Chapter Thirty-Eight: What I Want

Flecks of corroded iron clouded Anakin's vision; he squinted against the ever thickening orange haze, brushing the rust away from his eyes with a swipe of his gloved synthetic hand. He wondered to himself if their perch, seven stories up on an abandoned rooftop, was really an advantage at all. The rust storm seemed worse up here.

His gaze should have remained fixed on the plaza. On the band of mercenaries, on Valis—her bone-white armor helped her stand out, even from this distance, as did the off-shoulder cape that fluttered in the wind. Or at the very least on the three Star Destroyers hovering overhead—ships Executor Vader had oh so carefully borrowed from planetary defense details, whose captains all thought they were on a mission specially ordered by the Chancellor himself. Whose divisions Anakin would have to explain a whole lot to if things went south.

Instead, his eyes kept flitting sideways. To Padmé—or, more precisely, to her finger, hovering ever so closely over the trigger of her blaster. Every few seconds, without fail, he felt his focus drawn from the pirates down below to his wife, prone on the rooftop, one eye squeezed shut while the other stayed planted against the sniper scope.

"What's up?" she asked, her voice flat. Casual. Composed. Somehow she'd caught him looking—though she didn't seem fazed by it.

"You're making me nervous, that's all," he answered. "Finger's a little close to the trigger."

Padmé shrugged—as much as one could while lying on their stomach—keeping her face glued to the blaster's optics. "I've got to keep an eye on things down there."

"Sure, but do you have to do it through the scope of a high-powered rifle?"

She scoffed, finally backing away from the weapon—as she moved, Anakin felt the tension in his chest loosen. You can't afford to have her shoot them. Not yet.

"Fine, fine," Padmé said, scooting along the rooftop toward him. "I'll use these." She reached a hand toward his feet; toward the unassuming pair of dull grey electrobinoculars—

"Wait!" Anakin hissed, reaching out to swat her hand away. "Don't touch those!"

As her hand recoiled, Padmé shot him a look of irritation. "Gods, okay. Someone's protective of his favorite pair of binoculars."

Anakin shook his head. "They're not just binoculars."

When she tilted her head to the side in apparent confusion, he continued. "It's an orbital bombardment targeting scope. Point it at something, press that button on top, and"—he trailed off, gesturing skyward toward the hovering trio of Star Destroyers. "Boom."

Padmé's shoulders slumped; he sensed a wave of unease rolling off her. "An orbital strike? What for?"

"For Maul," he answered. "If Valis won't tell us where he is. Or doesn't know."

"Is that really necessary?" She looked up at the Star Destroyers hovering above them, as if trying to gauge exactly how much firepower would slam into the city should they becalled into action. "Seems a bit like overkill—"

A flare of anger welled up inside him. Whose side is she on? a voice echoed in his head. You shouldn't have to explain yourself to her, she should want him dead as badly as you—

He spoke aloud, interrupting his own thoughts. "He's here."

Down below, a cloaked figure strolled into the plaza, hooded cape flapping in the breeze. As Padmé snatched her sniper rifle once again and pointed it toward the streets, Anakin raised a hand to his ear and tapped the commlink wedged into it.

"All right," he told the man down below, "just hold steady. I'll walk you through the whole thing. Repeat after me and you'll be just fine."

A single click popped over the line. An affirmative response. Anakin shuffled along the rooftop so he was kneeling as close to the edge as he could without falling off.

Here we go.

The next sound that came through the earpiece was Valis's voice.

"Executor. A pleasure to meet you."

Valis had been half expecting something to go wrong immediately. Alarms sounding from the direction of the spaceport, explosions rocking the city, the hum of a crimson lightsaber echoing through the square as Vader set about massacring her troops. In a way, that would have been a relief—the plan gone to hell from the outset, her job simply to pick up the pieces as she had so many times before.

Instead, ten minutes after his ship had docked at the spaceport, a cloaked, hooded figure strode through the lone chokepoint and into the square.

He was tall, Valis saw—the holographic message he'd sent prior to his arrival had given no sense of scale, but here he stood several inches over some of the mercenaries that instantly filled the gap behind him, blasters ready in their hands. The hood obscured any trace of his visage, but his movements were that of a young man—the confident not-quite-strut, arms held loosely at his sides. He didn't look back at the way behind him closing up, nor did he look behind her, toward the docks, where her pirates formed an impenetrable rampart.

She couldn't see his eyes, but she knew they were fixed on her.

Curiously enough, there were no whispers from the dark side, no waves of cold or sweltering anger rolling off him. That's what comes of working with Maul for so many years, she thought, allowing herself the tiniest of sneers. When a sane Sith meets you in the flesh, you don't know what to do with him.

Pulling herself to her full height, she took one last moment to run her hand along the metal cylinder at her hip, then strode forward to meet him.

As the distance closed, she scanned Vader's form and noticed right away that on his own belt, there was nothing—no lightsaber, no blaster, no weapon of any kind. Stating peaceful intentions? Or is he simply hiding something in that cloak? Again, when she extended the dark side's tendrils, she could feel nothing—no hidden threat, no knot of kyber crystal within a sword hilt.

Something is wrong.

Without hesitation, she viciously swiped the distant message away. Stay out of my way, Maul. You gave your word.

From atop his perch, she could feel the fevered roil of Maul's blood, pent-up, ready to strike. But quiet. For now.

When she and Vader were ten paces apart, she drew to a halt, inclining her head in the smallest bow she could. "Executor. A pleasure to meet you."

Vader's voice was deep, rough, like the sweep of a saw through a thick cut of wood. "Lady Valis. Or should I call you Darth Valis?"

Now that was a bit jarring to hear from lips other than her own—even Maul had stayed away from her Sith title, the joining of her true name to the dark prefix seeming to verge toward the blasphemous for him.

After a moment, Valis decided she found it refreshing.

"Titles are immaterial," she replied. "What matters is what we can do for each other."

"We don't all seem to be here," Vader replied. "Where is the warlord?"

And here was where things could get very tricky.

"As I said in my message," replied Valis, taking care for her words to ring out across the square despite the lacerating rust pelting at her throat, "I've taken great pains to ensure he's elsewhere. You'll be well aware of Maul's . . . temper. I couldn't guarantee your safety should he find out we were meeting. Not until you've agreed to give us something that we want."

Exactly what she'd told Maul she'd say. Exactly what she'd told Vader before, in her invitation.

Close enough to the truth in either direction that she desperately hoped neither of the other two Sith currently standing in the square could read the thoughts below her words.

Beneath the hood, Vader pondered for a few moments, then nodded. "An end to the war."

Valis nodded in turn, steeling herself from glancing in the direction of Maul's hidden perch. "One that's agreeable to all parties."

As Vader spoke, he took a single step—slowly, but enough to make sure Valis and any pirates watching could see it. "You're not exactly in a position to make demands. This . . . pirate haven may be impressive to the backwater mercenaries you employ, but it's not a threat to the Republic. You had your chance at Coruscant, and you let it slip. You couldn't take us down now even if you really wanted to."

Evenly, fluidly, Valis took her own step closer. "You say that, and yet the Republic hasn't come knocking at our door. Too busy with Confederate remnants, even now." She allowed herself the faintest smirk of pride. "The Clone Wars aren't over, Executor. You've certainly hastened their demise, which I give you all due credit for, but the Republic fleet is still mopping up a thousand worlds. They won't come for us for years, and we can cause a lot of trouble for them in that time.

"Or—we come to an arrangement with you, and walk away. San Sestina sticks to her own pursuits. Whatever systems are allied with us put down their arms and stop incursions on Republic space. All in exchange for what you can offer us."

She swept an arm to encompass the square—the concentric rings of pirates, guns all trained on Vader. The surface-to-air cannons, pointed skyward at the three ships he had brought as his leverage. The distant twinkle of the fleet in orbit, the entirety of their firepower focused on those same three Star Destroyers.

"And while I would never harm you in the middle of negotiations," she finished, letting her arm fall back to her side, "neither are you exactly in a position to make demands."

Anakin gritted his teeth—partly in frustration, partly to brace against a sudden rush of corroded wind. In the plaza below, the gust cut across Valis and the false Vader—Anakin's heart leapt into his throat as the air threatened to tear the latter's hood from his head.

But just as quickly as the breeze had blown through, his agent's hands were beside his head, grasping the cloth and pulling it tighter around his face. Anakin breathed a sigh of relief. They'd avoided disaster, if only just.

Beside him, Padmé was back in firing position, scope fixed on the plaza below. He couldn't say anything to her, not while their decoy was listening in, but he wanted more than anything to snap for her to wait a minute. Maul wasn't out here, and while the orbital strike was always waiting, deep down Anakin knew that wasn't good enough. He needed to see the body.

And just as important, he needed to know the real reason Valis had invited him here.

"I can't give you the Jedi," he told her through his envoy, "if that's what you want. No one has that power."

At this, he sensed a spike of alarm—not from the plaza below, but from beside him. From Padmé. A sideways glance revealed she'd once again looked up from the rifle—she was staring at him in sudden panic and confusion, the negative emotions amplified by the piece of still-living wood around her neck.

Anakin waved a dismissive hand at her and shook his head. Why did that upset her so much? a voice rang out in his mind. You're just negotiating. What's so wrong with that? Why does she care?

He forced the thought aside as Valis's voice sounded in his earpiece. "The Jedi had their day. They'll rot with or without your help. They've seen to that themselves. No, they're not what I want."

Anakin whipped the electrobinoculars to his eyes, careful not to touch anything that would activate their targeting mode. Here it was at last, past all the careful back-and-forth—the reason Valis had seen fit to risk everything and bring him here. The last answer he needed before he took her and Maul's heads and laid them on Palpatine's desk—

"I want you to give me Sidious."

In an instant, the world around him slowed to a crawl. His stomach dropped, his mouth grew dry.

There would be no more negotiation, he realized. Without even knowing it, Valis had outplayed him.

A single word rattled around in Anakin's head, one he dared not say aloud lest the decoy Vader repeat it:

Who?

Seconds passed. Vader said nothing, just stood there, whatever his thoughts were obscured by his hood. From afar, Valis could feel Maul's frustration building to a boiling point, and stretched her perceptions outward to tell him he had to stay put—

—and then, finally, she felt Vader through the Force.

What she felt was not the cool calculation of dark side precognition, nor the hot flame of passion that fueled the Sith—that roared like a furnace within Maul, yes, but that burned brightly within her too. She felt blank incomprehension and sudden panic, and below those, nothing at all. No awareness of her probe, no counterprobing in place.

She could feel the man in front of her. But he couldn't feel her.

Too late, far too late, the pieces that had been before her eyes slammed into place, and when Maul's rage flared crystalline and pure she didn't have it in her to make him stop.

As the man in front of her opened his mouth several seconds too late to reply, a black shape whipped downward from the towering space vessel embedded in the square's dirt.

Maul took their guest's head from his shoulders in one clean stroke.

"He didn't know," Valis said, dimly conscious of the fact that the pirates gathered around them could hear her as well as Maul but too stupefied at her own inability to see for her to care. "He didn't know who Sidious was."

"Didn't know?" Maul roared, kicking the man's head across the ground and rounding on his partner. His teeth were bared as if to tear out her windpipe, his still-blazing lightsaber clutched so tight in his hand that the hilt looked as if it were about to snap. "That nothing at your feet has never touched the Force at all."

He began striding toward her, and before Valis knew it she was backpedaling, eyes locked on the amber irises that were filled with a mad dog's desire to rip the nearest living thing to pieces. "Vader was never a Sith," he spat, and twirled his saberstaff in a preparatory flourish.

As panicked outcries rose from the mercenaries among the square, as their weapons moved from the corpse sprawled out on the dirt to the glowering Zabrak, Valis gasped out a hysterical chuckle. "Vader," she replied, "was never here."

Maul froze, saber still raised to slash downward at her. Valis stayed rooted in place. The one thing you will not do is give him the satisfaction of going for your weapon. Not even now.

"He's somewhere in the city," she said, not flinching even as the ozone drone of the saberstaff hummed in her ears. "After drawing us out with this decoy. And we can still find him."

Maul stood there for a moment longer, his breathing ragged. Valis opened her palms. Kill me, then, she thought, if it will make you feel better. It really doesn't matter at the moment.

With a wordless snarl, he turned and bolted for the other side of the square.

Already striding after him, Valis turned to shout at Dorran, whose blaster was still tracking the moving Zabrak even as the other pirates simply stood there, dumbfounded. "Sound the general alarm. Vader is here, and we have to find him."

Snapping to attention, Dorran called back, "What about the Star Destroyers?"

"Surface-to-air strikes only, if the fleet fires on them now they'll hit the city too." At least his ships won't fire on us while he's down here, she thought, breaking into a sprint to catch up to Maul.

We'll find him. And then I'll kill the son of a bitch myself.

Padmé stared in horror at the scene that had unfolded in the plaza—its edges blurred by sniper optics which swayed up and down in an uneasy rhythm. Nausea boiled in her gut—pregnancy, or the fact she'd just watched a man get beheaded through a magnifying scope?

She forced the rolling in her stomach to subside through sheer will, gripping the weapon tighter in an effort to steady it. Shoot them first, she told herself. Puke later.

San Sestina's main square hung in suspended animation. Pirates brandished weapons—frozen in place, ready and waiting for an incoming counterattack—while two Sith lords exchanged verbal blows at the base of the towering crashed starship. Though rust and wind clouded her sightlines, Padmé's crosshairs eventually fell back upon her targets.

The center dot hovered over Valis, before shifting to the horned skull of Lord Maul and back again. "I've got a shot!" Padmé said, hissing out of one side of her mouth in Anakin's direction. "But I can't hit them both in one go. Who should I shoot first?"

Her husband's response was total silence.

Pulling back from the sniper scope, Padmé glanced in Anakin's direction. He had risen to his full height, teetering at the edge of their perch as he glared down toward the plaza.

Get DOWN, you idiot, before they see you, she almost said, and then let it go. "I have a shot," she repeated, drawing out the words into a measured cadence. "Should I take out Maul or Valis first?"

No words left Anakin's mouth—though his head shook from side to side, almost imperceptibly.

Guess it's up to you, Amidala. Returning her eye to the rim of the scope, Padmé leaned her weight into the rifle's stock and brought the crosshairs to bear over Valis's chest. "Firing on Valis now—"

"NO!"

The snarl that escaped his lips was almost inhuman—as was the force with which he wrenched the gun from her. Anakin's mechanical fist clamped around the rifle's barrel, forcing it skyward where it could do no harm.

She felt the shock of the impact—he'd twisted her wrist and yanked her arm, and the gun had jabbed into her shoulder. But it was nothing compared to what she felt within—deep, genuine fear.

Fear of him.

Padmé wanted to speak—she wanted to scream at him, to ask him why in the gods-damned hell he'd done a thing like that. She could summon only one word. "Why?"

"I have to get down there."

She should have made him let her listen. Should have demanded to overhear the false Vader's conversation with Valis. As it was, all she could do was hiss again, "Why?!"

As she lay on her back against the rooftop, Anakin towering over her, he shook his head. "I just do. It can't end like this."

He never got any good at lying to me, she thought as she struggled to stand up—she winced as she put weight on her right arm. He's hiding something. Something the Sith had told him, something that had frozen him in his tracks. What did Valis say to make you act like this?

Oh, how she wished she could say that to him. In another time, in another place, perhaps she could have. But he was already angry, was going to get them caught, and Padmé could feel her chance at helping Obi-Wan slipping away.

"Yes it can," she said through gritted teeth as she rose to her feet. "It already has ended. If you won't let me shoot, then use those," she told him, nodding at the binoculars lying on the roof at his feet. "Get us clear and blow them to hell."

As he stared at her, hands clenched into fists, his eyes hardened. "No. I have to confront them head on. Finish things my way."

She took an almost subconscious step backwards. "No you don't. They have lightsabers, all you have is a gun. Don't play the hero! You're not—"

The final word caught in Padmé's throat—she'd only just managed to stop herself, choking on the one topic she'd been avoiding this entire trip, waiting for the right moment. He'll move on, he's too angry about what's going on down there to notice—

Metal fingers clad in leather clamped around her forearm—even through the glove, she could feel the cold steel of his mechanical hand as it squeezed so hard her bones hurt.

"What?" Anakin asked.

She shook her head, turning away from his fiery gaze. "It's nothing—"

"Say. It."

Defiance in her eyes, Padmé turned back toward him. Stared him down. Dug her heels into the rooftop. Braced for the worst.

"You're not Obi-Wan."

Anakin sucked in a shallow gasp of air as he withdrew from her—he loosened his grip, and Padmé took the opportunity to yank her arm away. As she took several steps backward, he moved too—away from her, toward the rooftop's edge.

"You're so right," he said, his voice harsh. Raspy. "I'm not."

Then a twisted ghost of the old Skywalker grin bloomed on his face, and he threw himself off the roof.

Vertigo consumed her as he disappeared over the edge—for a moment, she couldn't move, feeling as though she were the one falling to her death. Then the weight of the situation caught up with her, and she scrambled to look over at the plaza.

Padmé expected to find him splayed out on the pavement—neck broken, blood splattered in every direction. But he was fine. Better than fine. She glanced down off the roof just in time to watch him land with a flourish and rush off, blaster in hand.

He'd survived a fall that no man could survive.

Wrong.

He'd survived a fall that a Jedi could survive. A fall not unlike one that, only moments earlier, a Sith lord had survived.

Her vertigo returned as reality set in.

Anakin had, somehow, restored his connection to the Force—even as he'd kept his distance from the Jedi. He wasn't using his talents as a guardian of peace and justice, but for whatever Palpatine wanted—or, now, whatever he wanted.

And in this moment, she was more afraid of him than she was of the two Sith he was about to face.

You have to stop him. Not for him, not for the Anakin Skywalker she'd used to know. But because if he didn't get out of this alive, neither would she. Neither would Obi-Wan, if he was still breathing.

Neither would her child.

Rifling frantically through her belt, she finally grabbed one of the gadgets she'd brought from the armory. A portable zipline was no match for the Force, but it would have to do—and she would just have to hope no one saw her riding it to the ground.

With a puff of compressed air, the line fired, embedding a harpoon of metal in the dirt. Snatching up the marksman's rifle with one hand, Padmé used the other to scoop up the pair of electrobinoculars that her husband, in his haste, had left sitting on the roof.

Not much, but—she looked at the three Star Destroyers hovering above—as much of an insurance policy as she was going to get.

Throwing the rifle over the zipline and propelling herself over the edge of the tower, she prayed that she'd live long enough to use it.

Republic Archives: Orbital Bombardment Targeting Array

The Orbital Bombardment Targeting Array is a technology suite designed to allow precision orbital strikes against planetary targets, either from orbit or atmospheric flight. The system consists mostly of specialized targeting hardware installed on Republic Star Destroyers

In the months following the crisis on Serenno, Republic scientists and engineers worked to devise an answer to the CIS's "Lancer" bombardment station—and although no Lancers have made an appearance since this incident, the technology remains in use throughout the battlefront.

The frontline component of the Orbital Bombardment Targeting Array is a modified pair of electrobinoculars, which act as a rangefinder that can transmit targeting data from the ground to at least one Star Destroyer. Star Destroyers are able to share targeting data among themselves, so the more Star Destroyers (or more rangefinder scopes) used in a bombardment array, the more precise the bombardment can be.

In theory, a single rangefinder scope working with at least four Star Destroyers can pick out and destroy an individual megacity block without collateral damage to the surrounding structures.