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He snarled, “Do you think I am foolish enough to arm my bodyguards with weapons that can actually hurt me?”

Instead of waiting for an answer he spun, heaving Obi-Wan right off the deck with effortless strength, whipping up him over his head to slam him to the deck with killing power; Obi-Wan could only let go of the staff and allow the Force to angle his fall into a stumbling roll. Grievous sprang after him, swinging the electrostaff and slamming it across Obi-Wan’s flank before the Jedi Master could recover his balance. The impact sent Obi-Wan tumbling sideways and the electroburst discharge set his robe on fire. Grievous stayed right with him, attacking before Obi-Wan could even realize exactly what was happening, attacking faster than thought—

But Obi-Wan didn’t need to think. The Force was with him, and he knew.

When Grievous spun the staff overhand, discharge blade sizzling down at Obi-Wan’s head for the killing blow, Obi-Wan went to the inside.

He met Grievous chest-to-chest, his upraised hand blocking the general’s wrist; Grievous snarled something incoherent and bore down on the Jedi Master’s block with all his weight, driving the blade closer and closer to Obi-Wan’s face—

But Obi-Wan’s arm had the Force to give it strength, and the general’s arm only had the innate crystalline intermolecular structure of duranium alloy.

Grievous’s forearm bent like a cheap spoon.

While the general stared in disbelief at his mangled arm, Obi-Wan had been working the fingers of his free hand around the lower edge of Grievous’s dented, joint-loose stomach plate.

Grievous looked down. “What?”

Obi-Wan slammed the elbow of his blocking arm into the general’s clavicle while he yanked as hard as he could on the stomach plate, and it ripped free in his hand. Behind it hung a translucent sac of synthskin containing a tangle of green and gray organs.

The true body of the alien inside the droid.

Grievous howled and dropped the staff to seize Obi-Wan with his three remaining arms. He lifted the Jedi Master over his head again and hurled him tumbling over the landing deck toward the precipice above the gloom-shrouded drop. Reaching into the Force, Obi-Wan was able to connect with the stone itself as if he were anchored to it with a cable tether; instead of hurtling over the edge he slammed down onto the rock hard enough to crush all breath from his lungs.

Grievous picked up the staff again and charged.

Obi-Wan still couldn’t breathe. He had no hope of rising to meet the general’s attack.

All he could do was extend a hand.

As the bio-droid loomed over him, electrostaff raised for the kill, the hold-out blaster flipped from the deck into Obi-Wan’s palm, and with no hesitation, no second thoughts, not even the faintest pause to savor his victory, he pulled the trigger.

The bolt ripped into the synthskin sac.

Grievous’s guts exploded in a foul-smelling shower the color of a dead swamp. Energy chained up his spine and a mist of vaporized brain burst out both sides of his skull and sent his face spinning off the precipice.

The electrostaff hit the deck, followed shortly by the general’s knees.

Then by what was left of his head.

Obi-Wan lay on his back, staring at the circle of cloudless sky above the sinkhole while he gasped air back into into his spasming lungs. He barely managed to roll over far enough to smother the flames on his robe, then fell back.

And simply enjoyed being alive.

Much too short a time later—long before he was actually ready to get up—a shadow fell across him, accompanied by the smell of overheated lizard and an admonitory honnnk.

“Yes, Boga, you’re right,” Obi-Wan agreed reluctantly. Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself to his feet.

He picked up the electrostaff, and paused for one last glance at the remains of the bio-droid general.

“So …” He summoned a condemnation among the most offensive in his vocabulary. “… uncivilized.”

He triggered his comlink, and directed Cody to report to Jedi Command on Coruscant that Grievous had