Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [152]
Kenobi had become a master of Soresu.
Dooku found himself having a sudden, unexpected, overpowering, and entirely distressing bad feeling about this …
His farce had suddenly, inexplicably, spun from humorous to deadly serious and was tumbling rapidly toward terrifying. Realization burst through Dooku’s consciousness like the blossoming fireballs of dying ships outside: this pair of Jedi fools had somehow managed to become entirely dangerous.
These clowns might—just possibly—actually be able to beat him.
No sense taking chances; even his Master would agree with that. Lord Sidious could come up with a new plan more easily than a new apprentice.
He gathered the Force once more in a single indrawn breath that summoned power from throughout the universe; the slightest whipcrack of that power, negligent as a flick of his wrist, sent Kenobi flying backward to crash hard against the wall, but Dooku didn’t have time to enjoy it.
Skywalker was all over him.
The shining blue lightsaber whirled and spat and every overhand chop crashed against Dooku’s defense with the unstoppable power of a meteor strike; the Sith Lord spent lavishly of his reserve of the Force merely to meet these attacks without being cut in half, and Skywalker—
Skywalker was getting stronger.
Each parry cost Dooku more power than he’d used to throw Kenobi across the room; each block aged him a decade.
He decided he’d best revise his strategy once again.
He no longer even tried to strike back. Force exhaustion began to close down his perceptions, drawing his consciousness back down to his physical form, trapping him within his own skull until he could barely even feel the contours of the room around him; he dimly sensed stairs at his back, stairs that led up to the entrance balcony. He retreated up them, using the higher ground for leverage, but Skywalker just kept on coming, tirelessly ferocious.
That blue blade was everywhere, flashing and whirling faster and faster until Dooku saw the room through an electric haze, and now Kenobi was back in the picture: with a shout of the Force, he shot like a torpedo up the stairs behind Skywalker, and Dooku decided that under these rather extreme circumstances, it was at least arguably permissible for a gentleman to cheat.
“Guards!” he said to the pair of super battle droids that still stood at attention to either side of the entrance. “Open fire!”
Instantly the two droids sprang forward and lifted their hands. Energy hammered out from the heavy blasters built into their arms; Skywalker whirled and his blade batted every blast back at the droids, whose mirror-polished carapace armor deflected the bolts again. Galvened particle beams screeched through the room in blinding ricochets.
Kenobi reached the top of the stairs and a single slash of his lightsaber dismantled both droids. Before their pieces could even hit the floor Dooku was in motion, landing a spinning side-stamp that folded Skywalker in half; he used his last burst of dark power to continue his spin into a blindingly fast wheel-kick that brought his heel against the point of Kenobi’s chin with a crack like the report of a huge-bore slugthrower, knocking the Jedi Master back down the stairs. Sounded like he’d broken his neck.
Wouldn’t that be lovely?
There was no sense in taking chances, however.
While Kenobi’s bonelessly limp body was still tumbling toward the floor far below, Dooku sent a surge of energy through the Force. Kenobi’s fall suddenly accelerated like a missile burning the last of its drives before impact. The Jedi Master struck the floor at a steep angle, skidded along it, and slammed into the wall so hard the hydrofoamed permacrete buckled and