Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [177]
It is the Force that makes this possible, and more than the Force. Anakin has no interest in serene acceptance of what the Force will bring. Not here. Not now. Not with the lives of Palpatine and Obi-Wan at stake. It’s just the opposite: he seizes upon the Force with a stark refusal to fail.
He will land this ship.
He will save his friends.
Between his will and the will of the Force, there is no contest.
SEDUCTION
The dark is generous, and it is patient.
It is the dark that seeds cruelty into justice, that drips contempt into compassion, that poisons love with grains of doubt.
The dark can be patient, because the slightest drop of rain will cause those seeds to sprout.
The rain will come, and the seeds will sprout, for the dark is the soil in which they grow, and it is the clouds above them, and it waits behind the star that gives them light.
The dark’s patience is infinite.
Eventually, even stars burn out.
FAULT LINES
Mace Windu hung on to the corrugated hatch grip beside the gunship’s open troop bay with one hand, squinting into the wind that whipped his overcloak behind him. His other hand shaded his eyes against the glare from one of the orbital mirrors that concentrated the capital planet’s daylight. The mirror was slowly turning aside now, allowing a band of twilight to approach the gunship’s destination.
That destination, a kilometer-thick landing platform in the planet’s vast industrial zone, was marked with a steeply slanting tower of smoke and vapor that stretched from the planet’s surface to the uppermost reaches of the atmosphere, a tower that only now was beginning to spread and coil from its tiny source point to a horizon-spanning smear across the stratospheric winds.
The gunship roared over the bottomless canyons of durasteel and permacrete that formed the landscape of Coruscant, arrowing straight for the industrial zone without regard for the rigid traffic laws that governed flight on the galactic planet; until martial law was officially lifted by the Senate, the darkening skies would be traveled only by Republic military craft, Jedi transports, and emergency vehicles.
The gunship qualified as all three.
Mace could see the ship now—what was left of it—resting on the scorched platform far ahead: a piece of a ship, a fragment, less than a third of what once had been the Trade Federation flagship, still burning despite the gouts of fire-suppression foam raining down on it from five different ships and the emergency-support clone troops who surrounded it on the platform.
Mace shook his head. Skywalker again. The chosen one.
Who else could have brought in this hulk? Who else could have even come close?
The gunship swung into a hot landing, repulsors howling; Mace hopped out before it could settle, and gave the pilot an open-palm gesture to signal him to wait. The pilot, faceless within his helmet, responded with a closed fist.
Though, of course, the pilot wasn’t faceless at all. Under his armored helmet, that clone pilot had a face that Mace Windu remembered all too well.
That face would always remind him that he had once held Dooku within his grasp, and had let him slip away.
Across the platform, an escape pod hatch cycled open. Emergency crews scrambled with an escape slide, and a moment later the Supreme Chancellor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Anakin Skywalker were all on the deck beside the burning ship, closely followed by a somewhat battered R2 unit that lifted itself down on customized maneuvering rockets.
Mace strode swiftly out to meet them.
Palpatine’s robes were scorched and tattered at the hem, and he seemed weak; he leaned a bit on Skywalker’s shoulder as they moved away from the ship. On Skywalker’s other side, Master Kenobi