Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [392]
She drew her lightsaber from her belt. “We need to say good-bye to these, as well.” She ignited the blade briefly, then summoned it back into the hilt and placed it at her feet on the deck.
Regarding everyone, she said: “May the Force be with all of us.”
Lord Vader,” the gunnery officer said, nodding his head in salute as Vader passed by his station.
“Lord Vader,” the communications officer said, saluting in similar fashion.
“Lord Vader,” the Exactor’s captain said, in crisp acknowledgment.
Vader continued on to the end of bridge walkway, thinking: This is how I will be greeted from now on, wherever I set foot.
Standing at the forward viewports, he scanned the stars with his reconstructed eyes.
He had guardianship of all this, or at least joint custody of it. The Jedi no longer mattered; they were no different from others who would interfere with his and Sidious’s realm. Their mission was to maintain order, so that the dark side could continue to reign supreme.
Anakin was gone; a memory so deeply buried he might have dreamed rather than lived it. The Force as Anakin knew it was interred with him, and inseparable from him.
Just as Sidious promised, he was now married to the order of the Sith, and needed no other companion than the dark side of the Force. He embraced all that he had done to bring balance to the Force, by dismantling the corrupt Republic and toppling the Jedi, and he reveled in his power. It could all be his, anything he wished. He needed only the determination to take it, at whatever cost to those who stood in his way.
But …
He was also married to Sidious, who doled out precious bits of Sith technique as if merely lending them—just enough to increase his apprentice’s power, without making him supremely powerful.
There would come a day, however, when they would be equals.
He scanned the stars, looking forward to a time when he could find an apprentice of his own and, together with that one, topple Darth Sidious from his throne.
It gave him something to live for.
Another glass, stranger?” the cantina owner asked Obi-Wan Kenobi.
“What will it cost me?”
“Ten credits for refills.”
“That’s as much as a shot of one of your imported brandies.”
“The price of staying hydrated on Tatooine, my friend. Yes or no?”
Obi-Wan nodded. “Fill it.”
Gathered by the cantina’s single moisture vaporator, the water was somewhat cloudy and had a metallic taste, but it was of a higher quality than that gathered by Obi-Wan’s own vaporator. If he was to survive in the hovel he had found, he would need to have the vaporator repaired, or somehow obtain a newer one from the Jawa traders who occasionally passed through the region he now called home.
If it hadn’t been for the kindness of the maroon-cloaked creatures, he would still be walking to Anchorhead rather than sitting in the scant shade of the cantina’s veranda, sipping water. A wind-scoured settlement close to Tatooine’s Western Dune Sea, Anchorhead was little more than a trading post frequented by the moisture farmers who made up the Great Chott salt flat community, or by merchants traveling between Mos Eisley and Wayfar, in the south. Anchorhead had a small resident population, a dozen or so pourstone stores, and two small cantinas. But it was known mainly for the power generator located at the edge of town.
Named for its owner, Tosche Station supplied energy to the moisture farms and served as a recharge depot for the farmers’ landspeeders and other repulsorlift vehicles. The station also boasted a hyperwave repeater, which—when it functioned—received HoloNet feeds relayed from Naboo, Rodia, and, occasionally, Nal Hutta, in Hutt space.
Tosche was working today, and The Weary Traveler’s handful of afternoon customers were catching up on news and the outcome of sports events that had taken place standard weeks earlier. Obi-Wan—known locally as Ben