Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [235]
“It can be,” Obi-Wan allowed equably. “Or, if you like, it can be the part where I dismantle your exoskeleton and ship you back to Coruscant in a cargo hopper.”
“I’ll take option three.” Grievous lifted his hand, and the bodyguards moved to box Obi-Wan between them. “That’s the one where I watch you die.”
Another gesture, and the droids in the ceiling hive came to life.
They uncoiled from their sockets heads-downward, with a rising chorus of whirring and buzzing and clicking that thickened until Obi-Wan might as well have stumbled into a colony of Corellian raptor-wasps. They began to drop free of the ceiling, first only a few, then many, like the opening drops of a summer cloudburst; finally they fell in a downpour that shook the stone-mounted durasteel of the deck and left Obi-Wan’s ears ringing. Hundreds of them landed and rolled to standing; as many more stayed attached to the overhead hive, hanging upside down by their magnapeds, weapons trained so that Obi-Wan now stood at the focus of a dome of blasters.
Through it all, Obi-Wan never moved.
“I’m sorry, was I not clear?” he said. “There is no option three.”
Grievous shook his head. “Do you never tire of this pathetic banter?”
“I rarely tire at all,” Obi-Wan said mildly, “and I have no better way to pass the time while I wait for you to either decide to surrender, or choose to die.”
“That choice was made long before I ever met you.” Grievous turned away. “Kill him.”
Instantly the box of bodyguards around Obi-Wan filled with crackling electrostaffs whipping faster than the human eye could see—which was less troublesome than it might have been, for that box was already empty of Jedi.
The Force had let him collapse as though he’d suddenly fainted, then it brought his lightsaber from his belt to his hand and ignited it while he turned his fall into a roll; that roll carried his lightsaber through a crisp arc that severed the leg of one of the bodyguards, and as the Force brought Obi-Wan back to his feet, the Force also nudged the crippled bodyguard to topple sideways into the path of the blade and sent it clanging to the floor in two smoking, sparking pieces.
One down.
The remaining three pressed the attack, but more cautiously; their weapons were longer than his, and they struck from beyond the reach of his blade. He gave way before them, his defensive velocities barely keeping their crackling discharge blades at bay.
Three MagnaGuards, each with a double-ended weapon that generated an energy field impervious to lightsabers, each with reflexes that operated near lightspeed, each with hypersophisticated heuristic combat algorithms that enabled it to learn from experience and adapt its tactics instantly to any situation, were certainly beyond Obi-Wan’s ability to defeat, but it was not Obi-Wan who would defeat them; Obi-Wan wasn’t even fighting. He was only a vessel, emptied of self. The Force, shaped by his skill and guided by his clarity of mind, fought through him.
In the Force, he felt their destruction: it was somewhere above and behind him, and only seconds away.
He went to meet it with a backflipping leap that the Force used to lift him neatly to an empty droid socket in the ceiling hive. The MagnaGuards sprang after him but he was gone by the time they arrived, leaping higher into the maze of girders and cables and room-sized cargo containers that was the control center’s superstructure.
Here, said the Force within him, and Obi-Wan stopped, balancing on a girder, frowning back at the oncoming killer droids that leapt from beam to beam below him like malevolent durasteel primates. Though he could feel its close approach, he had no idea from where their destruction might come … until the Force showed him a support beam within reach of his blade and whispered, Now.
His blade flicked out and the durasteel beam parted, fresh-cut edges glowing white hot, and a great hulk of