Coruscant
19 BBY (16:05:19 GrS)
Three Days before Order 66…
Things were not going exactly to plan. A trio of particularly insistent Jedi, the Togruta Shaak Ti, the Ithorian Roron Corobb, and an elderly human Master who looked like he could be Mace Windu's older brother, Roth Del-Masona, had barged into his office at 500 Republica. It was more than three minutes before Grievous's planned arrival, where the cyborg would abduct the Chancellor and take him to the Invisible Hand as planned.
Sidious had to stall.
Grievous's lateness forced him to do so—to remain in his private office even as an orbital bombardment rained down on Coruscant's shields overhead. Even as flocks of droid fighters and bombers escorted hulking landing craft and heavily-laden dropships to the surface after insiders, he had strategically placed, brought down key sections of the inner shield. Even as streams of anti-air fire and wings of interceptors raced up to meet them while CSF officers and Clone Troopers set up defenses on the ground and evacuated the populace. No matter how irrational it was—no matter how stupid it made Sidious look, he absolutely had to stall. There was no choice.
"The Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic shall not be seen fleeing as an enemy force advances!" Sidious hissed. "From this office, I can maintain better control over our forces." He gestured to the HoloProjector, which showed thousands of Separatist cruisers and battleships filling the space between Coruscant and its first moon, Centax I.
Of course, all of Palpatine's protests were irrational.
Standing at Palpatine's side, the Director of the Senate Bureau of Intelligence, Armand Isard, immediately began poking holes in his logic. "Supreme Chancellor, communications will be much clearer from the emergency shelter in the Sah'c District. With the number of bombs raining down on our position, it will soon be impossible to transmit a clear signal."
As if to punctuate his point, acrid black flak bursts and twirling concussion missile exhaust trails began filling the sky, beneath the now faltering city shield. Meanwhile, squadrons of droid bombers, both older Trade Federation types and newer Hyenas, released clutches of proton bombs from their bays that illuminated the cityscape with further explosions. It was like a dark mockery of a Fete Week fireworks display.
"We are here to evacuate you," the leader of the Jedi trio, Shaak Ti, said sternly. She squeezed her way through two of his Red Guards, approaching his desk. "This is not a discussion."
"Did you just give me an order?" Sidious hissed, genuinely angry at the Togruta's tone. "The Jedi answer to the Senate, not the other way around."
Roth Del-Masona bowed his head respectfully. "Supreme Chancellor, I understand you are afraid. We are all at least a little afraid. Please, come with us."
"Even your advisors agree," Roron Corobb rumbled softly, gesturing to Armand Isard as he stepped between the Red Guards and took position alongside Shaak-Ti. His translator collar deciphered the stereo speech from his twin mouths. "Please, listen to those of us with experience in these matters."
"And if I refuse?" Sidious asked, locking eyes with the Togruta, ignoring the human's and Ithorian's placating pleas. "The Jedi answer to me, not the other way around."
"We defend the Republic," Shaak-Ti said in an uncharacteristically severe tone. "Protecting you, as the head of state, is tantamount to the continued survival of the Republic—whether you want to survive or not."
It was not often that Sidious felt unsettled. In this moment though, Shaak-Ti's implicit accusation of suicidal behavior unsettled the Sith Lord. Not because it was true, but because his stalling now sounded so irrational and incredible to everyone that this Jedi Master thought he was suicidal.
"Of tantamount importance to the Galactic Republic is a coherent chain of command," Sidious retorted dryly, trying to keep calm. "As the Supreme Chancellor, I have decided to remain on Coruscant, in my office—AHHH!"
Shaak-Ti leapt over the desk, tackling him to the ground so hard that Sidious would have broken his nose had he landed facefirst. It was only through sheer dumb luck that, as the Togruta put her left knee on his back, her right knee was planted solidly on the floor—as opposed to on top of the Sith Lord's lightsaber hilt, which was dangling off his belt, buried deep under his layers of robes.
Corobb and Del-Masona both ignited their sabers, assuming defensive postures as the Red Guards ignited their Force pikes. The air was thick with tension as everyone waited for the other side to make the first attack.
Genuinely furious, it took Sidious every ounce of self-restraint not to ignite his saber and skewer these Jedi alive. "Unhand me at once," he mumbled, cheek pressed hard into the carpet.
"I am sorry, Chancellor, but I cannot follow an illegal order. If you remain here, you will certainly die. We are evacuating. You are coming with us. This is how it shall be."
A smirk crossed Sidious's face as the noise-canceling windows began to vibrate. He knew Grievous was arriving and, with his arrival, death and destruction to these three foolish Jedi. Then he gasped in horror as Shaak-Ti pulled him to his feet, and he got a better view.
Outside the window hovered an LAAT gunship. Standing within the open troop bay alongside a half dozen Clones were Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, and five other Jedi he did not recognize.
o.o.o.o.o
Obi-Wan Kenobi
When the turbolift from the landing pad arrived in the Chancellor's suite, Obi-Wan could not even begin to fathom what was going on. The fact he was in the Chancellor's suite at all during a Separatist attack was beyond absurd.
Yes, Palpatine had informed the Jedi High Council that he was remaining on Coruscant against all of his advisor's wishes, but there was a difference between being at an undisclosed location and being in his own home in the fanciest apartment building on the planet. This was an entirely new level of insanity Obi-Wan did not think Palpatine capable of. Even more bafflingly, it looked like Master Shaak-Ti was placing the Supreme Chancellor under arrest.
"UNHAND ME AT ONCE!" Sidious spat, now heaved to a standing position, he struggled to yank his sleeve out of Shaak-Ti's grasp.
"Master Jedi," one of the Red Guards said to Shaak-Ti, raising his voice over the commotion but making any further aggressive moves, "You're not helping things. Let go of the Supreme Chancellor."
"What in the blazes is going on?!" Obi-Wan demanded, stepping in front of Corobb and Del-Masona. Their tension was only rivaled by Shaak-Ti's.
"I would like to know as well," Mace Windu added, brandishing his lightsaber in Shaak-Ti's direction.
"The Supreme Chancellor has—ugh!" Shaak-Ti grunted, regaining her grasp on his wrist. "The Supreme Chancellor has refused to leave this room."
"IT IS YOU WHO ANSWER TO ME! THE JEDI ARE TAKING OVER! DON'T YOU SEE?!"
"No, respectfully, sir, I don't see," Armand Isard sighed, folding his arms in front of his chest.
"I sense the Chancellor wishes to end his life," Shaak-Ti said gravely as she maintained her grip on his sleeve. "That is the only logical explanation. If we don't move him now, the Separatists will kill him in an orbital strike and us with him."
Mace Windu and Obi-Wan's faces tightened with worry. They exchanged a brief open-mouthed glance at each other in horror, then turned back to the Chancellor.
"Is this true?! Are you trying to die?"
Before Palpatine could answer the question, Corobb warbled in alarm, staring at the transparisteel window behind Obi-Wan and Mace Windu. His neck translator let off an urgent cry, "Get down!" in a voice that sounded comically robotic.
Shaak-Ti shoved Palpatine to the floor just as Obi-Wan ducked to the floor himself, danger sense blaring.
Every Jedi, along with Armand Isard, the Clones, and all six of Palpatine's Red Guards were prone on the floor when the LAAT, which had been transporting the Jedi, took a hit to its stabilizers. The craft twisted dramatically and slammed into the window, leaving a three-meter-long crack that bisected the transparisteel horizontally from top to bottom. Just as it sank out of sight, a brilliant flash erupted from the gunship, sending a wave of thick black smoke upwards in front of the window.
"MOVE!" Mace Windu snarled, jumping to his feet. "GET THE CHANCELLOR—" His frantic barking orders ended mid-sentence, replaced with a sharp inhalation of breath.
Now standing, Obi-Wan too let out a gasp of shock, and so did six of the other Jedi. One of the more inexperienced Jedi Knights, a Trandoshan archivist named Lissarkh, hissed and cawed in alarm, her voice warbling off the cracked windows.
"GRIEVOUS! THAT'S GRIEVOUSSSSS!"
As if the whole universe were granting the Supreme Chancellor's apparent death wish, a gray-hulled Separatist shuttle of a type Obi-Wan didn't recognize rose from view through the smoke of the LAAT it had just destroyed. Its hatches were wide open, teeming with battle droids.
And sure enough, even through the cracked transparisteel badly distorting the view, a distinct and tall cloaked cyborg was visible. Standing behind the crowd of magnaguards and commando droids was the dreaded supreme commander of the droid armies himself, right here in the flesh (and augmented cybernetic body parts), General Grievous.
Isard bolted away from behind the desk, running towards the turbolift. He was followed by Shaak-Ti, who was yanking Palpatine up by the collar of his tunic, choking him slightly as they ran. Following their tails were four of the red guards and the six Clones.
As Obi-Wan ignited his lightsaber, the window shattered. Five magnaguards spilled through the rain of transparisteel shards, three with typical electrostaves and two with electrowhips. Deadly violet lightning crackled from their activated weapons.
Lissarkh swung her blade at the nearest one, then blinked in amazement as her saber failed to get through the phrik-plated electrostaff of the blocking droid. With a withdrawal followed by an uppercut, she successfully swung her blade through the heated up center of the droid's electrostaff, successfully breaking it—only for the wielder to use the now inactive ends as makeshift clubs, which the droid swung ruthlessly at her with both hands.
"Archivist! Get back from the window!" Windu screamed at the Trandoshan, quickly stabbing his purple blade into the head of the magnaguard that had been attacking her. Despite the loss of its cranium, the machine continued to attack as more droids poured in through the window. "Help Shaak-Ti!"
Three more commando droids armed with vibroswords landed on the ledge, but before they could join the fight, Obi-Wan reached out with the Force. The droids flailed, pushed back through the window and into the open sky. A moment later, the Jedi Master twirled, spinning just in time to block a swing against his back from another magnaguard that had entered the building.
With Shaak-Ti already gone and Lissarkh sprinting for the turbolift, there were still eight Jedi in the room, along with two Red Guards. Their opponents put up a serious fight for droids, but within forty seconds, every commando droid and magnaguard had been eviscerated. A few of the magnaguards continued fighting, their redundant systems keeping them in the fight even as their limbs and heads were cut off. Out of sheer frustration, the Jedi finally sliced them to pieces so small they could no longer function.
Grievous stood at the edge of his craft, howling in mad rage.
The fight was over. Or so Obi-Wan thought. Mace Windu had other ideas.
The purple blade wielder leapt through the shattered window and onto the Separatist transport. "I AM GOING TO CAPTURE GRIEVOUS!" he announced to the world, swinging his blades against the cyborg's, then screamed back at the rest of the Jedi. "STAY BACK!"
Obi-Wan stretched out his arm, blocking Corobb or any of the other Jedi from jumping as the two clashed. Behind the retreating shuttle, the air battle over the Senate building was now less than a kilometer away. Squadrons of V-Wings, ARC-170s, and Headhunters engaged in swirling dogfights with swarms of Vultures and Tri-Fighters across the sky in the distance.
"Master Windu has this handled. Let's take care of the Chancellor."
"Yes Master," said six voices of agreement.
As Obi-Wan ran across the room to the turbolift, he couldn't help but think about his own words. Take care of the Chancellor… Like babysitting.
Blast it. Ahsoka was right.
o.o.o.o.o
Sheev Palpatine
The original plan had been for Grievous to abduct the Chancellor of the Galactic Republic through the window quickly. Armand Isard and the Red Guards were intended to be the only witnesses who would then alert the Jedi.
However, Sidious had many contingencies for a wide array of possible futures he envisioned. In a few potential futures, Sidious saw that the Jedi would arrive. In some of these, Grievous and the droids would take them by surprise, eliminating them quick enough to abduct Sidious through the window. In some, the Jedi gave Grievous more trouble, and successfully evacuated the Chancellor to the turbolift.
The contingency plan for that was for Grievous to cut the Jedi off at the bottom of 500 Republica, lying in wait for the Chancellor's departure from the turbolift.
However, the Force had given Sidious absolutely no visions where so many Jedi arrived in his office that it was impossible for Grievous to have even a momentary tactical win. There was no possible future where Mace Windu himself showed up to protect the Chancellor and subsequently leapt into Grievous's shuttle.
Surrounded by nine Jedi, his thin white hair blew around in the howling wind as the LAAT crossed from the Federal District to CoCo Town, with two Red Guards and Director Isard for company, the Clone Troopers and the remainder of his guard were taking a second gunship as escort. In a few minutes, the Chancellor's transport would descend into the Sah'c district, dropping him off in the hardened shelter which the Separatists had absolutely no way of penetrating, not without raising the question of how they'd acquired the access codes.
In other circumstances, Sidious would have been deadly furious when his Red Guards refused an order. Yet, in these circumstances, he couldn't even rationally be angry. Wanting to have a more realistic reaction from his subordinates, Sidious hadn't told any of them that he intended to let Grievous capture him except for Mas Amedda, Sly Moore, and Sate Pestage. For his guards to attack ten Jedi, it would have created a scenario even Sidious would have difficulty extricating himself from.
No, he was angry and worried at Grievous and Dooku. His plan had failed so spectacularly that his concern was no longer what if Grievous doesn't capture me?
Wrinkles crossed his forehead as he now thought, what if Mace Windu kills or captures Grievous? Now that would be a disaster.
"Obi-Wan, what is your status?" Mace Windu's voice rang audibly from Obi-Wan's wrist-comm.
"We are nearly to the Chancellor's bunker," Obi-Wan said crisply, raising his wrist in front of his mouth. "What is your status?"
"Not as good as yours," Windu sighed, his exhalation of breath causing the channel to fill with static. "Grievous jumped out into another passing vessel. I crashed somewhere in the Column Commons—I am scaling a building, trying to get a better bearing on my location. Separatist craft have begun offloading around 500 Republica, there are hundreds of Super Battle Droids. I am not sure what they're planning."
Sidious managed to stifle a sigh of relief. Then his own danger-sense sent a warning to him through the Force, prompting him to grip the railing overhead.
Judging by the calm and relaxed demeanors of the nine Jedi around him, none of them felt it, but a few seconds later, the Clone pilot cried out in warning. "HOLD ON!"
Sensing Grievous's presence in a spacecraft presence behind them, Sidious deduced what the cyborg's impromptu backup plan was. The spray of laserfire, which shook the LAAT from bow to stern as it shimmered off the modified craft's shields, only confirmed his suspicions.
The pilot began skillfully veering the transport every which way, evading all fire.
That can't be allowed.
Reaching out with the Force surreptitiously, Sidious pushed the yokes inwards to force the gunship down as the Clone pilot attempted to pull it up.
"BLAST! Something's wrong with the controls!"
Obi-Wan's eyes and force-focus shot to the cockpit, and Sidious ended his grip just in time to avoid suspicion. The damage was already done. Impacted by a torpedo on the rear, the LAAT fell out of the sky, billowing smoke from its engine bank.
Another concern occurred to Sidious.
Grievous did not know that Sheev Palpatine and Darth Sidious were one in the same. His plan C might be to shoot down the LAAT and just kill the Chancellor right here and now. Thankfully, Grievous appeared to be following his orders.
"Mayday, mayday! We're going down!"
After a ten-second drop, the pilot managed to reactivate the repulsors, compensating somewhat for the total loss of the craft's stabilizers.
"I'm setting us down on a rooftop!"
Sidious took a sharp inhalation of breath, letting go of the handgrip.
"Chancellor, hold on!" Obi-Wan yelled.
Over the chaos, confusion, fog of war, overwhelming cries of danger from the Force, and general noise, a sudden clarity had blossomed in the Sith Lord's mind. Not a very detailed premonition, but an understanding of the next ten seconds. He had to let go of the handgrip.
Swearing, Shaak-Ti released her own handgrip and stepped forward, tugging the Chancellor back away from the open hatch. Atop an apartment building they were crashing onto, was a massive rooftop lake complete with a grove of palm trees and a sandy beach. Collision alarms blared as the LAAT descended nearer and nearer.
Sidious allowed himself to be gripped by Shaak-Ti for a moment longer. Just a second before the gunship hit the surface of the shallow water, he squirmed out of her grip and pushed off with the Force.
As the Sith Lord flew through the air, he was torn between multiple hopes. He hoped that the sudden five-meter jump into the sky would be explained by his being thrown from the impact of the LAAT on the water. He hoped even more that no Jedi on the LAAT survived the crash.
But as seconds dragged on, he could sense that not only had the Jedi survived, but the emergency landing had been done so well that all of the non-Force sensitives had made it through the landing too. It was a perfect landing. No casualties.
The fires bursting out of the stabilizers steamed into nothingness on contact with the water, extinguishing the Sith Lord's final hope that the craft might explode. As Sidious landed on the sand from his leap, completely dry, he could see Isard and all of the Jedi, Clones, and Red Guards were either grabbing hold of parts of the sinking craft or swimming towards him.
Sensing Obi-Wan's amazement, Chancellor collapsed, falling onto his buttocks on the sand. He faked a hurt leg as he screamed in a feeble elderly voice he had long practiced. "OOHH! HELP! I THINK I BROKE MY LEG!"
"Remain where you are!" Shaak-Ti cried out in dread, slowly swimming away from the wreckage in her soaked robes.
"No! Watch out!" Obi-Wan yelled contradictorily. "RUN TO THE WATER!"
Sidious felt a blast of sand and howling wind from behind. A Separatist assault craft, no doubt holding General Grievous, set down next to the grove of palm trees, two HMP gunships hovering to either side of it, their guns swiveling as they awaited the command to fire. The cyborg stepped out from the craft alone, seemingly having lost all of the magnaguards he could spare in the assault on 500 Republica.
"HELP ME!" Sidious screamed, pretending to struggle to stand. "IT'S GENERAL GRIEVOUS! ACH! MY LEG! I CAN'T MOVE!" When his danger sense blared, the Sith Lord turned to face the cyborg, and his eyes went wide.
With a durasteel backhand, Grievous swung at Sidious's head and struck him so hard that the Sith Lord had to root himself in the Force to remain conscious. As stars swam in his eyes, Sidious wished more than anything that there had been a way—a way to inform Grievous that he and Palpatine were the same person. But that would have been impossible. Grievous would have never cooperated under those circumstances.
While Grievous carried the Sith Lord roughly under one of his upper arms, Sidious let off genuine moans of pain as blood trickled down his face from under his hairline. This was going even worse than his altercation with Shaak-Ti had.
Suddenly coming to their senses, Obi-Wan, Shaak-Ti, and Roron Cobb leapt from the water, landing in well-practiced crouches, and began sprinting after Grievous—who cackled madly, letting off a few coughs as he quickened his cybernetically-enhanced pace. Dazed, Sidious stared back at the trio of Jedi dumb-founded.
Remarkably, just as Grievous reached his transport, Shaak-Ti threw her lightsaber.
Sidious's eyes went wide as it spun, flying towards him at multiple meters per second. He could sense that she actually now intended to kill him to both put him out of his misery and stop information from falling into Separatist hands.
But at the foot of his transport, Grievous spun around, flicking two of his sabers together in protective X. Shaak-Ti's lightsaber clanged against the cyborg's, falling harmlessly to the sand, where he quickly grabbed it before she could recall the weapon with the Force.
"Hahaha!" Grievous cackled, gesticulating in her direction tauntingly with the saber. "I'll be taking this!"
An apron of sand was kicked up by the transport's thrusters, coating Obi-Wan and Shaak-Ti from head to toe as it took off. Still held in Grievous's arms, Sidious could see Obi-Wan frantically barking into his wrist-comm as he dodged a barrage of laserfire from the droid gunships, now though too far away for him to hear.
That ruthless sense of duty, Sidious thought, ignoring the pain in his head as he focused for a moment on Shaak-Ti below. She would make a good acolyte.
Grievous strapped Sidious down into an acceleration couch. Then, to the Sith Lord's astonishment, he stepped into the cockpit of the transport, shoving the magnaguard pilot aside to fly it himself.
o.o.o.o.o
Obi-Wan Kenobi
"We've lost the Chancellor!" Obi-Wan could not help but scream the words into his wristcomm. He stood up taller, no longer dodging laser fire as the HMPs flew off finally, driven off by the escort gunship as it descended.
The Clones and remaining Red Guards emerged onto the rooftop from the troop bay of an LAAT and began firing at the fleeing shuttle with their rifles, one of the troopers readying a Plex launcher before his squad sergeant ordered him to stand down.
Covered from head to toe in sand, Obi-Wan wheeled around, shouting at a soaking-wet Director Isard, who was still ankle-deep in the pool. "Inform homeworld security!"
"I already have. Mas Amedda is now acting Chancellor."
"Palpatine is dead then," Windu remarked sullenly, appearing as a holopresence on Obi-Wan's wrist.
"Even worse," Obi-Wan croaked, bringing the holopresence closer to his bearded face. "He's been captured!"
Kit Fisto's holopresence appeared on Shaak-Ti's wristcomm. "How long ago?"
"Just seconds—Grievous's shuttle—I can still see it!" Obi-Wan sputtered, turning back towards the sight where it had happened. He squinted, wiped the sand from his eyelids, and pointed towards the skyline, where a dark Tri-Winged shuttle of some sort was ascending rapidly. "Heading east!"
"It looks like it's headed over Central District, nearing the B'ankor Refuge," Shaak-Ti muttered quietly. She sounded like she wasn't quite sure that what had just unfolded was real.
Before Grievous had absconded with the Chancellor under his arm, Obi-Wan thought it completely impossible for the Separatists to take Coruscant. However, for the first time since Geonosis, he was now genuinely concerned that they would lose the war.
The seven other Jedi gathered around Obi-Wan and Shaak-Ti, holding up their wrist-comms and to allow for an impromptu holoconference.
Saesee Tinn appeared on Roron Corobb's wrist-comm in full battle armor, Grandmaster Yoda on Roth Del-Masona's, and to Obi-Wan's surprise, Anakin Skywalker appeared on Lissarkh's, wearing a pilot's headset.
"The question is," Mace Windu said, "How did Grievous know where the Chancellor would be?"
"Greater concerns, we have," Yoda retorted sternly. "To rescue the Chancellor, our first priority must be."
"I have eyes on the transport," Anakin said. Unlike the others, his holopresence only showed his head and shoulders.
Isn't he supposed to be leading the 501st on the ground? The question quickly vanished in Obi-Wan's mind.
"No. Shooting it down or pursuing it by yourself is far too risky. Keep your distance and maintain visual contact, Skywalker. I want you to command the fighters providing us cover," Mace Windu instructed. "Obi-Wan, I'm sending a transport to your location. We will rescue the Chancellor."
"Understood, Master…" Anakin conceded. "I'll gather up every ship I can."
"It might be too late for that," Shaak-Ti said ominously.
"Give up hope, we must not, Master Ti," Yoda uttered sagely. "Trapped, the Separatist fleet is beneath the upper shield. To the command ship, to Dooku, the Chancellor has been taken."
"I will attempt to maneuver our captured ship closer," Saesee Tinn added. "The Separatists are losing ground but they still have countless fighters and thousands of warships ready to defend their flagship."
A Clone Trooper strode around the water's edge and up to Obi-Wan's side, holding up his own holocomm device. On it, a Clone Commander in BARC armor with Jaig Eyes snapped a salute. Obi-Wan recognized the man as Fordo, one of the Alpha ARCs. "General! I've just received word of the abduction. I'll transfer command of Sector Four to Commander Cody and gather any available ARCs and Commandos and we'll join you ASAP. I owe Grievous payback for Hypori."
Obi-Wan nodded, smiling wearily. "Welcome aboard Commander, we'll need all the help we can get."
