Star Wars_ Cloak of Deception - James Luceno [17]
Suddenly, the Revenue exploded. In the Lancet’s cockpit, it was as if someone had draped a bright white curtain over the canopy. The small craft received a punch in the tail that sent it rocking forward, riding the crest of the detonation wave. Great hunks of molten durasteel streaked like comets to all sides. The Lancet shook to the breaking point, systems shorting out with showers of sparks, and displays showing nothing but noise before they darkened.
Glancing over his shoulder, Obi-Wan watched the Revenue burst into sections, the massive hangar arms making brief, fist-first contact, then rolling off to opposite sides, as two loosed crescents. The centersphere and bridge tower spun away from the destroyed acceleration compensator stalk and what was left of the ship’s trio of gaping exhaust ports.
Some distance away the Acquisitor was moving for the safety of Dorvalla’s dark side. Cohl’s corvette and two of the support starfighters streaked away from the planet and made the jump to hyperspace.
“Dorvalla is either about to gain a moonlet or fall victim to a devastating meteor,” Obi-Wan said when he could.
“I fear the latter,” Qui-Gon said. “Contact Coruscant. Inform the Reconciliation Council that Dorvalla needs immediate emergency relief.”
“I’ll try, Master.” Obi-Wan began to flip switches on the console, hoping that at least some of the communications systems had survived the electronic storm that had accompanied the explosion.
“Is there any sign of Cohl’s shuttle?”
Obi-Wan glanced at the display screen. “No signal from the tracking device.”
Qui-Gon didn’t reply.
“Master, I know Cohl hated the Trade Federation. But could he have cared so little about his own life?”
Qui-Gon took a long moment to respond. “What are the sixth and seventh Rules of Engagement, Padawan?”
Obi-Wan tried to recall them. “The sixth is, Understand the dark and light in all things.”
“That is the fifth rule.”
Obi-Wan thought again. “Exercise caution, even in trivial matters.”
“That is the eighth.”
“Learn to see accurately.”
“Yes,” Qui-Gon said, “that is the sixth. And the seventh?”
Obi-Wan shook his head. “I’m sorry, Master. I cannot recall it.”
“Open your eyes to what is not evident.”
Obi-Wan considered it. “Then this isn’t the end of it.”
“Hardly, young Padawan. I sense instead a menacing beginning.”
CORUSCANT
The four walls of Finis Valorum’s office, at the summit of the governmental district’s stateliest if not most statuesque edifice, were made of transparisteel, paneled by structural members into a continuous band of regular and inverted triangles.
The city-planet that was Coruscant—“Scintillant Orb,” “Jewel of the Core,” choked heart of the Galactic Republic—spread to all sides in a welter of lustrous domes, knife-edged spires, and terraced superstructures that climbed to the sky. The taller buildings resembled outsize rocketships that had never left their launch pads, or the wind-eroded lava tors of long-dead volcanoes. Some of the domes were flattened hemispheres perched on cylindrical bases, while others had the look of shallow, hand-thrown ceramic bowls with finialed lids.
Striations of magnetically guided sky traffic moved swiftly above the cityscape—streams of transports, air buses, taxis, and limousines, coursing between the tall spires and over the measureless chasms like schools of exotic fish. Instead of feeding, however, they were the feeders, distributing the galaxy’s wealth among the greedy trillion to whom Coruscant was home.
As often as Valorum had beheld the view—which was to say, nearly every day of his now seven years as Supreme Chancellor of the Republic—he had yet to grow indifferent to the spectacle of Coruscant. As worlds went, it was neither large nor especially rugged, but history had transformed it into a uniquely vertical place, a vertical experience more common to ocean than atmospheric life.
Valorum’s principal office was located in the lower level of the Galactic Senate dome, but he was generally so swamped by requests and business there that he reserved