Revenge of the Sith

by Matthew Stover

  "That's enough of that."

  He let it burn its way free through the front, then he turned, lifting his weapon, appearing to study it as one might study the face of a beloved friend one has long thought dead. Power gathered around him until the Force shimmered with darkness.

  "If you only knew," he said softly, perhaps speaking to the Jedi Masters, or perhaps to himself, or perhaps even to the scarlet blade lifted now as though in mocking salute, "how long I have been waiting for this..."

  Anakin's speeder shrieked through the rain, dodging forked bolts of lightning that shot up from towers into the clouds, slicing across traffic lanes, screaming past spacescrapers so fast that his shock-wake cracked windows as he passed.

  He didn't understand why people didn't just get out of his way. He didn't understand how the trillion beings who jammed Galactic City could go about their trivial business as though the universe hadn't changed. How could they think they counted for anything, compared with him?

  How could they think they still mattered?

  Their blind lives meant nothing now. None of them. Because ahead, on the vast cliff face of the Senate Office Building, one window spat lightning into the rain to echo the lightning of the storm outside—but this lightning was the color of clashing lightsabers.

  Green fans, sheets of purple—

  And crimson flame.

  He was too late.

  The green fire faded and winked out; now the lightning was only purple and red.

  His repulsorlifts howled as he heeled the speeder up onto its side, skidding through wind-shear turbulence to bring it to a bobbing halt outside the window of Palpatine's private office. A blast of lightning hit the spire of 500 Republica, only a kilometer away, and its white burst flared off the window, flash-blinding him; he blinked furiously, slapping at his eyes in frustration.

  The colorless glare inside his eyes faded slowly, bringing into focus a jumble of bodies on the floor of Palpatine's private office.

  Bodies in Jedi robes.

  On Palpatine's desk lay the head of Kit Fisto, faceup, scalp-tentacles unbound in a squid-tangle across the ebonite. His lid-less eyes stared blindly at the ceiling. Anakin remembered him in the arena at Geonosis, effortlessly carving his way through wave after wave of combat droids, on his lips a gently humorous smile as though the horrific battle were only some friendly jest. His severed head wore that same smile. Maybe he thought death was funny, too.

  Anakin's own blade sang blue as it slashed through the window and he dived through the gap. He rolled to his feet among a litter of bodies and sprinted through a shattered door along the small private corridor and through a doorway that flashed and flared with energy-scatter.

  Anakin skidded to a stop.

  Within the public office of the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, a last Jedi Master battled alone, blade-to-blade, against a living shadow.

  Sinking into Vaapad, Mace Windu fought for his life.

  More than his life: each whirl of blade and whipcrack of lightning was a strike in defense of democracy, of justice and peace, of the rights of ordinary beings to live their own lives in their own ways.

  He was fighting for the Republic that he loved.

  Vaapad, the seventh form of lightsaber combat, takes its name from a notoriously dangerous predator native to the moons of Sarapin: a vaapad attacks its prey with whipping strikes of its blindingly fast tentacles. Most have at least seven. It is not uncommon for them to have as many as twelve; the largest ever killed had twenty-three. With a vaapad, one never knew how many tentacles it had until it was dead: they move too fast to count. Almost too fast to see. So did Mace's blade.

  Vaapad is as aggressive and powerful as its namesake, but its power comes at great risk: immersion in Vaapad opens the gates that restrain one's inner darkness. To use Vaapad, a Jedi must allow himself to enjoy the fight; he must give himself over to the thrill of battle. The rush of winning. Vaapad is a path that leads through the penumbra of the dark side.

  Mace Windu created this style, and he was its only living master.

  This was Vaapad's ultimate test.

  Anakin blinked and rubbed his eyes again. Maybe he was still a bit flash-blind—the Korun Master seemed to be fading in and out of existence, half swallowed by a thickening black haze in which danced a meter-long bar of sunfire. Mace pressed back the darkness with a relentless straight-ahead march; his own blade, that distinctive amethyst blaze that had been the final sight of so many evil beings across the galaxy, made a haze of its own: an oblate sphere of purple fire within which there seemed to be dozens of swords slashing in all directions at once.

  The shadow he fought, that blur of speed—could that be Palpatine?

  Their blades flared and flashed, crashing together with bursts of fire, weaving nets of killing energy in exchanges so fast that Anakin could not truly see them—but he could feel them in the Force.

  The Force itself roiled and burst and crashed around them, boiling with power and lightspeed ricochets of lethal intent.

  And it was darkening.

  Anakin could feel how the Force fed upon the shadow's murderous exaltation; he could feel fury spray into the Force though some poisonous abscess had crested in both their hearts.

  There was no Jedi restraint here.

  Mace Windu was cutting loose.

  Mace was deep in it now: submerged in Vaapad, swallowed by it, he no longer truly existed as an independent being.

  Vaapad is a channel for darkness, and that darkness flowed both ways. He accepted the furious speed of the Sith Lord, drew the shadow's rage and power into his inmost center—

  And let it fountain out again.

  He reflected the fury upon its source as a lightsaber redirects a blaster bolt.

  There was a time when Mace Windu had feared the power of the dark; there was a time when he had feared the darkness in himself. But the Clone Wars had given him a gift of understanding: on a world called Haruun Kal, he had faced his darkness and had learned that the power of darkness is not to be feared.

  He had learned that it is fear that gives the darkness power.

  He was not afraid. The darkness had no power over him. But—

  Neither did he have power over it.

  Vaapad made him an open channel, half of a superconducting loop completed by the shadow; they became a standing wave of battle that expanded into every cubic centimeter of the Chancellor's office. There was no scrap of carpet nor shred of chair that might not at any second disintegrate in flares of red or purple; lampstands became brief shields, sliced into segments that whirled through the air; couches became terrain to be climbed for advantage or overleapt in retreat. But there was still only the cycle of power, the endless loop, no wound taken on either side, not even the possibility of fatigue.

  Impasse.

  Which might have gone on forever, if Vaapad were Mace's only gift.

  The fighting was effortless for him now; he let his body handle it without the intervention of his mind. While his blade spun and crackled, while his feet slid and his weight shifted and his shoulders turned in precise curves of their own direction, his mind slid along the circuit of dark power, tracing it back to its limitless source.

  Feeling for its shatterpoint.

  He found a knot of fault lines in the shadow's future; he chose the largest fracture and followed it back to the here and the now—

  And it led him, astonishingly, to a man standing frozen in the slashed-open doorway. Mace had no need to look; the presence in the Force was familiar, and was as uplifting as sunlight breaking through a thunderhead.

  The chosen one was here.

  Mace disengaged from the shadow's blade and leapt for the window; he slashed away the transparisteel with a single flourish.

  His instant's distraction cost him: a dark surge of the Force nearly blew him right out of the gap he had just cut. Only a desperate Force-push of his own altered his path enough that he slammed into a stanchion instead of plunging half
a kilometer from the ledge outside. He bounced off and the Force cleared his head and once again he gave himself to Vaapad.

  He could feel the end of this battle approaching, and so could the blur of Sith he faced; in the Force, the shadow had become a pulsar of fear. Easily, almost effortlessly, he turned the shadow's fear into a weapon: he angled the battle to bring them both out onto the window ledge.

  Out in the wind. Out with the lightning. Out on a rain-slicked ledge above a half-kilometer drop.

  Out where the shadow's fear made it hesitate. Out where the shadow's fear turned some of its Force-powered speed into a Force-powered grip on the slippery permacrete.

  Out where Mace could flick his blade in one precise arc and slash the shadow's lightsaber in half.

  One piece flipped back in through the cut-open window. The other tumbled from opening fingers, bounced on the ledge, and fell through the rain toward the distant alleys below.

  Now the shadow was only Palpatine: old and shrunken, thinning hair bleached white by time and care, face lined with exhaustion.

  "For all your power, you are no Jedi. All you are, my lord," Mace said evenly, staring past his blade, "is under arrest."

  "Do you see, Anakin? Do you?" Palpatine's voice once again had the broken cadence of a frightened old man's. "Didn't I warn you of the Jedi and their treason?"

  "Save your twisted words, my lord. There are no politicians here. The Sith will never regain control of the Republic. It's over. You've lost." Mace leveled his blade. "You lost for the same reason the Sith always lose: defeated by your own fear."

  Palpatine lifted his head.

  His eyes smoked with hate.

  "Fool," he said.

  He lifted his arms, his robes of office spreading wide into raptor's wings, his hands hooking into talons.

  "Fool!" His voice was a shout of thunder. "Do you think the fear you feel is mine?"

  Lighting blasted the clouds above, and lightning blasted from Palpatine's hands, and Mace didn't have time to comprehend what Palpatine was talking about; he had time only to slip back into Vaapad and angle his blade to catch the forking arcs of pure, dazzling hatred that clawed toward him.

  Because Vaapad is more than a fighting style. It is a state of mind: a channel for darkness. Power passed into him and out again without touching him.

  And the circuit completed itself: the lightning reflected back to its source.

  Palpatine staggered, snarling, but the blistering energy that loured from his hands only intensified.

  He fed the power with his pain.

  "Anakin!" Mace called. His voice sounded distant, blurred, as if it came from the bottom of a well. "Anakin, help me! This is your chance!"

  He felt Anakin's leap from the office floor to the ledge, felt his approach behind—

  And Palpatine was not afraid. Mace could feel it: he wasn't worried at all. "Destroy this traitor," the Chancellor said, his voice raised aver the howl of writhing energy that joined his hands to Mace's blade. "This was never an arrest. It's an assassination!"

  That was when Mace finally understood. He had it. The key to final victory. Palpatine's shatterpoint. The absolute shatterpoint of the Sith.

  The shatterpoint of the dark side itself.

  Mace thought, blankly astonished, Palpatine trusts Anakin Skywalker...

  Now Anakin was at Mace's shoulder. Palpatine still made no move to defend himself from Skywalker; instead he ramped up the lightning bursting from his hands, bending the fountain of Mace's blade back toward the Korun Master's face.

  Palpatine's eyes glowed with power, casting a yellow glare that burned back the rain from around them. "He is a traitor, Anakin. Destroy him."

  "You're the chosen one, Anakin," Mace said, his voice going thin with strain. This was beyond Vaapad; he had no strength left to fight against his own blade. "Take him. It's your destiny.'"

  Skywalker echoed him faintly. "Destiny..."

  "Help me! I can't hold on any longer!" The yellow glare from Palpatine's eyes spread outward through his flesh. His skin flowed like oil, as though the muscle beneath was burning away, as though even the bones of his skull were softening, were bending and bulging, deforming from the heat and pressure of his electric hatred. "He is killing me, Anakin—! Please, Anaaahhh—"

  Mace's blade bent so close to his face that he was choking on ozone. "Anakin, he's too strong for me—"

  "Ahhh—" Palpatine's roar above above the endless blast of lightning became a fading moan of despair. The lightning swallowed itself, leaving only the night and the rain, and an old man crumpled to his knees on a slippery ledge.

  "I... can't. I give up. I... I am too weak, in the end. Too old, and too weak. Don't kill me, Master Jedi. Please. I surrender."

  Victory flooded through Mace's aching body. He lifted his blade. "You Sith disease—"

  " Wait—" Skywalker seized his lightsaber arm with desperate strength. "Don't kill him—you can't just kill him, Master—"

  "Yes, I can," Mace said, grim and certain. "I have to."

  "You came to arrest him. He has to stand trial—"

  "A trial would be a joke. He controls the courts. He controls the Senate—"

  "So are you going to kill all them, too? Like he said you would?"

  Mace yanked his arm free. "He's too dangerous to be left alive. If you could have taken Dooku alive, would you have?"

  Skywalker's face swept itself clean of emotion. "That was different—"

  Mace turned toward the cringing, beaten Sith Lord. "You can explain the difference after he's dead."

  He raised his lightsaber.

  "I need him alive!" Skywalker shouted. "I need him to save Padme!"

  Mace thought blankly, Why? And moved his lightsaber toward the fallen Chancellor.

  Before he could follow through on his stroke, a sudden arc of blue plasma sheared through his wrist and his hand tumbled away with his lightsaber still in it and Palpatine roared back to his feet and lightning speared from the Sith Lord's hands and without his blade to catch it, the power of Palpatine's hate struck him full-on.

  He had been so intent on Palpatine's shatterpoint that he'd never thought to look for Anakin's.

  Dark lightning blasted away his universe. He fell forever.

  Anakin Skywalker knelt in the rain.

  He was looking at a hand. The hand had brown skin. The hand held a lightsaber. The hand had a charred oval of tissue where it should have been attached to an arm.

  "What have I done?"

  Was it his voice? It must have been. Because it was his question.

  "What have I done?"

  Another hand, a warm and human hand, laid itself softly on his shoulder.

  "You're following your destiny, Anakin," said a familiar gentle voice. "The Jedi are traitors. You saved the Republic from their treachery. You can see that, can't you?"

  "You were right," Anakin heard himself saying. "Why didn't I know?"

  "You couldn't have. They cloaked themselves in deception, my boy. Because they feared your power, they could never trust you."

  Anakin stared at the hand, but he no longer saw it.

  "Obi-Wan—Obi-Wan trusts me..."

  "Not enough to tell you of their plot."

  Treason echoed in his memory.

  ... this is not an assignment for the record...

  That warm and human hand gave his shoulder a warm and human squeeze. "I do not fear your power, Anakin, I embrace it. You are the greatest of the Jedi. You can be the greatest of the Sith. I believe that, Anakin. I believe in you. I trust you. I trust you. I trust you."

  Anakin looked from the dead hand on the ledge to the living one on his shoulder, then up to the face of the man who stood above him, and what he saw there choked him like an invisible fist crushing his throat. The hand on his shoulder was human.

  The face... wasn't.

  The eyes were a cold and feral yellow, and they gleamed like those of a predator lurking beyond a fringe of firelight; the bone around th
ose feral eyes had swollen and melted and flowed like durasteel spilled from a fusion smelter, and the flesh that blaneted it had gone corpse-gray and coarse as rotten synthplast.

  Stunned with horror, stunned with revulsion, Anakin could only stare at the creature. At the shadow.

  Looking into the face of the darkness, he saw his future.

  "Now come inside," the darkness said.

  After a moment, he did.

  Anakin stood just within the office. Motionless.

  Palpatine examined the damage to his face in a broad expanse of wall mirror. Anakin couldn't tell if his expression might be revulsion, or if this were merely the new shape of his features. Palpatine lifted one tentative hand to the misshapen horror that he now saw in the mirror, then simply shrugged.

  "And so the mask becomes the man," he sighed with a hint of philosophical melancholy. "I shall miss the face of Palpatine, I think; but for our purpose, the face of Sidious will serve. Yes, it will serve."

  He gestured, and a hidden compartment opened in the office's ceiling above his desk. A voluminous robe of heavy black-on-black brocade floated downward from it; Anakin felt the current in the Force that carried the robe to Palpatine's hand.

  He remembered playing a Force game with a shuura fruit, sitting across a long table from Padme in the retreat by the lake on Naboo. He remembered telling her how grumpy Obi-Wan would be to see him use the Force so casually.

  Palpatine seemed to catch his thought; he gave a yellow sidelong glance as the robe settled onto his shoulders.

  "You must learn to cast off the petty restraints that the Jedi have tried to place upon your power," he said. "Anakin, it's time. I need you to help me restore order to the galaxy."

  Anakin didn't respond.

  Sidious said, "Join me. Pledge yourself to the Sith. Become my apprentice."

  A wave of tingling started at the base of Anakin's skull and spread over his whole body in a slow-motion shockwave.

  "I—I can't."

  "Of course you can."

  Anakin shook his head and found that the rest of him threat­ened to begin shaking as well. "I—came to save your life, sir. Not to betray my friends—"

  Sidious snorted. "What friends?"

  Anakin could find no answer.