Part 7 (2/2)

Dooku decided that the comedy had ended.

Now it was time to kill.

Ken.o.bi's Master had been Qui-Gon Jinn, Dooku's own Padawan; Dooku had fenced Qui-Gon thousands of times, and he knew every weakness of the Ataro form, with its ridiculous acrobatics. He drove a series of flas.h.i.+ng thrusts toward Ken.o.bi's legs to draw the Jedi Master into a flipping overhead leap so that Dooku could burn through his spine from kidneys to shoulder blades-and this image, this plan, was so clear in Dooku's mind that he almost failed to notice that Ken.o.bi met every one of his thrusts without so much as moving his feet, staying perfectly centered, perfectly balanced, blade never moving a millimeter more than was necessary, deflecting without effort, riposting with flickering strikes and stabs swifter than the tongue of a Garollian ghost viper, and when Dooku felt Skywalker regain his feet and stride once more toward his back, he finally registered the source of that blinding defensive velocity Ken.o.bi had used a moment ago, and only then, belatedly, did he understand that Ken.o.bi's Ataro and s.h.i.+-Cho had been ploys, as well.

Ken.o.bi had become a master of Soresu.

Dooku found himself having a sudden, unexpected, overpowering, and entirely distressing bad feeling about this . . .

His farce had suddenly, inexplicably, spun from humorous to deadly serious and was tumbling rapidly toward terrifying. Realization burst through Dooku's consciousness like the blossoming fireb.a.l.l.s of dying s.h.i.+ps outside: this pair of Jedi fools had somehow managed to become entirely dangerous.

These clowns might-just possibly-actually be able to beat him.

No sense taking chances; even his Master would agree with that. Lord Sidious could come up with a new plan more easily than a new apprentice.

He gathered the Force once more in a single indrawn breath that summoned power from throughout the universe; the slightest whipcrack of that power, negligent as a flick of his wrist, sent Ken.o.bi flying backward to crash hard against the wall, but Dooku didn't have time to enjoy it.

Skywalker was all over him.

The s.h.i.+ning blue lightsaber whirled and spat and every overhand chop crashed against Dooku's defense with the unstoppable power of a meteor strike; the Sith Lord spent lavishly of his reserve of the Force merely to meet these attacks without being cut in half, and Skywalker-Skywalker was getting stronger.

Each parry cost Dooku more power than he'd used to throw Ken.o.bi across the room; each block aged him a decade.

He decided he'd best revise his strategy once again.

He no longer even tried to strike back. Force exhaustion began to close down his perceptions, drawing his consciousness back down to his physical form, trapping him within his own skull until he could barely even feel the contours of the room around him; he dimly sensed stairs at his back, stairs that led up to the entrance balcony. He retreated up them, using the higher ground for leverage, but Skywalker just kept on coming, tirelessly ferocious.

That blue blade was everywhere, flas.h.i.+ng and whirling faster and faster until Dooku saw the room through an electric haze and now Ken.o.bi was back in the picture: with a shout of the Force, he shot like a torpedo up the stairs behind Skywalker, and Dooku decided that under these rather extreme circ.u.mstances, it was at least arguably permissible for a gentleman to cheat.

”Guards!” he said to the pair of super battle droids that still stood at attention to either side of the entrance. ”Open fire!”

Instantly the two droids sprang forward and lifted their hands. Energy hammered out from the heavy blasters built into their arms; Skywalker whirled and his blade batted every blast back at the droids, whose mirror-polished carapace armor deflected the bolts again. Galvened particle beams screeched through the room in blinding ricochets.

Ken.o.bi reached the top of the stairs and a single slash of his lightsaber dismantled both droids. Before their pieces could even hit the floor Dooku was in motion, landing a spinning side-stamp that folded Skywalker in half; he used his last burst of dark power to continue his spin into a blindingly fast wheel-kick that brought his heel against the point of Ken.o.bi's chin with a crack like the report of a huge-bore slugthrower, knocking the Jedi Master back down the stairs. Sounded like he'd broken his neck.

Wouldn't that be lovely?

There was no sense in taking chances, however.

While Ken.o.bi's bonelessly limp body was still tumbling toward the floor far below, Dooku sent a surge of energy through the Force. Ken.o.bi's fall suddenly accelerated like a missile burning the last of its drives before impact. The Jedi Master struck the floor at a steep angle, skidded along it, and slammed into the wall so hard the hydrofoamed permacrete buckled and collapsed onto him.

This Dooku found exceedingly gratifying.

Now, as for Skywalker-Which was as far as Dooku got, because by the time his attention returned to the younger Jedi, his vision was rather completely obstructed by the sole of a boot approaching his face with something resembling terminal velocity.

The impact was a blast of white fire, and there was a second impact against his back that was the balcony rail, and then the room turned upside down and he fell toward the ceiling, but not really, of course: it only felt that way because he had flipped over the rail and he was falling headfirst toward the floor, and neither his arms nor his legs were paying any attention to what he was trying to make them do. The Force seemed to be busy elsewhere, and really, the whole process was entirely mortifying.

He was barely able to summon a last surge of dark power before what would have been a disabling impact. The Force cradled him, cus.h.i.+oning his fall and setting him on his feet.

He dusted himself off and fixed a supercilious gaze on Skywalker, who now stood upon the balcony looking down at him-and Dooku couldn't hold the stare; he found this reversal of their original positions oddly unsettling.

There was something troublingly appropriate about it. Seeing Skywalker standing where Dooku himself had stood only moments ago ... it was as though he was trying to remember a dream he'd never actually had . . .

He pushed this aside, drawing once more upon the certain knowledge of his personal invincibility to open a channel to the Force. Power flowed into him, and the weight of his years dropped away.

He lifted his blade, and beckoned.

Skywalker leapt from the balcony. Even as the boy hurtled downward, Dooku felt a new twist in the currents of the Force between them, and he finally understood.

He understood how Skywalker was getting stronger. Why he no longer spoke. How he had become a machine of battle. He understood why Sidious had been so interested in him for so long.

Skywalker was a natural.

There was a thermonuclear furnace where his heart should be, and it was burning through the firewalls of his Jedi training. He held the Force in the clench of a white-hot fist. He was half Sith already, and he didn't even know it.

This boy had the gift of fury.

And even now, he was holding himself back; even now, as he landed at Dooku's flank and rained blows upon the Sith Lord's defenses, even as he drove Dooku backward step after step, Dooku could feel how Skywalker kept his fury banked behind walls of will: walls that were hardened by some uncontrollable dread.

Dread, Dooku surmised, of himself. Of what might happen if he should ever allow that furnace he used for a heart to go supercritical.

Dooku slipped aside from an overhand chop and sprang backward. ”I sense great fear in you. You are consumed by it. Hero With No Fear, indeed. You're a fraud, Skywalker. You are nothing but a posturing child.”

He pointed his lightsaber at the young Jedi like an accusing finger. ”Aren't you a little old to be afraid of the dark?”

Skywalker leapt for him again, and this time Dooku met the boy's charge easily. They stood nearly toe-to-toe, blades flas.h.i.+ng faster than the eye could see, but Skywalker had lost his edge: a simple taunt was all that had been required to s.h.i.+ft the focus of his attention from winning the fight to controlling his own emotions. The angrier he got, the more afraid he became, and the fear fed his anger in turn; like the proverbial Corellian multipede, now that he had started thinking about what he was doing, he could no longer walk.

Dooku allowed himself to relax; he felt that spirit of playfulness coming over him again as he and Skywalker spun 'round each other in their lethal dance. Whatever fun was to be had, he should enjoy while he could.

Then Sidious, for some reason, decided to intervene.

”Don't fear what you're feeling, Anakin, use it!” he barked in Palpatine's voice. ”Call upon your fury. Focus it, and he cannot stand against you. Rage is your weapon. Strike now! Strike! Kill him!”

Dooku thought blankly, Kill me?

He and Skywalker paused for one single, final instant, blades locked together, staring at each other past a sizzling cross of scarlet against blue, and in that instant Dooku found himself wondering in bewildered astonishment if Sidious had suddenly lost his mind. Didn't he understand the advice he'd just given? Whose side was he on, anyway?

And through the cross of their blades he saw in Skywalker's eyes the promise of h.e.l.l, and he felt a sickening presentiment that he already knew the answer to that question. Treachery is the way of the Sith.

=4=.

Jedi Trap This is the death of Count Dooku: A starburst of clarity blossoms within Anakin Skywalker's mind, when he says to himself Oh. I get it, now and discovers that the fear within his heart can be a weapon, too.

It is that simple, and that complex.

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