Yoda, Dark Rendezvous
Page 28
pulled the trigger.
Scout and Whie screamed together. The droid's eyes went blank and his body
toppled to the ground, jerking and twitching. Blue lines flared along his
circuit maps as the nano-burn ran along his processing conduits, searing them
out like thin streams of acid. For a long time the droid jerked and spasmed, and
then, at the end, he emitted a horrible, chattering mechanical sound, like a
vibro-weapon blade skittering and grinding into piping: a horrible parody of a
human scream that went on and on, until finally the body lay still—nothing but a
pile of hardware on the floor.
Asajj looked down and nudged the dead machine with her boot. "Loyalty," she
said philosophically. "It'll get you every time."
The great thing about Einblatz/Docker ultrahigh-fidelity auditory sensors
with built-in real-time sonographic analysis software and HyperBolicTM
directional virtual-mike capability, Solis thought savagely from his hiding
place on the other side of the cellar door—as Fidelis's death scream went on and
on—is that one can set them to mute.
Solis hadn't been programmed to hate, either, but he was a fast learner.
"You want me to tell you about the power of the dark side?" Dooku said
wonderingly.
Yoda had the dragon's eyes again: half closed, gleaming under heavy lids.
"Strong, strong the dark side is in this place," he murmured. "Touch it you can,
like a serpent's belly sliding under your hand. Taste it, like blood in the air
. . . Tell me of the dark side, apprentice."
"I'm not your apprentice anymore," Dooku said.
Yoda snuffed: laughed: stirred the air with his crooked stick. "You think
Yoda stops teaching, just because his student does not want to hear? Yoda a
teacher is. Yoda teaches like drunkards drink. Like killers kill," he said
softly. "But now, you be the teacher, Dooku. Tell me: is it hard to find the
power of the dark side?"
"No. The lore of the Sith—that is another matter. But to touch the power of
the dark side, to begin to know it, all you have to do is . . . allow yourself.
Relax. We carry the dark side within ourselves," Dooku said. "Surely you must
know that by now. Surely even Yoda has felt it. Half of life, dark to balance
light, waits inside you like an orphan. Waiting to be welcomed home.
"We all desire, Yoda. We all fear. We are all beset. A Jedi learns to
suppress these things: to ignore these things: to pretend they don't exist, or
if they do, they apply to someone else, not us. Not the pure. Not the
Protectors." Dooku found himself beginning to pace. "To know the dark side is
merely to stop lying. Stop pretending you don't want what you want. Stop
pretending you don't fear what you fear. Half the day is night, Master Yoda. To
see truly, you have to learn to see in the dark."
"Mmmmmmmm." Yoda hummed and grunted, eyes nearly closed now. "The dark side,
power would give me."
"Power over all. When you understand your own evils and the evils of others,
it makes them pitifully easy to manipulate. It's another kind of push-feather,"
the Count said. "The dark side will show you the stiff places in a being. His
dreads and needs. The dark side gives you the keys to him."
"Hmph. Very fine that is, but Yoda has power," the ancient Master said,
examining his hairy toes. "I live in a palace bigger than this one, if I count
the Temple as a palace. Dooku is a master of armies: but Yoda is a master of
armies, too. So far, we are even."
"Is there such a thing as too much power?" Dooku mused. "For instance," he
continued carefully, "there was a day when your power was clearly greater than
mine. Today, however, I have waxed as you have waned. You stand in my citadel. I
have at my command servants and droids and great powers of my own that I think
would overwhelm even you. It is possible that at a single word, I could have you
killed. And without you, how long would those dear to you last? I could have
them, one by one: Mace and Iron Hand, Obi-Wan and precious young Skywalker, too.
Surely you would feel safer if this were not so."
Yoda cocked his head to one side. "Like Anakin, you do not?"
"Perhaps he reminds me too much of myself at the same age. Arrogant.
Impulsive. Proud. I realize humility is high among the Enforced Virtues, the
ones no one acquires by choice; but that being said, if Fate is looking for an
instrument to humble Skywalker, I confess myself willing to volunteer."
Yoda reached behind his back with his stick, trying to scratch a spot just
between his shoulder blades. "Power over beings, need I not. What else can it
give me, this dark side of yours?"
"What game are you playing here, Master Yoda?"
Yoda smiled at the use of the term Master—curse him—and shrugged. "No game.
Wasteful, this war is. Even you agree. Sent you the candle, did I: you know
there can be coming home for you. Know this, both of us do, and if come back to
the Temple you wish, I will take you there."
"Very kind," Dooku said dryly. "Decent of you to give me an arm to lean on."
"Always catch you will I, when you fall," Yoda said. "I swore it."
Dooku flinched as if stung.
"But another way to solve the war there is. If you will not join with me,
perhaps join with you I should. Tell me more," Yoda said testily. "If power over
beings need I not, what else can your dark side do for me?"
"What do you want?" Dooku snapped. "Tell me what you want and I will show you
how the dark side can help you achieve it. Do you want friends? The dark side
can compel them for you. Lovers? The dark side understands passion in a way you
never have. Do you want riches—endless life—deep wisdom . . . ?"
"I want . .." Yoda held up the flower in his hand and took another sniff. "I
want a rose."
"Be serious," Dooku said impatiently.
"Serious am I!" Yoda cried. He bounced to his feet. Standing on the desktop,
he was almost as tall as Dooku. He held the flower imperiously toward his former
pupil. "Another rose, make for me!"
"The dark side springs from the heart," Dooku said. "It isn't a handbook for
cheap conjuror's tricks."
"But like this trick, do I!" Yoda said. "The trick that brings the flower
from the ground. The trick that sets the sun on fire."
"The Force is not magic. I can't create a flower out of thin air. Nobody
can—not you, not the Lord of the Sith."
Yoda blinked. "My Force does. Binds every living thing, the Force I
understand."
"Master, these are games of words. The Force is as it has always been. The
dark side is not a different energy. To use it is only to open yourself to new
ways to command that energy, that have to do with the hearts of beings. Want
something else. Want power."
"Power have I."
"Want wealth."
"Wealth I need not."
"Want to be safe," Dooku said in frustration. "Want to be free from fear!"
"I will never be safe," Yoda said. He turned away from Dooku, a shapeless
bundle under a battered, acid-eaten cloak. "The universe is large and cold and
very dark: that is the truth. What I love, taken from me will be, late or soon:
when the looking after him I had; and Maks Leem; and all the many, many more
Jedi I have lost. My family they were."
"So be angry about that!" Dooku said. "Hate! Rage! Despair! Allow yourself,
just once, to stop playing at the game of Jedi Knight, and admit what you have
always known: you are alone, and you are great, and when the world strikes you
it is better to strike back than to turn your cheek. Feel, Yoda! I can feel the
darkness rising in you. Here, in this place, be honest for once and feel the
truth about yourself."
At this moment Yoda turned, and Dooku gasped. Whether it was the play of the
holomonitors, beaming their views of bleak space and distant battles, or some
other trick of the light, Yoda's face was deeply hidden in the shadows, mottled
black and blue, so that for one terrible instant he looked exactly like Darth
Sidious. Or rather, it was Yoda as he might have been, or could yet become: a
Yoda gone rotten, a Yoda whose awesome powers had been utterly unleashed by his
connection to the dark side. In a flash Dooku saw how foolish he had been,
trying to urge the old Master to the dark side. If Yoda ever turned that way,
Sidious himself would be annihilated. The universe had yet to comprehend the
kind of evil that a Jedi Knight of nearly nine hundred years could wield.
From the shadows, Yoda spoke. "Disappointment like I not, apprentice," he
snarled, in a wicked, wicked voice. "Give me my rose!"
There were roses carved in the wall of the Crying Room, and thorns, too,
wonderfully lifelike. Wonderfully sharp. The blood seemed to be running off
Scout's face a little faster. Not serious, she told herself. Head wounds always
bleed a lot. Doesn't make it serious. Pat drip-drip-drop: blood spill-trickling
slowly down her cheeks and running the line of her jaw; driplets dropping away
like grains of sand in an hourglass. Running down. Running out.
Drip, drop. From the fireplace, the smell of wet wood burning. Flames gulping
and shuddering. Where the flames passed, welts and blisters blackened the pale
bark.
"What are you going to do to us?" Whie said.
"We're not going over," Scout growled hoarsely. "We won't—"
"You don't need to talk to your betters," Asajj said softly.
Crackle. Drip.
Scout struggled to speak, but Asajj held the Force like a clamp around her
throat.
Drop.
"I'll let you know when the time is right to speak," Ventress said.
Scout's eyes burned as she fought for air.
Drip. Crackle. Drop.
"Don't do that to her," Whie said.
"Her? The Force is weak in her," Ventress said. "Live or die, she hardly
matters. Killing her would be tidier, but I don't insist. You, on the other
hand, interest me very much." Asajj reached out with one hand and touched, just
touched, Whie's cheek. "There are things you want," she said. "Why not take
them?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm not your mother," Asajj said softly. "You don't have to be . . . nice,
for me. I feel the dark side very well, here. Very well." She glanced at Scout.
"I've seen the way you look at her."
"You're making this up," Whie said hoarsely. "You think you can kill my
droid, hurt my friend, and then talk me over to your side?"
"That's exactly what I think." Again, with just the back of her fingers, she
touched the line of his cheek. "I killed your droid and I could kill the girl.
Life isn't a storybook, boy. The good guys don't always win. Sometimes the bad
guys don't even know they're on the wrong side. You do know you're on the wrong
side now, don't you?" Her voice still soft and lazy. "In this world the only
rule is power: who has it, and who is willing to use what they have."
"I'm not like you," Whie said, but his voice broke as if he were on the point
of tears.
"Don't think so? You told me you were going to die under a Jedi blade,"
Ventress said. "Sounds to me like you're due to change sides."
The fire hissed.
"You're fighting me with everything you've got," Ventress murmured. "As if
I'm trying to hurt you: when all I want is to set you free." She was standing so
close he could feel the heat from her body. Her voice a whisper, light as a
spider crawling into his ear. "What you want, you can have, boy. What you
desire, you can take. This is all yours," she said, gesturing around the room.
"The room is yours, the manor house is yours. The Jedi took it from you, but
it's yours and you can have it back. The fire belongs to you, too. This is all
for you, and with it, anything else you care to take. She can be yours, too,"
she added, glancing at Scout. "You can have her if you want."
The bitter smell of damp wood burning.
"Tell him it's all right," Ventress whispered to Scout. And to her horror,
Scout felt Asajj use the Force to pull her lips into a smile.
Drip, drop.
"Kiss her, Whie." Blood trickling down Scout's face. Her collar wet with it.
"Kiss her." And he wanted to.
Asajj smiled. "Welcome home," she said. "Now choose."
"Your hand is shaking," Yoda said.
"Yes." Dooku frowned down at it. "Age."
Yoda smiled. "Fear."
"I don't think—"
Yoda came out of the shadows. The vision of him in his Sith avatar faded. It
was only Yoda, the same as always, taking Dooku's hand and studying it intently,
as if he were mad Whirry, trying to read the future in the pattern of liver
spots. "Feel the trembling, even you must."
Behind him, broadcast on the holomonitors, the attack on Omwat played out. "I
tricked you into coming here," Dooku said. "This is a trap."
Yoda said, "A trap? Oh, yes it is."
His old touch was warm and firm. If you fall, catch you I will.
No. Not if but when. Yoda had said, When you fall, catch you I will. Had he
known even then, seventy years ago, that this day would come? Surely even Yoda
could not guess that his star pupil would fall so very, very far.
"To the dark side I do not think I shall go," Yoda said conversationally.
"Not today. Feel the pull, do I? Of course! But a secret let me tell you,
apprentice."
"I'm not your apprentice," Dooku said. Yoda ignored him.
"Yoda a darkness carries with him," the Master said, ". . . and Dooku bears a
light. After all these years! Across all these oceans of space! All these bodies
you have tried to heap between us: and yet call to me still, this little Dooku
does! Flies toward the true Force, like iron pulled to a magnet." Yoda cackled.
"Even the blind seed grows to the light: should mighty Dooku be unable to
achieve what even the rose can do?"
The Count said, "I have gone too far down the dark path ever to return."
"Pfeh." Yoda snapped his fingers. "The empty universe, where is it now? Alone
are you, Count, and no one your master. Each instant the universe annihilates
itself, and starts again." He poked Dooku in the chest with his stick, hard.
"Choose, and start again!"
Far below, Whie was standing centimeters from Scout's bloody face.
And then Scout smile
d for real, because she knew, she knew what he would do,
and the Force welled up in her and she broke Asajj's grip around her throat.
"It's all right!" she gasped. "You're going to make the right choice!"
"I am?"
"Yes!"
Relief spread across the boy's face like daylight flooding into a dark place.
"What are you doing?" Asajj said angrily.
Whie laughed and snapped his fingers. "Waking up!" he said. "Scout, Scout,
you're right! I'm not going to give in! I'm not a bad guy!"
"You're going to be a dead guy," Ventress said. Her two red lightsabers
flashed to life.
Whie laughed again. "Honestly, that scares me less than the idea I was going
to . . . to turn into you," he said. "No offense."
"None taken," Asajj drawled. "Droids, kill th—"
A hail of lightning came through the door, reducing it to smoking splinters.
On the other side of the room, where six assassin droids had been standing with
their blasters leveled, there were suddenly two badly damaged assassin droids,
one on either side of a heap of molten slag.
"What was that?" Ventress asked.
"Rika/Moab mini rail cannon," Solis said, walking through the space where the
door used to be.
"That's not in the Footman specs."
He shrugged. "Upgrades."
Then he liquidated the remaining droids.
"I didn't know there were two of you," Ventress said, eyeing him warily. "I
thought this was the one who called to give me Yoda's location." She tapped
Fidelis's corpse with one foot.
"No—that would have been me."
"Why would you rescue us?" Scout said, bewildered. "You're not rescued yet,"
Asajj said tartly.
"She backed out of a bargain. One can't let that happen too often," Solis
said. "It's bad for business. I saved you because the odds of taking her down
are better if all three of us are alive and fighting."
Scout looked at him narrowly. "I don't think that's it at all. I think you
just didn't like the thought of us dying."
Solis sighed. "I didn't want you to die," the droid said. "I never got very
attached to the boy."
Scout drew her lightsaber, a pale blue wand of flame. "I like the better-odds
thing, too."
Asajj leapt high over the sudden death spitting from the cannon attachment at
the end of Solis's arm. A cabinet exploded in a shower of debris. Ventress was