Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [200]
“And even if the prophecy has been misread,” Agen Kolar added, “Anakin is the one Jedi we can best hope would survive an encounter with a Sith Lord. So let us also use him to help us set our trap. In Council, let us emphasize that we are intensifying our search for Grievous. Anakin will certainly report this to the Chancellor’s Office. Perhaps, as you say, that will draw Sidious into action.”
“It may not be enough,” Mace Windu said. “Let us take this one step farther—we should appear shorthanded, and weak, giving Sidious an opening to make a move he thinks will go unobserved. I’m thinking that perhaps we should let the Chancellor’s Office know that Yoda and I have both been forced to take the field—”
“Too risky that is,” Yoda said. “And too convenient. One of us only should go.”
“Then it should be you, Master Yoda,” Agen Kolar said. “It is your sensitivity to the broader currents of the Force that a Sith Lord has most reason to fear.”
Obi-Wan felt the ripple of agreement flow through the Chamber, and Yoda nodded solemnly. “The Separatist attack on Kashyyyk, a compelling excuse will make. And good relations with the Wookiees I have; destroy the droid armies I can, and still be available to Coruscant, should Sidious take our bait.”
“Agreed.” Mace Windu looked around the half-empty Council Chamber with a deepening frown. “And one last touch. Let’s let the Chancellor know, through Anakin, that our most cunning and insightful Master—and our most tenacious—is to lead the hunt for Grievous.”
“So Sidious will need to act, and act fast, if the war is to be maintained,” Plo Koon added approvingly.
Yoda nodded judiciously. “Agreed.” Agen Kolar assented as well, and Ki-Adi-Mundi.
“This sounds like a good plan,” Obi-Wan said. “But what Master do you have in mind?”
For a moment no one spoke, as though astonished he would ask such a question.
Only after a few seconds in which Obi-Wan looked from the faces of one Master to the next, puzzled by the expressions of gentle amusement each and every one of them wore, did it finally register that all of them were looking at him.
Bail Organa stopped cold in the middle of the Grand Concourse that ringed the Senate’s Convocation Chamber. The torrent of multispecies foot traffic that streamed along the huge curving hall broke around him like a river around a boulder. He stared up in disbelief at one of the huge holoprojected Proclamation Boards; these had recently been installed above the concourse to keep the thousands of Senators up to the moment on news of the war, and on the Chancellor’s latest executive orders.
His heart tripped, and he couldn’t seem to make his eyes focus. He pushed his way through the press to a hardcopy stand and punched a quick code. When he had the flimsies in his hands, they still said the same thing.
He’d been expecting this day. Since yesterday, when the Senate had voted to give Palpatine control of the Jedi, he’d known it would come soon. He’d even started planning for it.
But that didn’t make it any easier to bear.
He found his way to a public comm booth and keyed a privacy code. The transparisteel booth went opaque as stone, and a moment later a hand-sized image shimmered into existence above the small holodisk: a slender woman in floor-length white, with short, neatly clipped auburn hair and a clear, steadily intelligent gaze from her aquamarine eyes. “Bail,” she said. “What’s happened?”
Bail’s elegantly thin goatee pulled downward around his mouth. “Have you seen this morning’s decree?”
“The Sector Governance Decree? Yes, I have—”
“It’s time, Mon,” he said grimly. “It’s time to stop talking, and start doing. We have to bring in the Senate.”
“I agree, but we must tread carefully. Have you thought about whom