CHAPTER FOUR: Daritha
OBI-WAN
Neimoidian mercenaries took potshots at the advancing clones from the cover of a collapsed highrise. Meanwhile, a score of super battle droids directed a withering hail of blaster fire at the mobile deflectors being pushed forward by more of the Republic's men in white. Obi-Wan stood behind the Republic's lines, but he was the center of the conflict. All moments were one, all flesh and circuitry united. In deep Battle Meditation he felt no fear, no pain, only the depthless currents of the Force wrapped tight around him.
The fight for the tenth block of Eske Street was in its second day. The sun hung weak and watery on the gaseous horizon. Obi-Wan was the soldiers pushing forward through fading coils of effervescent plasma. He was the rock-roaches scrambling for cover in the drainage grates. He was the Neimoidians crouched behind their makeshift barriers of rubble, and the lone Geonosian soldier firing its pulse gun from a tilted spar of durasteel leaning out above the street. He was the cold wind, the faint fingers of the dawn, the dying Canthus vine clinging to the pilings beneath the street.
One of them tried to kill Padmé, said a quiet voice outside the circle of his contemplation. You saw his hands, the white armor, the bomb he clipped to the fuel tank.
No time for old mysteries. Obi-Wan set his memories aside and lowered himself deeper into the currents of the Force. Coruscant cried out for succor. Echoes of the wounds in its durasteel skin churned like whirlpools, frothing with black agony. So many have died, thought Obi-Wan as he guided the clones forward through the withering hail of blaster and slug fire. A battle droid exploded and Obi-Wan raced through its fuel cells, down its ruined processor pathways.
The surviving mercenaries surrendered before dark. There had been no night on Coruscant before the war had come home; the city-planet's trillion lights had kept the dark at bay. Now, though, whole vert-blocks responsible for distributing power from the thermal dynamos drilled deep into the abandoned surface had been destroyed or cut off from the mega-grid. Mile-wide stretches of the capital were black as pitch. Whole districts boiled in the unregulated heat of high summer while others froze in satellite-enforced winter. Freak thunderstorms came and went without warning.
"Master Jedi," said the Neimoidian commander. Two clones had to help him kneel. "I surrender on behalf of the 455th Confederate infantry." He held out his stun baton. Behind the quivering alien the other Republic soldiers, clones and volunteers both, broke down the deactivated droids.
Obi-Wan took the collapsed baton and weighed it in his hands. "I accept, lieutenant," he said. "You and your soldiers will be treated fairly."
The buzz of approaching LAATs was loud in the sudden silence. On the horizon, plasma flickered and snarled as starships dueled in the stratosphere and against the unlit hulk of a distant palace complex little pulses of light signaled a clash between Republic and CIS forces, unless it was between some of the innumerable gangs that had sprung up out of the chaos. Huge mobs of migrants swarmed the understories like entire civilizations turned suddenly nomad, fighting for shelter, for access to heat and hydroponics domes. Obi-Wan could feel their anger and desperation like a slow, erratic pulse set against his own.
One atrocity after another, piece by bloody piece, the planet was losing its mind.
The Jedi Temple was no longer the bastion of calm and clarity it had once been. Grievous's rampage through its halls had put an end to that illusion. Now, as Obi-Wan crossed the battle-scarred concourse beneath the vaulted ceiling, he felt the loss of his childhood haven keenly. Coruscant had never mattered to him, but the Temple had been his only home from the age of eight. He passed a hand over his face and noticed, for the first time, his skinned knuckles. He sighed. When did that happen?
"Obi-Wan." It was Mace, walking brusquely toward him across the polished floor. Padawans, Knights, and visitors cleared a path for the bald, dark-skinned Master. He fell into step beside Obi-Wan, his high-collared brown robe billowing behind him. "I'm glad I caught you before the session. Have you heard?"
"Heard what?" Obi-Wan often felt slow after immersing himself in Battle Meditation, unable to cope with conversation or Temple intrigue. "I've been out with the 45th."
Mace looked grim as they stopped, waiting for a lift car near the end of the hall. "Anakin," he said, his tone heavy with regret and anger.
They rode the lift in silence. Obi-Wan remembered another ride, years before, with Qui-Gon at his side. What he wouldn't give for another hour of his Master's calming influence, his sage council and even-tempered manner. You'd know what to do with Anakin, he thought, half wistful and half frustrated. You'd say something about the Living Force and take whatever it is that's eating him out of his heart, and he'd never even know you'd done it.
The lift doors slid open. Mace stepped out into the Council Chamber and Obi-Wan followed, trying to master his dread. The Council was at quorum, five members in attendance with himself and Mace included, but at Yoda's left hand on a plain boma-wood bench, dressed in a smart black robe and leggings, sat Anakin. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his skin looked sallow, but he wore a look of deep satisfaction on his handsome face. Yoda, seated beside him, looked older and wearier, than usual, and the many empty seats in the round made him look smaller than he was.
Obi-Wan stood on the threshold of the round, struck dumb by exhaustion and a deep, raw sense of loss. He'd thought Palpatine's move to place Anakin on the Jedi Council a bluff, but it seemed the Chancellor had pulled the trigger. Where will he stop? We already lead his soldiers. We mediate his treaties, enforce his laws... Obi-Wan closed his eyes, succumbing for an instant to the rigors of the past decade of his life. One war after another, catastrophe after catastrophe, whole worlds dying, the Force fraying at its roots until the whole Galaxy seemed one wild, continuous shriek of distress.
"Master Kenobi." His former apprentice's voice cut through his sorrow and weariness. "Are you going to join us?"
"Yes," said Obi-Wan, unable to keep the bite of bitter recrimination from his voice. Before the war no Master would have dared to show such naked aggression toward another, but they were a fallen order, a ragged band of monks clinging to their ideals by the skin of their teeth. Obi-Wan crossed the floor where once Anakin had stood for assessment, and he took his seat.
"Begun, the council has," Yoda said. "What business today concerns us?"
"The Menari District remains under firm Separatist control," said Mace. "The 488th has faltered in its attempts to provide ground support for aerial raids. If we're going to throw them off of this planet, we're going to need to recommit."
Anakin waved his gloved prosthetic hand. "The 501st has been assigned to the Menari district," he said. "They'll get it done."
"Under whose command?" Plo Koon asked, his vox-filtered voice rough.
"Mine," said Anakin, smug. He crossed his legs. "The Chancellor wants the district flushed. We threaten their command center, we get them to commit to a decisive battle. The big push comes in a little under four months."
Silence slammed down on the five assembled councilors. The others were in the field. Ki-Adi, Master Fisto, Agen Kolar, Master Rancisis, Master Piell... The Jedi Order was thinned, a living representation of the gutted Council Chamber. Obi-Wan felt the prospect of a grand counteroffensive deep in the pit of his stomach. How many would die? And a 501st Senatorial legion. The cloners pocket more credits, close their grip on our security even tighter. He still had nightmares, sometimes, of the sterile halls of the Kaminoan cloning complexes where he'd seen millions of Jango Fetts drilling in lockstep, millions more jogging along tracks in ten-year-old bodies, millions more hanging pale and fetal in amniotic quickgro tanks.
Obi-Wan thought of the Neimoidian officer who'd surrendered to him just a few hours before. What would happen to Neimoidia, that swampy, dingy planet if the Republic triumphed? Would it follow Duros, fusion-bombed into irreparable pollution and chaos? Would Palpatine exercise vengeance, or justice? Obi-Wan tried to read the answer in his one-time apprentice's face, or in his deep presence in the Force, but there was only the faint smile on Anakin's lips and a slick, heavy sense of triumph coiled around his heart.
DOOKU
He waited, sitting cross-legged in the Memorial Garden in the shadow of Qui-Gon's statue, one of the many erected in tribute to the war's valorous dead. The senate's remaining members didn't frequent the garden, and anyone who came too close found themselves suddenly overcome by the certainty that they should be elsewhere. Dooku was just beginning to wonder whether or not the woman would come when he sensed her entering the atrium.
She came reluctantly, full of fear, full of self-loathing. That was good. Dooku shifted. He had foregone his usual dark suit and half-cape; instead he wore a loose-fitting black robe and vest that suited his mood better. He felt old. His hair was uncombed, his beard untrimmed. Flitting avians buzzed between flowers, their brightly-colored feathers shimmering in the dim lighting. A knee-height stone fountain burbled away in the shadow of Qui-Gon's statue.
Padmé Naberrie stood in turmoil at the grotto's edge. Dooku dipped a cupped hand into the fountain, raised it, and drank. "Sit," he said, gesturing to the bench opposite his.
Her discomfiture at seeing him, the notorious traitor, in the center of her idyllic little government was satisfying in the extreme. Dooku allowed himself a smile. She sat. She was, the Count reflected, very lovely. Even harried and conflicted she presented an outwardly unruffled countenance to the world. Red gown, trailing sleeves, topaz choker, hair styled into a sleek, oiled knot. Her slender neck reminded him of Asajj's, and there his inspection ended.
The senator's emotions, while open to an adept of the Force, were not entirely unguarded, either. Had she been born poor the Order would have snatched her from her cradle, Dooku mused. His own mother had fought his father's decision to offer him up for training, had fought it tooth and nail in Serenno's courts, and then in the Republic's. In the end, though, they had taken the old Count's heir away at the tender age of four to be trained in that echoing mausoleum on Coruscant. "Good evening, madam senator," Dooku said.
Padmé said nothing. She looked like a cornered animal, tense and ready to bolt at the first whiff of trouble. She must know she would never leave this alcove. He could see it now, the lightsaber slashing that white throat, the ruby droplets of blood steaming on the tiles. He had always been made of sterner stuff than other men; he had always been willing to do what needed doing. He dipped his hand into the fountain and drank from it. The water was cold and clean, another ridiculous extravagance for the Senate's toadies while Coruscant starved. "Someone has taught you how to shield your thoughts, madam senator."
She said nothing. Her brown eyes met his, though, and they were full of cold fire.
Dooku shook droplets of water from his veined and spotted hand. When did I become so old? "Who was your instructor? Let me see if I can remember my Naboo court politics..." He pursued his lips and pretended to think while probing at the senator's mind, assessing her defenses. They were impressive, for a novice. "It couldn't have been that fool Queen Palpatine's animal bisected. She was only a child. Naboo always has been caught up in its own youthful idealism.
"Not Panaka; plenty of discipline, but no patience for mysticism. Bibble struck me as more of an empty suit stuffed with principles, and your family hasn't a hint of potential. So...it must have been Master Shenka. Court Jedi, twelve twenty-three to twelve sixty-six."
He could see he'd gotten it right in the way she set her jaw. Teti Shenka, a veteran of the Order's old guard, had died in one of the CIS bombing runs on Duro.
"Yes," Padmé bit out.
Dooku shrugged. "She did a shoddy job."
Anger. No sign on the face, but the ripples in the Force were unmistakable. Dooku savored that taste; he had trouble mustering rage at will, a block that had slowed his training for years. "The Jedi believe that the body must be controlled, that emotions must be shackled, that self-discipline is everything." He touched the jewel-bright minds of the avians flitting all around him, compelling them to fly in serried ranks. Padmé's eyes followed them. Dooku let them go and they dispersed, rattled. "It has some merit. The undisciplined mind is weak, but discipline does not always mean self-denial.
"Do you love your children?"
It was an old challenge, part of the litmus test for potential Sith acolytes already burdened with progeny. He felt her answer, a tangled skein of love, fear, suspicion, and belligerence. Her eyes flashed. "Yes."
"You would do anything for them."
The first tremor of uncertainty cracked her stately mask. He saw Anakin in her, the madman around which luminaries like Qui-Gon and Palpatine hung their hopes. She swallowed. "I would."
"That is of the Sith." He hoped Skywalker had not infected her with his schizophrenic rage, his pathological inability to channel his potential. "Love is strength, not weakness. The anger you feel now...you want to kill me.
"Good."
He drew his unlit lightsaber with a flick of his wrist. The curved hilt fit his palm as naturally as though it had always been there. "Would you like to try?" He flipped the hilt and offered it to her, butt first. "I won't tell you that my death means the end of the war, nor will I tell you that the defeat of the CIS would serve any purpose except, inevitably, to further Palpatine's agenda. Nevertheless, I have coerced you here and feel compelled to offer you a chance to vent your spleen."
The fountain gurgled. Padmé stared at him, never once looking at the lightsaber. Hate bubbled behind her flushed face. She threw herself at him. He'd never have guessed she'd try it, but he was ready nonetheless. He threw himself sideways and summoned up the Force, wrapping himself in its thunderous eddies and currents as Padmé hit the bench and spun to face him, fear blooming in her heart. He wrapped her throat in bands of steel.
"This is your first lesson," he said as she rose up from the ground at his silent command, her delicate feet kicking at nothing, her hands clawing at her throat. "Your death is never further away than my displeasure."
He dropped her and she crumpled to the floor, coughing and wheezing, her face red. Another burst of will flipped her over onto her back. Dooku flung against the base of Qui-Gon's statue with a gesture and kept her pinned there, his hand outstretched. "I can walk into the Senate Round unquestioned," he said. It was not a boast. "Believe that your apartment represents no challenge to my powers." He released his grip on the Force. "Tomorrow you will meet me in district 9-12 outside an establishment called The One-Eared Vrelt at half past midnight. We will discuss your future.
"Am I understood?"
She stood, shaky and disheveled, fear and despair writhing inside her. "I understand," she spat out at last. "What should I tell-"
"I haven't the faintest idea," said Dooku, smiling. He returned his lightsaber to his sleeve and turned his back on the senator. "Think on hatred, madam senator. I'll expect you at the Vrelt."
He left by the grand stair, reaching out with the Force to quell curious looks and blooming fear in the clones and senators he met there. To them, he was just another old human; they did not apprehend his true nature.
Dooku of Serenno was the first raindrop heralding the storm that was to come.
JANGO
Something was wrong. He had hands, but they were not his hands. He checked them, when the cameras focused on someone else. The weathered palms, the scarred knuckles, the pronounced veins just beneath his olive skin. Those things were right, but the hands were wrong. The voices agreed. They whispered that someone had stolen his real hands, that someone was to blame, that the food at the table was poisoned and Boba was a machine set to watch him, or else his beloved son, defenseless in the Republic's crumbling embrace. Now, dressed in full Mandalorian battle kit and standing behind the Chancellor on the central podium of the Senate Rotunda, Jango Fett considered his surroundings. How had he come so far so quickly? It made no sense. He remembered Tyranus, no, Dooku(they were the same man), recruiting him, remembered the operating room on Kamino and, later, the tanks full of (not him). The Chancellor was giving a speech. Jango listened.
"...with great reluctance accept the responsibilities thrust upon my person by this Republic's dire predicament. We stand upon the brink, my friends, and our enemy prepares for a clash that will surely ruin one or both of us. What can we do but fight on? What hope is there but unity, but strength, but unflinching commitment to the ideals of this Republic! We will fight on, we will persevere, and we will never surrender to tyranny!"
More executive powers. More troops recruited, and (made). More rights revoked, and always the creeping progress of pro-human, pro-male legislation pushed forward by Senators like Kuwat of Kuwat, Senators like Aldar Dreyn of Corellia, like Wislaw Coriolanus of Fondor. All the great industrialists cheering Palpatine onward, onward, onward(to the graveyard where the Mandalores are buried side by side, their empty armor the last ruined rags of their grandeur). Jango scowled behind his war-mask. Muscles moved in his face, but they were not his muscles. It was not his face.
Palpatine's weathered countenance, transmitted system-wide via holonet and displayed on every mural-screen on Coruscant, bows in mournful reverence. "Let us not forget the brave troops who give their lives for our safety," he intoned, clasping his wrinkled hands. He wore a robe of black brocade with bloused red sleeves and a high collar. It made him look like one of the carrion-eating reptavians Jango had seen when he'd (died) on Tattooine.
"May the Force be with our soldiers," Palpatine said. Transmissions cut out. The ceremonial acceptance of the vote to extend Palpatine's term finally came to an end and the central podium was descending toward the iris in the Senate floor that led back to the Chancellor's outer office. The iris cycled open, durasteel teeth parting. Discontent in the Senate was widespread. Senators watched the Chancellor's speech with sullen expressions, and if the loyalists were cheering louder than ever before, the silence from the rest was deafening. Empty seats, scars on the body politic, drew attention to the thousands of worlds that had withdrawn from the Republic. Jango watched the angry faces of the Senators pass by. Bothans, Ithorians, Talz, Nikto, Gran, and numberless others.
The podium sank through the open iris, disengaged its repulsors and met its docking station with a hiss of hydraulics. Palpatine, followed by Mas Amedda, stepped off onto the tiled floor, two red-robed guardsmen falling into line to his either side. Jango watched them, wondering if one of them was his real self. How many times had he seen (not his) face on the holonet, or in the vids? He stood abandoned in the outer office, forgotten by Palpatine and his retinue. He took off his helmet, ran someone else's hand through someone else's hair. He was not himself, but the armor was his.
The voices told him to kill Amedda, to kill Boba, to kill the Senators, to murder the clones and the Jedi and every Rodian female he could find and to write True Things in their blood on the steps of the Senate, but he restrained himself. Instead, he sat down on the podium and let his helmet roll away across the floor. He held his head in his hands, praying that when the war was over he would be allowed to die.
(How many times have I died already?)
In his apartment, or someone else's, Boba was doing figures at his desk in the stark, spare room Jango had assigned him. A son had to be strong, and strength came from privation. Jango watched his clone (himself? Another man's son?) from the doorway, unnoticed. He felt a deep, aching love for the boy, but he feared him. He feared everything. The diodes on the grav lift, the ship people said was his (who would name a ship Slave?), his armor, the coarse dark hair on his chest and his arms. In his own room, a bare-walled cell furnished only with a refresher and a military cot, Jango stripped off his polished kit, his disarmed jetpack, his ceremonial pistols. He was a false Mandalorian, a puppet Mandalore for a dead race of men who'd been noble, who'd stood for something. He dropped down onto his cot and put his head in his hands, breathing (with someone else's lungs).
"Dad?" came Boba's voice from the doorway.
Jango looked up. His clone was watching him, concern in his (their) eyes. "Go to bed, Boba," he said dully. "We'll practice your stances in the morning."
"I've been having bad dreams."
Palpatine, the lightsaber blazing to crimson life in his hands, blood running from his broken nose, Jango's own wrists hacked through in a searing wash of pain and then light, light, and the water closing over-
-nothing.
Jango looked at his son. "Go to bed," he said. "Warriors don't have bad dreams."
ANAKIN
Anakin lay beside Padmé in their bed, his arms around her. Her dreams were bad tonight, bad enough to poison the air in their bedroom and keep Anakin from sleep. He had tried to shut her out, but his own defenses were too brittle, and he was too attuned to her. He'd tried meditation, but the forge-fire at his center defeated him in that, too. He was a stripped wire, a raw nerve. Only his makeshift sheathe of absolute control kept his wife's nightmares, and Coruscant's, from becoming his own.
He sat up and ran his flesh-and-blood hand through his short brown hair. Padmé stirred in her sleep, sweat standing out on her brow. He left her in their bed and went out into the common area. It feels cold, he thought as he poured himself a finger of Corellian brandy from the sideboard. His stump ached and his artificial fingers twitching involuntarily. He took his drink out onto their privacy-screened and shielded balcony. The city-planet stretched out smearily beyond the barrier, a haphazard pattern of light and dark expressed in hive-like tenement sprawls, the soaring towers of the affluent, the smoking factories that drove the Grand Army's war machine.
Somewhere out there was Dooku, the Rancor lurking at the heart of the Confederate threat. Anakin suppressed his fury at having missed his chance to kill the traitor, to make Palpatine proud, to avenge the Order... The Order. They're spying on the Chancellor; they scorn my Council seat. I have to keep my wife, my children a secret from them. What do I owe them? He sipped his drink and thought of Obi-Wan, of meditating together atop a windswept pylon near Coruscant's southern pole, of their six-month trek through the fungal forests of Felucia, the practice duels they'd fought on the Temple proving grounds with cheering Padawans looking on, the pride he'd felt when Obi-Wan had cut his Padawan's braid and declared him a Jedi Knight.
Then the war had begun and the bitter arguments had begun. Obi-Wan had discovered Anakin's secret, his hidden family, and everything had spiraled into a nasty vortex of resentment. Anakin sipped his brandy. The world beat against his shell, howling and clawing, eager to sink spit-slick teeth into his sanity. He held it back with his buckling will. He could feel his children dreaming sweet, small dreams in their cradle. They slept together, brow to brow, their world safe and quiet. The distant strobing flashes of turbolaser fire, dulled to silence by the apartment's shielding, were worlds away. Anakin finished his drink, closed his eyes, and then smashed the glass against the railing.
His comlink chimed while he was picking shards of glass out of his hand. The Chancellor requests your presence in his office, it read. Please attend at earliest convenience.
Anakin wiped his bloody hand on his robe and went inside to change.
