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Despite his earlier misgivings, Mace thought for a moment that they might succeed.

Then he watched in disquiet as five hundred droid fighters—gushing from the great curving arms of a Trade Federation battleship—swarmed forward to safeguard the shuttle in its flight to freedom.

Three among a crowd several hundred strong standing in the Nicandra Plaza, Padmé, Bail, and Mon Mothma watched the late-breaking news report on the Embassy Mall’s HoloNet monitor. When word of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’s capture had first been rumored, then verified, all anyone in the crowd could ask was, How, in three short years, had it come to this?

The armies of chaos were parked in stationary orbit above Coruscant, and the beloved leader of the Galactic Republic seized. For so many, what had been an abstraction was stark reality, playing out overhead, for all of Coruscant and half the galaxy to watch.

Now that time had passed, however, Padmé had begun to notice a change in the crowd. Though a climactic battle was raging as near as the night sky’s frightening fireworks, most Coruscanti preferred to keep their gaze fixed on the real-time images of battle. That way, it was almost like watching an exciting HoloNet drama.

Would the starfighters be able to overtake the shuttle in which Palpatine was being held captive by a cyborg monster? Might the shuttle or the flagship that was its destination explode? What would become of the Republic should the Supreme Chancellor be killed, or Coruscant occupied by ten of thousands of battle droids? Would the Jedi and their clone army fly to the rescue?

When Padmé could take no more of the 3-D images or the remarks of the audience, she wended her way to the perimeter of the crowd to take hold of a handrail at the plaza’s edge, and to lift her eyes to the strobing sky.

Anakin, she said to herself, as if she could reach him with a thought.

Anakin.

Tears coursed down her cheeks, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. Her sadness was personal now, not for Palpatine, though his abduction hollowed her. She wept for a future she and Anakin might have had. For the family they might have been. More than ever she wished that she hadn’t been a featured player in the events that had shaped the war, but merely one of the crowd.

Come home to me before it’s too late.

Her gaze lowered, she caught sight of C-3PO, parting company with a silver protocol droid that disappeared into the crowd.

“What was that about, Threepio?” she asked as he approached.

“A most curious encounter, Mistress,” C-3PO said. “I think that shiny droid fancies himself something of a seer.”

Padmé looked at him askance. “In what way, Threepio?”

“In essence, he told me to flee while it was still possible. He said that dark times are coming, and that the line that separates good and bad will become blurred. That what seems good now will prove evil; and that what seems evil, will prove good.”

Sensing there was more, Padmé waited.

C-3PO’s photoreceptors locked on Padmé. “He said further that I should accept a memory wipe if it is ever offered to me, because the only alternative will be to live in fear and confusion for the rest of my days.”

Slapped by fire, the tri-winged shuttle fairly crawled toward the docking bay of the Invisible Hand. Grievous held to his treacherous course, even while contingency plans formed in his mind. Wings of Trade Federation droid fighters had burned a path for the shuttle through areas of intense combat, but the vulnerable little ship was not yet in the clear. Many of Grievous’s impassioned pursuers were so busy defending themselves that they no longer represented a threat, but three starfighters had managed to stay with the shuttle, and were continuing to harry it with surgical fire.

The spiraling chase up the gravity well and the twisting transit to the cruiser had left the ship battered. The sublight engine was whining in protest, the ray shield dangerously diminished, the minimal weapons depleted. Uncertain as to where Grievous