Part 7 (1/2)

”You mean destroy it.””

”The Chancellor is a civilian. You and General Ken.o.bi, on the other hand, are legitimate military targets. It is up to you whether you will accompany me as captives-” A twitch of the Force brought his lightsaber to his hand with invisible speed, its brilliant scarlet blade angled downward at his side. ”-or as corpses.''

”Now, there's a coincidence,” Ken.o.bi replied dryly as he swung around Dooku to place the Count precisely between Skywalker and himself. ”You face the identical choice.”

Dooku regarded each of them in turn with impregnable calm. He lifted his blade in the Makas.h.i.+ salute and swept it again to a low guard. ”Just because there are two of you, do not presume you have the advantage.”

”Oh, we know,” Skywalker said. ”Because there are two of you.”

Dooku barely managed to restrain a jolt of surprise.

”Or maybe I should say, were two of you,” the young Jedi went on. ”We're on to your partner Sidious; we tracked him all over the galaxy. He's probably in Jedi custody right now.”

”Is he?” Dooku relaxed. He was terribly, terribly tempted to wink at Palpatine, but of course that would never do. ”How fortunate for you.”

Quite simple, in the end, he thought. Isolate Skywalker, slaughter Ken.o.bi. Beyond that, it would be merely a matter of spinning Skywalker up into enough of a frenzy to break through his Jedi restraint and reveal the infinite vista of Sith power.

Lord Sidious would take it from there.

”Surrender.” Ken.o.bi's voice deepened into finality. ”You will be given no further chance.”

Dooku lifted an eyebrow. ”Unless one of you happens to be carrying Yoda in his pocket, I hardly think I shall need one.”

The Force crackled between them, and the s.h.i.+p pitched and bucked under a new turbolaser barrage, and Dooku decided that the time had come. He flicked a false glance over his shoulder-a hint of distraction to draw the attack-And all three of them moved at once.

The s.h.i.+p shuddered and the red smoke surged from Anakin's spine into his arms and legs and head and when Dooku gave the slightest glance of concern over his shoulder, distracted for half an instant, Anakin just couldn't wait anymore.

He sprang, lightsaber angled for the kill.

Obi-Wan leapt from Dooku's far side in perfect coordination-and they met in midair, for the Sith Lord was no longer between them.

Anakin looked up just in time to glimpse the bottom of Dooku's rancor-leather boot as it came down on his face and smacked him tumbling toward the floor; he reached into the Force to effortlessly right himself and touched down in perfect balance to spring again toward the lightning flares, scarlet against sky blue, that sprayed from clas.h.i.+ng lightsabers as Dooku pressed Obi-Wan away with a succession of weaving, flouris.h.i.+ng thrusts that drove the Jedi's blade out of line while they reached for his heart.

Anakin launched himself at Dooku's back-and the Count half turned, gesturing casually while holding Obi-Wan at bay with an elegant one-handed bind. Chairs leapt up from the situation table and whirled toward Anakin's head. He slashed the first one in half contemptuously, but the second caught him across the knees and the third battered his shoulder and knocked him down.

He snarled to himself and reached through the Force to pick up some chairs of his own-and the situation table itself slammed into him and drove him back to crush him against the wall. His lightsaber came loose from his slackening fingers and clattered across the tabletop to drop to the floor on the far side.

And Dooku barely even seemed to be paying attention to him.

Pinned, breathless, half stunned, Anakin thought, If this keeps up, I am going to get mad.

While effortlessly deflecting a rain of blue-streaking cuts from Ken.o.bi, Dooku felt the Force shove the situation table away from the wall and send it hurtling toward his back with astonis.h.i.+ng speed; he barely managed to lift himself enough that he could backroll over it instead of having it shatter his spine.

”My my,” he said, chuckling. ”The boy has some power after all.”

His backroll brought him to his feet directly in front of the lad, who was charging, headlong and unarmed, after the table he had tossed, and was already thoroughly red in the face.

”I'm twice the Jedi I was last time!”

Ah, Dooku thought. Such a fragile little ego. Sidious will have to help him with that. But until then-The grip of Skywalker's blade whistled through the air to meet his hand in perfect synchrony with a sweeping slash. ”My powers have doubled since we last met-”

”How lovely for you.” Dooku neatly sidestepped, cutting at the boy's leg, yet Skywalker's blade met the cut as he pa.s.sed and he managed to sweep his blade behind his head to slap aside the casual thrust Dooku aimed at the back of his neck-but his clumsy charge had put him in Ken.o.bi's path, so that the Jedi Master had to Force-roll over his partner's head.

Directly at Dooku's upraised blade.

Ken.o.bi drove a slash at the scarlet blade while he pivoted in the air, and again Dooku sidestepped so that now it was Ken.o.bi in Skywalker's way.

”Really,” Dooku said, ”this is pathetic.”

Oh, they were certainly energetic enough, leaping and whirling, raining blows almost at random, cutting chairs to pieces and Force-hurling them in every conceivable direction, while Dooku continued, in his gracefully methodical way, to out-maneuver them so thoroughly it was all he could to do keep from laughing out loud.

It was a simple matter of countering their tactics, which were depressingly straightforward; Skywalker was the swift one, whoos.h.i.+ng here and there like a spastic hawk-bat-attempting a Jedi variant of neek-in-the-middle so they could come at him from both sides-while Ken.o.bi came on in a measured s.h.i.+-Cho cadence, deliberate as a lumberdroid, moving step by step, cutting off the angles, clumsy but relentlessly dogged as he tried to chivvy Dooku into a corner.

Whereas all Dooku need do was to slip from one side to another-and occasionally flip over a head here and there-so that he could fight each of them in turn, rather than both of them at the same time. He supposed that in their own milieu, they might actually prove reasonably effective; it was clear that their style had been developed by fighting as a team against large numbers of opponents. They were not prepared to fight together against a single Force-user, certainly not one of Dooku's power; he, on the other hand, had always fought alone. It was laughably easy to keep the Jedi tripping and stumbling and getting in each other's way.

They didn't even comprehend how utterly he dominated the combat. Because they fought as they had been trained, by releasing all desire and allowing the Force to flow through them, they had no hope of countering Dooku's mastery of Sith techniques They had learned nothing since he had bested them on Geonosis.

They allowed the Force to direct them; Dooku directed the Force.

He drew their strikes to his parries, and drove his own ripostes with thrusts of dark power that subtly altered the Jedi's balance and disrupted their timing. He could have slaughtered both of them as casually as that creature Maul had destroyed the vigos of the Black Sun.

However, only one death was in his plan, and this dumb-show was becoming tiresome. Not to mention tiring. The dark power that served him went only so far, and he was, after all, not a young man.

He leaned into a thrust at Ken.o.bi's gut that the Jedi Master deflected with a rising parry, bringing them chest-to-chest, blades flaring, locked together a handbreadth from each other's throats. ”Your moves are too slow, Ken.o.bi. Too predictable. You'll have to do better.”

Ken.o.bi's response to this friendly word was to regard him with a twinkle of gentle amus.e.m.e.nt in his eye.

”Very well, then,” the Jedi said, and shot straight upward over Dooku's head so fast it seemed he'd vanished.

And in the s.p.a.ce where Ken.o.bi's chest had been was now only the blue lightning of Skywalker's blade driving straight for Dooku's heart.

Only a desperate whirl to one side made what would have been a smoking hole in his chest into a line of scorch through his armorweave cloak.

Dooku thought, What?

He threw himself spinning up and away from the two Jedi to land on the situation table, disengaging for a moment to recover his composure-that had been entirely too close-but by the time his boots touched down Ken.o.bi was there to meet him, blade weaving through a defensive velocity so bewilderingly fast that Dooku dared not even try a strike; he threw a feint toward Ken.o.bi's face, then dropped and spun in a reverse ankle-sweep-But not only did Ken.o.bi easily overleap this attack, Dooku nearly lost his own foot to a slash from Skywalker who had again come out of nowhere and now carved through the table so that it collapsed under Dooku's weight and dumped the Sith Lord un-:eremoniously to the floor. This was not in the plan. Skywalker slammed his following strike down so hard that the shock of deflecting it buckled Dooku's elbows. Dooku threw himself into a backroll that brought him to his feet-and Ken.o.bi's blade was there to meet his neck. Only a desperate whirling slash-block, coupled with a wheel kick that caught Ken.o.bi on the thigh, bought him enough time to leap away again, and when he touched down-Skywalker was already there.

The first overhand chop of Skywalker's blade slid off Dooku's instinctive guard. The second bent Dooku's wrist. The third flash of blue forced Dooku's scarlet blade so far to the inside that his own lightsaber scorched his shoulder, and Dooku was forced to give ground.

Dooku felt himself blanch. Where had this come from? Skywalker came on, mechanically inexorable, impossibly powerful, a destroyer droid with a lightsaber: each step a blow and each blow a step. Dooku backed away as fast as he dared; Skywalker stayed right on top of him. Dooku's breath went short and hard. He no longer tried to block Skywalker's strikes but only to guide them slanting away; he could not meet Skywalker strength-to-strength-not only did the boy wield tremendous reserves of Force energy, but his sheer physical power was astonis.h.i.+ng-And only then did Dooku understand that he'd been suckered.

Skywalker's s.h.i.+en ready-stance had been a ruse, as had his Ataro gymnastics; the boy was a Djem So stylist, and as fine a one as Dooku had ever seen. His own elegant Makas.h.i.+ simply did not generate the kinetic power to meet Djem So head-to-head. Especially not while also defending against a second attacker.

It was time to alter his own tactics.

He dropped low and spun into another reverse ankle-sweep-the weakness of Djem So was its lack of mobility-that slapped Skywalker's boot sharply enough to throw the young Jedi off balance, giving Dooku the opportunity to leap away-Only to find himself again facing the wheel of blue lightning that was Ken.o.bi's blade.