CHAPTER FIVE: Mace

ANAKIN

The flight to the Rotunda was brief, the cityscape below black and silent. Palpatine's secretary, Roganda, let Anakin into the Chancellor's offices. They were deserted, the holo-displays around the desk dead and silent. Busts of obscure men and women, figures out of the Republic's shrouded past, watched Anakin with sightless marble eyes as he crossed the polished Netch-wood floor of the antechamber with its wall carvings depicting in bas relief the Tenth Battle of Coruscant when the Republic had retaken its capital from the Sith Empire. The Jedi had led the charge against the Sith Emperor's Palace and, though the Order had been decimated, they had triumphed over their ancient foes. Anakin walked through the familiar tasteful rooms, his eyes heavy with sleep, his thoughts slow.

The journal was plain, bound in black leather, its pages yellowing around the edges. It lay open on its first page and the neat, orderly Arabesh handwriting of its author stood out bold against the aging paper. Anakin moved to the lip of the desk and looked down at the journal. It looked so odd and out of place in the Chancellor's sleek, modern office. Almost against his will, Anakin looked down at the first page and began to read. If Palpatine had wanted it kept secret, he would have locked it up.

Six months on Naboo. The swamps are lovely, if malarial, and at last we've secured a suitable specimen, a human slave girl I bought off of Trandoshan pirates using the ruins of Bunut Gunga as a smuggling base. She has survived our initial experiments and conceived without insemination. We haven't had such a rousing success since the Twi'Lek twins, and they died before coming to term. Shmi's health is excellent, though. Master Plagueis is excited.

Cold. Anakin felt cold. He could see it clearly, now, the house in the swamp and the dark-haired young man talking to his mother by the window while outside a herd of Faamba lumbered past in the morning mist. His trembling fingers turned the page.

Ten months. Halfway to term, and longer than either of the Twi'Leks survived. Shmi is ill on and off, but the fetus is healthy and growing fast. Already Lord Plagueis can sense its presence in the Force, and sometimes I think I can as well. I've never known him to be wrong, though I do grow frustrated with his failure to properly instruct me in the methods of the immortality trance. He sleeps often these days, and my instruction has fallen by the wayside since he bestowed my title on me. I am called Sidious now, after an ancient Darth of the Emperor's council.

Thirteen months. Shmi is very sick, but the day is close and now I'm sure I feel the child. Two months remain before she reaches term, and Lord Plagueis is worried. We spend most days in the laboratory with her, meditating to keep her fever down. We've even engaged several physicians from Theed, though of course they'll have to be put to death once this is all over. Plagueis is realizing what I did months ago: we should be working inside the system, not clinging to its fringes. He is too much the mystic, but I have Naboo birth records and documentation. When the time comes I can enter society and make a bid for office. I know I can accomplish great things.

Sixteen months. Child and mother are alive. Shmi has named him Anakin, and he is powerful, almost unimaginably so. He does not cry. He seldom sleeps. Lord Plagueis is beside himself. He says that we have secured the triumph of the Sith. He has less time for me than ever, and he refuses to share his notes and holocrons. He means, I think, to keep his secrets from me. Very well. Let him. Treachery, after all, is the way of the Sith.

Anakin felt hot tears course down his cheeks.

Thirty-seven months. Anakin is growing fast. Just yesterday Lord Plagueis felt him touch the Force, though he confided in me that he suspects the Force may touch Anakin of its own accord. The implications are stupendous. The boy has taken a liking to me, and so I am once again indispensable to Plagueis. Without me Anakin is willful and unfocused, but in my presence he can be shaped and taught with ease. My own unique connection to the Force, it seems, interacts with his in a favorable manner. He has begun to love me, and I confess I am won over. He is a charming child.

Thirty-eight months. Plagueis has given me his notes and his own personal instruction. Anakin's development continues apace.

Thirty-nine months. I have contracted the Trandoshans for an assault on the house. The time has come for an end to Plagueis's hermetic absurdities. I must have unfettered access to Anakin, and time to perfect the techniques my Master has taught me.

Forty months. Disaster. I am undone. My Master is dead by my hand, his manse destroyed, but the Trandoshans cannot find Shmi and her son. Suspecting treachery, I slew every slaver I could find, but when I arrived in Bunut Gunga I found their ships vanished, their bases abandoned. This is the end of Plagueis's grand experiment, and a crippling setback to my own research.

Fuck the slavers and their idiocy.

"They stole you, of course," said Palpatine. He stood in the doorway, hands clasped together, looking old and worn. "I was young, and stupid to trust in the word of slavers."

Anakin let the journal fall from his hands. There was a ringing in his ear. "What does this mean?" he heard himself say. "What is this? I was born on Tatooine." His voice broke.

"No, Anakin." Palpatine's smile was tired. "No."

The furnace inside Anakin cracked. Volcanic fury boiled out. His lightsaber was in his hand before he knew it. Three feet of sapphire plasma snapped into existence with a furious hiss of boiling air. "You're Sith. You're the one the Council is looking for." White-hot anger made his skin itch. He felt as though he would burst into flame at any second, as though his brain would fry, as though his false arm would melt into slag. The raw blaster scar on his left cheek ached horribly. "Did you start this war?" Fear rattled like a swarm of daggerflies in his belly. "Tell me."

The Chancellor's sad smile faded. "Are you going to kill me, Anakin?" He let his hands fall to his side. "You had better decide quickly."

Anakin stepped forward, leveling his lightsaber at the throat of the man who had raised him up from nothing, who had embraced him as a son in front of the whole galaxy and then, in truth, when no one was watching. Blue light washed Palpatine's wrinkled skin, and for an instant Anakin glimpsed something else beneath it. "Did you start the war?" he snarled.

"Yes," said Palpatine. His eyes glowed a dirty, carious yellow in the light of the Jedi weapon. "Yes, I started this war, but to purify the Galaxy, to strengthen it, to end the tyranny of the bureaucrats and the self-righteous arbitration of the Jedi.

"Now," said Palpatine, "Mace Windu and his thugs are on the stairs. Are you with me, or against me? Take a moment to think on it."

Anakin stared at the other man, at the Sith, at his mentor. His heart smoked. His false fingers creaked on his lightsaber's hilt, and he ground his teeth so hard he thought they'd break. Tears leaked from his eyes, hot and bitter.

"Whether you kill me or not, Anakin," Palpatine said, "you've made me very proud."

Anakin swung his lightsaber at the Chancellor's face with a roar of pained anger. The old man's pale blue eyes never left his, never widened the slightest bit. All that Anakin could feel from him was love. He palmed the activator stud and flung the deactivated lightsaber aside. It rolled away across the floor and suddenly he was in Palpatine's arms, folded in a strong embrace, his face buried in the Chancellor's shoulder, and he sobbed until he thought his heart would break.

"There now," Palpatine murmured to him. "Don't fret. You're safe with me."

There were footsteps on the stairs outside the office doors. Anakin clung to his friend like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood, desperate and insensate. Warm, comforting darkness enfolded him like a blanket, smothering the fires that ate at his innards. An endless world of thick, black fog.

"You're safe."

MACE

Mace led Shaak Ti, Eeth Koth, Kit Fisto, Plo Koon, and Saesee Tiin up the steps of the Chancellor's private tower suite. The Rotunda's lights glittered through the clearplast wall on his left, and beyond them were the beacons lighting the Jedi Temple. Palpatine's outer office was deserted, the doors to his inner sanctum closed. Mace paused ten strides from the door, his fellow councilors fanning out around him. He opened himself to the Force and extended his senses, probing beyond the graven bronzium-sheathed doors. Palpatine was the Sith he sought. There was no other answer to the puzzle that was the Galactic Civil War.

Beyond the door a swirling darkness waited, a deep well of silent night, a coagulation of the obfuscating gloom that had shrouded the Force throughout the course of the war. Mace looked at Kit Fisto, his oldest friend on the council, and nodded to the Nautolan Jedi. Kit inhaled, head-tentacles squirming, and stretched out a webbed hand toward the door. The heavy plates shifted, grinding in their slots, and then slammed home into the walls. The way was clear. Mace led his comrades on.

He has to be removed, he told himself again. For the Republic. Organa can serve as interim Chancellor while we negotiate a ceasefire and move toward peace.

Mace strode past the Supreme Chancellor's murals and statuary, his brown robe billowing in the dead, filtered air. He drew more deeply on the Force, lowering himself into its gentle eddies, letting himself feel the reality of the world around him. Darkness clung to everything like a lifeless caul, wet and sagging. Mace drew his lightsaber. The others did the same. They passed through the antechamber and emerged into Palpatine's office where the Chancellor sat behind his desk in a high-collared black robe and patterned red stole. He looked up at Mace's entrance.

"Master Windu." The Chancellor sounded frightened.

"Supreme Chancellor Palpatine," said Plo Koon, stepping forward and displaying a holo-warrant, "the Jedi Council finds you under extreme suspicion of graft, fomenting war, ordering assassination without Senatorial approval, and collusion with or involvement in the cult of the Sith. For these charges you will be arrested and held at the Jedi Temple, your office filled by an elected candidate, your personal assets frozen, and your powers suspended."

"The Sith?" Palpatine came to his feet, outrage and confusion warring in his expression. "Corruption? What is this nonsense, Master Windu?"

"The cost of your tyranny is high enough, Palpatine." Mace ignited his lightsaber. The others followed suit, save for Master Koth and Master Tiin, who closed their eyes and prepared themselves to detain the Chancellor with the Force.

"Please," said Palpatine, frantic, "there's been some mistake! Put your weapons away!"

"You are under arrest, Chancellor," said Mace, leveling his violet lightsaber at Palpatine's face. "In the name of the Republic, you are under arrest." He bit the words out through clenched teeth, unable to set aside his anger at what the monster before him had done. The war, the corruption, the endless fields of the dead lying at Palpatine's feet.

"Help!" Palpatine cried. "Guards!" He produced an electrum-plated lightsaber from somewhere in the blink of an eye. The snap-hiss as its crimson blade snarled into existence made Mace's blood run cold. "The Jedi are taking over!" He stabbed the lightsaber into the desk-mounted com-recorder, producing a fountain of sparks that lit his weathered face and white hair with a ghoulish radiance. He smiled through the smoke and fire. "That's enough of that, don't you think?"

The desk crushed Tiin before Mace could shift his stance. Eight hundred pounds of polished boma-wood flew across the office and smashed into the Ikotchi Jedi like a runaway bantha. Jedi and desk struck the wall in an explosion of blood and splinters. The others moved, but too slow. Too slow. Palpatine blurred across the intervening space, moving impossibly fast and low to the ground, and suddenly Skywalker was there, too, a black blur wielding a bar of sapphire light. Palpatine cut Eeth Koth down in a spray of pressurized blood, the cut executed so fast it failed to cauterize.

No, thought Mace, turning sluggishly to deflect the Sith Lord's thrust. The ruby blade's heat kissed his cheek. This isn't happening like it should.

Skywalker hammered at Kit's defenses, beating the Nautolan back from the press as Palpatine spun away from Mace to trade blows with Shaak Ti. The Togruta let out a wild battle-cry and swung at the Chancellor with brutal strength. Palpatine turned the blow and his riposte scored her ribs and ignited her robes. She twirled, batting another slash aside as she shrugged out of her smoldering robe in a single fluid motion. In her black singlesuit, gashed at the waist, she fought like a tempest. Palpatine cut her arm off in a spray of sparks, then impaled her through the heart. She fell; Plo spun past her toppling corpse, his sulfurous-yellow lightsaber swinging at Palpatine's face.

The Kel-Dor's head spun through the air, trailing ash and blood. It hit the floor and rolled.

Mace, his heart aching, dashed forward and swung at Palpatine, but the Chancellor danced back with a cruel grin on his pointed face. Behind him, Skywalker had pinned Kit to the wall with a monumental exertion of the Force. Mace could hardly stand to be so close to the Chosen One; it was like standing in a fire. How did Palpatine turn him? How did I miss this?

"Anakin, no!" Mace cried.

Anakin looked at him, eyes bloodshot and mouth twisted, and then he plunged his lightsaber up through Kit's chin and into the wall. The Nautolan jerked once, then sagged to his knees, his own weight opening his skull on Skywalker's blade.

PADME

Padmé woke from dark, confusing dreams of blood and betrayal to the sound of the twins wailing in their nursery. By the time she put on her silk dressing robe and slipped inside the warmly-painted room with its toys, its cloth books, and its mobiles, Nuodo had emerged from her room and was rocking both babies in her long, spindly reddish arms while her two mouths emitted comforting huffs of air. She was a mute. Padmé took Shmi, kissing the baby girl's hands and brow to quiet her. The girl whimpered against her chest.

"It's alright," Padmé whispered. She touched Qui-Gon's feathery hair with her free hand. "Mommy's here. Mommy loves you." She swayed, rocking Shmi back and forth while Nuodo cradled Qui-Gon. Anakin had insisted on the names. It left Padmé surrounded by memories, entombed with her husband's dead mother and the wise, quiet man who had saved her from Naboo. The man she still dreamed of sometimes, when Anakin was away.

Something was wrong. She could feel it in the air, or in herself, like a complex stench unfolding from a heap of garbage. Anakin, she thought, and for an instant she saw his screaming face, veins bulging at his temples, face bathed in the glow of his lightsaber. Then he was gone. She sat down on the chair beside Nuodo's, her daughter's small fingers clutching at her right breast. Was it Dooku? Had Anakin attacked him, or was it the other way around.

Padmé drew a deep, shuddering breath. She felt faint. Her heart pounded like a piston.

She saw blood and shadow.

MACE

They faced each other across the ruined office, sheets of flimsyplast drifting in the air like leaves, scorch marks and blood dragged across the floor, the walls, the panoramic window. The bodies of the others Mace had come with lay on the floor in various states of dismemberment. Mace himself leaned heavily against a bisected sculpture in his scorched and tattered robes, his lightsaber sparking fitfully in his hand. Palpatine had scored a shallow cut across its control surface, and Skywalker had grazed him several times. He'd lost blood.

The Chancellor was panting, points of color in his cheeks, but Anakin, spattered from head to toe in blood, seethed with ready menace.

"It's over, Jedi," Palpatine breathed. He savored each word like a delicacy. His irises were a lurid yellow, and his face seemed more ravaged than before, his skin infected with a greenish tinge, his teeth rotten and crooked. He grinned, his mouth like an open grave. "Surrender, and you will be treated equitably."

The real Chancellor at last, thought Mace. He shoved himself away from the statue and deactivated his faltering lightsaber. "I am a Knight of the Jedi Order." There was heat in his voice, a smoldering anger he couldn't shut out, couldn't bury with restraint. "I am a shield to the Galactic Republic." He shrugged out of his robe, falling deeper into the Force, past pain, past tranquility into the raw, animal pulse of the Living Force, the roar of vital energy he had known in the jungles of Haruun Kal. "I learned at Yoda's knee." He clenched his fists. His knuckles cracked audibly.

He had failed his master, he had failed his friends, his allies, the vast ocean of citizenry he had been trained and raised to protect. Here, though, he had a chance to redeem himself. As he sank deeper into the Force he saw the shatterpoint he occupied, the crux on which the whole galaxy turned. Here, now, in the Chancellor's office were three men who would shape centuries to come. Cracks crazed the looking-glass of fate, shifting and creaking with ominous import.

One chance.

Mace Windu spat on the floor. "Come and get me, you Sith trash."