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But even grief is an attachment, and Obi-Wan let it flow out of his life.

Good-bye, my friend.

He didn’t try to swim; he seemed to be hanging motionless, suspended in infinite night. He relaxed, regulated his breathing, and let the water take him whither it would.

C-3PO barely had time to wish his little friend good luck and remind him to stay alert as Master Anakin brushed past him and climbed into the starfighter’s cockpit, then fired the engine and blasted off, taking R2-D2 goodness knows where—probably to some preposterously horrible alien planet and into a perfectly ridiculous amount of danger—with never a thought how his loyal droid might feel about being dragged across the galaxy without so much as a by-your-leave …

Really, what had happened to that young man’s manners?

He turned to Senator Amidala and saw that she was crying.

“Is there anything I can do, my lady?”

She didn’t even turn his way. “No, thank you, Threepio.”

“A snack, perhaps?”

She shook her head.

“A glass of water?”

“No.”

All he could do was stand there. “I feel so helpless …”

She nodded, looking away again, up at the fading spark of her husband’s starfighter.

“I know, Threepio,” she said. “We all do.”

In the underground shiplift beneath the Senate Office Building, Bail Organa was scowling as he boarded Tantive IV. When Captain Antilles met him at the top of the landing ramp, Bail nodded backward at the scarlet-clad figures posted around the accessways. “Since when do Redrobes guard Senate ships?”

Antilles shook his head. “I don’t know, sir. I have a feeling there are some Senators whom Palpatine doesn’t want leaving the planet.”

Bail nodded. “Thank the Force I’m not one of them. Yet. Did you get the beacon?”

“Yes, sir. No one even tried to stop us. The clones at Chance Palp seemed confused—like they’re not quite sure who’s in charge.”

“That’ll change soon. Too soon. We’ll all know who’s in charge,” Bail said grimly. “Prepare to raise ship.”

“Back to Alderaan, sir?”

Bail shook his head. “Kashyyyk. There’s no way to know if any Jedi have lived through this—but if I had to bet on one, my money’d be on Yoda.”

Some undefinable time later, Obi-Wan felt his head and shoulders breach the surface of the lightless ocean. He unclipped his lightsaber and raised it over his head. In its blue glow he could see that he had come up in a large grotto; holding the lightsaber high, he tucked away his rebreather and sidestroked across the current to a rock outcropping that was rugged enough to offer handholds. He pulled himself out of the water.

The walls of the grotto above the waterline were pocked with openings; after inspecting the mouths of several caves, Obi-Wan came upon one where he felt a faint breath of moving air. It had a distinctly unpleasant smell—it reminded him more than a bit of the dragonmount pen—but when he doused his lightsaber for a moment and listened very closely, he could hear a faint rumble that might have been distant wheels and repulsorlifts passing over sandstone—and what was that? An air horn? Or possibly a very disturbed dragon … at any rate, this seemed to be the appropriate path.

He had walked only a few hundred meters before the gloom ahead of him was pierced by the white glare of high-intensity searchlights. He let his blade shrink away and pressed himself into a deep, narrow crack as a pair of seeker droids floated past.

Apparently Cody hadn’t given up yet.

Their searchlights illuminated—and, apparently, awakened—some sort of immense amphibian cousin of a dragonmount; it blinked sleepily at them as it lifted its slickly glistening starfighter-sized head.

Oh, Obi-Wan thought. That explains the smell.

He breathed into the Force a suggestion that these small bobbing spheroids of circuitry and durasteel were actually, contrary to smell and appearance, some unexpected variety of immortally delicious confection sent down from the heavens by the kindly gods of Huge Slimy Cave-Monsters.

The Huge Slimy Cave-Monster