"I don't need a lecture, okay? How many times have we had this talk?"

"Apparently, one time less than we needed to."

Anakin sighed. Obi-Wan could still make him feel about nine years old. He gave a sullen nod toward one of the droid bodyguards. "He's got it."

"He does? And how did this happen?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Anakin-"

"Hey, he's got yours, too!"

"That's different-"

"This weapon is your life, Obi-Wan!" He did a credible-enough Ken.o.bi impression that Palpatine had to smother a snort. "You must take care of it!"

"Perhaps," Obi-Wan said, as the droids clicked the binders onto their wrists and led them all away, "we should talk about this later."

Anakin intoned severely, "Without your lightsaber, you may not have a..."

"All right, all right." The Jedi Master surrendered with a rueful smile. "You win."

Anakin grinned at him. "I'm sorry? What was that?" He couldn't remember the last time he'd won an argument with Obi-Wan. "Could you speak up a little?"

"It's not very Jedi to gloat, Anakin."

"I'm not gloating, Master," he said with a sidelong glance at Palpatine. "I'm just . . . savoring the moment."

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, for now: The Supreme Chancellor returns your look with a hint of smile and a sliver of an approving nod, and for you, this tiny, trivial, comradely victory sparks a warmth and ease that relaxes the dragon-grip of dread on your heart.

Forget that you are captured; you and Obi-Wan have been captured before. Forget the deteriorating ship, forget the Jedi-killing droids; you've faced worse. Forget General Grievous What is he compared with Dooku? He can't even use the Force So now, here, for you, the situation comes down to this: you are walking between the two best friends you have ever had, with your precious droid friend faithfully whirring after your heels.

On your way to win the Clone Wars.

What you have done-what happened in the General's Quarters and, more important, why it happened-is all burning away in Coruscant's atmosphere along with Dooku's decapitated corpse. Already it seems as if it happened to somebody else, as if you were somebody else when you did it, and it seems as if that man-the dragon-haunted man with a furnace for a heart and a mind as cold as the surface of that dead star-had really only been an image reflected in Dooku's open staring eyes.

And by the time what's left of the conning spire crashes into the kilometers-thick crust of city that is the surface of Coruscant, those dead eyes will have burned away, and the dragon will burn with them.

And you, for the first time in your life, will truly be free.

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker.

For now.

=7=.

Obi-Wan and Anakin 2 This is Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi in the light: As he is prodded onto the bridge along with Anakin and Chancellor Palpatine, he has no need to look around to see the banks of control consoles tended by terrified Neimoidians. He doesn't have to turn his head to count the droidekas and super battle droids, or to gauge the positions of the brutal droid bodyguards. He doesn't bother to raise his eyes to meet the cold yellow stare fixed on him through a skull-mask of armorplast. He doesn't even need to reach into the Force. He has already let the Force reach into him. The Force flows over him and around him as though he has stepped into a crystal-pure waterfall lost in the green coils of a forgotten rain forest; when he opens himself to that sparkling stream it flows into him and through him and out again without the slightest interference from his conscious will. The part of him that calls itself Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi is no more than a ripple, an eddy in the pool into which he endlessly pours.

There are other parts of him here, as well; there is nothing here that is not a part of him, from the scuff mark on R2-D2's dome to the tattered hem of Palpatine's robe, from the spidering crack in one transparisteel panel of the curving view wall above to the great starships that still battle beyond it.

Because this is all part of the Force.

Somehow, mysteriously, the cloud that has darkened the Force for near to a decade and a half has lightened around him now, and he finds within himself the limpid clarity he recalls from his schooldays at the Jedi Temple, when the Force was pure, and clean, and perfect. It is as though the darkness has withdrawn has coiled back upon itself, to allow him this moment of clarity, to return to him the full power of the light, if only for the moment; he does not know why, but he is incapable of even wondering. In the Force, he is beyond questions.

Why is meaningless; it is an echo of the past, or a whisper from the future. All that matters, for this infinite now, is what, and where, and who.

He is all sixteen of the super battle droids, gleaming in laser-reflective chrome, arms loaded with heavy blasters. He is those blasters and he is their targets. He is all eight destroyer droids waiting with electronic patience within their energy shields, and both bodyguards, and every single one of the shivering Neimoidians. He is their clothes, their boots, even each drop of reptile-scented moisture that rolls off them from the misting sprays they use to keep their internal temperatures down. He is the binders that cuff his hands, and he is the electrostaff in the hands of the bodyguard at his back.

He is both of the lightsabers that the other droid bodyguard marches forward to offer to General Grievous.

And he is the general himself.

He is the general's duranium ribs. He is the beating of Grievous's alien heart, and is the silent pulse of oxygen pumped through his alien veins. He is the weight of four lightsabers at the general's belt, and is the greedy antic.i.p.ation the captured weapons sparked behind the general's eyes. He is even the plan for his own execution simmering within the general's brain.

He is all these things, but most importantly, he is still Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi.

This is why he can simply stand. Why he can simply wait. He has no need to attack, or to defend. There will be battle here, but he is perfectly at ease, perfectly content to let the battle start when it will start, and let it end when it will end.

Just as he will let himself live, or let himself die.

This is how a great Jedi makes war.

General Grievous lifted the two lightsabers, one in each duranium hand, to admire them by the light of turbolaser blasts outside, and said, "Rare trophies, these: the weapon of Anakin Skywalker, and the weapon of General Ken.o.bi. I look forward to adding them to my collection."

"That will not happen. I am in control here." The reply came through Obi-Wan's lips, but it was not truly Obi-Wan who spoke. Obi-Wan was not in control; he had no need for control. He had the Force.

It was the Force that spoke through him. Grievous stalked forward. Obi-Wan saw death in the cold yellow stare through the skull-mask's eyeholes, and it meant nothing to him at all.

There was no death. There was only the Force. He didn't have to tell Anakin to subtly nudge Chancellor Palpatine out of the line of fire; part of him was Anakin, and was doing this already. He didn't have to tell R2-D2 to access its combat subprograms and divert power to its booster rockets, claw-arm, and cable-gun; the part of him that was the little astromech had seen to all these things before they had even entered the bridge.

Grievous towered over him. "So confident you are, Ken.o.bi."

"Not confident, merely calm." From so close, Obi-Wan could see the hairline cracks and pitting in the bone-pale mask and could feel the resonance of the general's electrosonic voice humming in his chest. He remembered the Question of Master Jrul: What is the good, if not the teacher of the bad? What is the bad if not the task of the good?

He said, "We can resolve this situation without further violence. I am willing to accept your surrender."

"I'm sure you are." The skull-mask tilted inquisitively. "Does this preposterous I-will-accept-your-surrender line of yours ever actually work?"

"Sometimes. When it doesn't, people get hurt. Sometimes they die." Obi-Wan's blue-gray eyes met squarely those of yellow behind the mask. "By people, in this case, you should understand that I mean you."

"I understand enough. I understand that I will kill you." Grievous threw back his cloak and ignited both lightsabers. "Here. Now. With your own blade."

The Force replied through Obi-Wan's lips, "I don't think so."

The electrodrivers that powered Grievous's limbs could move them faster than the human eye can see; when he swung his arm, it and his fist and the lightsaber within it would literally vanish: wiped from existence by sheer mind-numbing speed, an imitation quantum event. No human being could move remotely as fast as Grievous, not even Obi-Wan-but he didn't have to.

In the Force, part of him was Grievous's intent to slaughter, and the surge from intent to action translated to Obi-Wan's response without thought. He had no need for a plan, no use for tactics.

He had the Force.

That sparkling waterfall coursed through him, washing away any thought of danger, or safety, of winning or losing. The Force, like water, takes on the shape of its container without effort, without thought. The water that was Obi-Wan poured itself into the container that was Grievous's attack, and while some materials might be water-tight, Obi-Wan had yet to encounter any that were entirely, as it were, Force-tight . . .

While the intent to swing was still forming in Grievous's mind, the part of the Force that was Obi-Wan was also the part of the Force that was R2-D2, as well as an internal fusion-welder Anakin had retrofitted into R2-D2's primary grappling arm, and so there was no need for actual communication between them; it was only Obi-Wan's personal sense of style that brought his customary gentle smile to his face and his customary gentle murmur to his lips. "Artoo?"

Even as he opened his mouth, a panel was sliding aside in the little droid's fuselage; by the time the droid's nickname had left his lips, the fusion-welder had deployed and fired a blinding spray of sparks hot enough to melt duranium, and in the quarter of a second while even Grievous's electronically enhanced reflexes had him startled and distracted, the part of the Force that was Obi-Wan tried a little trick, a secret one that it had been saving up for just such an occasion as this.

Because all there on the bridge was one in the Force, from the gross structure of the ship itself to the quantum dance of the electron sh.e.l.ls of individual atoms-and because, after all, the nerves and muscles of the bio-droid general were creations of electronics and duranium, not living tissue with will of its own-it was just barely possible that with exactly the right twist of his mind, in that one vulnerable quarter of a second while Grievous was distracted, flinching backward from a spray of flame hot enough to burn even his armored body, Obi-Wan might be able to temporarily reverse the polarity of the electrodrivers in the general's mechanical hands.

Which is exactly what he did.

Durasteel fingers sprang open, and two lightsabers fell free.

He reached through the Force and the Force reached through him; his blade flared to life while still in the air; it flipped toward him, and as he lifted his hands to meet it, its blue flame flashed between his wrists and severed the binders before the handgrip smacked solidly into his palm.

Obi-Wan was so deep in the Force that he wasn't even suprised it had worked.

He made a quarter turn to face Anakin, who was already in the air, having leapt simultaneously with Obi-Wan's gentle murmur because Obi-Wan and Anakin were, after all, two parts of the same thing; Anakin's flip carried him over Obi-Wan's head at the perfect range for Obi-Wan's blade to flick out and burn through his partner's binders, and while Grievous was still flinching away from the fountain of fusion fire, Anakin landed with his own hand extended; Obi-Wan felt a liquid surge in the waterfall that he was, and Anakin's lightsaber sang through the air and Anakin caught it, and so, one single second after Grievous had begun to summon the intent to swing, Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi and Anakin Skywalker stood back-to-back in the center of the bridge, expressionlessly staring past the snarling blue energy of their lightsabers.

Obi-Wan regarded the general without emotion. "Perhaps you should reconsider my offer."

Grievous braced himself against a control console, its dura-steel housing buckling under his grip. "This is my answer!"

He ripped the console wholly into the air, right out from under the hands of the astonished Neimoidian operator, raised it over his head, and hurled it at the Jedi. They split, rolling out of the console's way as it crashed to the deck, spitting smoke and sparks.

"Open fire!" Grievous shook his fists as though each held a Jedi's neck. "Kill them! Kill them all!"

For one more second there was only the scuttle of priming levers on dozens of blasters.

One second after that, the bridge exploded into a firestorm.

Grievous hung back, crouching, watching for a moment as his two MagnaGuards waded into the Jedi, electrostaffs whirling through the blinding hail of blasterfire that ricocheted around the bridge. Grievous had fought Jedi before, sometimes even in open battle, and he had found that fighting any one Jedi was much like fighting any other. Ken.o.bi, though-The ease with which Ken.o.bi had taken command of the situation was frightening. More frightening was the fact that of the two, Skywalker was reportedly the greater warrior. And even their R2 unit could fight: the little astromech had some kind of aftermarket cable-gun it had used to entangle the legs of a super droid and yank it off its feet, and now was jerking the droid this way and that so that its arm cannons were blasting chunks off its squadmates instead of the Jedi.

Grievous was starting to think less about winning this particular encounter than about surviving it.

Let his MagnaGuards fight the Jedi; that's what they were designed for-and they were doing their jobs well. IG-101 had pressed Ken.o.bi back against a console, lightning blazing from his electrostaff's energy shield where it pushed on Ken.o.bi's blade; the Jedi general might have died then and there, except that one of the simple-minded super battle droids turned both arm cannons on his back, giving Ken.o.bi the chance to duck and allow the hammering blaster bolts to slam 101 stumbling backward. Skywalker had stashed the Chancellor somewhere-that sniveling coward Palpatine was probably trembling under one of the control consoles-and had managed to sever both of 102's legs below the knee, which for some reason he apparently expected to end the fight; he seemed completely astonished when 102 whirled nimbly on one end of his electrostaff and used the stumps of his legs to thump Skywalker so soundly the Jedi went down skidding.

On the other hand, Grievous thought, this might be salvageable after all.

He tapped his internal comlink's jaw sensor to the general droid command frequency. "The Chancellor is hiding under one of the consoles. Squad Sixteen, find him, and deliver him to my escape pod immediately. Squad Eight, stay on mission. Kill the Jedi."

Then the ship bucked, sharper than it ever had, and the view wall panels whited out as radiation-scatter sleeted through the bridge. Alarm klaxons blared. The nav console flared sparks into the face of a Neimoidian pilot, setting his uniform on fire and adding his screams to the din, and another console exploded, ripping the newly promoted senior gunnery officer into a pile of shredded meat.

Ah, Grievous thought. In all the excitement, he had entirely forgotten about Lieutenant Commander Needa and Integrity.

The other pilot-the one who wasn't shrieking and slapping at the flames on his uniform until his own hands caught fire-leaned as far away from his screaming partner as his crash webbing would allow and shouted, "General, that shot destroyed the last of the aft control cells! The ship is deorbiting! We're going to burn!"

"Very well," Grievous said calmly. "Stay on course." Now it no longer mattered whether his bodyguards could overpower the Jedi or not: they would all burn together.

He tapped his jaw sensor to the control frequency for the escape pods; one coded order ensured that his personal pod would be waiting for him with engines hot and systems checks complete.

When he looked back to the fight, all he could see of IG-102 was one arm, the saber-cut joint still white hot. Skywalker was pursuing two super battle droids that had Palpatine by the arms. While Skywalker dismantled the droids with swift cuts, Ken.o.bi was in the process of doing the same to IG-101-the MagnaGuard was hopping on its one remaining leg, whirling its electrostaff with its one remaining arm, and screeching some improbable threat regarding its staff and Ken.o.bi's body cavities-and after Ken.o.bi cut off the arm, 101 went hopping after him, still screeching. The droid actually managed to land one glancing kick before the Jedi casually severed its other leg, after which 101's limbless torso continued to writhe on the deck, howling.

With both MagnaGuards down, all eight destroyers opened up, dual cannons erupting gouts of galvened particle beams. The two Jedi leapt together to screen the Chancellor, and before Grievous could command the destroyers to cease fire, the Jedi had deflected enough of the bolts to blow apart three-quarters of the remaining super battle droids and send the survivors scurrying for cover beside what was left of the cringing Neimoidians.

The destroyers began to close in, hosing down the Jedi with heavy fire, advancing step by step, cannons against lightsabers; the Jedi caught every blast and sent them back against the destroyers' shields that flared in spherical haloes as they absorbed the reflected bolts. The destroyers might very well have prevailed over the Jedi, except for one unexpected difficulty-Gravity shear.

All eight of them suddenly seemed, inexplicably, to leap into the air, followed by Skywalker, and Palpatine, and chairs and pieces of MagnaGuards and everything else on the bridge that was not bolted to the deck, except for Ken.o.bi, who managed to grab a control console and now was hanging by one hand, upside down, still effortlessly deflecting blaster bolts.

The surviving Neimoidian pilot was screaming orders for the droids to magnetize, then started howling that the ship was breaking up, and managed to make so much annoying noise that Grievous smashed his skull out of simple irritation. Then he looked around and realized he'd just killed the last of his crew: all the bridge crew he hadn't slain personally had sucked up the bulk of the random blaster ricochets.

Grievous shook the pilot's brains off his fist. Disgusting creatures, Neimoidians.

The invisible plane of altered gravity pa.s.sed over the bio-droid general without effect-his talons of magnetized duranium kept him right where he was-and as one of the MagnaGuards' electrostaffs fell past him, his invisibly fast hand s.n.a.t.c.hed it from the air. When another plane of gravity shear swept through the bridge, droids, Chancellor, and Jedi all fell back to the floor.

Though the droideka, also known as the destroyer droid, was the most powerful infantry combat droid in general production, it had one major design flaw. The energy shield that was so effective in stopping blasters, slugs, shrapnel, and even lightsabers was precisely tuned to englobe the droid in a standing position; if the droid was no longer standing-say, if it was knocked down, or thrown into a wall-the shield generator could not distinguish a floor or a wall from a weapon, and would keep ramping up power to disintegrate this perceived threat until the generator shorted itself out.

Between falling to the ceiling, bouncing off it, and falling back to the floor, the sum total output of all the shield generators of Squad Eight was, currently, one large cloud of black smoke.

It was impossible to say which one of them opened fire on the Jedi, and it didn't matter; inside of two seconds, eight droidekas had become eight piles of smoking sc.r.a.p, and two Jedi, entirely unscathed, walked out of the smoke side by side. Without a word, they parted to bracket the general. Grievous clicked the electrostaffs power setting to overload; it spat lightning around him as he lifted it to combat ready. "I am sorry I don't have time to fight you-it would have been an interesting match-but I have an appointment with an escape pod.

And you ..."

He pointed at the transparisteel view wall and triggered his own concealed cable-gun, not unlike the one that fancy astromech of theirs had; the cable shot out and its grappling claw buried itself in one of the panel supports.

"You," he said, "have appointments with death." The Jedi leapt, and Grievous hurled the overloading electrostaff-but not at the Jedi. He threw it at a window.

One of the transparisteel panels of the view wall had cracked under a glancing hit from a starfighter's cannon; when the sparking electrostaff hit it squarely and exploded like a proton grenade, the whole panel blew out into s.p.a.ce.

A hurricane roared to life, raging through the bridge, seizing Neimoidian corpses and pieces of droids and wreckage and hurling them out through the gap along with a white fountain of flash-frozen air. Grievous sprang straight up into the instant hurricane, narrowly avoiding the two Jedi, whose leaps had become frantic tumbles as they tried to avoid being sucked through along with him. Grievous, though, had no need to breathe, nor had he any fear of his body fluids boiling in the vacuum-the pressurized synthflesh that enclosed the living parts within his droid exoskeleton saw to that-so he simply rode the storm right out into s.p.a.ce until he reached the end of the cable and it snapped tight and swung him whipping back toward Invisible Hand's hull.

He cast off the cable. His hands and feet of magnetized duranium let him scramble along the hull without difficulty, the light-spidered curve of Coruscant's nightside whirling around him. He clambered over to the external locks of the bridge escape pods and punched in a command code. Looking back over his shoulder, he experienced a certain chilly satisfaction as he watched empty escape pods blast free of the Hand's bridge and streak away.

All of them.

Well: all but one.

No trick of the Force would spring Ken.o.bi and Skywalker out of this one. It was a shame he didn't have a spy probe handy to leave on the bridge; he would have enjoyed watching the Republic's greatest heroes burn.

The ion streaks of the escape pods spiraled through the battle that still flashed and flared silently in the void, pursued by starfighters and armed retrieval ships. Grievous nodded to himself; that should occupy them long enough for his command pod to make the run to his escape ship.

As he entered his customized pod, he reflected that he was, for the first time in his career, violating orders: though he was under strict orders to leave the Chancellor unharmed, Palpatine was about to die alongside his precious Jedi.