by James Luceno
The galaxy itself.
The Neimoidian communications officer had fallen silent, apparently in reception of an update from one of the duty stations. Now he said: “General, a group of Jedi starfighters has emerged from Coruscant’s gravity well.”
“How large a group?”
“Twenty-two craft.”
“Deploy as many tri-fighters against them as are needed.”
“Yes, sir.”
Grievous turned from the viewports. “Is the strike force assembled?”
The gunnery officer took a moment to reply. “Your gunboat is ready, and your elites are standing by in the launching bay.”
“Battle droids, as well?”
“Fifty, General.”
Grievous nodded. “That should suffice.” He glanced at the viewport a final time, then turned his gaze on the Neimoidian bridge crew. “Carry on. Consider every Republic vessel a target of opportunity.”
“I’m sorry, Master, but the beacon still isn’t transmitting.”
Yoda continued to pace the floor of the Temple’s computer room, then stopped and pointed the business end of his gimer stick at the Jedi seated at the beacon’s control console.
“Nothing for which to be sorry,” he said in reprimand. “The Separatists’ fault this is. Jamming transmissions from this sector of Coruscant, Grievous is.”
The Jedi—a brown-haired human female named Lari Oll—lifted her hands from the console and shook her head in confusion. “How could Grievous—”
“Dooku,” Yoda cut her off. “Shares our secrets with his confederates, he does.”
“If one of our starfighters could get past the Separatist blockade, there might be a way of relaying a message through the HoloNet.”
Yoda nodded. “Already considered that, Master Tiin has. Attempt to recall Jedi from Belderone, Tythe, and other worlds, he will.”
“Can they get back here in time?”
“Hmph. On Grievous’s objective, that depends. Leave Coruscant soon and only slightly bruised, he might. Wait, we must, until he reveals his plan.” Yoda paused to consider his own words, then leaned his weight on the gimer stick and looked hard at Lari Oll. “Enabled the comm is?”
“Intermittently, Master Yoda.”
He nodded his chin to the communications console. “Call Master Windu.”
Moments later, Windu’s voice issued indistinctly from the console’s annunciators.
“… Fisto and I … Senate building. Shaak … Allie … to the Chancellor’s quarters in Five Hundred Republica. We … with them—”
“Raised, the defense shields are. Among one another, districts are unable to communicate.” Yoda grimaced, then nodded once more. “Master Ti, try.”
Lari Oll tried several frequencies before giving up. “I’m sor—” She caught herself. “No response.”
Yoda paced away from the console, deliberately turning his back to the glut of devices, screens, data displays, in a kind of countermeasure.
Shutting his eyes to distance himself farther, he stretched out with his feelings, placing in his mind’s eye Mace and Kit Fisto skimming through the deranged sky; Shaak Ti and Allie Stass hurrying toward Palpatine’s quarters in 500 Republica; Saesee Tiin, Agen Kolar, Bultar Swan, and other Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights streaking from Coruscant’s envelope in their starfighters, local space flashing with energy bolts and globular explosions, ships too numerous to count embroiled in a monumental battle …
Grievous was loosing his war machines against both military and civilian targets, firing at anything and everything that wandered into his sights, commanding his droid fighters to dash themselves against Coruscant’s defensive umbrellas or race down through traffic lanes, initiating chain reactions of collisions.
And yet, for all the diversion, disruption, and terror those stratagems incited, they had little to do with the real battle.
As was true of the war itself, the real battle was being fought in the Force.
Yoda stretched out farther, immersing himself fully in the Force—only to feel his breath catch in his throat.
Frigid, the current became.
Arctic.
And for the first time he could feel Sidious. Feel him on Coruscant!
Captain Dyne stepped cautiously from the platform that had dropped the team into the unexplored depths of 500 Republica. Here, at an intersection of spooky corridors made of permacrete and surfaced with panels of plasteel, no water dripped, no insects constructed hives, no conduit worms nursed on electrical current. Strangely, however, the air was stirred by a faint and fresh breeze.
Dyne took a breath to steady his nerves. He was trained for combat, but had spent so many of the past few years doing routine Intelligence work that his once sharp reflexes were shot. Commanding the hovering probe droids to go to stasis mode, he deactivated the handheld processor and hooked it on his belt.
Drawing his Merr-Sonn blaster from its holster, he hefted it, then thumbed off the stun setting switch.
Ahead of him, ghost-like in the dismal light, the commandos were moving toward the thick door at the end of the hall, keeping close to the walls, with weapons raised. Valiant had the point, with the squad’s explosives expert close behind, a thermal detonator in hand.
Dyne stepped between the powered-down pair of probe droids, TC-16 following in his footsteps.
They hadn’t advanced three meters down the corridor when Dyne’s ears pricked up at the sound of gurgled voices.
He could sense TC-16 come to a sudden halt behind him.
“Why, someone is speaking Geonosian,” the protocol droid started to say.
Whirling, Dyne found himself staring down the wide muzzles of two organic-looking sonic weapons, grasped in the thick-fingered hands of two Geonosian soldier drones, barely visible in the shadows, their wings angled down toward the corridor’s grimy floor.
The next few moments unfurled in silent slow motion.
Dyne understood that it wasn’t his life flashing before his eyes, but his death.
He saw the commandos drop in their tracks, as if blown over by a gale-force wind. He watched Valiant and the explosives expert leave the floor and hurtle headlong into the door. He observed a storm of probe droid parts whirl past him. He felt himself go airborne and crash into the wall, and his insides turn spongy.
It was possible, in that eternal moment of silence, that the troopers had reacted quickly enough to get off a few bolts, because when Dyne looked to his right, along the way he had come, there were no signs of the Geonosians or, for that matter, TC-16.
Then again, for all he knew he had lapsed into unconsciousness for an undetermined amount of time. He was vaguely aware of being slumped against the wall in a position that didn’t come naturally to a human being. It was as if every bone in his body had been made pliant.
Soundlessly, the distant door opened inward, and light flooded into the corridor. The light was either red or tinted so by the blood that was filling his ruptured eyeballs.
Still set on slow motion, the immediate world came in and out of focus. What remained of his vision registered a room filled with blinking equipment, screens filled with scrolling data, a holoprojector table, above which drifted a Trade Federation battleship, halved and in flames. Two machine intelligences emerged from the room, their slender, tubular bodies identifying them as assassin droids. Behind them walked a human of medium height and build, who stepped nonchalantly over Valiant’s grotesquely twisted body.
His liquefying brain notwithstanding, Dyne found a moment to be astonished, because he recognized the man instantly.
Incredible, he thought.
As the Jedi suspected, the Sith had managed to infiltrate the highest levels of the Republic government.
The fact that the man had made no attempt to mask himself assured and comforted Dyne that he was about to die, and shortly after the realization, he did.
Where is the Chancellor?” Shaak Ti demanded of the three Red Guards stationed outside the entrance to Palpat
ine’s suite in 500 Republica.
Alongside her hurried Stass Allie, one hand on the hilt of her lightsaber. In their adamant wake followed four members of the building’s small army of security personnel, who had escorted the Jedi women from a midlevel skydock to the penthouse level.
Despite having been notified of their arrival, the imposing Red Guards kept their force pikes raised in defensive postures.
“Where?” Stass Allie said, making it clear that she was going to get past them, one way or another.
Shaak Ti had her hand raised to part the doors with a Force wave when the guards lowered their pikes and stepped aside.
One punched a code into a wall panel, and the pair of burnished doors opened.
“This way,” the same guard said, gesturing the Jedi inside.
A broad hallway lined with sculptures and holo-art images led into the suite itself, which, like Palpatine’s chambers in the Senate Office Building, was predominantly red. There was no telling how large the suite was, but the exterior wall of the vast main room followed the curve of the building’s crown and looked down on patchy clouds, typical of those that gathered around the building in late afternoon. Distant autonavigation lanes—transverse, and to and from orbit—were motionless with stalled traffic. Between them and 500 Republica hovered two LAAT gunships and a small flock of patrol skimmers.
A distinct disturbance at the crest of the Senate District’s defensive umbrella meant that continued bombardment by Separatist forces had rendered the shield permeable. Beyond the superhot edge of the shield, light flashed within banks of gray clouds.
Lightning or plasma, Shaak Ti told herself.
Scarcely acknowledging her presence, Palpatine paced into the room like a caged animal, hands clasped behind his back, Senatorial robes trailing along the richly carpeted floor.
Additional Red Guards and several of Palpatine’s advisers stood watching him, some with comlinks plugged into their ears, others with devices Shaak Ti understood to be vital to the continued operation of the Republic military. Should anything befall the Chancellor, authority to initiate battle campaigns and issue war codes would pass temporarily to Speaker of the Senate, Mas Amedda, who, Shaak Ti had learned, was already safely ensconced in a hardened bunker deep beneath the Great Rotunda.
She couldn’t help noticing that Pestage and Isard—two of Palpatine’s closest advisers—looked nervous.
“Why is he still here?” Stass Allie directed at Isard.
Isard made his lips a thin line. “Ask him yourself.”
Shaak Ti practically had to plant herself in Palpatine’s path to get his attention.
“Supreme Chancellor, we need to escort you to shelter.”
They were not strangers. Palpatine had personally commended her for her actions at Geonosis, Kamino, Dagu, Brentaal IV, and Centares.
He stopped briefly to regard her, then swung around and paced away from her. “Master Ti, while I appreciate your concern, I’ve no need of rescue. As I’ve made abundantly plain to my advisers and protectors, I feel that my place is here, where I can best communicate with our commanders. If I were to go anywhere, it would be to the holding office.”
“Chancellor, communications will be clearer from the bunker,” Pestage said.
Isard added: “All those familiarization drills you so despised were conducted for just this scenario, sir.”
Palpatine sent him a skewered grin. “Practice and reality are different matters. The Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Senate does not hide from enemies of the Republic. Can I be any clearer?”
The fact that Palpatine was flustered, confused, possibly frightened was obvious. But when Shaak Ti attempted to read him through the Force, she found it difficult to get a sense of what he was truly feeling.
“Chancellor, I’m sorry,” Stass Allie chimed in, “but the Jedi are obliged to make this decision for you.”
He swung to her. “I thought you answered to me!”
She remained unfazed. “We answer first to the Republic, and safeguarding you is tantamount to safeguarding the Republic.”
Palpatine deployed his signature penetrating gaze. “And what will you do should I refuse? Use the Force to drag me from my quarters? Pit your lightsabers against the weapons of my guards, who are also sworn to safeguard me?”
Shaak Ti traded looks with one of the guards, wishing she could see through the face shield of his red cowl. The situation was becoming dangerous. A shiver born in the Force moved her to glance out the window.
“Supreme Chancellor,” Pestage was saying. “You must listen to reason—”
“Reason?” Palpatine snapped. He aimed a finger toward the window. “Have you gazed into our once tranquil skies? Is there anything reasonable about what’s occurring there?”
“All the more reason to move you to safety as quickly as possible,” Isard said. “So that you conduct Coruscant’s defense from a hardened site.”
Palpatine stared at him. “In other words, you agree with the Jedi.”
“We do, sir,” Isard said.
“And you?” Palpatine asked the captain of his guards.
The guard nodded.
“Then all of you are in error.” Palpatine stormed to the window. “Perhaps you need to take a closer look—”
Before a further word could fly from his mouth, Shaak Ti and Stass Allie were in motion; Shaak Ti tackling Palpatine to the floor, while Allie ignited her blade and brought it vertically in front of her.
Without warning, the gunships closest to 500 Republica were lanced by plasma bolts. Their door gunners blown into midair, the two ships veered and began to fall through the clouds, trailing plumes of fire and thick black smoke.
“Unhand me!” Palpatine said. “How dare you?”
Shaak Ti kept him pinned to the floor and called her lightsaber into her hand.
A shrill sound overrode the window’s noise cancellation feature, and a Separatist assault craft rose into view from somewhere below the suite. Crowded at the side hatches and ready to deploy stood a band of battle droids and others. As the craft hovered closer to the window Shaak Ti gaped in disbelief.
Grievous!
“Down!” Stass Allie shouted a moment before the entire window wall blew inward, filling the air with permaglass pebbles. Through the shattered window, droids leapt into the room, opening up with blaster rifles.
Stass Allie stood immobile in the rush of wind, noise, and blaster bolts. Six Red Guards raced to her side, their activated force pikes humming in concert with Allie’s lightsaber. Droids fell armless, legless, headless before they made it two meters into the room. Blaster bolts deflected by Allie’s flashing blue blade blazed out of the window opening, ripping into the other droids waiting to hurdle the gap between craft and building.
For a moment Shaak Ti was certain that Allie was going to throw herself aboard the hovering gunboat, but there were simply too many droids standing in the way. Keeping Palpatine in a crouch, she grabbed a handful of his robes and began to guide him deeper into the room, her upraised lightsaber parrying bolts that ricocheted from the walls and ceiling.
Beaten back, the battle droids broke off their attack. Outside the window, the gunboat was taking heavy fire from a surround of patrol skimmers. As Allie and the Red Guards were felling the final few droids, the Separatist craft dropped back into the clouds, with bolts from the skimmers chasing it.
Releasing Palpatine to the custody of two guards, Shaak Ti raced to the window and gazed down into the clouds. By then, there was little to see but angry exchanges of cyan and crimson light.
She turned to face Isard. “Alert Homeworld Security that General Grievous has broken through the perimeter.”
Elsewhere in the room, Pestage was helping Palpatine to his feet.
“Ready now, sir?”
Palpatine returned a wide-eyed nod.
“These familiarization drills you’ve been conducting,” Stass Allie started to say.
Isard gestured to one of the side r
ooms. “The suite is equipped with a secret turbolift that serves a secure, midlevel skydock. An armored gunship is standing by to transport the Chancellor to a bunker complex in the Sah’c District.”
“Negative,” Shaak Ti said, shaking her head. “Grievous knew enough to come here. We have to assume that the escape route has been compromised, as well.”
“We can’t just take him to a public shelter,” Isard said.
“No,” Shaak Ti agreed. “But there are other ways to reach the bunker complex.”
“Why not use Republica’s private turbolifts,” one of the security guards suggested. “Ride them to the basement levels and you’ll have access to any number of landing platforms.”
Stass Allie nodded, then glanced at Palpatine. “Supreme Chancellor, your guards are going to encircle you. You are not to attempt to leave that circle under any circumstances. Do you understand?”
Palpatine nodded. “I’ll do whatever you say.”
Allie waited until the Red Guards had gathered around him. “Now—quickly!”
When everyone had moved into the hallway, Shaak Ti used her comlink to find Mace Windu.
“Mace, Grievous is onworld,” she said the moment she heard his voice.
The response was noisy but intelligible. “I just heard.”
“The Chancellor’s escape route may be in jeopardy,” she continued. “We’re heading for Republica’s sub-basements. Can you meet us there?”
“Kit and I are nearby.”
Pressed into the turbolift with Stass Allie, Palpatine’s guards and advisers, and Republica’s security personnel, Shaak Ti watched the display tick off the floors.
No one spoke until the car had reached the first sublevel.
“Don’t stop,” Shaak Ti told the security man closest to the controls. “The deeper we go, the better.”
“All the way to the bottom?” the man asked.