Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [115]
Mace leaned into the hatch to the gunner’s compartment and called up to him. “Where’s your wingmate?”
“Lost him, sir,” the gunner shouted. “He’s not anywhere on the tactical screen.”
“The ship could have gone down,” Kit suggested.
Mace’s brow furrowed. “I don’t think so. Something’s wrong about this.”
Overhead, missiles roared from the launchers and an explosion boomed and echoed from the surround of buildings. Black smoke and debris swept past the doorway, and the gunner whooped.
“We got him, sir! He’s trailing fire, and surface-bound!”
Mace and Kit leaned out the doorway in time to see the gunboat tip to one side, then begin a rapid downward spiral.
“Stay with him, pilot!” Mace yelled.
Coiling into a city chasm east of the Senate, the craft clipped the edge of a skydock and started to come apart. The pilot of the gunship jinked to avoid airborne wreckage, but managed to remain in the wake of the doomed ship. The collision with the skydock had added an end-over-end flip to the gunboat’s spiral, and now the craft was simply falling like a stone, straight down toward brightly illuminated Uscru Boulevard, which was blessedly free of traffic. Fires sputtering out, it hit the surface nose-first, cratering the street and shattering windows in buildings to all sides.
Maintaining a safe distance from the crash site, the gunship pilot engaged the repulsorlift engines and hovered to a landing at the frayed edge of the impact crater. Mace, Kit, and a dozen commandos jumped to the hot ground to secure the area. Crowds of startled onlookers formed almost immediately, and the sirens of emergency vehicles began to wail in the distance.
Lightsabers ignited, Mace and Kit strode along the perimeter of the shallow well, alert to the slightest movements. The crumpled ship had been torn open from bow to stern along one side, and they had clear views into every cabin space. Neither Grievous nor any of his elite guards were anywhere to be found.
Only battle droids: slagged, mangled, twisted into peculiar shapes.
“I can accept that Grievous might have fallen from the maglev,” Mace said, “but not that he would have included only two of his elite on a mission like this.”
Kit gazed at the wedge of night sky. “There could be a second assault craft.”
“Pilot!” Mace called toward the gunship. “Comlink the Supreme Chancellor’s bunker, and arrange for us to be cleared through the shield.”
Grievous and six MagnaGuards cut a bloody swath through the broad corridors that led ultimately to Palpatine’s sanctuary. Republic soldiers—cloned and otherwise—fell to Grievous’s lightsabers and the deadly staffs of his elite. Behind them, the firefight at the landing platform was raging. If nothing else, Grievous told himself, the clash would tie up two of the Jedi and dozens of troopers.
Thus far, things were still on target—if not proceeding according to plan.
At Palpatine’s apartment, Grievous had managed to fool everyone by placing the gunboat on display, then clandestinely transferring himself and his combat droids into the Republic gunship Lord Tyranus had promised would be waiting for them. He had been forced to improvise when Palpatine’s protectors had opted to follow an alternate route to the bunker, and he had enjoyed chasing the mag-lev—if not the brief duel on the roof of the train car.
Tyranus had warned him about Mace Windu’s prowess with a blade, and now he understood. His literal “misstep” had shamed him, and he was grateful that the two MagnaGuards that had fought at his side had not survived to bear witness to it. Had he not managed at the last instant to grab hold of the mag-lev rail and be retrieved by the borrowed gunship, all the efforts the Banking Clan had undertaken to have him rebuilt would have been for nothing.
But as it happened he was now about to give the Separatists more than their credits’ worth. Perhaps a means to proclaim themselves victors of the war.
Grievous and five remaining droids completed their march to the bunker, deflecting the fire of three troopers guarding the