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  “I can try.” Llanmore was also perspiring faintly, but he turned sharply on his heel and left the control room. The last she saw of him was his ramrod-straight back as he marched steadfastly back to his command. She was afraid she’d just sent the young man off to his death.

  “Get busy!” she ordered the technicians, many of whom had stopped to listen to her conversation with Llanmore. Why, she thought, had no one ever made any emergency destruction plans for a contingency like this? The Intergalactic Communications Center was vital to the Republic, and its facilities could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands.

  From outside on the mesa came the crashing roar of weaponry. Llanmore was engaging the invaders. Reija felt a rising sense of despair. Her comfortable world was at an end.

  Chapter 2

  Count Dooku wishes a status report, Tonith.“

  The Muun commander of the invasion force, Admiral Pors Tonith, quietly sipped his dianogan tea and smiled, ostensibly ignoring the disrespect clear in the way Commander Asajj Ventress addressed him. “He has the complete battle plan, Ventress,” he replied easily, showing her the exact same level of disrespect. He set his cup on a nearby sideboard. “I gave it to him before I left. He knows that once I have developed a plan I carry it out. That is why he chose me to lead this campaign.” He smiled amiably, purple-stained lips parting to reveal matching purple teeth and black gums—an effect of the tea. The temporary stain was an indignity Tonith was willing to suffer in order to savor the exquisite aroma, flavor, and mildly narcotic effect of the tea brewed from a chemical substance found in the spleens of the dianoga. Besides, he was commander of a vast invasion fleet: no sentient being would dare laugh at him, and droids had no sense of the ridiculous.

  Ventress’s expression didn’t change, but her dark eyes flashed through the HoloNet transceiver like two burn-ing coals. “A plan is not a status report,” she replied, her voice even. She was not used to being talked down to, especially not by this bloodless financier suddenly turned military commander.

  Tonith sighed dramatically. He considered the assassin an interloper in strategic affairs that were beyond her primitive grasp of the real art of military command and planning. But she was Dooku’s protegee, and he had to tread carefully. “Really, I cannot command this expedition if I am to be interfered with by—by…” He shrugged and reached for his teacup.

  “The report?” she insisted.

  “I am extremely busy just now.”

  “Make your report. To me. Now.” Her voice cut through the vast distances like the lightsabers she was reputed to wield so expertly.

  Tonith sat up straight and folded his hands in his lap. Actually, he found this Ventress woman rather attractive. He felt they had something in common: she, a ruthless warrior; he, a ruthless planner and schemer. When Tonith thought of women, which was not often, he preferred them with a head of hair, but Ventress’s baldness was not totally unattractive. She radiated power and confidence, even via the transceiver. He respected that. “We would make a good team,” he said. “I could use your help.”

  She sneered. “Little one, if I were to come out there it wouldn’t be to help you, it would be to replace you as commander. But the Count has more important business for me just now. Stop wasting my time and make that report.”

  Tonith shrugged languidly and bowed to the in-evitable. “As we speak, a fleet of one hundred twenty-six ships,” he said, “seventy-five of them capital ships, is investing Sluis Van to block any reinforcements from that sector. I am at this very moment landing a force of fifty thousand battle droids on Praesitlyn in a feint to divert the garrison from the Intergalactic Communications Center. When that operation is fully under way, I will land the main force, composed of, give or take, a million battle droids, crush the defenders in a containment maneuver, and capture the center intact. I have two hundred ships in my invasion fleet. This operation cannot possibly fail. I guarantee you that within twenty-four standard hours of the commencement of Operation Case White, Praesitlyn will be ours. We will sit firmly astride the communications link that connects the worlds of the Republic. Our forces will be poised at this strategic crossroads to strike without warning at any of the Republic’s allies. Most important, our control of Praesitlyn will be a vibroblade thrust directly at Coruscant itself.” He stabbed his arm forward as he spoke. “This is the move that will win the war for us,” he concluded, a confident smirk on his purple-stained lips. “They’ll never know what hit them, those technicians down there and their security forces. They’ll soon all be dead—or be assets belonging to us.” He sat back and sipped at his tea.

  Ventress did not seem impressed. “The electronic countermeasures suite?”

  “Fully operational. The center tried to dispatch a pan-galactic distress signal a brief while ago, but it was successfully blocked.” He smiled, showing his purple teeth and black gums.

  “The stealth suite? Your fleet is undetected? You have achieved tactical surprise?”

  “Yes. Not just tactical surprise, but strategic surprise, not to put too fine a point on it.”

  “Very well. Count Dooku will require regular updates as your campaign progresses. You will make them to me, so get used to it now.”

  “Yes,” Tonith answered, his voice tinged with false resignation, making clear that he thought he was succumbing to a nuisance he could do without. He had never met Ventress in person, but he had heard she was a deadly opponent in individual combat. That didn’t worry him in the least. Only stupid people lost fights. He was not stupid. Where a warrior like Ventress could cut down an opponent with lightning speed, Tonith cut down his enemies by outsmarting them. That was why Count Dooku had given him this command. He wouldn’t waste his time in individual combat or expose himself to possible harm—that was what droids were for. He would command and he would win.

  “By the way, I’m impressed by your interesting dental work,” Ventress said.

  Caught completely off guard, Tonith didn’t immediately know how to reply. Was she fooling with him or was she serious? He might have to reevaluate his estimation of her level of intelligence. “I thank you,” he said at last, bowing at the hologram. “And I compliment you on your unusual choice of hairstyle.”

  Ventress nodded, and her image vanished.

  * * *

  Pors Tonith was one of the most successful products of one of the InterGalactic Banking Clan’s most ruthless families. For him, life was constant struggle and competition. He approached business as if it were war. For generations it had been his family’s practice to consummate hostile takeovers of companies, whole worlds if need be, by the use of force. Tonith had reduced these unpleasant maneuvers to an art—a military art.

  Tonith did not present a very warlike figure. His height—he was over two meters tall—and his painfully thin physique and sallow complexion gave him a corpselike appearance; his long, equine face and blazing black eyes set in a skull-like head heightened this cadaverous aspect so that meeting him suddenly in a darkened companionway aboard the Corpulentus, his flagship, often gave his crew quite a start.

  Count Dooku had picked Tonith to lead the force against Praesitlyn because of his proven ability as a planner. Commanding an army of droids was more like playing a game than engaging in actual combat. Living soldiers bled and died, had to be fed, experienced morale problems, knew fear and all the other emotions common to beings who could think. And though some might feel that using a droid army to inflict pain and death on a force composed of sentient beings was another matter, Tonith not only looked upon a battlefield dry-eyed, but found sustenance, meaning, and sublime purpose in the destruction of his enemies.

  Pors Tonith not only looked like a corpse, but deep down inside him, where other beings had consciences, he was dead.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  Nejaa Halcyon was doing stretching exercises when Anakin Skywalker walked into the training area.

  “I hope you’re ready for a workout,” Halcyon said in gre
eting.

  “After the workout I’ve been giving my brain, I’m more than ready for a physical workout, Master Halcyon,” Anakin replied. “I feel the need to take it out on somebody.”

  Halcyon laughed and gave a last stretch before drawing his lightsaber from his belt. “Before you try to take anything out on anybody, you’d better loosen up, or you’re going to be in too much pain to defend yourself.” He grinned. “Or maybe that’s what you want, to be too uncomfortable tomorrow to go back to the library.”

  “I did my stretching on the way here,” Anakin said as he put his cloak aside and drew his lightsaber.

  Halcyon sparred better than he had the first day, but so did Anakin. In the end, the Jedi Master bowed to the Padawan.

  “You do very well. I need a sparring partner even more than I’d realized.” He shook his head sadly.

  “Who would have believed that a mere Padawan could best me with a lightsaber?” Then he smiled. “Shall we do it again tomorrow?”

  “I look forward to it even more than I looked forward to today,” Anakin answered with a broad grin.

  They sparred again the next day, and the next, and the day after that. Each day, each improved, and each surprised the other with new moves and tricks.

  After the first few days they didn’t immediately part company when their sparring was over, but sat and talked. The next day they talked for a longer time. And the day after that, they dined together.

  “Obi-Wan speaks highly of you, you know,” Halcyon commented as they were relaxing over dessert.

  “You know Obi-Wan?” Anakin asked, surprised.

  “We’re old friends,” Halcyon said, nodding. “He’s a great one, Obi-Wan is. And very powerful in the Force. I believe he’ll become a member of the Jedi Council one day. You’re fortunate to have him as your Master.”

  Anakin’s chest swelled with pride, then deflated just as quickly. “Maybe he’s too great.”

  Halcyon cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

  “He thinks my progress sometimes seems to be slow. Perhaps he’s too great, too busy to properly train me.”

  Halcyon barked out a laugh that made nearby diners turn to look—but when they saw that he was a Jedi, their expressions of disapproval vanished and they returned to their own meals and conversations.

  “Maybe you’re too impatient. But mostly, your progress isn’t as fast as it might be because you’re too busy fighting in a war. What you need is for this war to end. Then you’ll be surprised at how rapidly your progress is recognized.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “As sure as I know that nobody has ever impressed Obi-Wan with their potential as much as you have.”

  Anakin shook his head. “Then why am I still a Padawan? We’re fighting a major war, and I could do more to help win it! I’m good enough to go on small missions, I’m good enough to fight under someone else’s command, but they think I’m not good enough to handle my own command!”

  “Oh, you’re good enough,” Halcyon said. “I’ve watched you and listened to you these past few days, and I definitely think you’re good enough.”

  Anakin reached out with his prosthetic hand and clamped onto Halcyon’s forearm. “Would you speak to the Council for me, Master Halcyon?” he asked earnestly.

  Halcyon’s shoulders slumped. “Anakin, right now, the only way the Council would listen to me is to decide against whatever I recommend.” He shook his head again. “No, having me speak to them for you would be counterproductive.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sure the Council is aware of your abilities. You’ll begin your Trials when you are ready, Anakin.”

  “We’ll see,” Anakin Skywalker replied, unconvinced.

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  Luck, good or bad, is the great unknown factor in war. Often the outcome of battles, the fate of entire worlds, is determined by luck.

  It was luck of one sort or the other that placed Lieutenant Erk H’Arman of the Praesitlyn defense force and his Torpil T-19 starfighter on patrol along the southern coast of the continent on which the Inter-galactic Communications Center was located, about 150 kilometers from the center itself, when the inva-sion began. He and his wingmate were cruising at a leisurely 650 kilometers per hour at twenty thousand meters. For the Torpil T-19, 650 kph was almost standing still.

  “Looks like a big sandstorm down there,” Erk’s wingmate, Ensign Pleth Strom, commented. Neither pilot bothered to scan the terrain beneath the raging storm with his onboard surveillance suite. A storm is a storm is a storm—nothing they hadn’t seen many times before. “Hate to have to do a forced landing in that stuff.”

  Starfighter pilots considered atmospheric flying the worst possible waste of their skills, and both men claimed at every possible opportunity that their tour with the Praesitlyn defense force was a form of punishment for some unspecified transgression. It wasn’t, of course, but rather the luck of the assignment system: their numbers had come up, that was all, as they knew perfectly well. But if hotshots like Erk and Pleth weren’t showing what they could do by taking on the entire Separatist fleet, they complained about being misused by their commanders.

  Flying a high-performance fighter in an atmospheric environment was a lot different from piloting the same machine in the vacuum of space and, in truth, required a range of skills no less impressive. In an atmosphere, a pilot was subjected to g forces, air drag on his or her machine, and fatal malfunctions caused by high-flying creatures that got sucked into a fighter’s power system and gummed it up, not to mention what would happen if a flock of the things penetrated a cockpit while the craft was traveling at a thousand kph.

  The worst aspect of combat in an atmospheric environment was that the great speed and maneuverability of their craft often could not be used, because most of their combat missions would be in a close air-support role for ground forces. Even the gaudy paint jobs that aces tended to affect on their craft had to be abandoned for ground-support missions. While all kinds of stealth measures were available for use in space, in an atmosphere the fighters had to be invisible to the naked eye; they were coated with a self-camouflaging substance so that to ground observers or fliers at higher altitudes they blended in with the sky above or the ground below.

  Erk and Pleth were more than just good pilots who could fly in all conditions. Others might also be good pilots, able to master the science of flight, make the same number of landings as takeoffs, exercise good reflexes, and remain in touch with their ships while in flight, attuned to every nuance of their onboard systems. But pilots like Erk and Pleth were great pilots who “wore” their ships like comfortable old boots, or a second skin, using their machines as an extension of their own bodies and wills. In short, they had mastered the art of flight.

  “I hate to land anywhere on this blasted rock,” Erk said with a laugh. He consulted his planetary navigational chart. “Nothing here even has a name! That’s ‘Area Sixty-two, South Continent.’ You’d think someone would have taken the trouble to give the places names. Now down there could be ‘Desert Delite,’ and back at base it could be—”

  “Jenth Grek Five One, cut the chatter. This is a combat patrol. And please, get off the guard channel! Go to eight-point-six-four.” A thousand kilometers away, high over the ocean—another geographic feature that had no name—“Waterboy,” the petite ensign on board JG51’s airborne control ship, smiled. She knew both Erk and Pleth well and knew they were talking over the open channel just so she would butt in. Channel 8.64 was the discreet encrypted frequency, a scrambled freq that hopefully no potential enemy could intercept. Regulations strictly forbade pilots to go to an open channel when on a combat mission, except in an emergency, but there never were any emergencies, because nothing ever happened on Praesitlyn. And because duty there was so boring, commanders turned a deaf ear to the shenanigans of hotshots like Erk and his wingmate when they violated military protocol.

  “Copy, switching to eight-point-six-four,” Erk said lacon
ically, “and begging you to have a beer with us tonight, Waterboy.”

  “She said, cut the chatter, JG Five One,” a strong male voice interrupted.

  “Copy that, sir,” Erk replied, trying—and failing— to inject the appropriate inflection of contrition into his voice.

  “… approaching!” the female voice shouted in the next instant.

  “Waterboy, repeat that transmission,” Erk requested, frowning. In switching channels he had missed the first part of her message, but he thought he’d heard a note of panic in the controller’s voice.

  “Marks, lots of them!” Pleth shouted at the same instant Erk’s warning system buzzed.

  Now Erk saw them, a swarm of tri-droids emerging at great speed from that cloud of “dust” on the surface. Instantly Erk became a functioning component of his fighter. “Arming,” he reported casually. “Break to starboard,” he ordered Pleth. He put his machine into a half roll and commenced a steep dive to port. The T-19 could reach a top velocity of twenty thousand kph, but he knew he would not need that much speed to perform the maneuver that instantly came to mind.

  Erk’s fighter flashed through the approaching formation of enemy ships. Several fired at him as he roared groundward. At two thousand meters, with the enemy ships now far above him and no targets in his sights,

  Erk threw his ship into a steep climb. His anti-g couch successfully protected him from losing consciousness. As soon as his target acquisition system ranged in on the enemy fighters, his blaster cannons began pumping lethal bolts into their underbellies as he approached from astern. He had less than a second to acquire and fire at a target, and still enemy ships exploded all around him as he flew through their formation and soared far above it. He rolled his ship to starboard and plummeted through the fighters again, blossoming several into bright balls of flame. He had lost sight of Pleth.

  Confused by Erk’s lightning attack, the tri-droids quickly formed a protective circle at fifteen thousand meters. Erk laughed out loud. He came up under them again, firing at very close range as the first target vanished beneath the nose of his fighter. He continued his climb, rolled inverted, and came down behind another target, which also disappeared in a ball of flame.