Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [76]
The probe droids were first to exit the car when it stopped, misting the corridor in both directions. One of the droids hadn’t gone five meters before it stopped in midflight and began playing its detection lights across the floor.
“Footprints,” Dyne said with enthusiasm. “We’re still on track.”
Stepping carefully from the car, he followed the probe droids to the entrance of a wide tunnel. After the droids had disappeared inside and returned, Dyne swung to Mace, who was waiting with everyone else at the base of the turbolift.
“The prints end here. From this point on the unknown used a vehicle—certainly a repulsorlift of some sort, although the droids aren’t detecting any phantom emissions.”
Mace and Shaak Ti joined Dyne and his teammates at the tunnel entrance.
Shaak Ti peered into the darkness. “Where does it lead?”
Dyne consulted a holomap. “If we can trust a map that’s older than any of us, it connects to tunnels all over The Works—to adjacent buildings, to the foundries, to a onetime landing field … There must be a hundred branches.”
“Forget the branches,” Mace said. “What’s at the far end of this one?”
Dyne called up a series of displays and studied them in silence. At last, he said: “The principal tunnel leads all the way to the western limit of the Senate District.”
Mace walked two meters into the darkness, and ran his hand down the tunnel’s tiled wall.
Hundreds of Senators are now under the influence of a Sith Lord called Darth Sidious, Dooku had told Obi-Wan on Geonosis.
Turning to face Shaak Ti and the clone commanders, Mace said: “We’re going to need more troops.”
In the Supreme Chancellor’s Senate Office Building chambers, Yoda sat staring across the desk at Palpatine, silhouetted against the long window that overlooked western Coruscant. How many Supreme Chancellors had he sat with in this office and others like it? he asked himself. Half a hundred now. But why with this one did discussion so often skirt the edge of confrontation—especially when the topic turned to the Force. As ineffectual a leader as he was, Finis Valorum had tried to comport himself as if he placed the Force above all. With Palpatine, the Force was not placed last. It wasn’t even on the agenda.
“I understand your concerns entirely, Master Yoda,” he was saying. “More important, I am sympathetic to them. But the Outer Rim sieges must continue. Despite what you may think—and notwithstanding the extraordinary powers the Senate has deemed fit to bestow on me these past five years—I am one voice in a welter. At long last the Senate is galvanized to end this destructive conflict, and it will not permit me to stand in the way.”
“Exhort me, you need not, Supreme Chancellor,” Yoda said.
Palpatine smiled dryly. “I apologize if I sounded sermonizing.”
“Galvanized by your State of the Republic address, the Senate was.”
“My address was a reflection of the spirit of the times, Master Yoda. What’s more, I spoke from my heart.”
“Doubt you, I do not. But too soon, your encouragements came. Celebrates imminent victory, Coruscant does, when far from ended the war is.”
Palpatine’s frown contained a hint of warning, of malice. “After three years of fear, Coruscant craves relief.”
“Agree with you, I do. But how from the seizure of Outer Rim worlds is relief sustained? Too many new fronts, the Senate urges us to open. Too dispersed the Jedi are, to serve effectively. A reasonable strategy, we lack.”
“My military advisers would not be pleased to hear you categorize their strategy as irrational.”
“Need to hear it, they do. Say it to them, I will.”
Palpatine paused to consider the remark, then leveled a hard gaze. “Master Yoda, forgive my frankness, but if the Jedi are indeed too widely scattered to coordinate the sieges, then the burden will have to fall to my naval commanders.”
Yoda