Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [105]
So much rested on what would take place over the next few standard days.
So much rested on whether Lord Sidious’s plan could succeed on all fronts—even though forced to unfold hastily, because of a foolish oversight by Nute Gunray.
Outside, under Tythe’s yellow-gray sky, his sloop was waiting, and standing alongside it the ship’s pilot droid.
“A recorded message,” the droid announced. “From General Grievous.”
“Play it!” Dooku said as he hurried up the sloop’s aft boarding ramp and into the instrument-filled main hold.
A paused holoimage of the cyborg floated in blue light.
Throwing off his dusty cape, Dooku paced while the FA-4 triggered the recording to replay.
“Lord Tyranus,” Grievous said, in motion suddenly and genuflecting. “Supreme Chancellor Palpatine will soon be ours.”
Dooku exhaled in satisfaction. “And just in time,” he muttered.
As if recalled to life, he positioned himself on the transmission grid and sent a simple return message: “General, I will join you shortly.”
Padmé’s eyes fluttered open.
Into focus swam the faintly smiling face of Mon Mothma.
“No sleeping on the job, Senator,” Mon Mothma said, as if from underwater. “We have to get you out of here.”
Padmé took stock of herself; realized that she was reclined in the rear seat of Stass Allie’s skimmer. Her head was pillowed on Mon Mothma’s left arm, and her ears felt as if they were plugged with cotton.
“How long—”
“Just for a moment,” Mon Mothma said in the same watery tone. “I don’t think you struck your head. You were fine after the crash. Then you fainted. Can you move?”
Padmé sat up and saw that the skimmer’s safety mechanisms had deployed. Light-headed but unhurt, she brushed her hair from her face. “I can barely hear you.”
Mon Mothma regarded her in knowing silence, then extended a hand to help her climb from the craft. “Padmé, you have to be careful. Quickly, now.”
She nodded. “Crashing wasn’t exactly on my agenda.”
Mon Mothma hurried her away from the skimmer, to where Bail and C-3PO were hiding behind the blockish pedestal of a modernistic sculpture.
“Master Allie doesn’t strike me as someone who will sue for damages,” the droid was saying.
Still in a daze, Padmé grasped that they had skidded into the plaza that fronted the Embassy Mall, taking out a large holosign and three news kiosks along the way. Bail’s skill had somehow kept them from mowing down pedestrians, who had apparently scattered on first sight of the nose-diving ship. Or perhaps at sight of the craft that had fallen to Separatist fire ahead of the skimmer—a military police vehicle, similar to a Naboo Gian speeder, tipped on its side against the façade of the mall and belching smoke. Sprawled on the plaza close to the vehicle were the charred corpses of three clone troopers.
Reality reasserted itself in a rush of deafening noise, flashing light, and acrid smells. From nearby came anguished moans and terrified screams; from the tiered heights above the plaza, distant discharges of artillery. Higher still, plasma bolts raked the sky; fire bloomed, detonations thundered.
Padmé saw a smear of blood on Bail’s cheek. “You’re hurt—”
“It’s nothing,” he said. “Besides, we have more to worry about.”
She followed his grim gaze, and understood immediately why Coruscanti were fleeing the pedestrian skybridge that linked the mall to the midlevel entrances of the Senate Hospital. Five Vulture droids had alit on the far side of the span and reconfigured to patrol mode. Four-legged gargoyles, with heads deployed forward and sensor slits red as arterial blood, they were striding through Hospital Plaza, sowing destruction. Their four laser cannons were aimed downward, but from paired launchers in their semicircular fuselage flew torpedoes aimed at air taxis, craft attempting to dock at the hospital’s emergency platforms, the tunnel entrances to the Senate shelters …
Republic LAATs had dropped from the Senate Plaza