Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [106]
“Xi Char monstrosities,” Mon Mothma said.
Padmé remembered standing helplessly at the tall windows of Theed Palace, watching squadrons of Vulture fighters fill the sky, like cave creatures loosed on Naboo by darkness …
Caught in the crossfire, pedestrians had raced across the skybridge, hoping to find sanctuary in the Embassy Mall—midlevel in the dome-topped Nicandra Counterrevolutionary Signalmen’s Memorial Building—but thick security grates had been lowered over the entrances, leaving crowds of Coruscanti to scramble for whatever cover could be found.
Padmé felt faint once more.
Huddled, frightened, panicked masses of Coruscanti were suddenly getting a taste of what the inhabitants of Jabiim, Brentaal, and countless other worlds had faced during the past three years. Caught up in a war of ideologies, often by dint of circumstance or location. Caught between the forces of a droid army led by a self-styled revolutionary and a cyborg butcher, and an army of vat-grown soldiers led by a monastic order of Jedi Knights who had once been the galaxy’s peacekeepers.
Caught in the middle, with no allegiance to either side.
It was tragic and senseless, and she might have broken down and cried if her current circumstances had been different. She felt sick at heart, and in despair for the future of sentient life.
“Palpatine will never live this down,” Mon Mothma was saying. “Committing so many of our ships and troopers to the Outer Rim sieges. As if this war he is so intent on winning could never come to Coruscant.”
Bail frowned in sympathy. “Not only will he live it down, he’ll profit from it. The Senate will be blamed for voting to escalate the sieges, and while we’re mired in accusations and counter-accusations of accountability, Palpatine will quietly accrue more and more power. Without realizing it, the Separatists have played right into his hands by launching this attack.”
Padmé wanted to argue with him but didn’t have the strength.
“They’re all mad,” Bail continued. “Dooku, Grievous, Gunray, Palpatine.”
Mon Mothma nodded sadly. “The Jedi could have stopped this war. Now they’re Palpatine’s pawns.”
Padmé squeezed her eyes shut. Even if she managed to summon the strength, how could she respond, when her own husband was one of them—a general? What had the Jedi gotten Anakin into—taking him from Tatooine, from his youth, his mother? And yet hadn’t she done as much as anyone to encourage him to remain a Jedi; to heed the tutelage of Obi-Wan, Mace, and the others; to perpetuate the lie that was their secret life as husband and wife?
She hugged herself.
What had she gotten Anakin into? What had she gotten both of them into?
Bail’s voice snapped her from self-pity.
“They’re coming.” He aimed a finger across the plaza. “They’re coming across the bridge.”
From somewhere in the Vultures’ droid brains had come a revelation that the pedestrian skyway offered a better vantage for targeting buildings and craft to both sides of the kilometer-deep canyon. More important, the gunships were even less likely to fire on them there, lest they destroy the span and send it plummeting to the busy thoroughfares and mag-lev lines two hundred stories below.
“Perhaps if we throw ourselves on the mercy of the owners of the mall, they will raise the security grate,” C-3PO started to say.
Bail looked at Padmé and Mon Mothma. “We have to keep those droids on the far side of the bridge, so the gunships can take them out.”
Mon Mothma glanced at the overturned military craft. “I see a way to try.”
The craft sat scarcely fifty meters from the base of the sculpture. Without further word, the three of them hurried for it.
“What could I have possibility been thinking?” C-3PO shouted as he watched them search the craft for weapons. “It can never be the easy answer!”
The three humans returned momentarily, carrying three blaster rifles.
“Not much power left,