Broken Cadence
1.
The folds of Darth Sidious' cloak were a black waterfall concealing a face with no mercy left in it. A face scoured and cleaned of all pity, all weakness, by the harsh medicinal stringency of the Dark. Under the hood, which cast the illusion of a bottomless well of shadows, there gleamed two burning coals. Eyes, the ignorant world might call them. But Yan Dooku, hereditary Count of Serreno, former Jedi, knew better. They were windows into the hells.
His master's eyes frightened him. Indeed, they were the only thing left in this cold galaxy which could frighten him. His master's soul looked out of an eternity of fire – and he wondered if this were his fate, too. For with age came wisdom, and he knew that the Dark was not the soft caress of night. It was light without radiance. It was pure, tormenting heat, burning from within. And this was what he had taken as his master. That was the difference between Sidious and himself. Dooku was still slave to the dark, its terror-stricken servant. Sidious had ascended. He was no prisoner of the hells; he was their ruler. He looked out of their bottomless pits with the eyes of a king. Nay, an emperor.
When Dooku had grown in power…just a little more….then he would depose Sidious and take up the throne himself. And he, alone in the universe, would not fear the Dark. For it would be his dominion. But that time was not yet. Dooku was aging….but his ambition was still in the springtime of its youth. He had time yet. And so he knelt before the figure in the holo-transmission.
"This…information, my lord. Is it reliable?"
A wildly impertinent question. But his spy networks were better than anything the galaxy had yet seen, and yet he had heard not a whisper of this news. "As reliable as death," Sidious sneered down at him. "Only the Jedi Council and the Supreme Chancellor know of it. And, of course, me."
"Yes, my lord." Chastened, Dooku kept his eyes fixed to the floor. He felt the burning eyes of his master bore into the top of his bowed, white-haired head.
"I want you to capture him – I care not how. Take him alive, and then break him."
"I understand, master. May I ask….why?" He boldly raised his face upward.
But those eyes, those terrible windows into the realms of eternal fire, forbade further questions. Dooku dropped his gaze again. His was to do, not to know. Envy spoke in his breast: clawing, bitter envy. It had something to do with Skywalker, that curdled cot of cur's blood that the Jedi so fondly cherished as their savior. He could feel Sidious' tendrils of fascination with the boy, unfurling like hungry tentacles. This was some new ploy to unbalance the idol, to topple it into oblivion alongside Dooku and all the others who had plummeted from the Temple's high and holy walls. It should have made Dooku smile – but instead he found his brows contracted in a bitter scowl.
"You may think of it as revenge," the Lord said, patronizingly, to his apprentice.
Dooku bowed his submission. Everything, all existence, in some way reduced to revenge. His every choice was an act of revenge – revenge upon the Force for burdening him with its secrets, for inflicting existence upon him. If Sidious wished this to be focused on a particular man for a short while….why then, "So be it," he said solemnly.
Ahsoka Tano snapped out of her meditative trance, screaming.
Hands clutched tight against her luridly striped headtails, the young Togruta toppled over backward onto the floor and writhed, panting for breath. Oh no, oh no…
She struggled onto hands and knees, and then feet, clutching at the wall of her small, bare chamber in the Jedi Temple. Her breaths came fast and short as she wrestled the gut-wrenching, soul-flaying panic and terror down, down, into some part of her imagination and memory far, far away from this place and time. Stop, stop, oh please stop… Dizzy, she managed to drag her own mind out of the morass. I'm Ahsoka. Not Skyguy. That's not my panic. That's his. Not mine. His.
She regained some semblance of calm. Her muscles were shaking. Stars, she hated it when he did that! It was bad enough when they were both alert, on a mission together. But when she was completely open like that – in a meditation? It wasn't fair. She was his Padawan, and Force bonded to him in a way that no other shared. Well, maybe no other besides Master Kenobi, Anakin's own teacher. Had he suffered the way she did? One nightmare on Skyguy's part could send a blazing supernova of energy through the Force, ripping apart anyone whose spirit strayed too close. And this one….she rubbed at her solar plexus, gritting her small pointed teeth. Please let that have been a nightmare, and not a Force-inspired vision. Whatever it was, it was bad.
The door to her room slid open. "Snips?"
And there he was, silhouetted against the sun-drenched window of the corridor beyond. Light beamed in around him, setting the ends of his disheveled hair alight, revealing dust motes dancing in the air between them. He was shaking. Ahsoka swallowed and stood upright, too afraid to ask.
"Master. Are you….all right?"
He didn't hear the question. "I have to go."
"Where?" she demanded. His hand was on his saber hilt. His face was drawn into wrathful, fearful, lines. The Force rippled around him, frantic striations of light and heat and power. She had to squint. Her temples pounded.
"I – I don't know," he snapped, impatient. "Just…tell Master Yoda."
"What?" She was across the room in a flash, over the threshold, yelling down the hushed corridor at him as he fled, at a full out run, for the lift to the hangar bay level. "Master!" She couldn't just tell Master Yoda that he had run away, who knew where, who knew why…."Master!" But Anakin didn't respond. He practically threw himself into the lift, slammed a fist against the door control, and was gone.
"Chiszk," she cursed.
Dooku was furious. Jaw clamped tight, he examined the wound on his thigh, the other one on his arm. The fibers of his Chandrian silk tunic sent up a trail of incense where the burning blade had caught and flayed through them. His body sent up agonized pleas of pain, which he ignored, sousing them with a lifetime of cold discipline. He couldn't even walk properly. The slash in his leg carved a broad curving line of fire from kneecap to groin – superficial, perhaps, but incredibly painful. Awful, animal anger howled in his chest. He fingered the elegant hilt of his own weapon, longing to flick its switch and unleash the red blade. Longing to drive that line of ruby fire right through his opponent's heart. Stars…he should have done that the first time he had the chance, in the cave on Geonosis.
Instead, he recalled his lord and master's words. "Take him alive, and then break him." Thin lips curling in disgust, Dooku replaced his saber hilt at his side, and extended a hand, summoning his foe's weapon into his hand. The hilt smacked into his palm with a solid thud, and his fingers closed around it, squeezing tight as though to throttle the life out of it, in lieu of its owner. He tucked the vile thing which had wounded him into his sash, then casually dug one tall well-tailored boot under his enemy's limp, prone form and turned him onto his back.
"You are going to regret this encounter, my young friend," he told the unconscious Jedi. At a snap of his fingers, two magna-droids moved forward to drag the prize off toward his ship. He watched their ungainly progress up the boarding ramp, and then slowly, limpingly followed behind, mouth set in a tight line of fury.
The first part of his objective was achieved.
Artoo continued to string insults and demands and questions and then more insults at him, all the way through the atmosphere and into the hyperspace booster ring.
"Shut up, Artoo. Override the security codes for this thing and get us out of here."
The droid's next remark was so colorful that even Anakin blushed. He regretted having stripped his adored navigator of all protocol restraints. Artoo was becoming a monster…but he didn't have time to worry about it. "I don't know where!" he hollered, blind fury seizing him, His robotic fist slammed against the canopy.
Silence. Ironic silence, from the droid. Silence, from the soundless vacuum of space all around him. Silence, from the Force. Silence from Obi Wan. Not a peep, not a flash of humor, a sliver of an image, nothing. Just that annihilating dream-vision-feeling twenty minutes ago…and then blank silence. He could always sense Obi Wan, if he wanted to. Halfway across the galaxy, he could sense him. Could almost hear his voice sometimes. And now…nothing. And that dreadful certainty, like a drum pounding in his blood, that his former master was in terrible, terrible trouble. He had to go, he had to go now, right now….
But where?
He had no idea where the Council had sent Obi Wan. Nobody knew. It was a clandestine mission. The Chancellor knew. Yoda knew. But he, Anakin, wasn't worthy to know. New rage joined the anger born of fear. Why didn't they trust him? How could he save Obi Wan if they didn't trust him enough to tell him anything important?
The droid bleeped something at him. The hyperdrive ring was ready, the security codes easily hacked. All they needed were coordinates.
Focus, Anakin, focus. Use the Force. Think. He steadied his breath and heartbeat. He had to do this….he had to. There was no emotion. There was serenity. No emotion. Peace. The Force. Reach into it….
A fleeting image, tinged in ethereal light. Obi Wan's image. His presence. Pain. Not good. Where was his saber? His hands….were bound. Tightly. No saber, then. Thrumming underneath him, dimness all round. A ship – a hard deck. The durasteel toe-piece of a magna guard, about a meter from his face. The butt end of its electrostaff, resting on the floor beside it. The image faded, into a confused darkness.
Anakin opened his eyes. Think. Think. That was a Separatist ship. His master was prisoner on a Separatist ship. That could be anywhere in the galaxy. "Artoo," he ordered, suddenly able once again to act, to make decisions. "Plot a course for Admiral Yularen's flagship. Wherever it is." He would start with some reinforcements. And he would end by rescuing his master. It was just the parts in the middle that weren't so clear to him. But he would get there. He would. Just wait until he did.
The ring fired its drives, and in an instant, the ship and its two occupants had disappeared.
