Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [82]
“Well, is it?”
Anakin compressed his lips, then said, “I won’t lie to you and say that I don’t miss her.”
Obi-Wan frowned sympathetically. “You can’t afford to miss her in that way.”
“And exactly why is that, Master?”
“Because you cannot be married to both.”
“Who said anything about marriage? She’s a friend. I miss her as a friend!”
“You would forgo your destiny for Padmé?”
Anakin’s brows beetled in anger. “I never claimed to be the Chosen One. That was Qui-Gon. Even the Council doesn’t believe it anymore, so why should you?”
“Because I think you believe it,” Obi-Wan said calmly. “I think you know in your heart that you’re meant for something extraordinary.”
“And you, Master. What does your heart tell you you’re meant for?”
“Infinite sadness,” Obi-Wan said, even while smiling.
Anakin regarded him. “If you believe in destiny, then everything we do becomes part of that destiny—whether we go to Tythe or we return to Coruscant.”
“You may be right. I don’t have the answer. I wish I did.”
“Then where does that leave us?”
Obi-Wan rested his hands on Anakin’s shoulders. “Speak with Palpatine. Maybe he’ll see something in this that I’ve missed.”
Fifty meters ahead of Mace in the tunnel, Shaak Ti held up her hand, motioning for him to stop. Angling his purple blade to the floor, Mace turned to relay the signal to the commandos behind him.
Shaak Ti’s whisper reached him through the Force: Movement ahead.
She gestured to the mouth of an intersecting tunnel just beyond where she stood, her profile limned blue by the glow of her raised lightsaber. Faint light spilled from the opening, as if someone with a handheld luma was approaching on foot.
Mace waved a signal to Commander Valiant, whose team moved forward stealthily, hugging the walls, their T-visor helmets allowing them to see in the dark.
Normally the probe droids would have the point, playing their lights and sensors across the dusty floor and tiled walls, sending data to Dyne and his team of analysts. Mace and Shaak Ti would ride in separate speeders behind the agents, intermingled with those of the commandos. Occasionally, however, the Jedi would assume the lead on foot for a couple of kilometers, usually in response to some anomaly discovered by the droids. Ventilation, such as it was, came courtesy of ancient blowers that did little more than drag in the sooty air from above, and illumination was provided by what the team brought with them.
They were deep below an area of The Works called the Grungeon Block. Encompassing twenty square kilometers, the block had originally been a production center for Serv-O-Droid, Huvicko, and Nebula Manufacturing, but it had fallen on hard times when its three principal clients had declared bankruptcy. Unable to attract new businesses, the developers who owned the Grungeon had allowed stratts and other vermin to overrun the stamping plants, and cashed out.
In the days since the raid, Mace’s team had searched nearly every nook and cranny of the confusion of tunnels and shafts that undermined the Grungeon and similar assembly areas. Ten kilometers into the tunnel that led to the LiMerge building’s sub-basement, a shaft had been found, leading to a deeper, older tunnel that also ran east toward the Senate District. In appearance the parallel tunnels were similar, save for the fact that the floor of the older one hosted an ancient mag-lev rail. The probe droids had discovered places along the rail where the accumulated decades of dust and debris had been blown away by the rapid passage of a repulsorlift vehicle of some sort. With no other clues to go on, the team had made the mag-lev tunnel the focus of the investigation.
Still, Mace felt that the team was on the right track.
An extensive search of the LiMerge building had revealed the remains of several Trang Robotics Duelist Elite droids that had been reduced to durasteel pieces by a lightsaber. Only Sidious, Dooku, or Sidious’s previous apprentice could have performed the amputations.
And there was more.
Shortly before Dooku had left the Jedi