Stealth Page 4

  In silence they waited. Two very different men, twinned by a single purpose, their differences set aside to serve the greater good.

  And then—a sharpening of the Force. A leaping in his blood. The light side dazzled, beating back the dark. Beside him Yularen released a reverent sigh as he stared through the bridge’s transparisteel window on the galaxy.

  “They stop my heart, you know,” the admiral said softly. Surprisingly. “Every time I see them they stop my heart.”

  Sleek and lethal, beautiful in their killing way, Gold Squadron’s starfighters speared through the void beyond the viewport. Obi-Wan, reluctantly agreeing with Yularen’s unexpected sentiment, felt his own heart thud as he kept his Force-enhanced gaze on the lead fighter, on Anakin, tearing toward Grievous at the head of his pack. He could feel his former Padawan’s exhilaration in the flying, his fierce joy at the thought of crushing this impudent, implacable enemy.

  That fierce joy chilled him. Somewhere, somehow, Anakin had discovered… not a taste for killing. No. Never that. But certainly a taste for vengeance. He’d learned to find pleasure in making an enemy pay for his crimes.

  And did he learn it from me? In my thirst for justice, and the pleasure I take in perfecting my skills, have I led him astray?

  The thought was a torment. Not all those who fought for the Separatists were droids. That he might, unwittingly, have failed his brilliant apprentice, be blind to something in him so crucial, so vital…

  I don’t care what Yoda says. He was Knighted too soon. And I fear we’ve yet to pay the price for our haste.

  Movement to starboard caught his distracted attention. Hammer Squadron, fleeing the safety of Pioneer’s hangars, was following Gold Squadron to tangle with Grievous’s droid starfighters. Moments later, to port, Arrow Squadron surged out of Coruscant Sky. Three full complements of fighters, the pilot of each metal canister a thin skin’s distance from death.

  Yularen gave his conn officer the nod, then turned. “General. We’ll be in assault position shortly.”

  Indomitable was under way, ponderously heading for Kothlis, flanked by her sister cruisers and trusting to Anakin and his fearless pilots that they wouldn’t come to grief before they could defend themselves. Some of Grievous’s droid starfighters had broken off their prowling perimeter patrol of his battle group and were heading for the first wave of Republic starfighters, heading for Anakin, recklessly in the lead.

  “Thank you, Admiral.”

  Streams of laserfire, blinking bright, crisscrossed the dark of space. Jinking and swooping, rolling and evading, Anakin and his clone pilots dodged destruction by a finger’s-width. Four droid starfighters exploded in durasteel splinters and shards and slag.

  “General—” Yularen was frowning. “When do you anticipate launching the gunships?”

  Obi-Wan couldn’t take his eyes off Gold Squadron—off Anakin. “I don’t know yet. As soon as I do, I’ll tell you.”

  Yularen cleared his throat. “That’s… a little vague for my liking.”

  “Really, Admiral?” Obi-Wan made himself look at Yularen and smile with quiet confidence. Through the Force he heard a clone pilot scream. “I don’t find it vague at all.”

  “Stang!” Anakin cursed, and scraped under the rolling belly of a shattered droid ship. “Careful, Gold Seven! Watch where you’re shooting!”

  It didn’t matter that Flashpoint couldn’t hear him. Yelling helped, so he yelled. Grievous’s modified vulture starfighters were swarming them like enraged wasps. Best he could count, his people were outnumbered close on two-to-one.

  But we’ve faced worse odds. We can do this. We can get the job done.

  He’d made six kills in four minutes.

  A Republic fighter streamed past his line of sight, hotly pursued by a pair of enemy ships.

  “Look out, Arrow Nine, you’ve got two on your—”

  The vultures fired, lethally accurate, and Arrow Nine’s fighter disintegrated into fire and smoke. Punched through the Force he felt Stinger’s fury, his brief, intense pain. No. No. The clone pilot’s death echoed through him, blinding. And then there wasn’t time to feel anything because three droid ships were on him—where did they come from?—and he was fighting to escape them, fighting his own whipping speed and trajectory, while they kept him pinned among them. Stang, they were good—who programmed these barves? I want to meet him in a dark Coruscant alley—and suddenly flying a fighter in combat wasn’t so much fun anymore…

  Fireball saved him.

  Screaming out of a turn that should’ve been too tight for his fighter’s structural tolerance, feeling like he was holding the ship together with the Force and desperation, flying through the vulture debris Fireball left in his wake, Anakin caught a glimpse of Indomitable from the corner of his eye. Laserfire streamed from the cruiser’s gun turrets, welcome annihilation of Grievous’s advantage. Flicking his gaze farther around, he saw that Pioneer and Coruscant Sky were pounding the Separatist warships as they headed for Kothlis’s meager asteroid belt, diverting Grievous’s resources from the desperately battling fighter squadrons.

  And then Fireball dropped beside him so they were flying tandem, just for a moment. Turning his head, looking past smoke-scorched R2-D2, Anakin raised an acknowledging hand, thumb uptilted. Fireball’s teeth flashed in a swift smile, and then he was peeling away to chase another droid starfighter.

  Anakin shook himself. Good idea. You’re not a tourist, Skywalker.

  Hammer Two shot past his fighter’s nose, a silent shout of panic blistering through the Force. Smoke belched from Wingnut’s sublight drive and his cockpit canopy was bubbled in a wide streak, obscuring line of sight. Two droid starfighters pursued him, lethal projectiles spewing equally lethal plasma. Wingnut’s fighter was struggling, pitching; its starboard stabilizer shot, his R4 unit a smoking ruin—and the droids were gaining—gaining—

  No. No. Not Wingnut. He only joined us a month ago.

  Grimly determined, he plunged his own fighter into the vultures’ path, throwing the machine into a tight spin, hammering its laser controls so his weapons spewed death in a wildly expanding arc. The incendiary plasma sliced the droid starfighters to ragged, spinning pieces. One chunk grazed R2 on its way past, and the cockpit datapad lit up with a hysterical protest.

  “Sorry!” he shouted through the spark-singed canopy. “My mistake!”

  Wrenching the controls, he flipped his fighter right-side up again—or what counted as right-side up in this crazy fight—and tried to find Wingnut. There he was—limping back to Pioneer. Hammer Eight was covering him, keeping the tinnies off his smoking tail.

  Stang, stang, speaking of tinnies…

  His cockpit sensors screamed a warning, four of the enemy heading right for him. Where were they coming from? Every time he killed one, three more popped up in its place.

  Grievous was throwing every last tinnie he could lay his metal hands on at the Jedi cruisers and the fighters protecting them. Space and time blurred and the void filled with explosions and shards and narrow misses and voices in the Force: his pilots, laughing and swearing and howling to their deaths. He laughed and swore and howled along with them, the silence unbearable.

  Kill, kill, and kill again, slaughter the starfighters, slaughter the Tuskens, every loss is the same loss, every pain springs from one source. Save Kothlis, save Coruscant, save Padmé. Save them all.

  Chapter Three

  Sunk deep within the Force, subordinating what his eyes could see to what his senses told him, Obi-Wan watched Anakin and his pilots savage Grievous’s fleet—and watched the droid starfighters savage them in return. Someone on the Separatist’s side had clearly tinkered with the vultures’ operating systems; there was no Droid Control Ship in Grievous’s battle group, yet the enemy fighters were functioning with fluid efficiency.

  Wonderful. Just what we need—something else mechanical to distract Anakin from the larger picture.

  Observing from outside himself, peculiarly detache
d within the Force’s ebb and flow, he watched the three leviathan Republic warships add their might to the fray, weapons cleaving through enemy fighters and debris alike. And as he watched the furious battle, at once set apart from it and deeply involved, he felt clone pilots die. Felt Anakin’s rage and grief for them. Felt his own grief, muted. Felt a faint echo of Ahsoka, still young and perfecting her mastery of the light side’s strength, attempting to follow Anakin’s progress from their gunship on Indomitable’s hangar deck.

  Participant and witness, he stood before the bridge’s viewport, waiting for the signal he knew would come. Not yet—not yet—not yet—

  Yes. Now.

  He saw Gold Squadron worry fleeing droid starfighters to pieces. Saw Hammer and Arrow Squadrons set their sights on Grievous himself. Felt Anakin’s drenching relief. Heard his calm voice, clear as a shout.

  Go, Obi-Wan. Tell Yularen it’s now or never.

  He turned. “That’s a go, Admiral. Maximum sublight. Get us down to that planet.”

  “Done,” said Yularen, his deep voice ripe with a violent satisfaction and his eyes just a little wide with the reminder of Jedi powers. “Captain!”

  Behind them, needing no further prompting, the conn officer leapt to his duty. A heartbeat later Indomitable shuddered, her sublight engines powering them toward Kothlis and the beings trapped planetside who were desperate for their help.

  Obi-Wan stepped back from the bridge viewport. It was time for him to join Ahsoka, Rex, and Torrent Company.

  “Good hunting, General,” said Yularen, his eyes fierce, his face grim. “You’ll hear from me as soon as communications are restored.”

  If they were restored. Lieutenant Avrey was even now buried deep in Indomitable’s innards, attempting to graft into them those antiquated anodes.

  May the Force be with her.

  With a nod to Yularen he made his measured way to the gunship hangar. Even cocooned within the cruiser he could feel the dull thudding of her massive laser cannons as they pounded Grievous’s new flagship and the smaller warships in his fleet. Through the Force he could feel the wrath of Pioneer and Coruscant Sky, the cruiser’s sister ships lending their voices to the chorus of destruction raining down upon the enemy.

  You should’ve stayed at home, Grievous. Coming here was a mistake.

  The transport opened and there was Ahsoka, hanging out of their open gunship, her eyes enormous with impatient eagerness. He jogged across the crowded hangar deck, threading through the other waiting, clone-laden gunships, and leapt up beside her. Sparing Anakin’s apprentice a small, brief smile, he looked to Rex.

  “Soup’s on, Captain.”

  “Sir,” said Rex, and reached into the cockpit to tap their helmeted pilot on the shoulder. The pilot smacked two console switches, and the interior lights came up to full. A second later the exterior shielding thumped into place. In the gunship’s belly, crowded shoulder-to-shoulder, as many Torrent Company clones as would fit in the troop compartment slammed their buckets on their heads, becoming eerily alien.

  “Master Kenobi?” said Ahsoka, quiveringly hopeful. “Is Skyguy—I mean—”

  “He’s fine, Padawan,” he snapped. “Focus. Discipline your mind in preparation for battle.”

  “Yes, Master,” she whispered. “I do know that. I’m sorry.”

  She was a good child. Anakin was training her well. Better, perhaps, than I trained him. At least in some ways. He hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be young and uncertain. “Don’t apologize. Making mistakes is a large part of being a Padawan. It’s how we deal with making mistakes that determines our progress—and our ultimate success or failure.”

  Ahsoka’s eyes were almost comically wide. “I can’t imagine you making mistakes, Master Kenobi.”

  Despite his own simmering tension, he came close to laughing. “Padawan, in my time I have made more mistakes than there are sandfleas on a wild ban—”

  A triple flash of red lights reflected on faces and flat surfaces as the hangar’s launch beacon lit up in warning. Not needing to be told, the pilots fired up their engines. The throaty roar was echoed by the gunships on either side of them.

  “Better hang on, General,” said Rex. “That soup you mentioned has started to boil.” With a nod to Ahsoka, he grabbed his own helmet and vanished inside it.

  “Indeed,” said Obi-Wan, snatching hold of a ceiling strap.

  Rex’s terse words tautened the gunship’s atmosphere to the breaking point. The silence beneath all the normal operational noises was absolute, uncanny. Every clone stood with unnerving stillness, head tipped fractionally to one side. They were unified in a private conversation, attention trained on their captain. Last-minute instructions, a rallying pep talk, some kind of clone prayer? Obi-Wan didn’t know. He’d never asked. The idea of asking felt—intrusive. Insensitive. Impolite.

  “Weird, isn’t it?” Ahsoka whispered confidingly. “I’m used to it now—but I’m kind of not, too.”

  He gave her a half smile. “I know what you mean.”

  The hangar doors were fully open, their exterior shields still engaged. Staring over the pilot’s shoulder and out through the cockpit viewport, he could see they were close to their target, Kothlis. Just the asteroid belt left to negotiate, and then the steep plunge through the planet’s thin upper atmosphere. Indomitable shouldered her way between the suspended chunks of rock, blasting some aside, taking the path of least resistance where she could by using the route carved out by Grievous’s droid troop carriers.

  At least the Separatist leader was proving useful for something.

  Closing his eyes, Obi-Wan sought for Anakin in the Force. He was there, still in one piece, leading his surviving pilots in a ruthless chivvying of Grievous’s warships and droid starfighters, drawing their fire away from the Jedi cruisers, giving them the best possible chance of reaching the planet unscathed.

  Satisfied that Anakin was—and would be—all right, at least for the time being, he turned his senses to Kothlis. What he felt, so close now, tightened his throat and his belly and flared the banked fires of pain behind his eyes to bright, angry life.

  Terror. Agony. Bewilderment. Despair.

  Breathing harshly, he turned aside—and saw that Ahsoka was struggling to contain her own undisciplined reaction to the overwhelming sensations and emotions boiling through the Force. As Indomitable plowed through the planet’s upper atmosphere, the heat of reentry burning all around them, he took the child by one scrawny shoulder.

  “You’ve opened yourself too wide, Ahsoka,” he said, shaking her gently. “You’ve let yourself be overcome. You’re not a river in flood, youngling, you’re a faucet. Tighten your mind. Restrict the Force’s flow. Control the amount and the speed of what you’re seeing and feeling. You must never let it control you. That way lies madness, and a fall to the dark side.”

  The girl was trembling, her eyes squeezed tight shut. So distressed she didn’t even bristle at his deliberate use of youngling instead of Padawan. In the gunship’s dull illumination he thought he saw a tear escape between her extravagant lashes and trickle down her cheek.

  “I can’t—Master, I can’t—”

  “Yes, you can,” he insisted. “You’ve great potential, Ahsoka. Master Yoda has high hopes for you, as does Anakin. Control yourself.”

  “Yes—yes—” said Ahsoka, and opened her eyes. In her face a new and formidable determination. “You’re right, Master Kenobi. I can!”

  Obi-Wan felt a surge in the Force as she exerted control. Ahsoka exhaled one long breath as she regained her emotional balance. Impressed, Obi-Wan released her. “Well done, Padawan.”

  “General Kenobi!” their pilot said over his shoulder. “Hangar shields are disengaged.”

  “Then let’s go, Lieutenant,” Obi-Wan replied. “We’ve kept the people of Kothlis waiting long enough.”

  The gunships launched in swift succession, bursting free of the Republic cruisers like akk dogs slipped from their leashes. Watching ship aft
er ship dive toward the stricken planet’s surface, Anakin allowed himself one brief, distracted thought—May the Force be with you, Obi-Wan—and then banished the ground assault troops from his mind entirely. Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, and Rex’s men had their battle to win, and he had his. Worrying about them now would easily get him or his own people killed.

  The cockpit console datapad lit up with a new message from R2-D2: Still no comms. Comms not active.

  “I know, I know,” he muttered. “Believe me, I’ve noticed.” Come on, Avrey. What’s taking you so long? “Hang in there, Artoo. We’re doing all right without them.” So far.

  A partially damaged droid starfighter attempted to lock on to him. Braking hard, flipping end over end, he blew it to pieces then took a moment for a quick head count.

  Twenty-three starships, excluding himself. With Wingnut back on board Pioneer that meant—

  Twelve. I’ve lost twelve.

  There was no time to feel it. New droid starfighters were pouring out of the Sep warships—What, they’ve got an onboard foundry now?—heading in a direct line for Kothlis, the cruisers and all those clone-laden gunships. Scarab fighters this time, configured to kill just as easily in atmosphere as airless space.

  So you’ve run out of vultures, Grievous? Does that mean we killed them all? Hey, sorry about that.

  Another glance showed him the last of the gunships, plunging out of sight. Showed him Grievous’s scarabs swarming after it, bent on destruction. He turned his fighter sharply to port and executed a tight barrel roll to get Fireball’s attention. The captain’s gloved hand waved, acknowledging, so he flipped himself under a raggedly floating debris field and waggled his tail at a cluster of his people on its far side. Message received, his men formed up behind him. A hunting pack they were now, scenting fresh blood and eager for the kill. Soaked in the Force, his blood scalding with adrenaline, he set his sights on the scarabs, opened his fighter’s throttle to maximum velocity—