outsystem."

"I think we can risk a scan. Tight beam."

"Very well, sir."

Antilles gave the necessary orders, and moments later the scan tech reported that the object they'd picked up seemed to be some sort of escape pod. "It's not a Republic model, sir-wait, here comes the database-"

The scan tech frowned at his screen. "It's . . . Wookiee, sir. That doesn't make any sense. Why would a Wookiee escape pod be outbound from Kashyyyk?"

"Interesting." Bail didn't yet allow himself to hope. "Lifesigns?"

"Yes-well, maybe . . . this reading doesn't make any ..." The scan tech could only shrug. "I'm not sure, sir. Whatever it is, it's no Wookiee, that's for sure . . ."

For the first time all day, Bail Organa allowed himself to smile. "Captain Antilles?"

The captain saluted crisply. "On our way, sir."

Obi-Wan took General Grievous's starfighter screaming out of the atmosphere so fast he popped the gravity well and made jump before the Vigilance could even scramble its fighters. He reverted to reals.p.a.ce well beyond the system, kicked the starfighter to a new vector, and jumped again. A few more jumps of random direction and duration left him deep in interstellar s.p.a.ce.

"You know," he said to himself, "integral hypers.p.a.ce capability is rather useful in a starfighter; why don't we have it yet?"

While the starfighter's nav system whirred and chunked its way through recalculating his position, he punched codes to gang his Jedi comlink into the starfighter's system.

Instead of a holoscan, the comlink generated an audio signal-an accelerating series of beeps.

Obi-Wan knew that signal. Every Jedi did. It was the recall code.

It was being broadcast on every channel by every HoloNet repeater. It was supposed to mean that the war was over. It was supposed to mean that the Council had ordered all Jedi to return to the Temple immediately.

Obi-Wan suspected it actually meant what had happened on Utapau was far from an isolated incident.

He keyed the comlink for audio. He took a deep breath.

"Emergency Code Nine Thirteen," he said, and waited.

The starfighter's comm system cycled through every response frequency.

He waited some more.

"Emergency Code Nine Thirteen. This is Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi. Repeat: Emergency Code Nine Thirteen. Are there any Jedi out there?"

He waited. His heart thumped heavily. "Any Jedi, please respond. This is Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi declaring a Nine Thirteen Emergency."

He tried to ignore the small, still voice inside his head that whispered he might just be the only one out here.

He might just be the only one, period.

He started punching coordinates for a single jump that would bring him close enough to pick up a signal directly from Coruscant when a burst of fuzz came over his comlink. A quick glance confirmed the frequency: a Jedi channel.

"Please repeat," Obi-Wan said. "I'm locking onto your signal. Please repeat."

The fuzz became a spray of blue laser, which gradually resolved into a fuzzy figure of a tall, slim human with dark hair and an elegant goatee. "Master Ken.o.bi? Are you all right? Have you been wounded?"

"Senator Organa!" Obi-Wan exclaimed with profound relief. "No, I'm not wounded-but I'm certainly not all right. I need help. My clones turned on me. I barely escaped with my life!"

"There have been ambushes all over the galaxy."

Obi-Wan lowered his head, offering a silent wish to the Force that the victims might find peace within it.

"Have you had contact with any other survivors?"

"Only one," the Alderaanian Senator said grimly. "Lock onto my coordinates. He's waiting for you."

A curve of knuckle, skinned, black scab corrugated with dirt and leaking red-The fringe of fray at the cuff of a beige sleeve, dark, crusted with splatter from the death of a general-The tawny swirl of grain in wine-dark tabletop of polished Alderaanian kriin-These were what Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi could look at without starting to shake.

The walls of the small conference room on Tantive IV were too featureless to hold his attention; to look at a wall allowed his mind to wander . . .

And the shaking began.

The shaking got worse when he met the ancient green stare of the tiny alien seated across the table from him, for that wrinkled leather skin and those tufts of withered hair were his earliest memory, and they reminded Obi-Wan of the friends who had died today.

The shaking got worse still when he turned to the other being in the room, because he wore politician's robes that reminded Obi-Wan of the enemy who yet lived.

The deception. The death of Jedi Masters he had admired, of Jedi Knights who had been his friends. The death of his oath to Qui-Gon.

The death of Anakin.

Anakin must have fallen along with Mace and Agen, Saesee and Kit; fallen along with the Temple.

Along with the Order itself.

Ashes.

Ashes and dust.

Twenty-five thousand years wiped from existence in a single day.

All the dreams. All the promises.

All the children . . .

"We took them from their homes." Obi-Wan fought to stay in his chair; the pain inside him demanded motion. It became wave after wave of tremors. "We promised their families-"

"Control yourself, you must; still Jedi, you are!"

"Yes, Master Yoda." That scab on his knuckle-focused on that, he could suppress the shaking. "Yes, we are Jedi. But what if we're the last?"

"If the last we are, unchanged our duty is." Yoda settled his chin onto hands folded over the head of his gimer stick. He looked every day of his nearly nine hundred years. "While one Jedi lives, survive the Order does. Resist the darkness with every breath, we must."

He lifted his head and the stick angled to poke Obi-Wan in the shin. "Especially the darkness in ourselves, young one. Of the dark side, despair is."

The simple truth of this called to him. Even despair is attachment: it is a grip clenched upon pain.

Slowly, very slowly, Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi remembered what it was to be a Jedi.

He leaned back in his chair and covered his face with both hands, inhaling a thin stream of air between his palms; into himself with the air he brought pain and guilt and remorse, and as he exhaled, they trailed away and vanished in the air.

He breathed out his whole life.

Everything he had done, everything he had been, friends and enemies, dreams and hopes and fears.

Empty, he found clarity. Scrubbed clean, the Force shone through him. He sat up and nodded to Yoda.

"Yes," he said. "We may be the last. But what if we're not?"

Green leather brows drew together over lambent eyes. "The Temple beacon."

"Yes. Any surviving Jedi might still obey the recall, and be killed."

Bail Organa looked from one Jedi to the other, frowning.

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying," Obi-Wan replied, "that we have to go back to Coruscant."

"It's too dangerous," the Senator said instantly. "The whole planet is a trap-"

"Yes. We have a-ah . . ."

The loss of Anakin stabbed him.

Then he let that go, too.

"I have," he corrected himself, "a policy on traps . . ."