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.
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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.
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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.
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[the following is a transcript of an audio recording presented before the Galactic Senate on the afternoon of the first Empire Day; identities of all speakers verified and confirmed by voiceprint analysis]
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.
[sounds that have been identified by frequency resonances to be the ignition of several lightsabers]
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?
[sounds of scuffle]
KIT FISTO: Saesee—
AGEN KOLAR: [garbled; possibly “lt doesn't hurt"(?)]
[sounds of scuffle]
PALPATINE: Help! Help! Security—someone! Help me! Murder! Treason!
[recording ends]
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 . . ."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 . . ."
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