by Sean Stewart
“Indeed, sir,” Fidelis said, looking embarrassed. “But your lady mother is still the head of House Malreaux, and she represented to me that it would be best for you both—in the long-term interests of House Malreaux overall, if you follow me—for you to come to an accommodation with Count Dooku and his, ah, representatives.”
Ventress chuckled. “You just can’t get good help these days. Do you know what you’re playing with, boy? This is a Tac-Spec Footman. Very dangerous. The hardware alone would retail for the cost of a small planet these days, for the right collector.” She frowned. “As it happens, I could do with a bit of cash. The price of a small planet is looking pretty good. Present arms,” she added absently. The assassin droids instantly took a bead, every one of them, on Whie’s chest and head.
“What are you doing? I demand to speak to Her Ladyship,” Fidelis said. “Put those things down, or I will be obliged to take steps,” he added meaningfully.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Even you couldn’t take me and six droids out before we killed the boy. And I will kill the boy if you cause me any trouble. I gave him his chance to live the last time we met.”
Scout lurched heavily to her feet, wiping the blood out of her eyes with her sleeve. She watched Fidelis, wondering what the droid would do. Numbers and diagrams poured in a flickering glow across its eyes as it sized up the tactical situation.
Asajj pulled out a blocky hand weapon. “Do you know what this is?”
The Padawans glanced at one another blankly. Fidelis shifted, coughed. “Neural-net eraser,” he said.
“That’s right,” Asajj said pleasantly. “Take it.” She held it out. “Come on, droid. Take it, or else.” Her eyes flicked over to Whie.
Woodenly Fidelis reached out for the ugly weapon.
“Put it to your head and pull the trigger,” Asajj said.
Tip, drip, tap. More blood trickling down Scout’s face.
“Come on, droid. Put it to your head and pull the trigger, or I blow the boy’s head off. What are you waiting for?” she asked. “Is this the legendary loyalty I’ve read so much about? There is a clear and present threat to a Malreaux here.”
Whie licked his lips. “Fidelis. Don’t. I won’t die here. I can’t. I can only be killed by a Jedi. I saw it in a dream. Don’t throw your life away.”
“That would be risking a lot on a dream,” Asajj said. “And even if it’s true, why do you suppose that is? Because Fidelis is going to save your life. He is going to make the ultimate sacrifice, like a good little droid. He knows his duty, doesn’t he?”
If the droid had been programmed to hate, he would have looked at her with hate. Instead he lifted the neural gun to his head. “Only remember, I served the House Malreaux,” he said.
“Fidelis, no! Don’t!”
The droid blinked. “I didn’t think it would end like this,” he said. Then he 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 sono-graphic analysis software and HyperBolic™ 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: and no power is there, dark or light, that can save me. Murdered, Jai Maruk was 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 conversational
ly. “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 smiled 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.