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“Almost seems like your own people are trying to kill you, Vader,” he said. “Maybe they don’t like the idea of a Sith influencing the Emperor.”

Vader continued his resolute march. “Trust me, Shryne, the Emperor couldn’t be more pleased.”

Shryne cast a quick glance over his shoulder. They were entering an enormous interior space of wooden ramps, walkways, bridges, and concourses. “He doesn’t have enough experience with your kind.”

“And you do?”

“Enough to know that you’ll turn on him eventually.”

Vader loosed what could have been a laugh. “What makes you think the Emperor won’t turn on me first?”

“Like he turned on the Jedi,” Shryne said. “Although I suspect that was mostly your doing.”

Five meters away, Vader stopped short. “Mine?”

“You convinced him that with you by his side, he could get away with just about anything.”

Again, Vader’s exhalation approximated a laugh. “It’s thinking like that that blinded the Jedi to their fate.” He raised his sword. “Now it’s time for you to join them.”

Vader closed the distance between them in a heartbeat, slashing left and right with potent vertical strokes, narrowly missing Shryne time and again, but destroying everything touched by the blade. No whirling now; no windmilling or deft lunges. He simply used his bulk and size to remain wedded to the floor. It was an old style, the very opposite of what was said to have been Dooku’s style, and Shryne had no defense against it.

If I could see his face, his eyes, Shryne found time to think.

If he could knock that outsize helmet from Vader’s head.

If he could lance his lightsaber through the control panel on Vader’s chest—

That was the key! That was the reason for Vader’s antique style—to protect his center, as Grievous had been forced to do.

If he could only get to that control panel …

The two craft lifted off into smoke and withering night, spiraling up through resuming enemy fire toward Kachirho’s midlevel balconies. In the transport’s cramped cockpit with Cudgel, Filli, and Chewbacca—wedged into his seat, his head grazing the ceiling—Starstone clenched her white-knuckled hands on the shaking arms of the acceleration chair.

She couldn’t bring herself to lift her gaze to the viewports, for fear of what sights might greet her.

As if reading her mind, Cudgel said: “You can’t save an entire planet, kid. And it’s not like you didn’t try.”

Chewbacca reinforced the remark with a gutsy bass rumble, repeatedly slamming his huge hands down on the transport’s control yoke for emphasis.

“The Wookiees knew that their days of freedom were numbered,” Cudgel translated. “Kashyyyk will only be the first nonhuman world to be enslaved.”

Chewbacca threw the weary transport through a sudden evasive turn, nearly spilling everyone from their chairs. Through the viewport, Starstone caught a glimpse of Vader’s black shuttle, tumbling toward the ground. Firewalling the throttle, Chewbacca clawed for altitude, barely escaping the flames of the crashed shuttle’s mushrooming fireball.

Archyr’s voice issued through the cockpit enunciators as the drop ship appeared in the starboard panel of the viewport. “Close call!”

Growling irritably, Chewbacca ran a fast systems check.

“Tail singed,” Cudgel told Archyr through the comlink. “But everything else is intact.”

The drop ship remained in view to starboard.

“Half the balcony fell with the shuttle,” Archyr continued. “There isn’t much room to put down, even if you’re still fool enough to risk it. Whatever Olee has in mind, she’d better be quick about it.”

Cudgel swiveled to her. “You got that?”

She nodded as the ravaged balcony came into view, in worse shape than she had feared. Most of the rim was gone, and the few areas that still clung to the trunk of the wroshyr had been holed and crisped by turbolaser bolts. The bodies of Wookiees and stormtroopers sprawled in the spreading flames.

“I don’t see any sign of Shryne or Vader,” Archyr said over the comlink.

“Turbos could have killed them—” Cudgel started