Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [257]
Kenobi nodded and spoke to his mount, and the great beast overleapt the clone commander on its way down into the battle.
Cody withdrew the comlink from his armor and triggered it.
A holoscan appeared on the palm of his gauntlet: a hooded man.
“It is time,” the holoscan said. “Execute Order Sixty-Six.”
Cody responded as he had been trained since before he’d even awakened in his crèche-school. “It will be done, my lord.”
The holoscan vanished. Cody stuck the comlink back into its concealed recess and frowned down toward where Kenobi rode his dragonmount into selflessly heroic battle.
Cody was a clone. He would execute the order faithfully, without hesitation or regret. But he was also human enough to mutter glumly, “Would it have been too much to ask for the order to have come through before I gave him back the bloody lightsaber …?”
The order is given once. Its wave-front spreads to clone commanders on Kashyyyk and Felucia, Mygeeto and Tellanroaeg and every battlefront, every military installation, every hospital and rehab center and spaceport cantina in the galaxy.
Except for Coruscant.
On Coruscant, Order Sixty-Six is already being executed.
Dawn crept across Galactic City. Fingers of morning brought a rose-colored glow to the wind-smeared upper reach of a vast twisting cone of smoke.
Bail Organa was a man not given to profanity, but when he caught a glimpse of the source of that smoke from the pilot’s chair of his speeder, the curse it brought to his lips would have made a Corellian dockhand blush.
He stabbed a code that canceled his speeder’s programmed route toward the Senate Office Building, then grabbed the yoke and kicked the craft into a twisting dive that shot him through half a dozen crisscrossing streams of air traffic.
He triggered his speeder’s comm. “Antilles!”
The answer from the captain of his personal crew was instant. “Yes, my lord?”
“Route an alert to SER,” he ordered. “The Jedi Temple is on fire!”
“Yes, sir. We know. Senate Emergency Response has announced a state of martial law, and the Temple is under lockdown. There’s been some kind of Jedi rebellion.”
“What are you talking about? That’s impossible. Why aren’t there fireships onstation?”
“I don’t have any details, my lord; we only know what SER is telling us.”
“Look, I’m right on top of it. I’m going down there to find out what’s happening.”
“My lord, I wouldn’t recommend it—”
“I won’t take any chances.” Bail hauled the control yoke to slew the speeder toward the broad landing deck on the roof of the Temple ziggurat. “Speaking of not taking chances, Captain: order the duty crew onto the Tantive and get her engines warm. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“Sir?”
“Just do it.”
Bail set the speeder down only a few meters from the deck entrance and hopped out. A squad of clone troopers stood in the open doorway. Smoke billowed out from the hallway behind them.
One of the troopers lifted a hand as Bail approached. “Don’t worry, sir, everything is under control here.”
“Under control? Where are the SER teams? What is the army doing here?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t talk about that, sir.”
“Has there been some kind of attack on the Temple?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t talk about that, sir.”
“Listen to me, Sergeant, I am a Senator of the Galactic Republic,” Bail said, improvising, “and I am late for a meeting with the Jedi Council—”
“The Jedi Council is not in session, sir.”
“Maybe you should let me see for myself.”
The four clones moved together to block his path. “I’m sorry, sir. Entry is forbidden.”
“I am a Senator—”
“Yes, sir.” The clone sergeant snapped his DC-15 to his shoulder, and Bail, blinking, found himself staring into its blackened muzzle from close enough to kiss it. “And it is time for you to leave, sir.”
“When you put it that way …” Bail backed off, lifting his hands. “Yes, all right, I’m going.”
A burst of blasterfire ripped through the smoke and scattered into the dawn outside. Bail stared with an open mouth as a Jedi flashed