CHAPTER EIGHT: To Blood

DOOKU

She met him at the One-Eared Vrelt. He'd half-suspected that she wouldn't come, but there she was at the entrance in an elegant wrap of grey synth-silk, a hood raised to hide her face. She needn't have bothered. No one on Coruscant, especially none of the beings now clamoring and dancing and fornicating on the ground floor of the One-Eared Vrelt, cared about politics anymore. Eyes followed her. Gossam, Aqualish, humans, a score of races; the Senator was beautiful. Even surrounding by pulsing lights and the garish pornography of the wall-mounted vid displays, she stood out.

She came to stand beside Dooku at the scarred, stained bar. She ordered a glass of firewine from the morose Duros bartender. Dooku could feel the anguish in her, the hole that Skywalker's betrayal had punched through her heart. And all it took was a few low-rent assassins sent into the building. Dooku had hired idiots, then called an anonymous tip in to the clones guarding the apartment complex. Skywalker had seen the bodies, though, and the guards had reported the attempt. Fathers are all alike. We just want our children kept safe.

Mothers want them kept close.

"Senator."

She sipped her firewine, points of color kindling in her cheeks. Under her hood her hair was disheveled, her usual cosmetics absent. "You did it." The declaration was both absolute and desperately fragile. She had spent hours convincing herself. "You did this to us."

"Yes," he said, setting down his own glass of cheap Fondorian nettle-liquor. "I forced your husband to kill his comrades, swear allegiance to the Dark Lord of the Sith, and murder a room full of wailing children. It was during one of our non-existent meetings that I first planted the seeds that have driven Anakin Skywalker to madness."

She blanched as though he'd slapped her in the face. "Do you think I'm an idiot?" She thrust her face close to his, teeth bared and eyes wild. A lock of her dark hair hung out of place. "He would never have killed his fellow Jedi. This is all a part of your sick game."

The bar's patrons paid them no mind. Dooku had long ago found that dives like this one were the best places in the galaxy to conduct business discretely. The face he had built for himself, the master statesman and the orator, was not one that would crop up in the One-Eared Vrelt. He wore a plain suit and hadn't bothered with a shave. His lightsaber was hidden in his sleeve. Now that he and Poggle had commenced their race against the clock there was no room for error or detection; Palpatine's spies could not be allowed to apprehend his movements.

He tossed back his drink, then met Padmé Naberrie's frantic gaze. "I have never spoken to your husband," he said. "Palpatine corrupted him. Last night he slew the children of the Jedi Temple in the Council Chamber. I felt the disturbance in the Force myself, as, I'm sure, did you. It's why he sent your own children away.

"It must be torture, not knowing where they are."

He had her. Pain put faint lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. "You have them."

"My agents took them in orbit." It had been close work. In truth he had led the boarding party himself, and the clones guarding the shuttle had put up a savage fight. "They're waiting near Serenno, safe in the Sith Academy."

She wanted to kill him. That same hot-tempered instinct she'd displayed the night that he, unbeknownst to her, had begun her training. "Sith Academy?" She spoke through her teeth.

"We have been too few for too long." He paid for their drinks and slipped his arm through hers. The gyrating crowd parted for them as he led her toward the door and the pouring night. "It is time for a new ruling class. An ascendant humanity. Will you walk with me?"

Her lips whitened. Tears welled up in her eyes. She nodded.

The maimed cityscape, half-hidden by the sheeting rain, greeted them outside the club. This far down Coruscant was a ko-spider's web of durasteel walkways and yawning chasms. Lights glittered like greasfires in the distance. Most of the entertainment district was dark but high, high above Dooku could see the flickering exchanges of a major sortie between Confederate and Republic armadas. It looked like stars trading fire, bright lights lashing out at one another. Padmé kept close to him as they moved through the sparse walkway crowd toward a sleek black speeder.

Dooku felt a prickle at the back of his neck. He opened the speeder's doors with a wave of his hand and helped the Senator into the passenger's seat. "I suggest you buckle in," he said. "I suspect this is about to become substantially more interesting." He felt the blaster bolt coming like a climax, a series of hot murmurs in his skin. His lightsaber slipped from his sleeve, the curved hilt in his palm like something that had never left. Ruby light blazed and the incoming bolt flew back up and into the dark. He swung himself up into the driver's seat and embraced the Force just as a pair of LAAT-series gunships dropped down through the rain, floodlights washing over the walkway, blister-mounted cannons already firing. A dead clone hung from his crash webbing in one of the guns, his helmet neatly holed at the temple. Dooku laughed. Padmé, to her credit, uttered only a single terrified sound as he undocked the speeder and threw it into a dead plunge.

Duracrete and support girders flew past at dizzying speeds as Dooku, fiery power clawing through his bloodstream, primed the speeder's engines. They dropped like a stone into the planet's depths. Walkways and bridges whipped past them. The engines roared to life, repulsors filling the luxuriant cabin with static, and then they were off. Dooku laughed, juking to avoid a battered old freighter lifting off from a mobile dock. The LAATs were still on his tail, though far behind and high above. Their wings and heavy armaments made them difficult to maneuver in the cramped quarters of the planet's underlevels; whoever had sent them, Palpatine or Skywalker, had been scrambling.

"What the hell are you doing?" Padmé screamed over the howling of the speeder's engines.

"You were followed," Dooku replied, hauling back on the control yoke to jump a low-lying neon sign advertising a Skakoan specialty whorehouse's wares. "I suspected it might be the case. Fortunately, my ship is only a few hundred kilometers from here."

"Your ship?" The voice weak, fearful. She still hadn't internalized her betrayal. "What?"

"Don't play stupid." Blaster fire raked the face of a warehouse as one of the LAATs dropped into the kill position behind them. Dooku killed the engine governors. The cockpit warmed by a few degrees as they leapt forward. "You agreed to leave with me as soon as you walked into that bar. You've already begun your journey toward true knowledge, Senator." He shot through a narrow gap between two catwalks, terrifying a crowd of Gran. "Now be silent."

They lost the gunships, outstripping them as Dooku slipped deeper and deeper into the Force. The world around him was fire and lightning, so bright that it clawed at his eyes and his soul. He tore through it like a freezing knife. He was so tired by the time he docked the speeder in the hold of the corvette Darth Malak, stationed over the Twin Suns apartment complex deep in CIS territory,that it was all he could do to stagger out of the still-whining vehicle and accept a moist towel from one of the valet droids. He noticed for the first time that his private comlink was chiming frantically. Palpatine. It brought a smile to his slack and weary face.

The crew had their instructions. They were bound for orbit before the Count and his guest gained the bridge. Coruscant dwindled behind them, a scarred jewel hanging in the void. The jump to hyperspace lifted years from Dooku's shoulders. He sat upright and pensive in his command chair, no longer in his plain traveling clothes but a fine black suit and half-cape, his lightsaber proudly restored to his belt. Padmé sat beside him in the first officer's seat. The droid bridge crew went about their duties silently and the lone Neimoidian steersman had little more to say.

"I'll kill you if they're hurt," the Senator said. Her voice was flat. Dead.

Dooku said nothing. He let himself fall through the Force for the long first hours of the journey through hyperspace, let himself become a drop of rain and meld seamlessly with the raging ocean of the galaxy. Behind him he could feel the vast malevolence of his master rousing itself in Coruscant's gravity well, a great beast stirred to fury after centuries of slumber. I'm gambling everything, Dooku thought. This has become too personal. Qui-Gon, Asajj...

He vaguely sensed Padmé's departure to the crew quarters in the lower decks. She was grieving for her husband. It was only natural. In time he retired to his own apartments. They took breakfast together most mornings. He was gentle with her in the absence of her children, keeping to the very basics of the Sith philosophy and history. She was a receptive student, if a distracted one. The days blurred into weeks. She ate little, slept badly. Dooku meditated in his chambers.

The Darth Malak exited hyperspace near Serenno's eastern continent's morning nearly a month after entering it near the black of night in Coruscant's Menari District. The blue-and-tan sphere of his homeworld stirred a melancholy pleasure in Dooku's breast. Its two moons, Abatt and Cheln, were rising. He rose from his seat. "Helm," he said, "set course for the Sith Academy."

"Yes, Lord Dooku," came the helmsman's nasal reply. The viewscreen shifted, blurring, and the frigate adjusted its course. A new moon joined the planet's two. It was smaller than its siblings, a jagged little sphere cradled in the black, its face marred by a vast grey crater, its lines suspiciously artificial even at so vast a distance.

Padmé joined Dooku a few minutes later. She was clean and immaculately made-up, her hair piled high in an elegant knot, her dress a regal blue brocade with a narrow waist and Trandoshan poetry knots worked into the sleeves and bust. Golden chimes adorned her hair, and they rang softly as she came to a halt a few paces from where Dooku stood. She glanced at him, eyes wide, and then back at the screen. "What...what is that thing?"

The false moon grew larger in the viewscreen. "The future," Dooku said.

JANGO

He was Jango. The man across the room from him was Jango. The guards at the door were Jango. His son, studying in his room, was Jango. It made perfect sense. He could just explain everything to (Jango) and then Boba would be safe, even if he died. The other Jangos wouldn't live as long as he could, but there were more of them. They'd take care of the boy.

"You seem very calm today, Master Fett," said Taun We as she examined his ears with a holo-scanner. The graceful Kaminoan was bent nearly double next to the examination chair where Jango sat. "How are your dreams?"

"I dream about Korda 6," he said, because that was what (Jango) dreamed about. "I remember Montross, my second, taking shrapnel in his leg. I remember thinking that I would never fight again after that day." Bloodied fronds of jur-palms swaying in the breeze. Screams of the Mandalorians pinned down by Death Watch commandos. "Fucking zealots."

"Language, Master Fett," Taun We chided gently. The operating room was typically Kaminoan, a plain white dome centered on the chair and the banks of readouts and instrument tables around it. Kamino, the world where he'd (been born and born and born and born and born and-) first seen the other Jangos. He knew the white looked vibrant to the Kaminoans. They were like mating avians to each other, all kind of riotous shades. To him they just looked white (like the armor he wore when he wasn't himself).

"My apologies, Madame Senator."

"You're to lead the insurgent team tasked with bringing back Senator Naberrie." Taun We sounded like a proud parent. "Isn't that an honor, Master Fett?"

"It is, Madame Senator."

"Well don't sound so gloomy, then." She snapped off the holo-scanner and stepped back, straightening to her full height of just under three meters. The smile she wore looked strange on her tiny mouth. Her eyes looked dusty, somehow, as though the light-scribed pupils were leaking motes of perception into the blackness surrounding them. "The Chancellor is depending on you, Jango."

"Yes," said Jango, looking down at (someone's) hands. How many Jangos had he been so far? "Thank you very much, Madame Senator." He hopped down from the chair and rolled his shoulders. "Excuse me. Been a long day." He tried for his rough charm, hoisted his mouth into a tight, roguish grin. She looked appeased as he turned and left the room.

The other Jangos nodded to him at the door. He took a lift back to his apartments, right under the Chancellor's. Bare rooms. Clean desk. Small kitchen, military rations in the cupboards. His armor shone on a special stand in the living area. Boba was running through his exercises in his room. The boy, no, the young man, had grown. He was getting lanky, no longer a child but without the weight and muscle adulthood would give him. Jango leaned against the doorframe and watched him for a while, and then he went into his own room and used his terminal to send a priority request to Mas Amedda's office. Didn't the Chancellor think that his presence at the battle to rescue the Senator would have more impact if he arrived in Slave I?

The Chagrian replied an hour later, his brief message the textual equivalent of a shrug. Whatever you feel is best, General Fett. Surely, your sensibilities for war outstrip my own.

Jango resolved to kill Mas Amedda if he got the chance. He closed his terminal's screen and moved to the floor where he ran through a set of simple breathing and stretching exercises. His hands shook when he was done. There was sweat beaded on his brow. He was old. Older than (Jango).

"Dad?" It was Boba. He stood in the doorway.

"You want to go," said Jango. He used his darkest tone, the one that always presaged a lecture and a stiff penalty. "You want to go on the rescue mission. Into the teeth of Dooku's armada."

"They're driving the Confederates off of Coruscant," Boba said, careful not to beg. He knew Jango hated it when he whined. "I want to fight with you, dad. Like you did with Jaster."

Jango sat down on the edge of his cot. He patted the bed. Boba joined him, already looking disappointed. Jango folded his arms. "I'd already decided to bring you," he said. "You're a man now, Boba. It's time you understood what that means."

The boy blinked, incredulous and leery. "What?"

"You're coming with me." Jango rose and poured them each a tin cup of Mandalorian cut-glass brandy. Boba just stared at his.

"We follow the code of the Mandalorians. Battle is our sacrament. War is our god. It's time for your confirmation." Jango raised his cup.

Boba raised his.

"To blood," said Jango.

"To blood," said his son.

They drank.

OBI-WAN

Bail Organa had sheltered Yoda and a score of survivors in the aftermath of the Temple purge. Most of them were children, survivors of the holo-recorded massacre that Yoda played for Obi-Wan. After watching the recording Obi-Wan went to his guest suite's refresher and stood in the shower for more than an hour. He couldn't remember his last shower. Calm was his only defense, but he had no serenity left in him. Instead there was resignation.

He had failed. He had failed in every way it was possible to do so. He had taken up arms when he should have sought peace. He had neglected a young man in peril. He had ignored the warning signs of that man's fall. He had concealed some of them himself. Padmé. The children. He had been a sword for government rather than a shield for the people. Hot water scalded him as he stood under the shower, head tipped back, eyes closed.

Anakin's children, his secret wife, were gone now. Dooku had taken them. The Republic was gearing up for a final campaign against the retreating Separatists. Obi-Wan turned off the water and stepped out onto the plain black bath mat. He dried himself, trimmed his beard, shaved his neck. She sky outside the glazed and blast-shielded window looked tired and sullen. Bruise-colored clouds swirled over the cityscape. The Menari District was a glowing wasteland in the wake of the final exchange between the fleeing CIS and the Republic's Home Fleet.

Obi-Wan dressed himself brusquely in the plain clothes Bail Organa's staff had provided. Brown trousers, cream shirt, brown coat, sensible boots. He regarded the lightsaber sitting by the sink.

Master, Anakin had said once in the dueling atrium of the Temple, why do we carry lightsabers? He'd been a shade past twenty, a sunburned man with a quiet, fixated intensity.

To remind us of our role, Obi-Wan had answered him. They'd sat together on a stone bench by a reflecting pool. Fondorian carp swam in lazy circles beneath the umber surface. We are protectors, Anakin, and our lives are forfeit in the cause of peace and justice.

"Butchery and stupidity," he said to himself in the vast, luxuriant emptiness of Bail Organa's washroom. He buckled the lightsaber on under his coat and walked out into the hall. A liveried member of the Senator's household staff bowed in passing. They were the most tight-lipped assembly of people Obi-Wan had ever met. Twenty-three Jedi in the spacious apartment and so far they had faced only a cursory security sweep. Palpatine would trade a battle fleet for the contents of this house.

Just being on the same planet as the Chancellor made Obi-Wan feel unclean. He could tell the direction of the Rotunda by the unclean gravity of the man's presence, the fulminating cloud of his influence on the Force. He was like a vile crustacean stirring silt from the ocean floor. Obi-Wan walked down the wood-paneled halls past pictures of the Senator's handsome wife Queen Breha, his distinguished family, his laughing nieces, his university repulsor-polo team.

What would it have been like to have a family? Obi-Wan remembered so little of his home. Qui-Gon had been a father figure, but a distant one. What if his mother had wrapped him in her arms each night? What if his father had walked with him along the field-side paths of their farm? He knew they had grown crops on Stewjon, and that once he had run laughing with a brother along a mossy riverbank. They'd shared slices of sticky orange-red fruit in the fading daylight.

Had he been four? Five? The memories hung over him like a cloud as he passed out of the hall and into the tastefully-appointed sitting room. It took all the composure he could muster to stifle the cry of horror that welled up in him at the sight of Bail Organa seated opposite an unmasked officer of the Chancellor's Guard. The red-robed clone was not one of the Fett models but a tall, pale man with receding blonde hair and a long, dour face. He carried a projection holo-slate on which he was typing swiftly while the serving staff set down a tea service and finger sandwiches on the lacquered dessert table between himself and Organa.

"Ah, Owen," said Bail, his tone conversational, "come and have a glass of tea with us. It's a fungal brew from Feluccia. Proprietary, and very good for the liver." He sipped at his own cup. "Lieutenant Jarrod was just going over some of the new protocols with me, and I'm sure we could both benefit from your informed opinion." He turned back to the Guardsman. "Owen has a brother in the Order. He came to me to volunteer his help in finding the fugitive, Obi-Wan."

The Guardsman fixed Obi-Wan with a murderous stare. He typed and words flashed across his projection slate. You are aware that relation to a member of the heretical and treasonous so-called Jedi Order makes you subject to Senatorial inquest and subpoena?

The man was a mute. Obi-Wan took a seat beside Bail and rubbed his sweating palms on the knees of his trousers. Now that his reminiscences had departed he could hear the tramp of plastoid boots on fine hardwood. Clones were searching the Senator's apartments. Please, he thought desperately as he marshaled his thoughts. Please, let Master Yoda and the children be safe. "I am aware of my brother's crimes, Lieutenant," he said carefully. "We haven't seen each other in several decades, but I wish to do all I can to bring him to justice. The stain on my family's honor is a matter of great shame to the memory of my parents."

You have not seen him. Have you heard from him? Sent him any communications? The man's brows drew down. Withholding information on this matter is a capital offense, master Kenobi.

"Owen will do fine, Lieutenant," Obi-Wan said. "I sent a transmission to my brother just last week at the Senator's express request, hoping to convince him to fall upon the mercy of the courts. He has not replied, and it is my belief that he has died or left Coruscant." Thank the fates Bail had send those false-flag signals. If they've cracked Temple code, though, we'll have hanged ourselves. "He was not a warlike man, sir. I doubt he could have survived long in a zone of combat."

Your impressions are noted, the clone typed, scowling. If he presents himself at this or any other residence you will inform the Senatorial Guard and your local security dispatch station without delay. He stood, robes rustling. Thank you for the tea, Senator. Owen. He stowed his slate inside his robes and lifted his Mandalorian-styled helm from the side table. It gave him the look of a blood-drenched ghost. He touched the comlink on his wrist, then left the sitting room with Organa hurrying after him to show him to the door.

Obi-Wan remained seated, breathing deeply until the last of the clones had left the building. He practically sprinted down to the basement levels, ignoring Bail's shouted questions. He vaulted down a spiral wrought-iron stair and jogged down the guest corridor to the rearmost servants' quarters where he found Yoda comforting a room full of shaken children and toddlers. The old Master held a squalling Neimoidian grub in his arms. The room resonated with the deep, warm quiet of his presence. He was like an island in storm-tossed seas. "The search," Obi-Wan said.

"Inevitable, it was," Yoda said. "Safe we are, no longer. Leave, we must."

Bail, red-faced and sweating, appeared at Obi-Wan's side. "I've begun making arrangements. I have contacts in shipping and transit, and my summer staff is headed back to Alderaan already. Some of the children will be safe there. The rest will stay with family, trusted associates, those willing to assume the risks."

"Senator Organa," Obi-Wan said, "I can accompany a smaller group, see them safely-"

"No," Yoda said. The quiet certainty in the old Master's voice was absolute. The children around him, all trying with rattled eagerness to meditate, relaxed visibly. "Confront the Sith we must, Master Kenobi." His ancient eyes held Obi-Wan's. "Face Anakin you will. My task, the Chancellor's destruction is."

Bail's expression softened with sympathy. "Forgive me," he said. "I'm intruding. I'll leave you to discuss your business." He turned to go. Obi-Wan wanted to tell the man that he would be remembered, that he had saved something precious and beautiful, but the words would not come. Oh, Anakin, he thought. Oh, my friend. My son. My brother.

How can I do this?

"Master." His voice was steady. "May I join you?"

Yoda rocked the infant in his arms. It had quieted at last, its skin shading from pinkish-green to a healthy marbled turquoise. "Yes," he said. "Contemplate our futures, let us."

Obi-Wan sat down cross-legged by one of the cots where a gaggle of children sat. Too young to be Padawans, too old for the nursery. Whipid, Mon Cal, Kaleesh, human. He closed his eyes and let himself slip into the dark, rich earth that was the Force. He let his roots spread deep through thirsty soil. There was a howling in the air, a hiss like sand rushing over stone in rivers.

Fire of sunlight on the back of his neck.

RUNE

The Jedi had made a move on Palpatine. The Jedi had made a move on Palpatine. What's more, they'd fucked it up gloriously. Dooku, however, had disappeared, and Poggle had gone with him. This, combined with the departure of a full two thirds of the Confederate fleet, had not done much for Rune's nerves. It had done less for several others in the High Command. San Hill swung from one of the chandeliers in the Grand Atrium. Shu Mai had been found in her apartments, most of her brain splattered over the rich tapestries of her clan she'd hung to hide the bare walls.

Rune had always liked Shu Mai, but he'd despised San with a singular passion, so he figured it all canceled out. Right now Rune had to worry about Rune. The Confederate strongholds were out of the question. Retreat to Geonosis or Skakoa would be a fool's move with their alliance in tatters. Even Neimoidia wouldn't be safe for much longer. No, he'd take his Saumae and head for the Outer Rim, maybe try and unload the warship on the Hutts. He could run for a long time on even the ship's salvage price. He could disappear.

He sat beside his luggage in his suite, attended by a detachment of Neimoidian soldiers in plastoid body armor. The droids weren't to be trusted anymore. He'd had to use his personal overrides to kill the ones on the Saumae after they'd rebelled. Half the living crew were dead, slaughtered by the rebellious droids. More of the machines had rampaged through the Twin Suns building, decimating personal guards, slaves, servants, and dignitaries with equal indifference. It has to be Sidious. He's betrayed us all, the scheming old vrelt.

"How long until my shuttle arrives?" he snapped, impatience and panic warring in his gut.

"Six minutes, Viceroy," stammered his aide, Basal Aute. The pallid Neimoidian swallowed, his throat working. "Atmospheric conditions are not ideal."

That was a nice, safe, stupid way to put it. Rain lashed against the suite's windows. Lightning snarled like crooked roots across the sky. "You are an idiot," said Rune. "You may be the single biggest idiot I have ever known. My best friend was a tremendous idiot. I come from a long line of idiots. You have earned a towering distinction, Aute."

The aide shifted nervously and wrung his hands. He liked a good fret, Rune had observed.

Out in the hall, someone screamed. It rose higher, higher, higher, and then crescendoed in a sputtering salvo of blaster fire. Rune subtly positioned himself on his settee so that Aute was between himself and the door. He wanted to at least see the other Neimoidian die in a hail of plasma before he himself was shuffled loose the mortal coil. Is this what you felt like, Nute? At the end?

The minutes dragged by. Rune took a cocktail of relaxants in an actual cocktail, then smoked a great many kedi-sticks, then had another drink. His guards shifted, paced, sweated. They checked their carbines. Rechecked them. Aute fretted. Finally, like a wobbly beetle bouncing off a window, Rune's insectle shuttle dropped down through the storm and skidded across the landing pad outside the window. A burning vulture-class droid fighter flew past a moment later and streaked down into the city below. Rune was already hurrying out onto the rain-slicked balcony, his shouts lost in the howling tempest. The landing ramp was down, his men waiting to pull him up into the shuttle.

The ship, it seemed, could only hold twelve Rune joyfully left Aute standing bedraggled and confused on the platform with a promise that he would send another ship. "I'm not going to send another ship," he told the pilot as the shuttle rose, legs folding into its bulbous belly.

Wind shears buffeted the shuttle as it rose up through the perilous atmosphere. Lightning lit the flight cabin where Rune sat strapped in behind the Neimoidian pilot and his Duros co-pilot. The whole ship shook. Below, the storm-wracked city fell away. Rune Haako, drunk out of his mind and with half of his luggage still piled in the suite below, began to cry.

PALPATINE

The ship was vast, a leviathan of durasteel, a predator of the void. It was miles long, a great sleek dagger glittering against the stars over Coruscant It had arrived, flung across space by Kuati engines, from the shipyards at Fondor just days ago. Crewmen were still shutting up toward its colossal silhouette. The batteries, carrying sufficient ordinance to slag whole continents, were being tuned and loaded with fuel cells of spin-sealed Tibanna gas.

Palpatine had intended it as a gift for his new protege. It was still serving that ostensible purpose, although Skywalker was in no state to receive gifts, but more and more the Chancellor thought of the ship as a knife he could drive into Dooku's smug, charismatic face. He'd christened the thing Executor for pity's sake, a moment of ill-advised theatricality breaking through his usual avuncular facade. Well, so what? His scars had earned him the political capital to show a little savagery. No one would think less of him for obliterating the man who had stolen the beloved Senator Naberrie.

The worst part was that the bitch had been his most credible opposing voice. Now he was left listening to Bail Organa and Mon Mothma drone on about labor rights and peace talks, and he looked more like a warmonger than he ever had with Naberrie harping at him. At least that whole farce would be over soon, too. No more approval ratings, no more rallies. He just had to deal with Dooku. He'd expected the Count to show a bit more class, to try to challenge him to a duel or expose his identity on the steps of the Rotunda. Grabbing Padmé Naberrie (along with her not-so-secret bastards) from the 501st legion in a direct boarding action was not exactly the Count's style.

Countering Palpatine's backdoor programs in the droid army was more Dooku's speed, although that hadn't been entirely successful. Best estimates stood at a fifth of the army destroyed, another two fifths lost to irreparable glitches and system cascades. Dooku had perhaps two third of the remainder under his immediate command at Serenno. Along, Palpatine was discovering, with a construction project that had beggared not just the Count's homeworld but Geonosis and several other wealthy worlds as well. A fleet. It had to be a secret fleet.

He's playing a deeper game. The stakes were obvious. Dooku was attacking Palpatine through Anakin, fracturing the boy's loyalty. Palpatine also suspected revenge as a component. Dooku had always blamed him for Qui-Gon's death, and more lately for Ventress's. Valid complaints, but I'm still going to feed him to a sarlacc.

Seated alone but for his red-robed guards in the command cabin of his shuttle, Palpatine stared hard at the Executor. The ship, now that the Confederate Navy was in more or less full retreat, was going to spearhead an assault on Serenno. The rest of the High Command had fled to the safehouse on Mustafar, but they could wait. Palpatine had sent them a message, as Sidious, telling them to stay in place while he put his grand counterstroke into action. There would be time after Dooku was dealt with for tying up loose ends.

He pressed the com-key for the cockpit. "Take us aboard, pilot," he said. "Inform Grandmaster Skywalker of my imminent arrival."

"Yes sir, Chancellor," the clone pilot replied. "Understood."

The great ship grew in Palpatine's viewscreens.