Part 12 (1/2)
”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 s.h.i.+p, 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 stars.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+elds, and both bodyguards, and every single one of the s.h.i.+vering 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.