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He leaned back in his chair and covered his face with both hands, inhaling a thin stream of air between his palms; into himself with the air he brought pain and guilt and remorse, and as he exhaled, they trailed away and vanished in the air.

He breathed out his whole life.

Everything he had done, everything he had been, friends and enemies, dreams and hopes and fears.

Empty, he found clarity. Scrubbed clean, the Force shone through him. He sat up and nodded to Yoda.

“Yes,” he said. “We may be the last. But what if we’re not?”

Green leather brows drew together over lambent eyes. “The Temple beacon.”

“Yes. Any surviving Jedi might still obey the recall, and be killed.”

Bail Organa looked from one Jedi to the other, frowning. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” Obi-Wan replied, “that we have to go back to Coruscant.”

“It’s too dangerous,” the Senator said instantly. “The whole planet is a trap—”

“Yes. We have a—ah …”

The loss of Anakin stabbed him.

Then he let that go, too.

“I have,” he corrected himself, “a policy on traps …”

THE FACE OF THE SITH

Mustafar burned with lava streaming from volcanoes of glittering obsidian.

At the fringe of its gravity well, a spray of prismatic starlight warped a starfighter into existence. Declamping from its hyperdrive ring, the starfighter streaked into an atmosphere choked with dense smoke and cinders.

The starfighter followed a preprogrammed course toward the planet’s lone installation, an automated lava mine built originally by the Techno Union to draw precious metals from the continuous rivers of burning stone. Upgraded with the finest mechanized defenses that money could buy, the settlement had become the final redoubt of the leaders of the Confederacy of Independent Systems. It was absolutely impenetrable.

Unless one had its deactivation codes.

Which was how the starfighter could land without causing the installation’s defenses to so much as stir.

The habitable areas of the settlement were spread among towers that looked like poisonous toadstools sprung from the bank of a river of fire. The main control center squatted atop the largest, beside the small landing deck where the starfighter had alit. It was from this control center, less than an hour before, that a coded command had been transmitted over every HoloNet repeater in the galaxy.

At that signal, every combat droid in every army on every planet marched back to its transport, resocketed itself, and turned itself off. The Clone Wars were over.

Almost.

There was a final detail.

A dark-cloaked figure swung down from the cockpit of the starfighter.

Bail Organa strode onto the Tantive’s shuttle deck to find Obi-Wan and Yoda gazing dubiously at the tiny cockpit of Obi-Wan’s starfighter. “I suppose,” Obi-Wan was saying reluctantly, “if you don’t mind riding on my lap …”

“That may not be necessary,” Bail said. “I’ve just been summoned back to Coruscant by Mas Amedda; Palpatine has called the Senate into Extraordinary Session. Attendance is required.”

“Ah.” Obi-Wan’s mouth turned downward. “It’s clear what this will be about.”

“I am,” Bail said slowly, “concerned it might be a trap.”

“Unlikely this is.” Yoda hobbled toward him. “Unknown, is the purpose of your sudden departure from the capital; dead, young Obi-Wan and I are both presumed to be.”

“And Palpatine won’t be moving against the Senate as a whole,” Obi-Wan added. “At least, not yet; he’ll need the illusion of democracy to keep the individual star systems in line. He won’t risk a general uprising.”

Bail nodded. “In that case—” He took a deep breath. “—perhaps I can offer Your Graces a lift?”

Inside the control center of the Separatist bunker on Mustafar …

Wat Tambor was adjusting the gas mix inside his armor—

Poggle the Lesser was massaging his fleshy lip-tendrils—

Shu Mai was fiddling with the brass binding that restrained her hair into the stylish curving horn that rose behind her head—

San Hill was stretching his bodystocking, which had begun to ride up in the