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While at the same time oblivious.

Dooku took a moment to set in place his compact welcoming device, then hurried through a series of decontamination chambers into the facility’s control room, which overlooked the rear of the archive hall and the vast space enclosed by the containment dome itself. There he activated a second small holoprojector and positioned himself for the holocam. Owing to interference, images of the achive hall were nowhere near as clear as he might have wished, and the audio feed was worse. It was more important, though, that Kenobi and Skywalker be able to see him, than he them.

At long last the two Jedi rushed headlong into the hall, only to stop upon spying his life-sized holoimage emanating from the compact holoprojector he had left behind.

“Dooku!” young Skywalker said, as if his tone of voice should suffice to send shivers down the backbones of his opponents. “Show yourself!”

Rooms distant, Dooku merely spread his hands in a gesture of greeting, and aimed his words at the holoprojector’s microphone. “Stand not amazed, young Jedi. Is this not the way you had your first glimpse of Lord Sidious?”

Instead of replying, Kenobi touched Skywalker on the arm, and the two of them began to scan the hall, no doubt in an attempt to locate him through the Force.

“You won’t find me, Jedi—”

“We know you’re here, Dooku,” Kenobi said suddenly—and with irksome audio distortion. “We can sense you.”

Dooku sighed in disappointment. They weren’t hearing him. Worse, the video feed was also becoming hopelessly corrupted. More through the Force than the holocam feed he saw them moving toward the very doorway he had taken to reach the control room.

Exceptional, he thought.

Despite his mastery of the Quey’tek technique for hiding oneself in the Force, they had located him! Ah, well then, time to entertain them, in observance of Sidious’s wishes.

Plucking his comlink from his belt, Dooku’s right thumb leapt across the small touch pad.

Heralded by the sound of metallic footfalls, fifty infantry droids crowded into the archive hall through two opposing doorways, perpendicular to the one through which the Jedi had entered.

“—beginning to … things almost as much … I hate sand,” Skywalker was saying to his former mentor as he raised his lightsaber over one shoulder.

Kenobi spread his legs and brought his blade directly in front of him. “Then … sweep up.”

Touched by their camaraderie, Dooku smiled to himself. Darth Sidious had his work cut out for him if he ever expected to turn Skywalker to the dark side.

He thumbed a final comlink key.

And with that, the droids leveled their blaster rifles at the Jedi and opened fire.

Yoda surrendered himself to the current of the Force. Sometimes, when the current was swift and steadfast, he could see through the eyes of his fellow Jedi, almost as if they were the Temple’s remote sensors. And sometimes when the current was especially forceful, when it surged as if descending from great heights, he could hear the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn, as clearly as if he were still alive.

Master Yoda, he might say, we still have much to learn. The Force remains a code only partially deciphered. But another key has been found. We will become stronger than we have ever been …

Today was not one of those days. Today the current was interrupted by eddies and whirlpools, hydraulic traps whose roar overpowered the voices Yoda sought to hear. Today the current was not pellucid, but muddied by red soil eroded from distant shores, treacherous with obstacles, tainted.

Though he was scarcely aware of it, his eyelids were squeezed tight, his eyeballs dancing beneath as if incapable of focusing on any one thing. He had an image of himself drawing aside a veil only to find another, and another beyond that.

The dark side frustrated his every effort to see clearly.

The experience was still something new to him.

Even though he’d had centuries to grow accustomed to foreboding, he had lived far longer without it. The