The gemcutter flashed, and a moment later the Call told her a Seltaya-class armored courier was punching out of hyperspace. Master Yoda had arrived.
She was gaining fast on the first of the Tavyas. He had one turret-mounted laser he could swivel around to fire backward at her, but he never came close to hitting her. On a good day, Asajj Ventress could walk between raindrops, and any day with a chance to bring Yoda’s charred green head to her Master was a good one in her books.
The Tavya’s pilot stopped firing abruptly, throwing everything he had into a wild dash for the first planet in the system, a lifeless frozen rock one would barely dignify with the word moon—but the Ithorians had armed it with a formidable battery of automated defenses as a deterrent for unwelcome visitors. He was hoping to run under the protection of its big guns.
Not that it would work. The Call was too fast. He had to see that. His readouts would be telling him. He had to try something new. Duck or rise, that was the question. He couldn’t just stop. Asajj reached out through the Force, like another kind of gemcutter, surfing on the Tavya pilot’s intention.
Down.
He would dive toward the rapidly approaching battery and hope she overshot. She could feel his heart racing; could feel him steeling himself to hold on, hold on, forcing himself not to commit too early.
She laid a couple of char lines across his wings just to make him twitch.
There—the dive! A fast drop, pulling ten crushing g’s. Even his pressure suit couldn’t adequately protect him from that. Asajj could feel blackout starting to close over him.
Merciful, really.
With the blood congealing in his veins from pressure, he was only dimly aware of Last Call shooting by underneath him and pulling sharply up. He didn’t have enough extra consciousness to understand that Asajj, anticipating him, had already cut under his line. He couldn’t pay nearly enough attention to notice the very tiny object trailing her.
The proton torpedo’s new interception angle took it straight into the belly of the Tavya and detonated. The ship cracked open like an egg, spilling out white light and a red-stained yolk. Another little candle guttered out.
Yoda must have felt that.
The Tavya that had fired the proton torpedoes at her was banking away, heading back to join Yoda. She picked him off almost casually as another picket ship, the last of the four accompanying Yoda, dropped into realspace.
Three guards down, one to go, and then the Master himself.
Asajj frowned. It was singularly curious that Yoda hadn’t opened fire on her himself. Although he was usually quoted mumbling some piety about the inherent beauty of peace or life, the wizened old swamp toad was no slouch with a lightsaber, by all accounts, and from her reading about the battle on Geonosis, she would have expected him to come to the defense of his entourage with all cannons blazing.
As if in answer to her thought, his ship opened fire, but the shots were slow and wide of the mark. Either the old guy or his R2 unit was fighting the ship while suffering from some kind of damage, or else Yoda had a plan so subtle she couldn’t grasp it at all. In a way, she was almost hoping for the latter. If he was sitting there in his cockpit gasping through a stroke, it lessened the glory of the kill very considerably, although she wouldn’t, obviously, dwell on that when she reported back to Dooku.
Another few blinks of laserfire flashed off into the distance, missing her by a clear thirty degrees. If the old being had a plan, it was too deep for her to determine. Perhaps he was signaling for reinforcements, with some kind of code embedded in the pulse of his weapons?
Asajj shrugged and accelerated into a corkscrewing attack run on the one remaining picket. Best to get the distractions out of the way.
The gemcutter stammered a warning across her monitors, and a moment later the last of Yoda’s protectors jumped right back into hyperspace. Asajj cocked one eyebrow. Better a live womp rat than a dead dire cat, as the saying went. So much the better. The stars knew that an overdeveloped sense of compassion was not one of her vices, but she got no particular pleasure from slaughtering defenseless bystanders.
Now for the Jedi Master himself.
She closed her eyes, feeling for him in the wide darkness of space. It was harder than she had anticipated. Dooku was a presence she could find half a planet away—a burning shadow, darkness made visible. From the Grand Master of the Jedi Order she expected no less…but when at last she felt the little frightened pinprick of life inside his ship, he seemed a weak and puny thing.
Perhaps age, that tireless hunter, had chased him down at last? She’d seen old beings wither thus, when the fire of life burned lower until they had no heat left for the great passions, love and hate and fury, but spent their last years in embers, able to support the little fires of avarice, peevishness, anxiety. Life’s thin, pinched afterglow.
She felt out for him again, eyes open this time, watching his ship fall steadily under Last Call’s shadow. She rested her fingers on the firing buttons as her targeting computers locked down his thrusters, engine core, canopy. She had originally intended to go directly for the engine core, on the theory it would be best to be thorough, but if the old Jedi was going to go this easily, perhaps she should try just pricking open the canopy and letting the vacuum in. That would certainly leave her with a more convincing trophy to hand to Dooku than a series of archived spectrographic analyses that implied some organic residue left in a pile of debris.
The Seltaya juked and twisted mechanically in her sights, but there was no flair to its movements at all. Her fingers tensed.
No.
Ventress took her hands off the firing controls. She knew exactly what the Seltaya was doing. Its R2 unit was executing its factory-standard evasive maneuvers; she recognized them from a dozen previous kills.
Whoever was in that ship, it sure wasn’t Yoda.
With a snarl Ventress snapped off a single shot from her lasers, picking off the Seltaya’s rear stabilizer and sending it tumbling into space. Under high magnification, she saw the viewports of the Seltaya’s cockpit go green. Whoever was in there—a decoy, obviously—was spacesick, and throwing up.
She had ambushed a decoy.
Score one for the other team.
Asajj took a deep breath, refocusing. What to do now? Killing the poor creature over there in a fit of pique would hardly be constructive. The decoy might well have been a child, come to think of it—she had seen the footage of him walking across the spaceport to the starfighter, and if he was more than a meter tall, it wasn’t by much.
She shifted over to tractor beams and slowly stilled the tumbling ship. She could just let him go, of course. The R2 ought to be able to pilot him on to Ithor, although the descent would be tricky thanks to the damage she had done to his rear stabilizer. Once he got there, the local authorities could package him up and ship him back to Coruscant. What a farce.
Asajj shook her head. What a fool she felt. To think that the Grand Master of the Jedi Order could possibly go so easily into the long night.
Except…
…As far as the world knew, that was exactly what had just happened.
That cowardly fourth starfighter had seen her destroy the rest of the entourage. Remote surveillance from the Ithorian battery would confirm the engagement. If she were to let the decoy carry on to Ithor, surely the Republic would be a little embarrassed. But if she destroyed his ship in a way that would ensure blasted pieces went spinning insystem for the authorities to find…what would happen then?
Her cruel, pretty mouth twisted into a smile. What was it Dooku said to her once? There are at least two things one appreciates more the older one becomes: excellent wine, and confusion to the enemy.
She laughed, and dragged the hapless Seltaya in. “Confusion to the enemy,” she said.
Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker stood ankle-deep in the meltwater of spring on the Arkanian tundra, facing a third figure, a tall, imperious woman with the snowdrift eyes of her species. “Please
,” Obi-Wan said. “Reconsider.”
“I have considered the matter long and carefully,” the Arkanian said. Her name was Serifa Altunen, and she was a Jedi Knight.
Had been a Jedi.
Carefully she took off her Jedi cloak, folded it up, and handed it to Obi-Wan. “I follow the Force—not the law. I serve the people—not the Senate. I will make peace—not war.”
“You swore an oath to the Jedi Order!” Anakin said.
She shrugged. “Then I am forsworn. But I must tell you, I do not feel it much.”
“If every Jedi gets to choose which orders she will follow, and which ones she will not, it won’t be long before we are all lost,” Obi-Wan said.
Serifa’s eyebrows rose. “I do not feel lost. The Force is as it always has been. It is the Order that has strayed from the path.”
Which probably served Obi-Wan right for coming in philosophical with an Arkanian. Yoda managed to pull off these sage-like meditations, but they never seemed to work out quite right for Obi-Wan. Maybe one just had to be older.
“More to the point, the war will be lost,” Anakin said angrily. “Say what you like about following your conscience, but if we divide our forces, the Trade Federation will win. If you think the Republic has strayed from the path of benevolence and wisdom, wait until you experience government by battle droid.”
“So you care about winning this war?” the Arkanian asked.
“Of course I do!”
“Why?”
Anakin threw up his hands. “What do you mean, why?”
Serifa gave him that condescending look the Arkanians had been perfecting over the course of millennia. “Perhaps you, too, should examine your path—at least until you come up with a better answer to that question.”
They watched her mount the hoversled she had ridden to this rendezvous and peel away over the thawing tundra on it, raising twin fountains of icy meltwater. Scattered patches of snow and ice the same white as the Arkanian’s eyes; white sun, too, glittering on the watery plain as if on broken glass.
Obi-Wan blew out a breath. “That didn’t go so well.”
“Does she really have influence on the government?”
“I have to think a respected Jedi coming forward to say she has renounced the Order and recommending that Arkania declare itself to be a neutral party in the war would carry weight. At the very best, it’s diplomatically damaging, and a public relations nightmare.” Obi-Wan turned and slogged back to their ships. They had landed far from any settlements, to avoid drawing undue attention to themselves, but for a weary moment Obi-Wan was missing a cozy bar with a good fire and a chance to drink off one tumbler of excellent Arkanian sweet milk—a demure term for a creamy mead that could leave a strong man under the table.
“Come with me for a moment,” Obi-Wan said, waving Anakin away from his own ship. Anakin followed him into his starfighter. “Wipe your feet, or you’ll get wet prints all over,” Obi-Wan said. “You know the artoo hates that.”
“When do we get your old artoo back?”
“When its repairs are done. Given the amount of fire it’s seen riding shotgun with me, I’m sure it’s in no hurry to report for duty,” Obi-Wan said dryly, settling himself in front of the comm console. “You’ve been sending private messages back to Coruscant.”
Anakin flushed. “You’ve been tracing my outgoing—” He stopped. “You just guessed.”
“I am a wise and powerful Jedi Knight, you know,” Obi-Wan said, allowing himself a small grin.
The little R2 rolled into the nav-and-comm area and wheeped unhappily at their wet bootprints.
An awkward pause.
“Since part of my duty as your Master is to pass on my vast wisdom—” Obi-Wan began.
“Here it comes,” Anakin said.
“—I suppose I should officially remind you that a Jedi has no room in his life for…some kinds of entanglement.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Nonattachment is a fundamental precept of the Order, Padawan. You knew that when you signed up.”
“I guess I didn’t read the Toydarian print,” Anakin growled.
For the first time, Obi-Wan turned away from the holocomm transceiver. “How serious are you about this girl, Anakin?”
“That’s not the point,” Anakin said, still flushed and angry. “The point is, we are out here asking people to support a Republic that barely knows they exist, and backing it up with a, a police force of Jedi sworn not to care about them! And we wonder why it’s a hard sell?” He waved out through the front viewscreen. “What if Serifa is right? What if we are the ones who have lost our way? I trust what I can feel, Master. That’s what you have always taught me, isn’t it? I trust the living Force. I trust love. The ‘principle of nonattachment’…? That’s an awfully abstract thing to pledge loyalty to.”
“Do you trust hate?” Obi-Wan said.
“Of course I don’t—”
“I’m serious, Padawan.” Obi-Wan held the younger man’s eyes. “To follow your heart, to either love or hate, in the long run is the same mistake. Your judgment becomes clouded. Your motives, confused. If you are not very careful, Padawan, love will take you to the dark side. Slower than hate, yes, but no less surely for that.”
The air between them crackled with tension, but finally Anakin lowered his eyes. “I hear you, Master.”
“You can hardly help that,” Obi-Wan said tartly. “It’s whether you believe me or not that matters.” He sighed. “For what it’s worth, most Jedi make the same mistake. Learn from it; grow through it. If the Order were made up only of those invulnerable to love, it would be a sad group altogether.” He turned back to his holocomm transceiver, scanning Arkanian news as he set the encryption key for the transmission he would send back to Coruscant.
“Does that mean there is a woman to be discovered in even Master Obi-Wan’s past?” Anakin inquired. “Tall, I imagine, and dark-haired. Pathetically desperate to have anyone at all, that much goes without saying—”
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan breathed, staring at the news flashing across his monitor. “Be quiet.”
“I was only joking!”
Obi-Wan swiveled around in his chair. He had never felt so completely at a loss. “It’s Master Yoda,” he said. “He’s dead.”
“What?” Padmé cried.
“Ambushed just outside the Ithor system,” her handmaiden said. “The Ithorians have confirmed debris from the Master’s ship.”
Thoughts of disaster hurtled through Padmé’s mind like meteorites. The loss of Yoda was a crippling blow to the Republic—surely Dooku must have been behind it—what would it mean to Anakin? Anakin loved Yoda, of course they all did; but he also said the old Master never completely trusted him, always held him back—if it was true, who would take up the mantle as head of the Order? Mace was a soldier in a soldier’s time, but he did not get on so comfortably with Chancellor Palpatine…
So her thoughts whirled madly, like snowflakes, drifting down to settle finally on one cold fact: Yoda dead, and the whole universe a little darker for it.
Courage, she told herself. Hope. When the time grows dark, hope must shine the brighter. If I could trade my life for a chance of a brighter day for the next generation, would I do it?
In a heartbeat.
“I’m going to the Senate chamber. The Chancellor will have the best and most reliable news.” In the doorway Padmé turned to look back over her shoulder at her handmaidens. They seemed shaken and afraid—far more so than if the Chancellor had died. And who could blame them? After more than eight hundred years, it was only natural to think Yoda would be around forever. “I wouldn’t write the old Master off yet,” Padmé said. “I’ll believe he’s gone when I see them bring his body back. Not before.”
“Thank you for receiving me, Chancellor,” Mace Windu said tightly to the holographic image of Chancellor Palpatine projected in the Jedi Council Chamber.
“I am indeed extremely pressed for time, Master Win
du, but I value your opinion exceedingly.” Palpatine’s intelligent face creased with a small, dry smile. “I think you may safely presume that given a choice between listening to the council of Mace Windu, or that of, say, the honorable Senator from Sermeria, with his startling ability to bring any topic under discussion to a close analysis of its impact on the trade in his homeworld’s root vegetables, why, I would rather listen to you.”
Mace Windu had his weaknesses, but an easy susceptibility to flattery was not one of them. “Thank you,” he said briskly, “but may I ask why you have not issued an immediate denial of the reports about Master Yoda? I know—”
Palpatine interrupted him. “This channel is hard-encrypted, Master?”
“Always.”
“I assumed as much, but my security forces tell me that Coruscant is presently infested with spies of every description, including the electronic kind. An unfortunate side effect of our policy of allowing unrestricted free movement to practically everyone, with only the flimsiest of security checks.”
“The best security, Master Yoda once said, lies in creating a society that nobody wishes to attack.”
“Of course! But having somehow failed to convince the Trade Federation, we must play the cards as they have been dealt,” the Chancellor said. “This is not a perfect world, and not all our choices are easy ones.” This was obviously true, and the kind of hard truth Mace Windu found more comfortable than the Chancellor’s little sallies into gallantry and compliment. “Leaving the question of spies aside, I accept your assurance that this transmission is confidential. Carry on, Master Windu.”
“I know Yoda was not in the starship destroyed by Asajj Ventress. You know—”
“It was Ventress, then? I think you sent me a file on her some time back.”
“Yes, Chancellor. Or at least, it was certainly her ship. It’s a distinctive design, patterned after Count Dooku’s. We have analyzed the recordings from the fourth pilot—”
“Who will face a court-martial for cowardice by tomorrow evening, with a swift and public sentence,” Palpatine said grimly.