CHAPTER SEVEN
Bryon Skywalker interlinked his black-gloved fingers and cracked his knuckles loudly. He stood on a small balcony overlooking the Great Hall of an ancient palace on Malastare. Beneath him two long mahogany tables created parallel dashes against the yellow-and-green speckled marble floors, and seven equally long rows of straight-backed oaken chairs were set up behind each table for aides and translators. Along the edges of the room huge granite columns extended to the high ceiling covered with brilliantly colored murals of planetary heroes long dead. It was a sight to behold, one that would play marvelously to the galaxy-wide audiences on the Holonet.
The Special Forces lieutenant could not see the beauty of the room. He saw only a deathtrap.
His eyes scanned the spacious room again. There were fifteen other balconies like this one spread around the four walls. Too much space was hidden by the ten-foot wide columns. Near the ceiling at each corner were four additional balconies. Underneath the Great Hall was a series of tunnels that were far too easy to access. And the wide and tall windows, which revealed a spectacular vista of grassy meadows and meandering rivers, would be no match for a well-aimed blaster bolt or explosive rocket. It was difficult to imagine a less secure venue for a summit between parties on the brink of war.
Given all of these risks and contingencies, the decision about how best to protect the Republic delegation was an easy one. Bryon reached down and pulled his black helmet from its resting place at the end of his blaster rifle, which leaned against the low stone railing. Another swift motion pulled the rifle from the floor by its strap and slung it over his shoulder. He spun on his heel and headed downstairs to address his troops.
An hour later Bryon stood in the far less ornate ballroom of a nearby hotel explaining the security arrangements for the summit to the eight Senators, their staffs, and their own security personnel. Senator Rylla, the Twi'lek, was fully in agreement with everything Bryon proposed; it would make his task much easier to have the delegation's chairman on his side. Sabé also deferred happily to his judgment, although he was struggling mightily to remember to call her Senator Bellion. Five other Senators grumbled under their breath and griped quietly to their aides but did not question him.
"The only way we can assure your safety," Bryon explained, "is for the Special Forces to be the only armed members of the Republic team in the summit hall. There are more than enough of us to provide complete protection. And should any hostilities arise, we will be in the simple position of being able to eliminate all armed persons in the room. Our task would be much more difficult if it were necessary to distinguish between enemy and friendly agents." He let his gaze travel around the group to the various Senators. "I understand you may be reluctant to go without your usual guards. But I must insist that you do so."
Senator Breena, the Rodian, was obstructing him at every step. "I do not have to listen to you, boy," the green-skinned, bug-eyed female alien proclaimed loudly in heavily accented Basic.
Before any of the Senators could intervene on his behalf, Bryon stared down Breena. He was mildly surprised that his black battle armor and considerably greater size did not appear to intimidate her even a little. "To the contrary, Senator."
"How dare you interrupt me, you…"
"Excuse me! I'm in charge of security here, my Lady." His hands dropped to the handles of the large blaster pistols on his hips. "I have complete authority by order of Commander General Dodonna and by directive of Supreme Chancellor Trellem. If you care to read the memorandum again, you will see that if you refuse to comply with my instructions I have power to preclude you from attending. I do not imagine you would care to risk such embarrassment?"
Breena blinked rapidly and balled her hands into fists. Behind her the four Rodian soldiers forming her usual protective contingent advanced to stand directly behind their Senator. Breena took a deep breath and spoke in a cold, dark voice. "I most certainly will be attending. And I will be attending with my own security detail."
"No, I'm afraid you will not, Senator." With a quick glimpse to the side, he could see that Rylla and Sabé were nodding in agreement with him. "You attend on my conditions or not at all."
Breena's self-control failed. "I have had enough of this!" With a wave of her hand, her four guards reached for their weapons.
In a flash it was over. Bryon's hands flew up from his holsters with blaster pistols firing. Two stun bolts, pale blue circles of shimmering light, brushed to either side of Breena's head and slammed directly into the inner guards. An instant later two more stun bolts pounded squarely into the chests of the outer guards. Bryon let his hands drift gently down toward his waist as the four Rodian bodies plopped to the ground in states of deep unconsciousness, never having been close to taking action against him.
And not only that. The fourteen of his Special Forces soldiers in the room with him instantaneously had snapped their heavy blaster rifles to their shoulders and had them aimed directly at the crowd of Senators and staff.
After the briefest pause that it took those actions to sink in, a collective gasp escaped from the Republic delegation. Surrounded by the black-armored soldiers and their towering leader, the armed individuals in the group unnecessarily raised their empty hands in gestures of submission. Anyone who previously had harbored any doubts that these men could provide all the protection the delegation needed no longer did so.
Bryon's brown eyes, ordinarily soft and warm like his mother's, burned with an intense, angry fire. Pistols still in his hands, he took two steps forward and stared into the depths of the Rodian Senator's skull. "I trust I have made my point?"
It had become so quiet that his deep, thick voice dominated the room like the words of a mythological deity thundering down from the heavens.
Senator Breena could not hold the stare and looked aimlessly at the floor in humiliation. "Yes, Lieutenant," she mumbled almost incoherently.
Bryon holstered the pair of pistols and stepped back to where he had stood originally. The four Rodian guards would wake up on the own accord within a few more minutes, and he was content to leave them in their heap until then. He took one deep breath and picked up without missing a beat from where he had been interrupted.
"As I was saying, the Special Forces will be the only armed members of the Republic team in the summit hall."
---
From a distance the barren third moon of the planet Ralltiir, near to Coruscant in the galactic Core, appeared to be utterly devoid of anything other than gray rock formations and asteroid impact craters. Only upon close approach for landing did the orb's sole artificial addition become visible. In the shallow bottom of a cleft in the stone almost a mile wide was a facility of several dozen buildings surrounded by a high wall. One of the Republic's most secure prisons, it held dangerous gangsters, vanquished warlords, and convicted traitors. In recent months it also had acquired several hundred prisoners of war captured from failed piracy operations by Argis' New Justice movement.
Officially named the Ralltiir Confinement Center, everyone called it The Rock.
Major Histon Tirix checked the monitors again as the weekly transport slowly descended toward the landing pad on the west edge of the facility. The middle-aged man had supervised this arrival the last seventy-seven times without incident. Today he expected four slave traders who recently had been convicted at Rodia as well as several dozen additional Vyhrragian captives.
He turned away from the screens and looked out the transparisteel viewport to watch the landing. The transport cut its engines and floated gently downward on its repulsors. A tubular starship several dozen yards long and ten yards wide and high, it came to rest on its landing gear and lowered two boarding ramps from the middle of the visible side. Two bureaucrats from the prison moved forward to process the prisoners while twenty Army regulars stood in several groups to oversee the transfer.
Major Tirix felt his heart stop and his stomach lurch at the sight before him. With unbelievable speed Vyhrragian brownshirts poured down the ramps with blaster rifles firing. The two functionaries went down instantly, and probably half of the soldiers were slaughtered before they could react. Unprepared for this kind of attack, the Republic regulars carried only light blaster rifles. By contrast, the brownshirts were protected by their tan body armor and unleashed torrents of blaster bolts from their heavy repeating rifles. The remaining regulars had been annihilated within only a few more seconds.
Tirix slammed his hands down on all of the emergency buttons. Klaxons blared and red lights flashed in the stone plaza below and throughout most of the interior of the facility. Tirix typed in the code to broadcast the Under Siege warning to all his subordinates. Looking out the window again, he saw almost fifty brownshirts dividing into seven groups and heading toward different buildings of The Rock. He could not hesitate any longer. His fingers found the pad again and he sent the most desperate possible mayday messages to nearby Ralltiir and to his superiors on Coruscant.
There was nothing more Tirix could do from his command post. He checked to be sure his pistol was set to kill and grabbed a blaster rifle from the rack at the door. He burst out the open doorway and ran down the stairs. There had not been an escape from The Rock in over three centuries, and he was not about to let one occur on his watch.
---
Deep in the bowels of The Rock, hundreds of feet beneath the surface, were the secure cells reserved for the most dangerous or violent prisoners. Due to the sensitivity of this portion of the facility, the usual alarms and warning lights were absent. Instead, those who served in this wing were highly trusted and responsible for monitoring their silent comlinks.
In the middle of a narrow hallway about two hundred feet long the four guards assigned to this area had gathered beneath a dim lighting disk. Keeping their voices hushed, they wondered what to make of the messages they had received.
"Do you think it's a drill?" the youngest one asked hesitantly.
"Probably," grumbled the oldest one as he crossed his arms over the plain gray shirt of the uniform.
"I've never seen a drill with all the top codes at once, though," suggested the third guard.
"And usually in a drill they cancel it for us by now," said the fourth reluctantly.
"You guys are getting paranoid working down here," laughed the oldest, who had served in this assignment for over ten years. "I think I'm going to tell Major Tirix you need a transfer."
"I still think something unusual is going on," the youngest one insisted. "This isn't right." While the others pondered the man's statement, the deep shadows of the hallway shifted and moved behind them. Engrossed in their thoughts, none of them noticed.
Suddenly a distinctive snap-hiss broke the heavy silence. The four guards turned in time to see two brilliant red lightsaber blades attached to huge black blurs charge toward them. Before hands could reach holstered blasters, two simple whirling strikes had slain them where they stood.
Blades still ignited, the two dark figures turned to face each other. They wore black tunics and pants, black boots and gloves, and billowing black cloaks. Even the rapid movements of their assault had not drawn the hoods away from covering their faces.
"We're alone," said a grim male voice from the slightly taller figure.
After a short pause, a female voice agreed. "Yes."
"Which cell is his?"
"This way," the female motioned with her blade. After a few long strides down the hallway she stopped in front of a windowless metal cell door. She extended her shimmering red weapon toward the right-hand edge of the door and pierced the interchange between the metal and stone. Sparks and tiny explosions lit the hallway for a few seconds. Stepping away, the female raised her left hand in the air and drew it back toward her head.
Slowly the cell door creaked open. Leaving their lightsabers ignited, the two dark figures walked confidently inside.
In the small, dimly lit room they found an old man sitting upright on his cot. He was very thin and very pale; he had wisps of unkempt short white hair on his head and sunken, pale blue eyes the color of arctic ice. His prominent face and proud posture suggested that in his younger years he must have been tall and strong and powerful. He tugged at the front of his plain white prison grab and then reached up to rub the sleep from his eyes.
With the two menacing figures standing before him, red blades humming in the air, the old man finally spoke. "To what do I owe this honor?" Like his appearance, his raspy and quiet voice recalled lost glories of another lifetime.
"We bid you to come with us," the male voice said simply in a tone laden with respect and admiration.
"I do not know you," the old man replied assertively, "and I wonder why you think I would wish to do so."
"You may not know us," the female voice conceded, "but no doubt you know who we are, do you not?"
"Yes, I suppose I do," the prisoner said while he stood up and stepped toward them. "And you must know that my prior association with your… ancient religion did not work out to my advantage."
"A fair point," the male voice admitted. "So let me present two options. One, you can choose to remain here and we will leave you be and not trouble you again. I give you my word on the sacred memory of your dead friend. Two, you can choose to come with us and assist us in accomplishing what our predecessors could not. What do you wish?"
The old man took his gaze away from the two black-cloaked figures and stared up into the shadowy corner of the ceiling of his cell. He took a deep breath and sighed. "I am old," he stated calmly. "I do not want to spend the last days of my life in this forsaken place." He let a quiet chuckle rumble from his emaciated chest. "I have nothing left to lose. So I will go with you, my friends."
---
Within hours the highest levels of the Ministry of Justice on Coruscant received the initial consequences assessment report from the Ralltiir Confinement Center. Fifty-five Vyhrragian brownshirts had mounted a surprise attack on The Rock. Some had struck at the command center of the building while most had directed their efforts toward freeing the Vyhrragian prisoners of war. A valiant defensive effort by the Republic forces at the prison had been successful. By the time reinforcements from Ralltiir had arrived, all the brownshirst had been killed and their mission had been a failure. The losses by the Republic were severe, however. Over eighty guards and Army regulars had been killed, including The Rock's commanding officer, Major Tirix.
Two hours later a short addendum arrived. A complete assessment of the facility had been made and one small set of uncertain facts revealed. Far away from the main strike, on detention bloc 1138 in the depths of the prison, the security cameras had been knocked out of commission by an unknown cause ten minutes prior to the beginning of the Vyhrragian assault. Two significant explosions had occurred on that bloc during the attack, perhaps from thermal detonators. One had caused considerable damage to a portion of hallway. The four guards assigned to the wing remained missing and their bodies had not yet been recovered. The other had destroyed utterly a single cell and doorway in the bloc.
Records on The Rock showed, and physical inspection of the remaining cells confirmed, that the relevant prisoner was a long-term resident of The Rock. Over twenty years ago he had been convicted of several hundred counts of treason as an accomplice to the many crimes of Darth Sidious; he was serving a multitude of life sentences because the Senate had abolished capital punishment a century earlier. Like the guards, his body had not been located.
The Minister of Justice, a forty-one-year-old political crony of the Chancellor's, shook his head. On his datapad he keyed in the code authorizing the reporting official's request to proceed with an inquest into how the Vyhrragian attack had been accomplished. One aspect of the matter would be to investigate the mysterious explosions deep inside the prison, but the overall surprise attack was far more significant. In the meantime the prisoner would be listed as "Missing: Presumed Dead." The name did not mean anything to the Minister, so he keyed in the code approving that request as well.
Were the former prisoner aware of the decision, he would be pleased. The Republic's incompetence always had amused Wilhuff Tarkin.
---
In the same empty side docking bay that had hosted a grueling father-daughter sparring match the day before, five members of the Jedi Order wearing the standard-issue tan robes sat cross-legged in a small circle in the precise center of the wide room. The two Masters and three Padawan learners were deep in meditation, their minds interconnected and calm as they let the Force flow around, among, within, and through themselves. They all absorbed the same Force, but it touched their unique spirits in diverse ways.
At some imperceptible signal from the eldest participant, the five slowly returned their minds to the present time and place. Simultaneously their eyes opened.
The youngest one spoke first, as was tradition. "There is a great disturbance in the Force," Danaé said in a solemn, hushed tone. "One I have not felt since… One I have not felt before." She was attuned to the living Force and could sense in its currents the earnest ripples of fear and anguish from the millions of citizens of the dozens of star systems now subject to Argis' despotic rule. And there was more: a soft taste of death, of horrors beyond imagination, flickering around the edges of her profound empathy.
"The dark side is gaining strength," Luke continued after an approving nod from his sister. "It clouds my vision, my perceptions of the Force. And it responds to my anger." He quickly met eyes with his Master, who made a simple gesture with his right hand to acknowledge his apprentice's honesty. Like his father Luke could not describe the Force in the usual way. Unlike other Jedi the Force simply reached directly into him with its visions and sensations, its strength and guidance, its will. He did not perceive it; it perceived him. For most Jedi all but the most trivial efforts with the Force required an act of concentration corresponding in magnitude to the task at hand. For Luke, as with Anakin, the Force flowed in symbiosis with him, often responding to his will – or perhaps its will – before the thoughts even formed.
Mara took a deep breath. "There is much suffering to come. The equilibrium I always have felt in the Force is gone. There is a disruption. An imbalance." She took another very slow and careful breath. "Terrible things will happen before the Force is calm again." For someone comparatively so young and untrained as a Jedi, her attunement to the unifying Force, in particular her perception of the constant motion of the future, was remarkable. That was part of what made her an outstanding duelist with a lightsaber. Sometimes, however, her thoughts dwelled so much on foresight and strategy that her Master had to remind her not to lose track of the intricacies of the present. That was not the lesson for today.
"You are each correct, in your own way," Anakin smiled. "I sense all of these things." And more. But he did not need to speak that aloud; the apprentices knew it without being told. "The threat to the galaxy is not merely a violent rebellion in a small sector of the Mid Rim. If it were, it would be simple enough to contain. It is worse than that. Much worse."
"We did not tell you until now to avoid compromising your focus on your mission," Obi-Wan said to Mara and Luke. "You will be the first Jedi not members of the Council to hear what I am about to say," he stated without fanfare, training his gaze on Danaé. At that, the faces of the three Padawans reacted in unabashed shock and concern. "The disturbance in the Force results from the activities of the Sith."
Danaé spontaneously drew her hand up to her lips and gasped. Luke's jaw hung open. Mara gulped audibly as she swallowed a lump in her throat.
"The Sith?" Luke finally asked, still struggling to comprehend the announcement.
"There is little doubt of it," Obi-Wan answered regretfully. "It is the only explanation consistent with the disturbances in the Force and with other events in the galaxy."
Danaé now understood why her father had tested her lightsaber technique so vigorously. "Why could we not sense them sooner?"
"I wish I understood why the Force operates in this way," Anakin conceded. "But it always has been so. When the Sith are silent and inactive, merely training and growing in strength, we cannot perceive them. Only when they begin to act, when they set their evil schemes in motion, do their impacts on others and on the future become apparent within the Force."
Mara was the first to regain her composure and confidence. "We will go to Xixus and rescue Leia. If the Sith have taken her, then we will meet them and defeat them." She sat up straighter and clenched her fists. "Let them come."
Not to be outdone, Luke leaned forward, interlaced his fingers, and chuckled. "That's very bold of you, Mara. I'm sure they're afraid of you already." Seeing a stern stare from Obi-Wan, however, Luke leaned back again and took a deep breath.
Danaé had a more practical issue on her mind. "Is there anything we need to know besides the fact the Sith are threatening us again? Do we need any additional training to confront them?"
Obi-Wan smiled. "No, young Padawan. Everything you need, you already have."
With graceful ease Anakin sprang to his feet and motioned the others to join him. "While we wait for the final word, I recommend a last bit of lightsaber sparring. It has been some time since any Jedi last faced a true enemy who fought our way. Let us be as prepared as possible." They all unclipped their lightsaber handles from their belts and ignited the shimmering, whirring weapons. "Danaé, help me test Master Kenobi," Anakin requested. On the mission to come, Obi-Wan would be on his own for his task. "You two," he chuckled, waving his left hand at Luke and Mara, "work out some of that antagonism, will you?"
With a laugh Luke swung his turquoise blade in two hands straight for Mara's head. She snapped her violet blade up to block, then rolled her wrists and almost ripped the laser sword from his grip before she launched into a blistering series of powerful arcs. After Luke parried away the final strike, he lunged into a high triple back flip that brought him several yards away and gave him time to set his defense again.
Across the room Anakin and Danaé attacked Obi-Wan aggressively from opposite sides. Even one-on-one, Obi-Wan had difficulty defending against Anakin; with Danaé on the offensive it was the most vigorously he had fought in many years. Obi-Wan's turquoise blade flashed from right to left, over his head and around behind his shoulders, back and forth in brilliant swaths of color. Every swing of Anakin's blue laser sword and Danaé's emerald one was turned away before it came close to hitting home. Were it not for the look of utter calm on the white-bearded Jedi Master's face, his defense would have appeared frantic.
---
Sarré found Padmé, Jenny, and Threepio standing at the wide transparisteel viewport in the lounge of the guest quarters on the Invictus. She wore a dark blue flight suit and her blaster pistol strapped to her hip. At any moment the Republic's spies on Xixus would be reporting in with the final pieces of information needed to launch the rescue operation to retrieve Leia. When that happened Sarré would be providing cover in an X-Wing. "I'm all ready," she announced as calmly as she could.
"You'll fly well out there, Sarré, I know you will," Padmé smiled gently.
"You're a better pilot than half the naval ensigns on this ship," Jenny teased to lighten the mood. While that might not have been entirely true, the Naboo handmaiden training was extensive and thorough. Although she never formally had held that title, Jenny's certificates were up to date.
Padmé's were too. "Thank you for coming by," she said. "I appreciate it. May the Force be with you."
Sarré tipped her head in thanks and left the room. She was anxious and fretful. So she was better off simply waiting in the hangar, where Artoo and Jaytoo already were preparing for the mission.
"I'm annoyed with Anakin," Padmé grumbled after she was gone. "He's left us out of this entirely."
"Mistress Padmé," Threepio interjected, "I must admit I think that is a wise decision. This mission sounds very dangerous indeed."
"Yes, Threepio, I'm sure it is," Padmé laughed at the protocol droid's astonishing capacity for stating the obvious.
"What do you want to do, Padmé? I'm sure they'll be fine without us," Jenny said soothingly as she reached out to take Padme's hand.
"That's not the point!" Padmé's frustration had not abated. "It's not his decision to make alone." She shook her head, pulled her hand away, and ran her fingers through her hair several times. Then a sparkle came to her eyes and a mischievous grin crossed her face. Like a young child in a toy store, she grabbed Jenny's hand and dragged her toward the door. "Come with me."
"Wait, Mistress Padmé, wait for me!" Threepio exclaimed as the two women disappeared out the exit. "What do you wish for me to do?" When no reply was forthcoming Threepio started to follow, then stopped. "Oh dear."
---
Another series of Mara's vicious two-handed swings drove Luke into a rapid back-stepping retreat. His defense was holding, but he could sense no opportunities to change the momentum of their duel. As the seconds passed by and his situation did not improve, Luke finally made the only move he could think of. He blocked with greater strength than before, then drew on the Force to launch himself straight up into the air, corkscrewing his body around an invisible axis in his hips to land behind her. In her intense combat focus, however, the maneuver had no effect on Mara. She spun to meet him and attacked again, her loose red-gold hair and thin Padawan braid flailing out in all directions.
"Not bad, not bad," she laughed sarcastically. "For a Skywalker."
Luke grimaced as one of her swings came perilously close to his left ear. "What's that supposed to mean? You still have never beaten my father." He tumbled smoothly along the floor, springing up a few yards away and swinging the tip of his blade twice through a circle to regain his concentration.
"He's an aberration," she declared. "A fluke. A quirk of fate."
"I hardly think so." Part of the problem was that Mara's greatest prowess was in lightsaber fighting, while Luke spent considerable effort honing his skills as a pilot. While this gave him more balance in his abilities, it also meant she had the advantage when only this one was involved.
"Fine. Tell me, Luke, whose name is on the championship trophy this year?" For centuries the Lightsaber Competition had been an annual tradition in the Jedi Temple. All but the least skilled Padawans competed in the eleven rounds of single-elimination duels until a single winner emerged. Excluding those who were absent due to missions, failed to qualify in preliminary heats, or simply chose not to enter, Knights and Masters competed in a separate eleven-round bracket to crown their own supreme fencer.
"Jade," he grudgingly admitted. "And the three years before that," he quickly grumbled, forestalling her from making him admit them separately.
"And how many times has a Skywalker won?" Mara shifted from the powerful, aggressive arcs of her usual offensively oriented technique to the swift, precise swings of the very difficult expert style her Master slowly was teaching her.
"Three." Luke's father had prevailed when he was fourteen, fifteen, and twenty; in the other years, his impatience had caused sloppy errors that had cost him duels in which he ought to have prevailed. Anakin would have won more titles, certainly, had he not been promoted to Knight before his twenty-first birthday. And neither Luke nor Danaé ever had made it past the quarterfinals.
"So you see my point. I have four, Skywalkers have three. Hardly an impressive record."
"I'll make a deal with you, Mara," Luke sighed as he dove into another evasive roll. "If you can match my father's streak in the Knights' bracket, I'll concede your point." After sitting out his first two years of Knighthood focusing on other matters, Anakin had won the title fifteen consecutive years, repeatedly defeating such luminaries as Mace Windu, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Oga Trill, and Ki-Adi-Mundi in the process. After that the competition had lost its appeal to him, and he had not entered since.
"You're on," she smirked, aiming a blazing triple-double attack at his head.
On the other side of the large room Anakin's and Danaé's testing of Obi-Wan's defenses had continued relentlessly. Confident his friend had received all the practice he needed, Anakin was about to call a halt when he sensed a presence approaching in the hallway outside. He spun smoothly away from the two-on-one duel. "Obi-Wan, why don't you turn the tables on Danaé for a while? There's someone I'd like to talk to." With simple nods the pair continued their sparring without interruption.
After his Master's death on Naboo over thirty years ago, Obi-Wan had switched from Qui-Gon's favored acrobatic, tumbling style – ironically the same style his own apprentice preferred – to a focus on defensive techniques. Whether blasters or lightsabers he would be in little danger. To test Danaé, however, he needed to shift to the offensive, so he began to attack her with the short, quick moves of the classical fencer, which rarely even were taught to Jedi anymore. As he drove her back, he sensed her drawing on the living Force, relying on her instincts and intuitions rather than a concerted strategy. A small smile crossed his face: she fought like Qui-Gon, if not as well.
She blocked and parried easily, letting the Force guide her actions and concentrating hard to fend off the unfamiliar technique. Without a passion for lightsaber dueling like her father and Mara, and less interest in it even than her brother, Danaé had trained in the contemporary, default Jedi technique that combined elements of the older defensive, offensive, and acrobatic styles without reaching mastery in any one of them. This always had been enough for her. Until now. As she parried away another series of strikes from Master Kenobi, she began to wonder whether she had made a mistake in allowing her skills to develop this way. Ducking to avoid a high blow she almost failed to anticipate, she decided to speak to her father about it once the mission was over.
When Anakin reached the open door to the docking bay he found Han leaning against the doorframe on his right shoulder, hands crammed into the pockets of his pants, watching the two duels taking place inside. "Care to join us, Captain Solo?" he winked.
Han chuckled, for the first time without any hint of nervousness in his tone. "Thank you for the offer, Master Skywalker, but I'd prefer to keep all of my appendages."
"Very well." Anakin leaned against the opposite side of the doorframe on his left shoulder and crossed his arms over his chest. "My apprentice informs me she talked you into joining us for the rescue operation on Xixus."
"That's the way she tells it, is it?" Han's eyes flickered in indignation. "She offered; I accepted. There was no persuasion involved."
Anakin let a pleased laugh roll from his abdomen. "She has a way of interpreting the truth that I find quite interesting." He met Han's curious gaze. "But she won't let you down in the field, Captain. I promise you that."
"I don't doubt it." Han's eyes had turned back to the blindingly fast pace of the duel between Mara and Luke. It was impressive. Most impressive.
For his entire walk over and during their conversation, Anakin had probed Han through the Force, reading his emotions and feelings and judging the character of the man. He too was most impressed. "I'll admit something, Captain. I had a platoon of Special Forces troops here earlier to assist in this rescue operation, until they were ordered away to guard the peace summit at Malastare. Without them, I was concerned about the mission. As much as I trust my apprentice and my son, sending the two of them alone is not a good idea. There is too much involved, even for two Jedi." He met Han's intrigued stare again. "I think with you and Commander Chewbacca and Lieutenant Commander Calrissian, we'll be very well positioned to succeed."
"Thank you, Master Skywalker," Han nodded humbly. "We will do our best."
"As you always do, Captain Solo. I would expect nothing less." Without speaking, the two men watched the duels with great focus for several more minutes.
Suddenly Anakin lunged away from the wall and began to walk out into the spacious room. "I apologize, Captain, but I have to attend to something."
In a few quick strides Anakin had made his way to the duel between Luke and Mara. His right hand snapped up from his hip, his blue blade forming a whirling disc of light from its handle rotating in his palm. Out of my way, Mara, he ordered through the Force.
His apprentice spun away as he arrived. Anakin's blade crashed into Luke's in an immensely powerful two-handed swing that almost sent Luke staggering. The immediate return arc smashed Luke's lightsaber completely out of position. The reversed pull of the third strike knocked the weapon from Luke's hand and sent him sprawling to the floor. In an instant his father towered over him, the point of his turquoise laser sword at Luke's throat.
From dozens of yards away Han's eyes met Mara's. Even she had not thought what they just had witnessed was possible. Obi-Wan and Danaé had sensed the lightning-fast victory in the Force and had stopped their own sparring to see what was going on.
"Father?" Luke gasped quietly, afraid to move.
"After what we discussed, how could you fight this way?" Anakin's stare pierced Luke's soul like a dagger.
"I don't understand."
The blade retracted into its handle and Anakin let his outstretched right arm fall to his side. "If you cannot control your emotions fighting Mara, you will have no chance against a Sith. None." He shook his head sadly. "You're as good as dead."
"I…"
The Jedi Master would hear no excuses. "Your anger makes you weak."
Ripping his eyes from Luke's, Anakin spun on his heel and headed back toward Han. He cast a quick glance at Obi-Wan, who nodded approvingly. The abject humiliation Luke just had suffered was a far more effective teacher than any lesson Obi-Wan could have designed for his apprentice.
Before Anakin reached Han again, his comlink beeped. He pulled it from his belt and read the short text message from Admiral Mirkalla. He stopped in his tracks and used his eyes to catch the attention of the other five.
"We have the information we need. We launch in twenty minutes."