ROTS novel excerpts

NoMeN

so there we go:

Chapter 21

A New Order

A Naboo skiff reverted to realspace and flashed toward an alien medical installation in the asteroid belt of Polis Massa.

Tantive IV reentered reality only moments behind.

And on Mustafar, below the red thunder of a volcano, a Sith Lord had already snatched from sand of black glass the charred torso and head of what once had been a man, and had already leapt for the cliffbank above with effortless strength, and had already roared to his clones to bring the medical capsule immediately!

The Sith Lord lowered the limbless man tenderly to the cool ground above, and laid his hand across the cracked and blackened mess that once had been his brow, and he set his will upon him.

Live, Lord Vader. Live, mv apprentice.

Live.

Beyond the transparent crystal of the observation dome on the airless crags of Polis Massa, the galaxy wheeled in a spray of hard, cold pinpricks through the veil of infinite night.

Beneath that dome sat Yoda. He did not look at the stars.

He sat a very long time.

Even after nearly nine hundred years, the road to self-knowledge was rugged enough to leave him bruised and bleeding.

He spoke softly, but not to himself.

Though no one was with him, he was not alone.

"My failure, this was. Failed the Jedi, I did."

He spoke to the Force.

And the Force answered him. Do not blame yourself, my old friend.

As it sometimes had these past thirteen years, when the Force spoke to him, it spoke in the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn,

"Too old I was," Yoda said. "Too rigid. Too arrogant to see that the old way is not the only way. These Jedi, 1 trained to become the Jedi who had trained me, long centuries ago—but those ancient Jedi, of a different time they were. Changed, has the galaxy. Changed, the Order did not—because let it change, I did not."

More easily said than done, my friend.

"An infinite mystery is the Force." Yoda lifted his head and turned his gaze out into the wheel of stars. "Much to learn, there still is."

And you will have time to learn it.

"Infinite knowledge . . ." Yoda shook his head. "Infinite time, does that require."

With my help, you can learn to join with the Force, yet retain consciousness. You can join your light to it forever. Perhaps, in time, even your physical self.

Yoda did not move. "Eternal life . . ."

The ultimate goal of the Sith, yet they can never achieve it; it comes only by the release of self, not the exaltation of self. It comes through compassion, not greed. Love is the answer to the darkness.

"Become one with the Force, yet influence still to have . . ." Yoda mused. "A power greater than all, it is."

It cannot be granted; it can only be taught. It is yours to learn, if you wish it.

Slowly, Yoda nodded. "A very great Jedi Master you have become, Qui-Gon Jinn. A very great Jedi Master you always were, but too blind I was to see it."

He rose, and folded his hands before him, and inclined his head in the Jedi bow of respect.

The bow of the student, in the presence of the Master.

"Your apprentice, I gratefully become."

He was well into his first lesson when the hatch cycled open behind him. He turned.

In the corridor beyond stood Bail Organa. He looked stricken,

"Obi-Wan is asking for you at the surgical theater," he said. "It's Padme. She's dying."

Obi-Wan sat beside her, holding one cold, still hand in both of his. "Don't give up, Padme."

"Is it . . ." Her eyes rolled blindly. "It's a girl. Anakin thinks it's a girl."

"We don't know yet. In a minute . .. you have to stay with us."

Below the opaque tent that shrouded her from chest down, a pair of surgical droids assisted with her labor. A general medical droid fussed and tinkered among the clutter of scanners and equipment.

"If it's ... a girl—oh, oh, oh no . . ."

Obi-Wan cast an appeal toward the medical droid. "Can't you do something?"

"All organic damage has been repaired." The droid checked another readout. "This systemic failure cannot be explained."

Not physically, Obi-Wan thought. He squeezed her hand as though he could keep life within her body by simple pressure. "Padme, you have to hold on."

"If it's a girl . . . ," she gasped, "name her Leia . . ."

One of the surgical droids circled out from behind the tent, cradling in its padded arms a tiny infant, already swabbed clean and breathing, but without even the hint of tears.

The droid announced softly, "It's a boy."

Padme reached for him with her trembling free hand, but she had no strength to take him; she could only touch her fingers to the baby's forehead.

She smiled weakly. "Luke ..."

The other droid now rounded the tent as well, with another clean, quietly solemn infant. ". . . and a girl."

But she had already fallen back against her pillow.

"Padme, you have twins," Obi-Wan said desperately. ""They need you—please hang on ..."

"Anakin ..."

"Anakin . . . isn't here, Padme," he said, though he didn't think she could hear.

"Anakin, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry . . . Anakin, please, I love you . .."

In the Force, Obi-Wan felt Yoda's approach, and he looked up to see the ancient Master beside Bail Organa, both staring the same grave question down through the surgical theater's observation panel.

The only answer Obi-Wan had was a helpless shake of his head.

Padme reached across with her free hand, with the hand she had laid upon the brow of her firstborn son, and pressed something into Obi-Wan's palm.

For a moment, her eyes cleared, and she knew him.

"Obi-Wan . . . there ... is still good in him. I know there is... still..."

Her voice faded to an empty sigh, and she sagged back against the pillow. Half a dozen different scanners buzzed with conflicting alarm tones, and the medical droids shooed him from the room.

He stood in the hall outside, looking down at what she had pressed into his hand. It was a pendant of some kind, an amulet, unfamiliar sigils carved into some sort of organic material, strung on a loop of leather. In the Force, he could feel traces of the touch of her skin.

When Yoda and Bail came for him, he was still standing there, staring at it.
"She put this in my hand—" For what seemed the dozenth time this day, he found himself blinking back tears. "—and I don't even know what it is."

"Precious to her, it must have been," Yoda said slowly. "Buried with her, perhaps it should be."

Obi-Wan looked down at the simple, child-like symbols carved into it, and felt from it in the Force soaring echoes of transcendent love, and the bleak, black despair of unendurable heartbreak.

"Yes," he said. "Yes. Perhaps that would be best."

NoMeN

Around a conference table on Tantive TV, Bail Organa, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Yoda met to decide the fate of the galaxy.

"To Naboo, send her body . . ." Yoda stretched his head high, as though tasting a current in the Force. "Pregnant, she must still appear. Hidden, safe, the children must be kept. Foundation of the new Jedi Order, they will be."

"We should split them up," Obi-Wan said. "Even if the Sith find one, the other may survive. I can take the boy. Master Yoda, and you take the girl. We can hide them away, keep them safe— train them as Anakin should have been trained—"

"No." The ancient Master lowered his head again, closing his eyes, resting his chin on his hands that were folded over the head of his stick.

Obi-Wan looked uncertain. "But how are they to learn the self-discipline a Jedi needs? How are they to master skills of the Force?"

"Jedi training, the sole source of self-discipline is not. When right is the time for skills to be taught, to us the living Force will bring them. Until then, wait we will, and watch, and learn."

"I can . . ." Bail Organa stopped, flushing slightly. "I'm sorry to interrupt, Masters; I know little about the Force, but I do know something of love. The Queen and I—well, we've always talked of adopting a girl. If you have no objection, I would like to take Leia to Alderaan, and raise her as our daughter. She would be loved with us."

Yoda and Obi-Wan exchanged a look. Yoda tilted his head. "No happier fate could any child ask for. With our blessing, and that of the Force, let Leia be your child."

Bail stood, a little jerkily, as though he simply could no longer keep his seat. His flush had turned from embarrassment to pure uncomplicated joy. "Thank you, Masters—I don't know what else to say. Thank you, that's all. What of the boy?"

"Ciiegg Lars still lives on Tatooine, I think—and Anakin's stepbrother . . . Owen, that's it, and his wife, Beru, still work the moisture farm outside Mos Eisley . . "

"As close to kinfolk as the boy can come," Yoda said approvingly. "But Tatooine, not like Alderaan it is-—deep in the Outer Rim, a wild and dangerous planet."

"Anakin survived it," Obi-Wan said. "Luke can, too. And I can—well, 1 could take him there, and watch over him. Protect him from the worst of the planet's dangers, until he can learn to protect himself."

"Like a father you wish to be, young Obi-Wan?"

"More an ... eccentric old uncle, I think. It is a part I can play very well. To keep watch over Anakin's son—" Obi-Wan sighed, finally allowing his face to register a suggestion of his old gentle smile. "I can't imagine a better way to spend the rest of my life."

"Settled it is, then. To Tatooine, you will take him."

Bail moved toward the door. "If you'll excuse me, Masters, I have to call the Queen . . ." He stopped in the doorway, looking back. "Master Yoda, do you think Padme's twins will be able to defeat Palpatine?"

"Strong the Force runs, in the Skywalker line. Only hope, we can. Until the time is right, disappear we will."

Bail nodded. "And I must do die same—metaphorically, at least. You may hear . . . disturbing things . . . about what I do in the Senate. I must appear to support the new Empire, and my comrades with me. It was . . . Padme's wish, and she was a shrewder political mind than I'll ever be. Please trust that what we do is only a cover for our true task. We will never betray the legacy of the Jedi. I will never surrender the Republic to the Sith."

"Trust in this, we always will. Go now; for happy news, your Queen is waiting."

Bail Organa bowed, and vanished into the corridor.

When Obi-Wan moved to follow, Yoda's gimer stick barred his way. "A moment, Master Kenobi. In your solitude on Tatooine, training I have for you. I and my new Master."

Obi-Wan blinked. "Your new Master?" v;
"Yes." Yoda smiled up at him. "And your old one . . ."

C-3PO shuffled along the starship's hallway beside R2-D2, following Senator Organa who had, by all accounts, inherited them both. "I'm certain I can't say why she malfunctioned," he was telling the little astromech. "Organics are so terribly complicated, you know."

Ahead, the Senator was met by a man whose uniform, C-3PO's conformation-recognition algorithm informed him, indicated he was a captain in the Royal Alderaan Civil Fleet.

"I'm placing these droids in your care," the Senator said. "Have them cleaned, polished, and refitted with the best of everything; they will belong to my new daughter."

"How lovely!" C-3PO exclaimed. "His daughter is the child of Master Anakin and Senator Amidala," he explained to R2-D2. "I can hardly wait to tell her all about her parents! I'm sure she will be very proud—"

"Oh, and the protocol droid?" Senator Organa said thoughtfully. "Have its mind wiped."

The captain saluted.

"Oh," said C-3PO. "Oh, dear."

In the newly renamed Emperor Palpatine Surgical Reconstruction Center on Coruscant, a hypersophisticated prototype Ubrikkian DD-13 surgical droid moved away from the project that it and an enhanced FX-6 medical droid had spent many days rebuilding.

It beckoned to a dark-robed shadow that stood at the edge of the pool of high-intensity light. "My lord, the construction is finished. He lives."

"Good. Good."

The shadow flowed into the pool of light as though the overhead illuminators had malfunctioned.

Droids stepped back as it came to the rim of the surgical table.

On the table was strapped the very first patient of the EmPalSuRecon Center.

To some eyes, it might have been a pieced-togcther hybrid of droid and human, encased in a life-support shell of gleaming black, managed by a thoracic processor that winked pale color against the shadow's cloak. To some eyes, its jointed limbs might have looked ungainly, clumsy, even monstrous; the featureless curves of black that served it for eyes might have appeared inhuman, and the underthrust grillwork of its vocabulator might have suggested the jaws of a saurian predator built of polished blast armor, but to the shadow—

It was glorious.

A magnificent jewel box, created both to protect and to exhibit the greatest treasure of the Sith.

Terrifying.

Mesmerizing.

Perfect.

The table slowly rotated to vertical, and the shadow leaned close.

"Lord Vader? Lord Vader, can you hear me?"

NoMeN

-----------------

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever:

The first dawn of light in your universe brings pain.

The light burns you. It will always burn you. Part of you will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew upon your flesh.

You can hear yourself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but you cannot stop it. You can never stop it. You cannot even slow it down.

You don't even have lungs anymore.

Mechanisms hardwired into your chest breathe for you. They will pump oxygen into your bloodstream forever.

Lord Vader? Lord Vader, can you hear me?

And you can't, not in the way you once did. Sensors in the shell that prisons your head trickle meaning directly into your brain.

You open your scorched-pale eyes; optical sensors integrate light and shadow into a hideous simulacrum of the world around you.

Or perhaps the simulacrum is perfect, and it is the world that is hideous.

Padme? Are you here? Are you all right? you try to say, but another voice speaks for you, out from the vocabulator that serves you for burned-away lips and tongue and throat.

"Padme"? Are you here? Are you all right?"

I'm very sorry, Lord Vader. I'm afraid she died. It seems in your anger, you killed her.

This burns hotter than the lava had.

"No . . . no, it is not possible!

You loved her. You will always love her. You could never will her death.
Never.

But you remember . . .

You remember all of it.

You remember the dragon that you brought Vader forth from your heart to slay. You remember the cold venom in Vader's blood. You remember the furnace of Vader's fury, and the black hatred of seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth—

And there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker.

That it was all you. Is you.

Only you.

You did it.

You killed her.

You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself. . .

It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith—

Because now your self is all you will ever have.

And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow.

In the end, you do not even want to.

In the end, the shadow is all you have left.

Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself—

And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywatker.

Forever. . .

--------------------------------------------------

The long night has begun.

Huge solemn crowds line Palace Plaza in Theed, the capital of Naboo, as six beautiful white gualaars draw a flower-draped open casket bearing the remains of a beloved Senator through the Triumphal Arch, her fingers finally and forever clasping a snippet of japor, one that had been carved long ago by the hand of a nine-year-old boy from an obscure desert planet in the far Outer Rim . . .

On the jungle planet of Dagobah, a Jedi Master inspects the unfamiliar swamp of his exile . . .

From the bridge of a Star Destroyer, two Sith Lords stand with a sector governor named Tarkin, and survey the growing skeleton of a spherical battle station the size of a moon . . .

But even in the deepest night, there are some who dream of dawn.

On Alderaan, the Prince Consort delivers a baby girl into the loving arms of his Queen.

And on Tatooine, a Jedi Master brings an infant boy to the homestead of Owen and Bern Lars—

Then he rides his eopie off into the Jundland Wastes, toward the setting suns.

NoMeN

thats it! guys.... i read it! HEAVY SPOILERS!!!! and they are freankin awesome!!! big grin

yodasplace

3 day ban for ignoring warning!

WD

NoMeN

its ok yodasplace..... smile

Jedi Priestess

Thanks NoMen for posting all that and thanks Wind for cleaning house. smile

9c7ztf3n

Repost last chapter snippet smile

((The_Anomaly))

awsome! i likey!! big grin

Darth Jello

hmm, the description of what it's like to be vader is consistent with the TFN analysis of his injuries.

LandoSpeeder2

The Face of the Dark

Depowered lampdisks were rings of ghostly gray floating in the gloom. The shimmering jewelscape of Coruscant haloed the knife-edged shadow of the chair.

This was the office of the Chancellor.

Within the chair's shadow sat another shadow: deeper, darker, formless and impenetrable, an abyssal umbra so profound that it drained light from the room around it.

And from the city. And the planet.

And the galaxy.

The shadow waited. It had told the boy it would. It was looking forward to keeping its word.

For a change.

-------

Night held the Jedi Temple.

On its rooftop landing deck, thin yellow tight spilled in a stretching rectangle through a shuttle's hatchway, reflecting upward onto the faces of three Jedi Masters.

"I'd feel better if Yoda were here," This Master was a Nautiloid, tall and broad-shouldered, his glabrous scalp-tentacles restrained by loops of embossed leather. "Or even Kenobi. On Ord Cestus, Obi-Wan and I—"

"Yoda is pinned down on Kashvyyk, and Kenobi is out of contact on Utapau. The Dark Lord has revealed himself, and we dare not hesitate. Think not of if, Master Fisto; this duty has fallen to us. We will suffice." This Master was an Iktotchi, shorter and slimmer than the first. Two long horns curved downward from his forehead to below his chin. One had been amputated after being shattered in battle a few months before. Bacta had accelereated its regrowth, and the once maimed horn was now a match to the other. "We will suffice,”' he repeated. "We will have to."

"Peace," said the third Master, a Zabrak. Dew had gathered on his array of blunt vestigial skull-spines, glistening very like sweat. He gestured toward a Temple door that had cycled open. "Windu is coming."

Clouds had swept in with the twilight, and now a thin drizzling rain began to fall. The approaching Master walked with his shaven head lowered, his hands tucked within his sleeves.

"Master Ti and Gate Master Jurokk will direct the Temple's defense," he said as he reached the others. "We are shutting down all nav beacons and signal lights, we have armed the older Padawans, and all blast doors are sealed and code-locked." His gaze swept the Masters. "It's time to go."

"And Skywalker?" The Zabrak Master cocked his head as though he felt a distant disturbance in the Force. "What of the chosen one?"

"I have sent him to the Council Chamber until our return." Mace Windu turned a grim stare upon the High Council Tower, squinting against the thickening rain. His hands withdrew from his sleeves. One of them held his lightsaber.

"He has done his duty. Masters. Now we shall do ours."

He walked between them into the shuttle.

The other three Masters shared a significant silence, then Agen Kolar nodded to himself and entered; Saesee Tiin stroked his regrown horn, and followed.

"I'd still feel better if Yoda were here . . . ," Kit Fisto muttered, and then went in as well.

Once the hatch had sealed behind him, the Jedi Temple belonged entirely to the night.

----

Alone in the Chamber of the Jedi Council, Anakin Skywalker wrestled with his dragon.

He was losing.

He paced the Chamber in blind arcs, stumbling among the chairs. He could not feel currents of the Force around him; he could not feel echoes of Jedi Masters in these ancient seats.

He had never dreamed there was this much pain in the universe.
Physical pain he could have handled even without his Jedi mental skills; he'd always been tough. At four years old he'd been able to take the worst beating Watto would deliver without so much as making a sound.

Nothing had prepared him for this.

He wanted to rip open his chest with his bare hands and claw out his heart.

"What have I done?" The question started as a low moan but grew to a howl he could no longer lock behind his teeth. "What have I done?"

He knew the answer: he had done his duty.

And now he couldn't imagine why.

When I die, Palpatine had said, so calmly, so warmly, so reasonably, my knowledge dies with me ...

Everywhere he looked, he saw only the face of the woman he loved beyond love: the woman for whom he channeled through his body all the love that had ever existed in the galaxy. In the universe.

He didn't care what she had done. He didn't care about conspiracies or cabals or secret pacts. Treason meant nothing to him now. She was everything that had ever been loved by anyone, and he was watching her die.

His agony somehow became an invisible hand, stretching out through the Force, a hand that found her, far away, alone in her apartment in the dark, a hand that felt the silken softness of her skin and the sleek coils of her hair, a hand that dissolved into a field of pure energy, of pure feeling that reached inside her—

And now he felt her, really felt her in the Force, as though she could have been some kind of Jedi, too, but more than that: he felt a bond, a connection, deeper and more intimate than he'd ever had before with anyone, even Obi-Wan; for a precious eternal instant he was her ... he was the beat of her heart and he was the motion of her lips and he was her soft words as though she spoke a prayer to the stars—

I love you, Anakin. I am yours, in life, and in death, wherever you go, whatever you do, we will always be one. Never doubt me, my love. I am yours.

—and her purity and her passion and the truth of her love flowed into him and through him and every atom of him screamed to the Force how can I let her die?

The Force had no answer for him.

The dragon, on the other hand, did.

All things die, Anakin Skywalker. Even stars burn out.

And no matter how hard he tried to summon it, no wisdom of Yoda's, no teaching of Obi-Wan's, not one scrap of Jedi lore came to him that could choke the dragon down.

But there was an answer; he'd heard it just the other night.

With such knowledge, to maintain life in someone already living would seem a small matter, don't you agree?

Anakin stopped. His agony evaporated.

Palpatine was right.

It was simple.

All he had to do was decide what he wanted.

LandoSpeeder2

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The Coruscant nightfall was spreading through the galaxy.

The darkness in the Force was no hindrance to the shadow in the Chancellor's office; it was the darkness. Wherever darkness dwelled, the shadow could send perception.

In the night, the shadow felt the boy's anguish, and it was good. The shadow felt the grim determination of four Jedi Masters approaching by air.

This, too, was good.

As a Jedi shuttle settled to the landing deck outside, the shadow sent its mind into the far deeper night within one of the several pieces of sculpture that graced the office; an abstract twist of solid neuranium, so heavy that the office floor had been specially reinforced to bear its weight, so dense that more sensitive species might, from very close range, actually percieve the tiny warping of the fabric of space-time that was its gravitation.

Neuranium of more than roughly a millimeter thick is impervious to sensors; the standard security scans undergone by all equipment and furniture to enter the Senate Office Building had shown nothing at all. If anyone had thought to use an advanced gravimetric detector, however, they might have discovered that one smallish section of the sculpture massed slightly less than it should have, given that the manifest that had accompanied it, when it was brought from Naboo among the then-ambassador's personal effects, clearly stated that it was a single piece of solid-forged neuranium.

The manifest was a lie. The sculpture was not entirely solid, and not all of it was neuranium.

Within a long, slim, rod-shaped cavity around which the sculpture had been forged rested a device that had lain, waiting, in absolute darkness—darkness beyond darkness—for decades.

Waiting for night to fall on the Republic.

The shadow felt Jedi Masters stride the vast echoic emptiness of the vaulted halls outside. It could practically hear the cadence of their boot heels on the Alderaanian marble.

The darkness within the sculpture whispered of the shape and the feel and every intimate resonance of the device it cradled. With a twist of its will, the shadow triggered the device.

The neuranium got warm.

A small round spot, smaller than the circle a human child might make of thumb and forefinger, turned the color of old blood.

Then fresh blood.

Then open flame.

Finally a spear of scarlet energy lanced free, painting the office with the color of stars seen through the smoke of burning planets.

The spear of energy lengthened, drawing with it out from the darkness the device, then the scarlet blade shrank away and the device slid itself within the softer darkness of a sleeve.

As shouts of the Force scattered Redrobes beyond the office's outer doors, the shadow gestured and lampdisks ignited. Another shout of the Force burst open die inner door to the private office. As Jedi stormed in, a final flick of the shadow's will triggered a recording device concealed within the desk.

Audio only.

"Why, Master Windu," said the shadow. "What a pleasant surprise."

----------

Shaak Ti felt him coming before she could see him. The infra- and ultrasound-sensitive cavities in the tall, curving montrals to either side of her head gave her a sense analogous to touch: the texture of his approaching footsteps was ragged as old sacking. As he rounded the corner to the landing deck door, his breathing felt like a pile of gravel and his heartbeat was spiking like a Zabrak's head.

He didn't look good, either; he was deathly pale, even for a human, and his eyes were raw.

"Anakin," she said warmly. Perhaps a friendly word was what he needed; she doubted he'd gotten many from Mace Windu. "Thank you for what you have done. The Jedi Order is in your debt—the whole galaxy, as well."

"Shaak Ti. Get out of my way."

Shaky as he looked, there was nothing unsteady in his voice: it was deeper than she remembered, more mature, and it carried undertones of authority that she had never heard before.

And she was not blind to the fact he had neglected to call her Master.

She put forth a hand, offering calming energies through the Force. "The Temple is sealed, Anakin. The door is code-locked. "

"And you're in the way of the pad."

She stepped aside, allowing him to the pad; she had no reason to keep him here against his will. He punched the code hungrily. "If Palpatine retaliates," she said reasonably, "is not your place here, to help with our defense?"

"I'm the chosen one. My place is there." His breathing roughened, and he looked as if he was getting even sicker. "I have to be there. That's the prophecy, isn't it? I have to be there—"

"Anakin, why? The Masters are the best of the Order. What can you possibly do?"

The door slid open.

"I'm the chosen one," he repeated. "Prophecy can't be changed. I'll do—"

He looked at her with eyes that were dying, and a spasm of unendurable pain passed over his face. Shaak Ti reached for him— he shouid be in the infirmary, not heading toward what might be a savage battle—but he lurched away from her hand.

I’ll do what I'm supposed to do," he said, and sprinted into the night and the rain.

LandoSpeeder2

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PALPATINE: Why, Master Windu. What a pleasant surprise.

MACE WINDU: Hardly a surprise. Chancellor. And it will be pleasant for neither of us.

PALPATINE: I'm sorry? Master Fisto, hello. Master Kolar, greetings. I trust you are well. Master Tiin—I see your horn has regrown; I'm very glad. What brings four Jedi Masters to my office at this hour?

MACE WINDU: We know who you are. What you are. We are here to take you into custody.

PALPATINE: I beg your pardon? What I am? When last I checked, I was Supreme Chancellor of the Republic you are sworn to serve. I hope I misunderstand what you mean by custody, Master Windu. It smacks of treason.

MACE WINDU: You're under arrest.

PALPATINE: Really, Master Windu, you cannot be serious. On what charge?

MACE WINDU: You're a Sith Lord!

PALPATINE: Am I? Even if true, that's hardly a crime. My philosophical outlook is a personal matter. In fact— the last time I read the Constitution, anyway—we have very strict laws against this type of persecution. So I ask you again: what is my alleged crime? How do you expect to justify your mutiny before the Senate? Or do you intend to arrest the Senate as well?

MACE WINDU: We're not here to argue with you.

PALPATINE: No, you're here to imprison me without trial. Without even the pretense of legality. So this is the plan, at last: the Jedi are taking over the Republic.

MACE WINDU: Come with us. Now.

PALPATINE: I shall do no such thing. If you intend to murder me, you can do so right here.

MACE WINDU: Don't try to resist.

PALPATINE: Resist? How could I possibly resist? This is murder, you Jedi traitors! How can I be any threat to you? Master Tiin—you're the telepath. What am I thinking right now?

KIT FISTO: Saesee—

AGEN KOLAR:

PALPATINE: Help! Help! Security—someone! Help me! Murder! Treason!

A fountain of amethyst energy burst from Mace Windu's fist. "Don't try to resist."

The song of his blade was echoed by green fire from the hands of Kit Fisto, Agen Kolar, and Saesee Tiin. Kolar and Tiin closed on Palpatine, blocking the path to the door. Shadows dripped and oozed color, weaving and coiling up office walls, slipping over chairs, spreading along the floor.

"Resist? How could I possibly resist?" Still seated at the desk, Palpatine shook an empty fist helplessiy, the perfect image of a tired, frightened old man. "This is murder, you Jedi traitors! How can I be any threat to you?"

He turned desperately to Saesee Tiin. "Master Tiin—you're the telepath. What am I thinking right now?"

Tiin frowned and cocked his head. His blade dipped. A smear of red-flashing darkness hurtled from behind the desk.

Saesee Tiin's head bounced when it hit the floor.

Smoke curled from the neck, and from the twin stumps of the horns, severed just below the chin.

Kit Fisto gasped, "Saesee!"

The headless corpse, still standing, twisted as its knees buckled, and a thin sigh escaped from its trachea as it folded to the floor.

"It doesn't. . ." Agen Kolar swayed.

His emerald blade shrank away, and the handgrip tumbled from his opening fingers. A small, neat hole in the middle of his forehead leaked smoke, showing light from the back of his head.

". . . hurt. . ."

He pitched forward onto his face, and lay still.

Palpatine stood at the doorway, but the door stayed shut. From his right hand extended a blade the color of fire.

The door locked itself at his back.

"Help! Help!" Palpatine cried like a man in desperate fear for his life, "Security—someone! Help me! Murder! Treason!"

Then he smiled.

He held one finger to his lips, and, astonishingly, he winked.

In the blank second that followed, while Mace Windu and Kit Fisto could do no more than angle their lightsabers to guard, Palpatine swiftly stepped over the bodies back toward his desk, reversed his blade, and drove it in a swift, surgically precise stab down through his desktop.

"That's enough of that."

He let it burn its way free through the front, then he turned, lifting his weapon, appearing to study it as one might study the face of a beloved friend one has long thought dead. Power gathered around him until the Force shimmered with darkness.

"If you only knew," he said softly, perhaps speaking to the Jedi Masters, or perhaps to himself, or perhaps even to the scarlet blade lifted now as though in mocking salute, "how long I have been waiting for this . . ."

LandoSpeeder2

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Anakin's speeder shrieked through the rain, dodging forked bolts of lightning that shot up from towers into the clouds, slicing across traffic lanes, screaming past spacescrapers so fast that his shock-wake cracked windows as he passed.

He didn't understand why people didn't just get out of his way. He didn't understand how the trillion beings who jammed Galactic City could go about their trivial business as though die universe hadn't changed. How could they think they counted for anything, compared with him?

How could they think they still mattered?

Their blind lives meant nothing now. None of them. Because ahead, on die vast cliff face of the Senate Office Building, one window spat lightning into the rain to echo the lightning of the storm outside—but this lightning was the color of clashing lightsabers.

Green fans, sheets of purple—

And crimson flame.

He was too late.

The green fire faded and winked out; now the lightning was only purple and red.

His repulsorlifts howled as he heeled the speeder up onto its aide, skidding through wind-shear turbulence to bring it to a bobbing halt outside the window of Palpatine's private office. A blast of lightning hit the spire of 500 Republica, only a kilometer away, and its white burst flared off the window, flash-blinding him; he blinked furiously, slapping at his eyes in frustration.

The colorless glare inside his eyes faded slowly, bringing into focus a jumble of bodies on the floor of Palpatine's private office.

Bodies in Jedi robes.

On Palpatine's desk lay the head of Kit Fisto, faceup, scalp-tentacles unbound in a squid-tangle across the ebonite. His lidless eyes stared blindly at the ceiling. Anakin remembered him in the arena at Geonosis, effortlessly carving his way through wave after wave of combat droids, on his lips a gently humorous smile as though the horrific battle were only some friendly jest. His severed head wore that same smile.

Maybe he thought death was funny, too.

Anakin's own blade sang blue as it slashed through the window and he dived through the gap. He rolled to his feet among a litter of bodies and sprinted through a shattered door along the small private corridor and through a doorway that flashed and flared with energy-scatter.

Anakin skidded to a stop.

Within the public office of the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, a last Jedi Master battled alone, blade-to-blade, against a living shadow.

-------------

Sinking into Vaapad, Mace Windu fought for his life.

More than his life: each whirl of blade and whipcrack of lightning was a strike in defense of democracy, of justice and peace, of the rights of ordinary beings to live their own lives in their own ways.

He was fighting for the Republic that he loved.

Vaapad, the seventh form of lightsaber combat, takes its name from a notoriously dangerous predator native to the moons Sarapin: a vaapad attacks its prey with whipping strikes of its blindingly fast tentacles. Most have at least seven. It is not uncommon for them to have as many as twelve; the largest ever killed had twenty-three. With a vaapad, one never knew how many tentacles it had until it was dead: they move too fast to count. Almost too fast to see.

So did Mace's blade.

Vaapad is as aggressive and powerful as its namesake, but its power comes at great risk: immersion in Vaapad opens the gates that restrain one's inner darkness. To use Vaapad, a Jedi must allow himself to enjoy the fight; he must give himself over to the thrill of battle. The rush of winning. Vaapad is a path that leads through the penumbra of the dark side.

Mace Windu created this style, and he was its only living master.

This was Vaapad's ultimate test.

-----------------

Anakin blinked and rubbed his eyes again. Maybe he was still a bit flash-blind—the Korun Master seemed to be fading in and out of existence, half swallowed by a thickening black haze in which danced a meter-long bar of sunfire. Mace pressed back the darkness with a relentless straight-ahead march; his own blade, that distinctive amethyst blaze that had been the final sight of so many evil beings across the galaxy, made a haze of its own: an oblate sphere of purple fire within which there seemed to be dozens of swords slashing in all directions at once.

The shadow he fought, that blur of speed—could that be Palpatine?

Their blades flared and flashed, crashing together with bursts of fire, weaving nets of killing energy in exchanges so fast that Anakin could not truly see them—

But he could feel them in the Force.

The Force itself roiled and burst and crashed around them, boiling with power and lightspeed ricochets of lethal intent.

And it was darkening.

Anakin could feel how the Force fed upon the shadow's murderous exaltation; he could feel fury spray into the Force though some poisonous abscess had crested in both their hearts.

There was no Jedi restraint here.

Mace Windu was cutting loose.

LandoSpeeder2

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Mace was deep in it now: submerged in Vaapad, swallowed by it, he no longer truly existed as an independent being.

Vaapad is a channel for darkness, and that darkness flowed both ways. He accepted the furious speed of the Sith Lord, drew the shadow's rage and power into his inmost center—

And let it fountain out again.

He reflected the fury upon its source as a lightsaber redirects a blaster bolt.

There was a time when Mace Windu had feared the power of the dark; there was a time when he had feared the darkness in himself. But the Clone Wars had given him a gift of understanding: on a world called Haruun Kal, he had faced his darkness and had learned that the power of darkness is not to be feared.

He had learned that it is fear that gives the darkness power.

He was not afraid. The darkness had no power over him. But—

Neither did he have power over it.

Vaapad made him an open channel, half of a superconducting loop completed by the shadow; they became a standing wave of battle that expanded into every cubic centimeter of the Chancellor's office. There was no scrap of carpet nor shred of chair that might not at any second disintegrate in flares of red or purple; lampstands became brief shields, sliced into segments that whirled through the air; couches became terrain to be climbed for advantage or overleapt in retreat. But there was still only the cycle of power, the endless loop, no wound taken on either side, not even the possibility of fatigue.

Impasse.

Which might have gone on forever, if Vaapad were Mace's only gift.

The fighting was effortless for him now; he let his body handle it without the intervention of his mind. While his blade spun and crackled, while his feet slid and his weight shifted and his shoulders turned in precise curves of their own direction, his mind slid along the circuit of dark power, tracing it back to its limitless source.

Feeling for its shatterpoint.

He found a knot of fault lines in the shadow's future; he chose the largest fracture and followed it back to the here and the now—

And it led him, astonishingly, to a man standing frozen in the slashed-open doorway. Mace had no need to look; the presence in the Force was familiar, and was as uplifting as sunlight breaking through a thunderhead.

The chosen one was here.

Mace disengaged from the shadow's blade and leapt for the window; he slashed away the transparisteel with a single flourish.

His instant's distraction cost him: a dark surge of the Force nearly blew him right out of the gap he had just cut. Only a desperate Force-push of his own altered his path enough that he slammed into a stanchion instead of plunging half a kilometer from the ledge outside. He bounced off and the Force cleared his head and once again he gave himself to Vaapad.

He could feel the end of this battle approaching, and so could the blur of Sith he faced; in the Force, the shadow had become a pulsar of fear. Easily, almost effortlessly, he turned the shadow's fear into a weapon: he angled the battle to bring them both out onto the window ledge.

Out in the wind. Out with the lightning. Out on a rain-slicked ledge above a half-kilometer drop.

Out where the shadow's fear made it hesitate. Out where the shadow's fear turned some of its Force-powered speed into a Force-powered grip on the slippery permacrete.

Out where Mace could flick his blade in one precise arc and slash the shadow's lightsaber in half.

One piece flipped back in through the cut-open window. The other tumbled from opening fingers, bounced on the ledge, and fell through the rain toward the distant alleys below.

Now the shadow was only Palpatine: old and shrunken, thinning hair bleached white by time and care, face lined with exhaustion.

"For all your power, you are no Jedi. All you are, my lord,” Mace said evenly, staring past his blade, "is under arrest."

"Do you see, Anakin? Do you?" Palpatine's voice once again had the broken cadence of a frightened old man's. "Didn't I warn you of the Jedi and their treason?"

"Save your twisted words, my lord. There are no politicians here. The Sith will never regain control of the Republic. It's over. You’ve lost." Mace leveled his blade. "You lost for the same reason the Sith always lose: defeated by your own fear." Palpatine lilted his head. His eyes smoked with hate.

"Fool," he said.

He lifted his arms, his robes of office spreading wide into raptor's wings, his hands hooking into talons.

"Fool!" His voice was a shout of thunder. "Do you think the fear you feel is mine?"

Lighting blasted the clouds above, and lightning blasted from Palpatine's hands, and Mace didn't have time to comprehend what Palpatine was talking about; he had time only to slip back into Vaapad and angle his blade to catch the forking arcs of pure, dazzling hatred that clawed toward him.

Because Vaapad is more than a fighting style. It in a state of mind: a channel for darkness. Power passed into him and out again without touching him.

And the circuit completed itself: the lightning reflected back to its source.

Palpatine staggered, snarling, but the blistering energy that poured from his hands only intensified.

He fed the power with his pain.

"Anakin!" Mace called. His voice sounded distant, blurred, as if it came from the bottom of a well. "Anakin, help me! This is your chance!"

He felt Anakin's leap from the office floor to the ledge, felt his approach behind—

And Palpatine was not afraid.

Mace could feel it: he wasn't worried at all.

"Destroy this traitor,” the Chancellor said, his voice raised over the howl of writhing energy that joined his hands to Mace's blade. "This was never an arrest. It's an assassination!”

That was when Mace finally understood. He had it. The key to final victory. Palpatine's shatterpoint. The absolute shatterpoint of the Sith.

The shatterpoint of the dark side itself.

Mace thought, blankly astonished, Palpatine trusts Anakin Skywalker. . .

Now Anakin was at Mace's shoulder. Palpatine still made no move to defend himself from Skywalker; instead he ramped up the lightning bursting from his hands, bending the fountain of Mace's blade back toward the Korun Master's face.

Palpatine's eyes glowed with power, casting a yellow glare that burned back the rain from around them. "He is a traitor, Anakin. Destroy him."

"You're the chosen one, Anakin," Mace said, his voice going thin with strain. This was beyond Vaapad; he had no strength left to fight against his own blade, "Take him. It's your destiny."

Skywalker echoed him faintly. "Destiny . . .”

"Help me! I can't hold on any longer!" The yellow glare from Palpatine's eyes spread outward through his flesh. His skin flowed like oil, as though the muscle beneath was burning away, as though even the bones of his skull were softening, were bending and bulging, deforming from the heat and pressure of his electric hatred. "He is killing me, Anakin—! Please, Anaaahhh—"

Mace's blade bent so ciose to his face that he was choking on ozone. " Anakin, he's too strong for me—"

"Ahhh—" Palpatine's roar above above the endless blast of lightning became a fading moan of despair.

The lightning swallowed itself, leaving only the night and the rain, and an old man crumpled to his knees on a slippery ledge.

"I ... can't. I give up. I ... I am too weak, in the end. Too old, and too weak. Don't kill me, Master Jedi. Please. I surrender."

Victory flooded through Mace's aching body. He lifted his blade. "You Sith disease—'"

"Wait—" Skywalker seized his lightsaber arm with desperate strength. "Don't kill him—you can't just kill him, Master—"

"Yes, I can," Mace said, grim and certain. "I have to."

"You came to arrest him. He has to stand trial—"

"A trial would be a joke. He controls the courts. He controls the Senate—"

"So are you going to kill all them, too? Like he said you would?"

Mace yanked his arm free. "He's too dangerous to be left alive. If you could have taken Dooku alive, would you have?"

Skywalker's face swept itself clean of emotion. "That was different—"

Mace turned toward the cringing, beaten Sith Lord. "You can explain the difference after he's dead."

He raised his lightsaber.

"I need him alive!'" Skywalker shouted. "I need him to save Padme!”

Mace thought blankly, Why? And moved his lightsaber toward the fallen Chancellor.

Before he could follow through on his stroke, a sudden arc of blue plasma sheared through his wrist and his hand tumbled away with his lightsaber still in it and Palpatine roared back to his feet and lightning speared from the Sith Lord's hands and without his blade to catch it, the power of Palpatine's hate struck him full-on.

He had been so intent on Palpatine's shatterpoint that he'd never thought to look for Anakin's.

Dark lightning blasted away his universe.

He fell forever.

LandoSpeeder2

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Anakin Skywalker knelt in the rain.

He was looking at a hand. The hand had brown skin. The hand held a lightsaber. The hand had a charred oval of tissue where it should have been attached to an arm.

"What have I done?"

Was it his voice? It must have been. Because it was his question.

"What have I done?"

Another hand, a warm and human hand, laid itself softly on his shoulder.

"You're following your destiny, Anakin," said a familiar gentle voice. "The Jedi are traitors. You saved the Republic from their treachery. You can see that, can't you?"

"You were right," Anakin heard himself saying. "Why didn't I know?"

"You couldn't have. They cloaked themselves in deception, my boy. Because they feared your power, they could never trust you,"

Anakin stared at the hand, but he no longer saw it. "Obi-Wan—Obi-Wan trusts me ..."

"Not enough to tell you of their plot."

Treason echoed in his memory.

,.. this is not an assignment for the record ...

That warm and human hand gave his shoulder a warm and human squeeze. "I do not fear your power, Anakin, I embrace it. You are the greatest of the Jedi. You can be the greatest of the Sith. I believe that, Anakin. I believe in you. I trust you. I trust you. I trust you."

Anakin looked from the dead hand on the ledge to the living one on his shoulder, then up to the face of the man who stood above him, and what he saw there choked him like an invisible fist crushing his throat.

The hand on his shoulder was human.

The face . . . wasn't.

The eyes were a cold and feral yellow, and they gleamed like those of a predator lurking beyond a fringe of firelight; the bone around those feral eyes had swollen and melted and flowed like durasteel spilled from a fusion smelter, and the flesh that blanketed it had gone corpse-gray and coarse as rotten synthplast.

Stunned with horror, stunned with revulsion, Anakin could only stare at the creature. At the shadow.

Looking into the face of the darkness, he saw his future.

"Now come inside," the darkness said.

After a moment, he did.

-------------

Anakin stood just within the office. Motionless.

Palpatine examined the damage to his face in a broad expanse of wall mirror. Anakin couldn't tell if his expression might be revulsion, or if this were merely the new shape of his features. Palpatine lifted one tentative hand to the misshapen horror that he now saw in the mirror, then simply shrugged.

"And so the mask becomes the man," he sighed with a hint of philosophical melancholy, "I shall miss the face of Palpatine, I think; but for our purpose, the face of Sidious will serve. Yes, it will serve.”

He gestured, and a hidden compartment opened in the office's ceiling above his desk. A voluminous robe of heavy black-on-black brocade floated downward from it; Anakin felt the current in die Force that carried the robe to Palpatine's hand.

He remembered playing a Force game with a shuura fruit, sitting across a long table from Padme in the retreat by the lake on Naboo. He remembered telling her how grumpy Obi-Wan would be to see him use the Force so casually.

Palaptine seemed to catch his thought; he gave a yellow sidelong glance as the robe settled onto his shoulders.

"You must learn to cast off the petty restraints that the Jedi have tried to place upon your power," he said. "Anakin, it's time. I need you to help me restore order to the galaxy."

Anakin didn't respond.

Sidious said, "Join me. Pledge yourself to the Sith. Become my apprentice.”

A wave of tingling started at the base of Anakin’s skull and spread over his whole body in a slow-motion shockwave.

"I—I can't."

"Of course you can."

Anakin shook his head and found that the rest of him threatened to begin shaking as well. "I—came to save your life, sir. Not to betray my friends—"

Sidious snorted. "What friends?"

Anakin could find no answer.

"And do you think that task is finished, my boy?" Sidious seated himself on the corner of the desk, hands folded in his lap, the way he always had when offering Anakin fatherly advice; the misshapen mask of his face made the familiarity of his posture into something horrible. "Do you think that killing one traitor will end treason? Do you think the Jedi will ever stop until I am dead?"

Anakin stared at his hands. The left one was shaking. He hid it behind him.

"It's them or me, Anakin. Or perhaps I should put it more plainly: It's them or Padme."

Anakin made his right hand—his black-gloved hand of durasteel and electrodrivers—into a fist.

"It's just—it's not. . . easy, that's all. I have—I've been a Jedi for so long—"

Sidious offered an appalling smile. "There is a place within you, my boy, a place as briskly clean as ice on a mountaintop, cool and remote. Find that high place, and look down within yourself; breathe that clean, icy air as you regard your guilt and shame. Do not deny them; observe them. Take your horror in your hands and look at it. Examine it as a phenomenon. Smell it. Taste it. Come to know it as only you can, for it is yours, and it is precious."

As the shadow beside him spoke, its words became true. From a remote, frozen distance that was at the same time more extravagantly, hotly intimate than he could have ever dreamed, Anakin handled his emotions. He dissected them. He reassembled them and pulled them apart again. He still felt them—if anything, they burned hotter than before—but they no longer had the power to cloud his mind.

"You have found it, my boy: I can feel you there. That cold distance—that mountaintop within yourself—that is the first key to the power of the Sith."

Anakin opened his eyes and turned his gaze fully upon the grotesque features of Darth Sidious.

He didn't even blink.

As he looked upon that mask of corruption, the revulsion he felt was real, and it was powerful, and it was—

Interesting.

Anakin lifted his hand of durasteel and electrodrivers and cupped it, staring into its palm as though he held there the fear that had haunted his dreams for his whole life, and it was no larger than the piece of shuura he'd once stolen from Padme's plate.

On the mountain peak within himself, he weighed Padme's life against the Jedi Order.

It was no contest.

He said, "Yes."

"Yes to what, my boy?"

"Yes, I want your knowledge."

"Good, Good!"

"I want your power. I want the power to stop death."

"That power only my Master truly achieved, but together we will find it. The Force is strong with you, my boy. You can do anything."

"The Jedi betrayed you," Anakin said. "The Jedi betrayed both of us."

"As you say. Are you ready?"

"I am," he said, and meant it. "I give myself to you. I pledge myself to the ways of the Sith. Take me as your apprentice. Teach me. Lead me. Be my Master."

Sidious raised the hood of his robe and draped it to shadow the ruin of his face.

"Kneel before me, Anakin Skywalker."

Anakin dropped to one knee. He lowered his head.

"It is your will to join your destiny forever with the Order of the Sith Lords?"

There was no hesitation. "Yes."

Darth Sidious laid a pale hand on Anakin's brow. "Then it is done. You are now one with the Order of the Dark Lords of the Sith. From this day forward, the truth of you, my apprentice, now and forevermore, will be Darth . . ."

A pause; a questioning in the Force—

An answer, dark as the gap between galaxies—

He heard Sidious say it: his new name.

Vader.

A pair of syllables that meant him.

Vader, he said to himself. Vader.

"Thank you, my Master."

"Every single Jedi, including your friend Obi-Wan Kenobi, have been revealed as enemies of the Republic now. You understand that, don't you?"

"Yes, my Master."

"The Jedi are relentless. If they are not destroyed to the last being, there will be civil war without end. To sterilize the Jedi Temple will be your first task. Do what must be done, Lord Vader."

"I always have, my Master."

"Do not hesitate. Show no mercy. Leave no living creature behind. Only then will you be strong enough with the dark side to save Padme."

"What of the other Jedi?"

"Leave them to me. After you have finished at the Temple, your second task will be the Separatist leadership, in their 'secret bunker' on Mustafar. When you have killed them all, the Sith will rule the galaxy once more, and we shall have peace. Forever.

"Rise, DarthVader."

The Sith Lord who once had been a Jedi hero called Anakin Skywalker stood, drawing himself up to his full height, but he looked not outward upon his new Master, nor upon the planet-city beyond, nor out into the galaxy that they would soon rule. He instead turned his gaze inward: he unlocked the furnace gate within his heart and stepped forth to regard with new eyes the cold freezing dread of the dead-star dragon that had haunted his life.

I am Darth Vader, he said within himself.

The dragon tried again to whisper of failure, and weakness, and inevitable death, but with one hand the Sith Lord caught it, crushed away its voice; it tried to rise then, to coil and rear and strike, but the Sith I,ord laid his other hand upon it and hrokc its power with a single effortless twist.

I am Darth Vader, he repeated as he ground the dragon's corpse to dust beneath his mental heel, as he watched the dragon's dust and ashes scatter before the blast from his furnace heart, and you—

You are nothing at all.

He had become, finally, what they all called him.

The Hero With No Fear.

LandoSpeeder2

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Gate Master Jurokk sprinted through the empty vaulted hallway, clattering echoes of his footsteps making him sound like a platoon. The main doors of the Temple were slowly swinging inward in answer to the code key punched into the outside lockpad.

The Gate Master had seen him on the monitor.

Anakin Skywalker.

Alone.

The huge doors creaked inward; as soon as they were wide enough for the Gate Master to pass, he slipped through.

Anakin stood in the night outside, shoulders hunched, head down against the rain.

"Anakin!" he gasped, running up to the young man. "Anakin, what happened? Where are the Masters?"

Anakin looked at him as though he wasn't sure who the Gate Master was. '"Where is Shaak Ti?"

"In the meditation chambers—we felt something happen in the Force, something awful. She's searching the Force in deep meditation, trying to get some feel for what's going on ..."

His words trailed away. Anakin didn't seem to be listening.

"Something has happened, hasn't it?"

Jurokk looked past him now. The night beyond the Temple was full of clones. Battalions of them. Brigades.

Thousands.

"Anakin," he said slowly, "what's going on? Something's happened, Something horrible. How bad is it - ?"

The last thing Jurokk felt was the emitter of a lightsaber against the soft flesh beneath his jaw; the last thing he heard, as blue plasma chewed upward through his head and burst from the top of his skull and burned away his life, was Anakin Skywalker's melancholy reply.

"You have no idea . . ."

LandoSpeeder2

17 - The Face of the Dark
http://rapidshare.de/files/982076/17_-_The_Face_of_the_Dark.cbz.html

18 - Order 66
http://rapidshare.de/files/982095/18_-_Order_66.cbz.html

21 - A New Jedi Order
http://rapidshare.de/files/982115/21_-_A_New_Jedi_Order.cbz.html

JC2004

Awesome Lando! Big thumbs up for the posts. A most powerful asset you are at KMC...MOst powerful

peluffo

Great reading. Thank you very much.

cylob49

Well thats that for my so called "will power"
id be a crap jedi.

LandoSpeeder2

Never thought copying and pasting would make me a powerful asset. stick out tongue

It's all from MF.com

cylob49

Well aint that was this forum is all about Lando?
congratulating people for their copy and paste skills
Cheers (insert name) for posting those pics you found on Milleniumfalcon.com,Starwarz.com etc etc etc

Lana

WOW.

So much for wanting to stay away from the novel...I'm buying it the day it comes out eek!

NoMeN

Chapter 18: Order Sixty-Six

Pau City was a cauldron of battle.

From his observation post just off the landing ramp of the command lander on the tenth level, Clone Commander Cody swept the sinkhole with his electrobinoculars. The droid-control center lay in ruins only a few meters away, but the Separatists had learned the lesson of Naboo; their next-generation combat droids were equipped with sophisticated self-motivators that kicked in automatically when control signals were cut off, delivering a program of standing orders.

Standing Order Number One was, apparently, Kill Everything That Moves.

And they were doing a good job of it, too.

Half the city was rubble, and the rest was a firestorm of droids and clones and Utapaun dragon cavalry, and just when Commander Cody was thinking how he really wished they had a Jedi or two around right now, several metric tons of dragonmount hurtled from the sky and hit the roof of the command lander hard enough to buckle the deck beneath it.

Not that it did the ship any harm; Jadthu-class landers are basically flying bunkers, and this particular one was triple-armored and equipped with internal shock buffers and inertial dampeners powerful enough for a fleet corvette, to protect the sophisticated command-and-control equipment inside.

Cody looked up at the dragonmount, and at its rider. “General Kenobi,” he said. “Glad you could join us.

“Commander Cody,” the Jedi Master said with a nod. He was still scanning the battle around them. “Did you contact Coruscant with the news of the general’s death?”

The clone commander snapped to attention and delivered a crisp salute. “As ordered, sir. Erm, sir?”

Kenobi looked down at him.

“Are you alright, sir? You’re a bit of a mess.”

The Jedi Master wiped away some of the dust and gore that smeared his face with the sleeve of his robe—which was charred, and only left a blacker smear across his check. “Ah. Well, yes. It has been a … stressful day.” He waved out at Pau City. “But we still have a battle to win.”

“Then I suppose you’ll be wanting this,” Cody said, holding up the lightsaber his men had recovered from a traffic tunnel. “I believe you dropped it, sir.”

“Ah. Ah, ye s.”

The weapon floated gently up to Kenobi’s hand, and when he smiled down at the clone commander again, Cody could swear the Jedi Master was blushing a bit. “No, ah, need to mention this to, erm, Anakin, is there, Cody?”

Cody grinned. “Is that an order, sir?”

Kenobi shook his head, chuckling tiredly. “Let’s go. You’ll have noticed I did manage to leave a few droids for you…”

“Yes, sir.” A silent buzzing vibration came from a compartment concealed within his armor. Cody frowned. “Go on ahead, General. We’ll be right behind you.”

That concealed compartment held a secure comlink, which was frequency-locked to a channel reserved for the commander in chief.

Kenobi nodded and spoke to his mount, and the great beast overleapt the clone commander on its way down into the battle.

Cody withdrew the comlink from his armor and triggered it.

A holoscan appeared on the palm of his gauntlet: a hooded man.

“It is time,” the holoscan said. “Execute Order Sixty-Six.”

Cody responded as he had been trained since before he’d even awakened in his crèche-school. “It will be done, my lord.”

The holoscan vanished. Cody stuck the comlink back into his concealed recess and frowned down toward where Kenobi rode his dragonmount into selflessly heroic battle.

Cody was clone. He would execute the order faithfully, without hesitation or regret. But he was also human enough to mutter glumly, “Would it have been too much to ask for the order to have come through before I gave him back the bloody lightsaber…?”

-----------
The order is given once. Its wave-front spreads to clone commanders on Kashyyyk and Felucia, Mygeeto and Tellanroaeg and every battlefront, every military installation, every hospital and rehab center and spaceport and cantina in the galaxy.

Except for Coruscant.

On Coruscant, Order Sixty-Six is already being executed.

----------

Dawn crept across the Galactic City. Fingers of morning brought a rose-colored glow to the wind-smeared upper reach of a vast twisting cone of smoke.

Bail Organa was a man not given to profanity, but when he caught a glimpse of the source of that smoke from the pilot’s chair of his speeder, the curse it brought to his lips would have made a Corellian dockhand blush.

He stabbed a code that canceled his speeder’s programmed route toward the Senate Office Building, then grabbed the yoke and kicked the craft into a twisting dive that shot him through half a dozen crisscrossing streams of air traffic.

He triggered his speeder’s comm.. “Antilles!”

The answer from the captain of his personal crew was instant. “Yes, my lord?”

“Route an alert to SER,” he ordered. “The Jedi Temple is on fire!”

“Yes, sir. We know. Senate Emergency Response has announced a state of martial law, and the Temple is under lockdown. There’s been some kind of Jedi rebellion.”

“What are you talking about? That’s impossible. Why aren’t there fireships onstation?”

“I don’t have any details, my lord; we only know what SER is telling us.”

Look, I’m right on top of it. I’m going down there to find out what’s happening.”

“My lord, I wouldn’t recommend it—”

“I won’t take any chances.” Bail hauled the control yoke to slew the speeder toward the broad landing deck on the roof of the Temple ziggurat. “Speaking of not taking chances, Captain: order the duty crew on the Tantive and get her engines warm. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Sir?”

“Just do it.”

Bail set the speeder down only a few meters from the deck entrance and hopped out. A squad of clone troopers stood in the open doorway. Smoke billowed out from the hallway behind them.

One of the troopers lifted a hand as Bail approached. “Don’t worry, sir, everything is under control here.”

“Under control? Where are the SER teams? What is the army doing here?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t talk about that, sir.”

“Has there been some kind of attack on the Temple?”

“I’m sorry< I can’t talk about that, sir.”

“Listen to me, Sergeant, I am a Senator of the Galactic Republic,” Bail said, improvising, “and I am late for a meeting with the Jedi Council—“

“The Jedi Council is not in session, sir.”

“Maybe you should let me see for myself.”

The four clones moved together to block his path. I’m sorry, sir. Entry is forbidden.

“I am a Senator—”

“Yes, sir.” The clone sergeant snapped his DC-15 to his shoulder, and Bail, blinking, found himself staring into its blackened muzzle from close enough to kiss it. “And it is time for you to leave, sir.”

“When you put it that way…” Bail backed off, lifting his hands. “Yes, all right, I’m going.”

A burst of blasterfire ripped through the smoke and scattered into the dawn outside. Bail stared with an open mouth as a Jedi flashed out of nowhere and started cutting down clones. No: not a Jedi.

A boy.

A child, no more than ten years old, swinging a lightsaber whose blade was almost as long as he was tall. More blasterfire came from inside, and a whole platoon of clones came pelting toward the landing deck, and the ten-year-old was hit, and hit again, and then just shot to rags among the bodies of the troopers he’d killed, and Bail started backing away, faster now, and in the middle of it all, a clone wearing the colors of a commander came out of the smoke and pointed at Bail Organa.

“No witnesses,” the commander said. “Kill him.”

Bail ran.

He dived through a hail of blasterfire, hit the deck, and rolled under his speeder to the opposite side. He grabbed onto its pilot’s-side door and swung his leg onto a tail fin, using the vehicle’s body as cover while he stabbed the keys to reinitialize its autorouter. Clones charged toward him, firing as they came.

His speeder heeled over and blasted away.

Bail pulled himself inside as the speeder curved up into the congested traffic lanes. He was white as flimsiplast, and his hands were shaking so badly he could barely activate his comm..

“Antilles! Organa to Antilles! Come in, Captain!”

“Antilles here, my lord.”

It’s worse than I thought. Far worse than you’ve heard. Send someone to Chance Palp—no, strike that. Go yourself. Take five men and go to the spaceport. I know at least one Jedi ship is on the ground there; Saesee Tiin brought in Sharp Spiral late last night. I need you to steal his homing beacon.”

“What? His beacon? Why?”

“No time to explain. Get the beacon and meet me at the Tantive. We’re leaving the planet.”

He stared back at the vast column of smoke that boiled from the Jedi Temple.

“While we still can.”

LandoSpeeder2

I'm getting the novel on either next Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.

thejeditraitor

saved all of this last night. it rocks.

SithSpy

This is amazing thanks for posting guys!!!!

macgeek2005

Is this really from the Novel? Or did people make this up.

LandoSpeeder2

It's from the novel, we have some scans from the novel and some people took the time to type it out. Here is a zip file to all the scans.
http://s14.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0QKIUAGWU985Z1E61VVUW50KV1

LandoSpeeder2

Extra link http://s14.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2D691D6PBHXFY1KTC450FLBGIC

LandoSpeeder2

Obi-Wan and Anakin flying around shooting in the space battle and one-liners mainly. Obi-Wan comments how he hates flying like in AOTC. Nothing we havent already known...yet.

Anakin pretty much lighlty smashed himself into Obi-Wan to knock off some of the spider droids.

Artoo is fighting a buzz droid now. Obi-Wan is amazed at all the stuff Artoo can do.

EDIT: Only Obi-Wan and Anakin in the fight. What ever jedi were there are dead by the time Obi-Wan and Anakin got there.

Obi-Wan & Anakin are on the hanger and fighting the battle droids!

This novel is REALLY protraying Obi-Wan and Anakin's relationship. I hope some of stays in the film

Artoo hooked up to the computer to locate Palpatine just like he did on the DeathStar to find Leia! Very cool mirror

Obi-Wan sensed Dooku and now Anakin & Obi-Wan are off heading in Palpatines direction

Also Dooku just told Grievous to lead Obi-Wan and & Anakin to Dooku

Dooku is watching Anakin & Obi-Wan fight through the ship from security cameras

It mentioned the lost 20 like in the AOTC novel.

Dooku is thinking about how he never had a true friendship with anyone(while watching Obi & Anakin)

Dooku is feeling tired of being a villian and secretly wishes to be captured to get out of the mess he is involved in now

Sidious told Dooku to kill Obi-Wan so Anakin will turn.

Obi-Wan told Anakin to call him Obi-Wan not Master anymore. They both entered the room with Palpatine now...

The Dooku duel just began! Palpatine is offering some "helpful" words

Dooku thinks Anakin is pathetic and Obi-Wan is his real challange. How wrong he is!

Anakin: You won't escape us this time Dooku!
Dooku: Escape? *sarcastically* Please...

Dooku: How is Senator Amidala?
Anakin: DON'T..DON'T EVEN MENTION HER NAME!!!

Dooku kicked Anakin in the face now

Obi-Wan just did something called a "force roll" over Anakin's head.

Dooku is starting to realize Anakin is a real threat and not the Jedi he faced on Geonosis.

Anakin is laying it on Dooku and Dooku is in pure defense mode.

Dooku: Aren't you a little old to be afraid of the dark?

Sidious: Strike now! STIKE! KILL HIM
Dooku: Kill....me?

Dooku's hands are OFF!

Anakin has the blades at his throught. Dooku is cringing.

Dooku: HELP ME!
Anakin: I shouldn't.....
Sidious: DO IT NOW
*head is lobbed*

*Anakin stares at the head*
Anakin: I did that....who am I?

*Drops Dooku's saber*
Anakin: I couldn't help myself...
Palpatine: You did well....not only well. But right

Palpatine: Have you ever noticed....the way of the Jedi.....is not always the right way?
Anakin: But...

LandoSpeeder2

The ship is crashing. They are heading to try to escape

Invisable Hand's shield has failed!

Grievous is on the bridge as its crashing so far. He is pacing the deck.

A neimodan was objecting to grievous's order ad Grievous rammed his fist into his FACE. INTO IT. And ripped it out of the seat by the face. And he told a junior officer he has been promoted.

Anakin is talking to Artoo via a comlink like in ANH! He is yelling to Artoo to activate a turbo-lift

They are heading to the bridge to get Grievous.

Grievous is on the bridge. Grievious likes saying preposterious a lot.

Grievous just realized Dooku is dead and Anakin rescued Palpatine. Grievous is dang pissed.

Palpatine fell in the elavator shaft and is holding on Anakin's leg. He is telling ANakin to drop Obi-Wan. He is trying to get Obi-Wan out of the picture. Earlier he told Anakin to go after Grievous and leave obi-wan with him.

Obi-Wan wakes up over Anakin's shoulder*
Obi-Wan: Have I missed something?
*Obi-Wan sees Palpatine dangling in a elevator shaft*
Obi-Wan: *very droggy and hitting his head seems to make him pretty oblivous* Oh hello Chancellor! Are you well?

Anakin holding Obi-Wan and having palps on his leg can't hold on any longer and they are plummeting. At the last minute he got ahold of Artoo on the comlink and were saved by a open door being opened by Artoo.

Obi-Wan seems alert and Obi-Wan says its time go to the escape pods but Anakin refuses to without Artoo

I listened some more last night. They crashed and Mace came to meet them. He asked about Dooku and Anakin said he killed him. When Mace asked how he did it Anakin got nervous and Palpatine stepped in and explained how wonderful ANakin was. They decided they need to get Grievous now to end this war. And Anakin headed off to find Padme. Mace & Obi-Wan talked about Palpatine and Sidious. Mace said he and Yoda suspect Palpatine has somesort of connection to SIdious but they have kept it a secret from the other Jedi. So now just Obi-Wan, Mace, & Yoda know. Mace worries Anakin is getting to close to Palpatine.

Anakin and Artoo went to find Padme and they found threepio and threepio tells him she is hiding and Artoo and Threepio have some funny lines. Like threepio refues to believe Artoo's heroics from the mission. Anakin finds Padme and they kiss and she tells them of her pregnancy.

Back to the Jedi temple with a secret meeting between Obi-Wan, Yoda, & Mace. They discuss how Palpatine now is getting MORE power by making himself incharge of the Jedi Order(So he can appoint Anakin). All 3 are very sure Sidious is either one of his advisors or Palpatine himself. They decide the Jedi may have to strike against Palpatine if he goes to far and that remaining part of the Republic and respected by the people is not as important as keeping the Jedi Order from destruction. They also begin to realize everything since the Trade Blockation on Naboo has been a plot of the Sith to destroy the Jedi Order.

LandoSpeeder2

Back to Anakin & Padme. ANakin has the dream of her dying in childbirth. He tells her and all she says is "Oh". She realizes all people have to die eventually while Anakin is freaking out about it.

Mace, Obi-Wan, and Yoda are discussing Palps, Sidious, and the war still.

Obi-Wan is saying that if we get Grievous that Sidious wont have Dooku or Grievous and will have to act and they can watch and catch him.
Obi-Wan: His actions will reveal him. He will not escape us!
Yoda: Seeing into the heart of the matter, Obi-Wan has.
Mace: We will move against Sidious.

They are sending Obi-Wan to find Grievous. Obi-Wan says he sometimes can hear Qui-Gon talk to him.
Now its describing Grievous on Utapau.

Nute Gunrary is on Utapau too!

Grievous: Gunray! Why are you still here?
Gunrary: You said we would be safe here! Why are we being moved to Mustafar?!

Grievous: Mustafar is the most secure planet in the galaxy!

Now Gunray is whining about spending all his money on the war and annoying Grievous.
Sidious is contacting Grievous
Sidious: Have you moved the council to Mustafar?
Grievous: Yes, master.
SIdious: Well done my general

Now they are talking setting a trap for Obi-Wan to kill him.

Grievous: Kenobi will die.

Anakin is at the temple now trying to find Obi-Wan.

He is thinking about his dreams of Padme's death again.

Anakin went to Yoda for advice now!
Anakin is asking for help with his dream with Padme but not revealing it is about Padme and what it predicting to keep it hidding. Yoda asked Anakin to meditate with him.

Yoda: Sense the future all Jedi could. Now few alone have this skill. These visions of yours...
Anakin: They are of pain..suffering..and death.
Yoda: No suprise this is. Someone close to you?
Anakin: Yes....
Yoda: Fear of loss is the path to the darkside.
Anakin went to the archive to try to find out how to stop prophecy dreams from coming true. However he isn't allowed. They are restricted to Jedi Masters.
Palpatine arrived at the Temple and is asking for Anakin.
Obi-Wan came to tell him that he is summoned to Palpatine.
Obi-Wan: As your friend I am asking you be wary of Palpatine. I know you are his friend but I don't think he is a friend of yours.
Anakin is going to talk to Palpatine right now.
Palpatine: I have asked you here because I need yout help.

Palpatine: In all the years we have been friends, have I ever asked for something against the will of your concious?
Anakin: Well...
Palpatine: And I never will.
Palpatine: You you may become more powerful then all of them together.

Palpatine: I am coming to feel the Jedi themselves....The council keeps pushing for more control. They lost all respect for the law.
Anakin: Many would say the same of you.
Palpatine: Many of the Jedi would prefer if I was out of office.
Palpatine: How do you know Sidious exists? Created by the Jedi Council to defeat their political enemies!

LandoSpeeder2

Anakin: The sith are evil.
Palpatine: That is what you have been told...
Palpatine: I would ask him to sit down and help end this war!
Anakin: You would.....you would....?
Palpatine: And I would bloody well offer him a brandy and talk it out.
Anakin: The JEdi will no longer report to the senate?
Palpatine: They will report to me only.
Anakin: I can see how that can help but the council won't.
Palpatine is appointing Anakin to the council to keep an eye on the council now!

Anakin: Me?
Palpatine: Who else? You are the only Jedi I can trust. I need you my boy. To be the eyes, the ears, and voice of the Republic on the council.
Anakin: On the council....

The council is discussing Palpatine appointing Anakin(Anakin is not there yet).

Obi-Wan: How can you ask him to lie to a friend? To spy on him? Don't make Anakin pick sides between me and Palpatine!

Windu: We should appear shorthanded and weak to make Sidious move thinking his unobserved. Lets make them think both I & Yoda have to take the field in action.
Yoda: Only one should go. The sepretists on Kashyyk a compelling excuse will make.
Mon Mothma: Bail whats happened?
Bail: Its time Mon...its time to stop talking and start doing.
Mon & Bail are talking about Padme. Its EXACTLY as Motee stated.

Now its back to the Jedi Temple. Anakin is walking into the Temple. Thinking about when he first came in back in TPM.

Anakin is being allowed on the council now but not the rank of master.

Mace: You will not be granted the rank of Jedi Master.
Anakin: What?
Anakin: How dare you! HOW DARE YOU! No Jedi in this room can match my power...now Jedi in the galaxy! You think you can deny mastery to ME?!?
Obi-Wan: Please....*points to a chair beside him*
Anakin: Forgive me masters.

Yoda is offically sent to Kashykk and Obi-Wan to find Grievious.

Anakin is sitting in the council alone as everyone left depressed.

Bail & Mon are talking to Padme. exaxt quotes as Motee...once again!

Bail: He has become a dictator...we made him a dictator.
Mon Mothma: What are we going to do about it.
Some Senator: I don't like where this is going....
Bail: We can't let a 1000 years of democracy end without a fight!
Padme: You sound like a sepratist!
Bail: Who will vote against Palpatine now?
Padme:...I will...
Bail: Do that, make as much noise as you can. It will provide cover for me and Mon Mothma while we build the organization.
Mon Mothma: No one can be told. No one.
*All nod*
Padme: *sigh* Yes....yes agreed. *thinking: Oh Anakin. I'm sorry...so sorry*

Anakin & Obi-Wan are walking down the steps talking from the scene in the trailer.

Anakin: If I wan't friends with Palpatine would I be master?!?
Obi-Wan: I don't know.
Anakin: They call me the chosen one! CHOSEN FOR WHAT!?
Anakin: I'm too close to him? Maybe I am! A man who has been nothing by generious to me! The only man who has given me the respect I deserve!
Obi-Wan: How can you be a Jedi Master when you haven't mastered yourself?
Anakin: What do I have to do? They want something from me!
Obi-Wan: That's not how the council works...
Obi-Wan: The council.....approved your appointment because Palpatine trusts you. They want you to report on all his dealings.
Anakin: That's treason!
Obi-Wan: We are at war Anakin....
Anakin: Your trying to get me to turn against Palpatine. To lie to him. This is what it is about!
Obi-Wan: No it isn't!
Anakin: HE IS A GREAT MAN!
Anakin: He is my friend Obi-Wan...
Obi-Wan: Yes...sadly...
Anakin: He is like family...
Obi-Wan: The Jedi are your family.
Anakin: The Jedi are YOUR family. I had a mother who loved me! Do you remember what happened to her? BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T LET ME SAVE HER?
Obi-Wan: You know how sorry I am for your mother...

*Right before Yoda leaves*
Obi-Wan: I think we did a terrible thing.
Yoda: Know how important your frienship with Anakin is I do.

Yoda: The prophecy...misread it could of been....

Mace: Jedi create light,the Sith don't create darkness. They just use it.
Obi-Wan: I am not sure I follow you. Are you saying the Jedi cast too much light?
Mace: All I am saying I don't know..we don't know what it means to bring balance to the force.
Yoda: The more we learn the more we discovery how much we don't know.
Obi-Wan: He is loyal to people...not principles.
Obi-Wan: I think Anakin can do anything..other than betray a friend.
Anakin & Padme are together again.
*outside*
Anakin: Beatiful isn't it?
Padme: Anakin you shouldn't be out here. It is still daylight.
Anakin: Tonight is forever from now. How can I live that long without you?
Padme: Let's go inside...
Anakin: How are you feeling?
Padme: He keeps kicking
Anakin: He?
Padme: It's my....motherly intuiton
Anakin: With a kick that hard? Defintely a girl.
Anakin: I can't stay...I am off to meet the chancellor.
Padme: Sometimes I wonder...if we are on the wrong side.
Padme: What if the democracy we are fighting for doesnt exist. What if it becomes the evil we are fighting against?
Anakin: Where would the Republic be without Palpatine?
Padme: I don't know but it wouldn't be any worse....
Padme: Our government is heading in the wrong direction!
Anakin: I am tired of this..this politcal justice.
Padme: I am becoming afraid...that I might know that the bad guys are here now....
Padme: Ask Palpatine to offer a cease fire!
Anakin: Is that a order?! DO I GET ANY SAY IN THIS? What if I don't agree with you?! What if I think Palpatine's way is the right way!?
Padme: Anakin....
Anakin: I am sick of this.
Padme: *cries* Anakin..what is it? What is it really?
Anakin: Nothing that you can help.
Padme: Let me help you!
Anakin: I am trying...to help you.

Anakin is with Palpatine now. Time for the sudece to get even stronger. Expect some Palpatine quotes!
Palpatine is telling Anakin he found out with Grievous is. Utapau.
They are in the theater.

Palpatine: The Jedi council can't always be trusted to do the right thing.
Palpatine: I think you know I can't rely on the Jedi Council.
Palpatine: I believe they intent to control the republic itself! They are planning treason. And hope to overthrow my government. Search your feelings...you do know...don't know?
Palpatine: They want you to spy on me don't they?
Anakin: I...
Palpatine: It's ok. I have nothing to hide.
Palpatine: Do you remember when you were young? I tried to teach you the in's and outs of politics. You should remember my first teaching. All those who gain power are afraid to lose it...
Anakin: The Jedi use it for good!
Palpatine: Good...good is not the only valid one.
Anakin: The sith are evil!
Palpatine: From a Jedi point of view....
Palpatine: Perhaps the real difference between the sith and jedi is their orientation....
Palpatine: The sith has always been more powerful than the Jedi...
Palpatine: Beings have these emotions for a reason. That is why the sith are more powerful.
Anakin: They think only of themselves!
Palpatine: And the Jedi don't..?
Anakin: Jedi are selfless!
Palpatine: Or so you have been told to believe....

LandoSpeeder2

Anakin: Have they asked you to break the Jedi code? To betray a friendship..?
Palpatine: Think Anakin...think. Consider their motives.
Anakin: Would it be possible to learn this power?
Palpatine: Not from a Jedi....

They are out of the opera house. Anakin is sitting in his speeder with his eyes closed just thinking
He wants to go there apparently to somehow find out if the story of Plagiues is true.

Obi-Wan has arrived at Padme's appartment!

Obi-Wan: This is not a social call. I have come to speak to you about Anakin.
Obi-Wan: He he came to see you?
Padme: Several times...
Obi-Wan: It's Anakin....may I sit?
Padme: Please.
Padme: Is he in trouble?
Obi-Wan: We had words yesterday and parted badly....
Padme: What were these words about?
Obi-Wan: I can't tell you. Jedi business. Its just that I have been a bit worried about him...
Padme: Why would he talk to me about Jedi business?
Obi-Wan: I am not blind Padme. Though I have tried to be for Anakin and your sake. Niether of you are good at hiding feelings. Anakin has loved you since Tatooine. He has tried to hide it. I pretended to not know. It made him happy. You made him happy. And you Padme as skilled as you are can't hide the light in your eyes when anyone mentions his name.
Padme: I...
Obi-Wan: Anakin is under a great deal of pressue. He is changing..quickly. It would be a very great mistake if he were to leave the Jedi order
Padme: Why that seems so unlikely. Isn't he the chosen one?
Obi-Wan: It only says a chosen one will be born and bring balance to the force. It never says he has to be a Jedi. My master believed it was the will of the force that Anakin would be trained as a Jedi.
Padme: But the will of the force...
Obi-Wan: But the Jedi doesn't know all there is to know of the force. We don't know what the will of the force can be.
Obi-Wan: I fear some of his current difficulty has to do with his relationship with you. I can't tell you what to do Padme. Consider Anakin's best interests.
Padme: I can't talk about this.
Obi-Wan: Remember the Jedi are his family. Please tread carefully. Some decisons can never be reversed.
*comlink beeps*
Mace: We are calling the council into session. We knowvGrievous's location.
Obi-Wan: Thank you.
Obi-Wan: I won't tell the council of this.
Padme: Thank you...Obi-Wan. You love him too, don't you? You do! You love him.
Obi-Wan: Please do what you can to help him.
Council is in session. Talking about Utapau. They are wondering how Palpatine could of got this information.
Obi-Wan is being sent to get Grievous. They decide to send him so their best swordsman Mace will be there to attack Sidious if he strikes.

Rebellion meeting in Padme's living room!

Senator: The new governer's are arriving with clone troopers...
Padme: I have realible information that Grievous has been located and Jedi are moving against him.
Bail: What then? How do we make Palpatine withdrawl his governers?
Bail: It is only Palpatine to declare when the emergency is over.
Senator: We are ready to make him surrender power.
Threepio: This discussion is most-
Padme: Threepio that will be all.
*after threepio leaves*
Padme: this is a most dangerous step. We can't turn this into another war.
Bail: Politcal solution is our only solution.

Padme: We should consult the Jedi.
Senator: That....would be dangerous
Mothma: We don't know where the jedi stand in this
Padme: The Jedi aren't happy with this either.
Senator: If we are to oppose the chancellor we need the support of the Jedi. Otherwise what do we have?
Padme: One jedi then...There is one I truely know I can trust absolutely......Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Obi-Wan is on the deck with Anakin saying goodbye.

Anakin: I have a bad feeling about this...
Obi-Wan: Did you say something?
Anakin: You are going to need me on your mission
Obi-Wan: It might just be a wild bantha chase. You are needed here.
Anakin: Master....I know I've dissapointed you in these last few days. I have been arrogant. My frustration with the council is not your fault. I apologize.
Obi-Wan: You are wise. You have surpassed my instruction.
Obi-Wan: I am speaking not of your power, but of your heat. You have done great things and I am very proud of you. I believe I hear General Grivous calling my name. Goodbye old friend. May the force be with you.

Those are the LAST things Obi-Wan says to Anakin before he goes to the Sith.

Anakin is back with Palpatine now.

Palpatine: Anticpation is my sole source of sucess. It's the only way I can take advantage of oppurtunity.

Palpatine: I do not believe in the will of the force....I believe it is our will that matters.

Palpatine: My friends have picked up disturbing rumors about Kenobi...
Anakin: Are you serious?
Palpatine: Most serious. Some in the senate regret giving me emergency powers....
Anakin: What about Obi-Wan?
Palpatine: I am getting to that.
Palpatine: The difference is now these senators have given up on democracy.....
Palpatine: They are organizing. To remove me...by other means...
Anakin: Treason?
Palpating: They have fell with the power of the Jedi...mixed in the plot of the Jedi to destroy the Republic...
Palpatine: If this is true we must be prepared. I have a very good idea of who is the leaders of this oraganization is...I want you here when they come to meet me.....We will pierce their veil.
Anakin: I will try.
Palpatine: No, we won't try we will do!
Anakin: You still haven't told me about Obi-Wan.
Palpatine: That is the disturbing part. It appears that Kenobi has been in contact with the leaders of this kobal... The rumor is that he has been seen leaving this senator's place quite early in the morning...
Anakin: Lets go to that senator! Let's question him!
Palpatine: I am afraid its a her...a woman you know very well....
Anakin: You.....you mean.....
Palpatine: I am afraid so.
Anakin: THATS IMPOSSIBLE! I WOULD KNOW!
Palpatine: Sometimes the closest are those who can not see...

Anakin is going to Padme to find out if this is true.

Padme: Anakin what are you doing here?
Anakin: Waiting for you.
Padme: I have a meeting...
ANakin: Is it with the chancellor?
Padme: Er....yes
Anakin: Obi-Wan has been here
Padme: Yes this morning...
Anakin: What did you talk about!?
Padme: We talked about you.
Anakin: WHAT ABOUT ME?
Padme: He is worried about you...the way you have been acting...
Anakin: I am not the one doing the acting. Not the one doing the pretending!
Anakin: I'm sorry....I know I have been difficult...I feel like I am in freefall...I don't know which way is up or where I will be when I land...or crash. I think it's going to be a crash.
Padme: What has happened my love? You always been so sure of yourself...
Anakin: Nothing...everything. I don't know....

Talking about the dream that shows Padme's death....

Anakin: I will become so powerful...I will keep you safe forever.
Padme: You don't need power. You can save me from anything just as you are.

Rebellion is meeting with Palpatine(and Anakin) now.

Padme is talking for the rebellion. Asking to have peace talks with sepratists. Right in front of Anakin.

Padme: This system of governers is very troubling.
Palpatine: I assure you the republic governers are to make your system safer.

Obi-Wan is at Utapau now.
Grievous has his body guards and a ENTIRE army of battle droids waiting for Obi-Wan. Poor Obi.

Obi-Wan: I can keep them distracted for some time but don't take to long.
Commander Cody: Come on boss! Have I ever let you done?

Tion Meddon is going up to Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan: My business is the war.
Meddon: There is no war here unless you brought it with you.
Obi-Wan: Very well then. Please permit me to refuel here and to search.
Tion: He is here. We are hostages. We are being watched. You must depart in truth. I was ordered to reveal his presence. It is a trap! 10's of thousands of war droids!

Obi-Wan: *looks up at the 10th level* Never a air taxi when you need one...

Now he is going off to get a ride on Boga.
He is on Boga now heading for Grievous.
Obi-Wan finally reached Grievous face to face and Palpatine is filling Anakin with more lies about how evil the rebellion is and how Padme is a traitor.He also admited he knows of the marriage.

Palpatine: You must understand than what is at stake here is the fate of the galaxy!
Palpatine: Think how hard it has been to keep your srecrets inside....
Palpatine: You never had to pretend with me like you had with your Jedi comrades. I accept you the way you are! Share with me your truth! Let yourself out!

Palpatine: Ask what you want...and its yours.
Anakin: Is this a joke?
Palpatine: I have never been more serious.
Palpatine: Pick something, anything.
Anakin: How about those new custom speeders?
Palpatine: Done, would you prefer a battle cruiser?
Anakin: how about the senatorial aparetments...the whole building
Palpatine: Done
Anakin: You cant just!
Palpatine: Yes I can.
Anakin: Corillia. I want Corillia.
Palpatine: Planet or whole system?
Palpatine: I am trying to impress on you a funamental truth of yourself. Do you understand now? I will give you anything you want.
Anakin: What if I want the war to end?
Palpatine: Would tommorow be to soon?
Anakin: How?
Palpatine: We are discussing what. How will come later.
Anakin: What do I have to do?
Palpatine: In exchange...do what you want. Do what the JEdi fear most. do what you think is right. COMMIT to that life. I know you buuuuurn for the wider truth. Let yourself gain that truth. You have dreamed of leaving the order and having a life based on love!
Anakin: I cant just leave!
Palpatine: But you can.

LandoSpeeder2

Its back to Obi-Wan fighting Grievous and the body guards.
100's of droids are surrounding Obi-Wan.
Grievous's body guards are leaping at him.
*obi-wan slices a beam and 3 body guards crash to their doom*
Obi-Wan: Well, that went well. 10,000 droids to go!
There is such a insane amount of droids they are wiping out themselves trying to shoot Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan has made his way through droid's to reach Grievous.
Obi-Wan: I am still willing to take you alive.
Utapaun's are coming to the rescue. They are attacking the droids.
Now CLONES are attacking too. Utapuan's, Clones, vs. Battle Droids.

*Grievous ignites his sabers*
Grievous: TO THE DEATH!
Obi-Wan: Well if you insist...
Back to Anakin.

Palpatine: I was the only man skilled enough for this. Without my deception how would I have cured the Republic?
Palpatine: If only you could know how I longed to tell you Anakin. Since they day we met I have watched over you...biding my time. Waiting for the time your ready.
Palpatine: YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE!
Palpatine: Chosen by ME! Chosen to be the heir of my power!
Palpatine: Do you think the Sith did not know of the prophecy? Do you think we would sleep while it came to pass? This Jedi submission to fate is not the way of the Sith. This is not my way. This is not your way. It may never be!
Palpatine: I am offering you the power to save Padme! Is that evil?
Palpatine: I am asking you to do the right thing. Turn your back on treason.
Its back to Obi-Wan battling Grievous again.
Still dueling..... TONS of blaster fire around the duel from Clones, Utapuans, & Droids.
Obi-Wan chopped one of Grievou's thumb's off and a saber in half!
an explosion seperated him and Grievous got in his wheel thing.
Obi-Wan got on Boga and chasing after Grievous

Obi-Wan: Boga! Here girl! We have a General to catch.
Boga jumped on the ship thing!
Obi-Wan: I believe you need another ship general.
Somehow it seems General is on foot and Obi-Wan is on Boga. Obi-Wan is attacking droid's while on mount still.
Wait Grievous is still in the vehicle. Got out from under Boga. I assumed he got out of the ship.
Now Boga is never to the wheeler. And Obi-Wan is slicing at it with his Saber
Boga is getting shot
They are still racing even with Booga nearly dead. She is still racing with all her might.

Obi-Wan JUMPED off her and took one of the pikes and wacked Grievous in the head with it while on the wheeler. The wheeler is rolling off course and crashed. Both Grievous and Obi-Wan flew out.
Grievous pulled out a blaster and shot at Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan grabbed the pike with the force and is holding it. Obi-Wan is now charging as Grievous is blasting.
Obi-Wan charged at Grievous and RIPPED the steel on his stomach off revealing his flesh. Grievous threw Obi-Wan and charged at him but Obi-Wan force grabbed the blaster and shot grievous in the flesh stomach. Killing him.
Booga still LIVES! But barely...
*Obi-Wan looks at the blaster in his hand*
Obi-Wan: So...uncivilized! *drops it*
Obi-Wan STILL has to get away from the 10,000 battle droids. Thats when Booga is finished I suspect.
Its switching to MACE!!
He is talking to Yoda via hologram. He is saying he has 3(4 with himself) of his best masters ready in case Sidious attacks.
ANakin has RAN IN!

Anakin: MASTER! MASTER WINDU!!!
Mace: What's wrong? Are you hurt?
Anakin: Obi-Wan! I NEED TO TALK TO OBI-WAN!
Anakin: Listen to me. *Shakes* *mace holds Anakin*
Don't...don't hurt him.
Mace; Have you been attacked?
Anakin: *collasps on the floor*
Mace: Anakin...look at me....are you hurt? Do you...
Anakin: Master....Windu........I have....bad news.
Mace: Bad news?
Anakin: Palpatine is Sidous! The Chancellor is the Sith Lord!
Mace: Wait in the council chamber till we get back.
Anakin: But...
Mace: THATS AN ORDER!
ANakin: What are you going to do?
Mace: Only as much as I have to.
Palpatine is waiting in his office.
*4 Jedi head toward the office*
Kit Fisto: I'd feel better if Yoda was here. Or even Kenobi.
Anakin is pacing in the chamber.
Anakin: WHAT HAVE I DONE!?!??!!
He is wandering around the chamber alone still.
Anakin is leaving the chamber now!

The 4 Jedi Masters are outside the room now.
Palpatine's saber is hidden in one of his statues!
He took it out and tested the saber. Palps then put in his sleeve.

THE DOORS OPEN! THE JEDI ARE IN!!!
*Palps turns on a recording, audio only*
Palpatine: Why Master Windu. What a pleasent suprise....
Mace: Hardly a suprise chancellor and will not be pleasent for either of us.
Palpatine: Master Fisto hello.
Palpatine: Master Kolar greetings, I trust you are will.
Palpatine: Master Timm! I see your horn has regron. I am very glad.
Mace: We know who you are. We are here to take you into custody.
Palpatine: When I last checked I am supreme chancellor who you are sworn to protect. I hope I missunderstand you. It smacks of treason.
Mace: Your under arrest
Palpatine: Really master windu you cant be serious. Under what charge?
Mace: Your a sith lord
Palpatine: Am I? Even if true. That is not a crime. My philosophical outlook is a personal matter. In fact the last time I read the consitution we have strict laws against persection. So I ask you again what is my crime?
Mace: We are not here to argue with you
Palpatine: Your here to imprison me without trial. This is the plan at last. The jedi are taking over the Republic.
Mace: Come with us, now.
*sabers ignite*
The trailer stuff happens here.
yells for the audio recording Palps is making:
Palpatine: HELP! SECURITY! HELP ME! MURDER TREASON!!
*recording ends*

They are fighting like mad!
Palpatine: THIS IS MURDER YOU JEDI TRAITORS!
*timm's head hits floor*
Fisto: SAESE!(sp?)
*fisto is lobbed*
Kolar: *saber goes through his head* *falls over*
Palpatine: HELP HELP HELP!

Mace: For all of your power, you are no Jedi. All you are my lord, is under arrest.

Palps: Do you see Anakin, Do you? Didn't I warn you of the Jedi's treason?

Mace: Save your twisted words, my lord. There are no politicians here. The Sith will never regain control of the Republic. It's over. You've lost. You lost for the same reason the Sith always lose: deafeated by your own fear.

Palps: FOOL do you think the fear you feel is MINE!
"I-I can't" says Anakin
"Of course you can" says Sidious
"I came to save your life. not to betray my friends" says Anakin
"What friends?" says Sidious
Anakin could find no answer

"And do you think that task is finished my boy? Do you think killing one traitor will end treason? Do you think the Jedi will ever stop till I am dead?
"It's them or me Anakin. Or perhaps I should put it more plainly. It's them or Padme`.

The duel went exactly as spoilers say. Mace and Sidious fight. It goes outdoors and back again. Anakin comes in and chops off his hand and Sidious throws him out via force lightning. RIGHT after Anakin pledges himself to the sith and Palpatine sends him to kill the Jedi and says the "SHOW NO MERCY" speech from the trailer. He said after that go to Mustafar and wipe out the sepratists. And its the duel that makes Sidious's face ugly.

LandoSpeeder2

The novel implies he was NOT faking defeat also.

Gate Master Jurokk: "Anakin, what happened? Where are the Masters?"

Vader: "where is Shaak Ti?"

GMJ: "In the meditation chambers- we fealt something happen in the Force, something awful. She is searching the force in deep meditation, trying to get some feel for what is going on..."

"Something has happened, hasn't it?"

GMJ: "Anakin, what's going on? Something's happened. Something horrible. How bad is it?"

The last thing Jurokk felt was the emitter of a lightsaber against the soft flesh beneath his jaw; the last thing he heard. as blue plasma chewed upward through his head and burst from the top of his skull and burned away his life, was Anakin Skywalker's melencholy reply.

Vader: "You have no idea"
ORDER 66:

Cody withdrew the comlink from his armor and triggered it. A holoscan appeared in the palm of his gauntlet: a hooded man.

"It is time" the holoscan said "Execute Order Sixty Six"

Cody responded as he had been trained since before he'd even awaken in his creche-school. "It will be done, my lord"

Cody was a Clone. He would execute the order faithfully, without hesitation or regret. But he was also human enough to mutter glimly "Would it have been too much to ask for the order to have come before I gave him back the bloody lightsaber...?
-----------------
(he had recovered it for ObiWan earlier in the chapter)
More Order 66:

The Clone Wars were the perfect Jedi trap.

By fighting at all, the Jedi Lost.
With the Jedi Order overextended, spread thin across the galaxy, each Jedi alone, surrounded only by whatever clone troops he, she, or it commands. Wat itself pours darkness into the force, deepening the cloud that limites Jedi perception. And the clones have no malice, no hatred, not the slightest ill intent that might give warning. They are only following orders.

In this case, order sixty six.

Hold-out blasters appear in clones hands ARC-170s drop back on the tails of Jedi starfighters. AT-STs swivel their guns. Turrets on hovertanks swung