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  Because I hurt him. And while it was needful, I am truly sorry.

  Anakin looked at him, suspicious, his resentment lingering. “Thought you said we had to stay bruised?”

  “Bruised is one thing. But should that bone break we’ll be at a distinct disadvantage.”

  “Fine,” Anakin muttered. “Then fix it.”

  The crack in Anakin’s collarbone was just tricky enough that mending it cost him something, which was good. Penance that came easily was no penance at all.

  “Thanks,” said Anakin when it was done, and swung his arm in wide, experimental circles. And then came a tentative smile, temper forgotten. “I appreciate it.”

  So mercurial.… “You’re welcome,” Obi-Wan said, very proper and reserved. “Just be careful. No sudden movements or lifting anything heavy until tomorrow.”

  Anakin nodded. “I can do that.”

  “Well, yes, I know you can. The question is, Will you?”

  “Nag, nag, nag,” said Anakin with a flashing grin. “Stop fussing. I’ll be fine.”

  Obi-Wan gave up. “Before we track down Teeb Rikkard I’d like to continue looking around the village. I’m not comfortable with disappearing underground until I know what’s on top of it.”

  “Agreed,” said Anakin. “Although I’m still not picking up any immediate danger.”

  “Neither am I. But let’s not get complacent. There’s no fancy groundcar for you to tinker with this time.”

  Anakin gave him a look. “You really don’t get tired of being right, do you?”

  “No, I really don’t,” he said. “Now shall we go? Our brand-new career awaits.”

  Every time Bant’ena turned around she almost fell over a battle droid. Thanks to Lok Durd and his near-hysterical paranoia her new laboratory was crowded with the clankers, skinny and silent and armed with blasters that would reduce her to splintered bone and splattered blood in a heartbeat. She couldn’t even take a meal without them.

  They never called her by name. They never said: Doctor Fhernan, turn left or Doctor Fhernan, turn right or Doctor Fhernan, put your hands behind your head before they searched her body each morning and night with a variety of scanners and sensors. They never called her anything but you. That was Durd’s doing, too, she was sure of it. She knew enough about droids to know they could be programmed with any amount of personal information about a human. Calling her you was a deliberate ploy on the Neimoidian’s part to keep her craven and docile.

  What an idiot he is. If I weren’t Bant’ena Fhernan he’d have no bioweapon out of me.

  But since she was Bant’ena Fhernan, and all her friends and family but one were relying on her to keep them alive, then of course he’d get the precious, monstrous bioweapon he was forcing her to make. Just as soon as she worked out how to stop the toxin breaking down when more than half a beakerful was manufactured.

  Telling General Durd she’d found a glitch in the process had nearly gotten her killed, not to mention her loved ones. A day later and she was still limping, the side of her face still sore and swollen where his fist had smashed indiscriminately into her cheek.

  Without warning the lab door hissed open and there he was, back again, agitation roiling off him like stink off a marsh. It was barely the crack of dawn and he couldn’t leave her alone.

  “Well? Well? Is there progress? Have you found your mistake, Doctor?”

  He wasn’t looking good. She’d spent enough time with Durd by now to recognize the signs of a Neimoidian in distress. His skin was pale and clammy, his hands cracked and trembling and his eyes fervid, with widely dilated pupils.

  The Jedi still elude him. And if Dooku finds out about his lies, not even his precious Project will save his bloated hide. Dooku will skin him alive and give the job to someone else.

  Warily, she put down her isothermogenic probe and stepped back from her lab bench. Movement skewered pain through her bruised left hip, but it was a point of honor not to show him that he’d hurt her. Probably he knew it was a charade, but even so it was almost more important than she could bear, that she keep up the act and deny him any pleasure.

  “General,” she said, respectfully bowing, because lives depended upon her submission. “I believe I’m making progress.”

  His mouth dropped open, obscenely. “Progress? That’s all you can say? Progress?” With a garbled cry of fury he turned to the nearest battle droid, snatched its blaster from its metal grasp and started firing. Carefully programmed never to point a weapon at him, the battle droids made no attempt to save themselves.

  When he was done, and the ten droids were reduced to half-melted slag, he threw the blaster aside and snatched a comlink from his tunic.

  “I want more droids in the lab!” he shrieked. “Ten! Send me ten droids! Send them now! And a cleanup crew!”

  She’d stopped breathing. Her heart was pounding, her lungs no more than flaccid balloons in her chest. The blood in her veins was screaming for air. But she’d frozen solid, and couldn’t breathe.

  He’s going to kill someone. He’s going to kill my nephews next. No, no, no, no…

  She showed him her pain, cried it aloud as she dropped to her knees on the lab’s ferrocrete floor. “General! Please, General, let me finish! I have isolated the unstable molecular chain. I can fix it. I can fix it. Please, I’m begging you, let me fix it!”

  Was he even listening? He was flailing about the lab grunting horribly, stumbling over the destroyed battle droids, on the teetering edge of a breakdown. His rage was so elemental she wanted to be sick.

  And then it was over. Eerily calm, he turned and looked at her, his odd, flat face devoid of emotion.

  “Yes, Doctor,” he said pleasantly. “Fix it. You have one more day. If the problem is not rectified by then, we will have to make other arrangements.”

  Other arrangements? What did that mean? “General—”

  As though he hadn’t heard her, as though she hadn’t spoken, he turned and headed for the door. It hissed open before he reached it, and ten new battle droids marched in.

  The lead droid snapped off a sharp salute. “Roger, roger, reporting for duty.”

  Durd ignored them, too, and swished his ponderous way out of the lab. Moments later two maintenance droids with a large wheeled trolley arrived and began collecting bits and pieces of blasted droid.

  The new lead battle droid fixed its glowing round photo-receptors on her and gestured with its lethal blaster. “Get back to work.”

  Roger, roger. Trembling, hurting so badly her eyes were stinging with unshed tears, Bant’ena levered herself to her feet and got back to work.

  “General Durd. You wanted to see me?”

  That was Barev. Even if the human hadn’t opened its mouth he’d have known it, because humans stank in many different and horrible ways. Their stink was as unique as their fingerprints, and their retinas.

  They disgust me. All of them. Even Count Dooku.

  His internal balance bladder shuddered, so that he rocked on his heels. Dooku. More than human. Much more. Much more than a Jedi. Dooku was the breathing embodiment of nightmare.

  Durd turned. “You said you could find the Jedi, Colonel. You haven’t. They are still here, and they are plotting my downfall. I want to know what you’re doing about that.”

  Something of his earlier, obliterating rage must have shown in his eyes because Colonel Barev swallowed and took half a step back. “General. I am searching.”

  “Not very well, if you haven’t found them yet.”

  Barev’s little blue eyes widened. “Lanteeb is a large planet, General, and they are Jedi. They have tricks up their sleeves.”

  Just like that, his rage was back. “I don’t care! I don’t care!” he shouted, pumping his fists up and down, wishing he could pummel Barev until the human’s pale skin was running with blood. “I want you to find them! I want you to find them and kill them and bring their mangled bodies to me!”

  “General, that is my intention,” said Bare
v, watching him carefully. “I am as disappointed as you are, sir.”

  With an effort that burst blood vessels behind his eyes, splotching his vision yellow, Durd wrestled his temper under control. “Whatever you’re doing to find them, Barev, it’s not working. You have to change tactics. You have to do something different.”

  Barev bowed again. “General, you and I have reached the same conclusion. Because we are hunting Jedi I feel we must look to unconventional methods. My only concern is that unconventional methods are rarely… inexpensive.”

  Oh, yes? Oh, yes? He knew what that meant. “If I find you’ve cheated me, Barev, do you know what I’ll do?” he said, half closing his eyes. “I’ll give you to Doctor Fhernan. You can be a test subject. And the last thing you’ll hear will be me laughing as the flesh bubbles off your bones.”

  Barev’s already pale skin drained dead white. “My word as an officer, General. There won’t be any cheating.”

  Durd reached into his tunic pocket, pulled out a cloth and dabbed sour spittle from the corners of his mouth. “Who will you give my money to, Barev? Who is going to find my Jedi?”

  “There is a… man,” Barev said slowly. “For want of a better term. A bounty hunter. He’s a psychic seeker. Once he catches their scent they’ll be as good as dead. Nobody escapes him, General. Nobody. Not ever.”

  A psychic seeker. That sounded promising. That sounded as if it might actually work. And if it worked then no matter how much he had to pay, the price would be worth it.

  I want those Jedi scum dead.

  He wiped his mouth again, then tucked the cloth away. “Very well, Barev. Send for him. Your psychic seeker. And for your sake, let’s hope he’s as good as you say.”

  Chapter Six

  Behind the mask he wore as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, the Sith Lord Darth Sidious felt every exquisitely honed instinct stir. Yoda was worried. Deeply worried. Not merely about the war, which went badly for the Republic, but about something more personal. As the most skilled and experienced Jedi Master in the Temple, Yoda could hide those inconvenient feelings from everyone who knew him, but they were there.

  And I can feel them. Try as you might, Yoda, you cannot hide from me.

  Alas, he dared not risk an obvious question like: Master Yoda, is everything all right? Because to any other observer Yoda was his usual, emotionally uninvolved self. Not even the wonderfully sympathetic and intuitive Chancellor Palpatine could avoid arousing the Jedi’s suspicions with a question like that.

  He and the ancient Jedi Master were sharing tea in his stately executive suite. Just the two of them. An informal, private meeting where they could discuss the progress of the Republic’s battle against the Separatists without the need for diplomatic phrasing and carefully couched assessments. Without an audience of senators and lesser-ranked Jedi and the bureaucrats whose job it was to insist upon a data trail for every decision. One day soon he would rule the galaxy in such a fashion and longingly looked forward to that time, coming ever closer now. Close enough to touch, to taste, to dream about in brief sleep.

  Beyond the transparisteel windows of Palpatine’s office, Coruscant sank slowly and inevitably into dusk. He loved twilight—such a symbolic time of day. He loved to watch this sprawling, garish city-planet descend into darkness. For only in darkness could the light of the Sith truly shine.

  And as Coruscant sinks… so sinks this puling, pathetic, crumbling Republic.

  Yoda was droning on about the shipboard communications crisis. Progress on purging the corruption from the GAR Fleet was slow but steady. The culprits responsible hadn’t been found yet but they would be, he could assure the Supreme Chancellor of that. Experienced Jedi truth-readers were even now interviewing key shipyard and related GAR personnel. They would uncover the facts of this calamitous conspiracy and then the newly invigorated GAR would undo the damage of sabotage, thus winning back the ground lost to the Separatists.

  Sagely, Sidious nodded. “Yes, yes, Master Yoda. I have no doubt of that. My confidence in your ability to overcome this regrettable reversal in our fortunes is unshaken, I do assure you.”

  The investigation was doomed to failure, of course—as was the purging of the GAR comm systems. The handful of Separatist operatives responsible for planting the various computer viruses in those strategic shipyards were long gone. The sabotage had been planned and executed months ago and the viruses designed with a time-release feature so that nobody involved in their creation or deployment would be found.

  Better yet, there were other, dormant comm viruses yet to be revealed. Yoda and his precious Jedi and the GAR had no idea what awaited them.

  “Truly, Master Yoda,” he added, refilling both their cups with fragrant tea. “While I appreciate how concerned you are about this unfortunate communications situation, my office’s support for the Jedi remains undiminished—as I insisted only today, when asked by HoloNet News for my opinion of the war effort.”

  Yoda’s ears dipped, the tiniest fraction, and his stubby fingers tightened around the handle of his cup.

  Sidious hid a smile. “I do avoid making public statements to them whenever I can. Generally speaking I find these journalists strident and confrontational—but Mas Amedda assures me that I must, from time to time, relax my standards. Would that it were not necessary, Master Yoda. But I feel confident that today, at least, I’ve managed to shore up any wavering public support for the Jedi.”

  “Appreciate that I do, Supreme Chancellor,” said Yoda, after a brief hesitation. “Patience the public must have as the defeat of Count Dooku’s Separatists we pursue.”

  “That’s very true,” Sidious said gravely. “I know I have great faith in the efficacy of patience. Although I fear it is fast becoming a lost art. Now, was there anything else you wished to tell me, Master Yoda?”

  Yoda put down his cup. “To Master Windu did I speak earlier, Supreme Chancellor. Almost restored the Kothlis spynet facility is. Significantly upgraded has its security been.”

  Yes, so he’d heard. The news did not please him. He’d been hoping for a few accidents. A little useful friction. “Excellent, Master Yoda. I knew we could count on Master Windu for that. Although…”

  “A concern you have, Supreme Chancellor?”

  “I’m afraid I do,” he said. “I’m not at all sure that the compromise proposed by Senator Organa is going to work out long-term. In light of that monster Grievous’s attack, Kothlis’s new government is understandably nervous. They’ve begun expressing certain… reservations… about the notion of us removing experienced ships and personnel from patrolling their system and handing over their protection to less seasoned GAR troops.”

  Yoda looked like he wanted to spit. “Told I am, by Master Windu, that exceeded expectations the younger clones and their GAR officers have. Fearful for its future Kothlis need not be. And needed elsewhere Master Windu and the experienced GAR personnel are.”

  “Oh, I know,” he said, raising a placating hand. “Master Yoda, you don’t need to convince me. But my friend, herein lies the heart of our dilemma. By your own admission we are heavily reliant upon the intelligence gathered by Kothlis and its sister facilities on Bothawui.” He leaned forward. “Now, if it should come to pass that these shortsighted bureaucrats lose faith in our ability to protect them, well, as far as I can tell there is nothing stopping them from reconsidering their loyalties. Do you see what I’m saying?”

  “To the Separatists you think they might turn?” Yoda’s ears flattened and his lips pinched tight. “No sense of that do I feel in the Force, Supreme Chancellor.”

  Delicately he cleared his throat. “Haven’t you said, Master Yoda, that the dark side clouds the future? I’m afraid, if that’s the case, that I can’t help wondering if you’re absolutely certain you can rely on what you feel.”

  And there again, sharply, he noticed that flare of unbridled anxiety in the little green troll.

  “Confident I am that abide by its agreement with us Kothlis will,�
� said Yoda, his emotions under control again. “Trust me on this you must.”

  “Of course, of course,” Sidious said, exhibiting the proper amount of hasty assurance. “I’m so sorry, Master Yoda. I had no intention of suggesting that you are anything but in total control of the situation.”

  Yoda nodded. “Know that I do, Supreme Chancellor. And appreciate your support the Jedi do. The Jedi’s staunchest ally in this war you are.”

  He was hard put not to laugh out loud. “Indeed I am, Master Yoda. Indeed I am. But still—I must insist that Master Windu remain on Kothlis for the time being. Until its government is less skittish.”

  “Supreme Chancellor—”

  “Please, Master Yoda,” he said, pretending distress. “Do not make me take a tone we’ll both regret. In this instance, I’m afraid politics must trump strategy.”

  “Very well, Supreme Chancellor,” Yoda said after a moment. “For the time being.”

  “Excellent.” He looked at the chrono glowing on his desk. “Now, I should let you get back to the fight. Only—before you go—if I might beg an indulgence of you and ask for word of young Anakin? I had thought to invite him to speak about the Jedi life with a delegation from the Rantofaran Conglomerate but I can’t seem to find him.”

  Yoda went so completely still he came close to vanishing within the Force… and then his simmering anxiety leapt again, like a supernova. Leapt so high and so hot that it actually threatened to escape his formidable control.

  “Young Skywalker?” said Yoda, the faintest thread of tension in his voice. “On Coruscant he is not at present, Supreme Chancellor.”

  Yes, you old fool. That much I had ascertained for myself. “He’s on a mission, then?”

  And oh, how it galled Yoda to admit even that much. “Yes, Supreme Chancellor. With Master Kenobi has he gone. To see you I will send him when he returns.”