Part 2 (1/2)
”No joy, Master.” Anakin's stomach clenched, but he fought the tension out of his voice. ”We may be the only two Jedi out here.”
”Then we will have to be enough. Switching to clone fighter channel.”
Anakin spun his comm dial to the new frequency in time to hear Obi-Wan say, ”Oddball, do you copy? We need help.”
The clone captain's helmet speaker flattened the humanity out of his voice. ”Copy, Red Leader.”
”Mark my position and form your squad behind me. We're going in.”
On our way.”
The droid fighters had lost themselves against the background of the battle, but R2-D2 was tracking them on scan. Anakin s.h.i.+fted his grip on his starfighter's control yoke. ”Ten vultures inbound, high and left to my orientation. More on the way.”
”I have them. Anakin, wait-the cruiser's bay s.h.i.+elds have dropped! I'm reading four, no, six s.h.i.+ps incoming.” Obi-Wan's voice rose. ”Tri-fighters! Coming in fast!”
Anakin's smile tightened. This was about to get interesting.
”Tri-fighters first, Master. The vultures can wait.”
”Agreed. Slip back and right, swing behind me. We'll take them on the slant.”
Let Obi-Wan go first? With a blown left control surface and a half-crippled R-unit? With Palpatine's life at stake?
Not likely.
”Negative,” Anakin said. ”I'm going head-to-head. See you on the far side.”
”Take it easy. Wait for Oddball and Squad Seven. Anakin-”
He could hear the frustration in Obi-Wan's voice as he kicked his starfighter's sublights and surged past; his former Master still hadn't gotten used to not being able to order Anakin around.
Not that Anakin had ever been much for following orders. Obi-Wan's, or anyone else's.
”Sorry we're late.” The digitized voice of the clone whose call sign was Oddball sounded as calm as if he were ordering dinner. ”We're on your right, Red Leader. Where's Red Five?”
”Anakin, form up!”
But Anakin was already streaking to meet the Trade Federation fighters. ”Incoming!”
Obi-Wan's familiar sigh came clearly over the comm; Anakin knew exactly what the Jedi Master was thinking. The same thing he was always thinking.
He still has much to learn.
Anakin's smile thinned to a grim straight line as enemy starfighters swarmed around him. And he thought the same thing he always thought.
We'll see about that.
He gave himself to the battle, and his starfighter whirled and his cannons hammered, and droids on all sides began to burst into clouds of debris and superheated gas.
This was how he relaxed.
This is Anakin Skywalker: The most powerful Jedi of his generation. Perhaps of any generation. The fastest. The strongest. An unbeatable pilot. An unstoppable warrior. On the ground, in the air or sea or s.p.a.ce, there is no one even close. He has not just power, not just skill, but dash: that rare, invaluable combination of boldness and grace.
He is the best there is at what he does. The best there has ever been. And he knows it.
HoloNet features call him the Hero With No Fear. And why not? What should he be afraid of?
Except-Fear lives inside him anyway, chewing away the firewalls around his heart.
Anakin sometimes thinks of the dread that eats at his heart as a dragon. Children on Tatooine tell each other of the dragons that live inside the suns; smaller cousins of the sun-dragons are supposed to live inside the fusion furnaces that power everything from stars.h.i.+ps to Podracers.
But Anakin's fear is another kind of dragon. A cold kind. A dead kind.
Not nearly dead enough.
Not long after he became Obi-Wan's Padawan, all those years ago, a minor mission had brought them to a dead system: one so immeasurably old that its star had long ago turned to a frigid dwarf of hypercompacted trace metals, hovering a quantum fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Anakin couldn't even remember what the mission might have been, but he'd never forgotten that dead star.
It had scared him.
”Stars can die-?”
”It is the way of the universe, which is another manner of saying that it is the will of the Force,” Obi-Wan had told him. ”Everything dies. In time, even stars burn out. This is why Jedi form no attachments: all things pa.s.s. To hold on to something-or someone-beyond its time is to set your selfish desires against the Force. That is a path of misery, Anakin; the Jedi do not walk it.”
That is the kind of fear that lives inside Anakin Skywalker: the dragon of that dead star. It is an ancient, cold dead voice within his heart that whispers all things die . . .
In bright day he can't hear it; battle, a mission, even a report before the Jedi Council, can make him forget it's even there. But at night-At night, the walls he has built sometimes start to frost over. Sometimes they start to crack.
At night, the dead-star dragon sometimes sneaks through the cracks and crawls up into his brain and chews at the inside of his skull. The dragon whispers of what Anakin has lost. And what he will lose.
The dragon reminds him, every night, of how he held his dying mother in his arms, of how she had spent her last strength to say I knew you would come for me, Anakin . . .
The dragon reminds him, every night, that someday he will lose Obi-Wan. He will lose Padme. Or they will lose him.
All things die, Anakin Skywalker. Even stars burn out. . .
And the only answers he ever has for these dead cold whispers are his memories of Obi-Wan's voice, or Yoda's.
But sometimes he can't quite remember them.
?????? all things die . . .
He can barely even think about it.
But right now he doesn't have a choice: the man he flies to rescue is a closer friend than he'd ever hoped to have. That's what puts the edge in his voice when he tries to make a joke; that's what flattens his mouth and tightens the burn-scar high on his right cheek.
The Supreme Chancellor has been family to Anakin: always there, always caring, always free with advice and unstinting aid. A sympathetic ear and a kindly, loving, unconditional acceptance of Anakin exactly as he is-the sort of acceptance Anakin could never get from another Jedi. Not even from Obi-Wan. He can tell Palpatine things he could never share with his Master.
He can tell Palpatine things he can't even tell Padme.
Now the Supreme Chancellor is in the worst kind of danger. And Anakin is on his way despite the dread boiling through his blood. That's what makes him a real hero. Not the way the HoloNet labels him; not without fear, but stronger than fear.