The Rise And Fall Of Darth Vader (9 page)

Even though Dooku had renounced the Jedi order ten years earlier, Anakin noticed that the man had a curved-handled lightsaber clipped to his belt. Anakin snarled, “You’re gonna pay for all the Jedi that you killed today, Dooku.”

Knowing Dooku’s reputation as a swordsman, Obi-Wan kept his eyes on Dooku as he stepped closer to Anakin and said in a low voice, “We’ll take him together. Go in slowly on the left.”

But Anakin was all out of patience. “I’m taking him now!” he shouted as he ignored Obi-Wan’s protests and charged Dooku. He was barely halfway across the hangar’s mosaic floor when Dooku, instead of reaching for his lightsaber, raised and aimed his right hand in Anakin’s direction.

Anakin screamed and involuntarily squeezed his eyes shut as brilliant blue bolts of lightning suddenly enveloped his body. Overwhelmed by the intense pain, he could not even begin to think how Dooku was controlling and directing the lightning at him. Anakin felt his feet leave the floor, and then he was hurled across the chamber and smashed into the wall. He screamed again as he landed on the hard floor, still feeling the surge of dark energy that Dooku had unleashed upon him. His body felt as if it had been seared, and as he writhed on the floor, he realized smoke was rising from his tunic.

He struggled to stay conscious. Trying to block out the pain, he was only peripherally aware that Obi-Wan had engaged Dooku in a lightsaber fight.
I should have listened to Obi-Wan!
He thought of Padmé.
I can’t die like this!

As Anakin lay on the floor and struggled to recover, he attempted to open his eyes and felt more agony. It was as if the electric shock was still licking at his eyeballs. For a moment, he wondered if he had been blinded by the lightning.

Have to focus!
He concentrated, tried to get his breathing under control. A moment later, his vision returned, allowing him to watch helplessly as Dooku’s red-bladed lightsaber slashed at Obi-Wan’s left arm and leg. Obi-Wan dropped his lightsaber as he collapsed to the floor.

Smoke was still rising from Anakin’s clothes. He watched with mounting horror as Dooku raised his lightsaber and prepared to bring it down on the helpless Obi-Wan.

Finding some unexpected reserve from within himself, Anakin roared as he ignited his lightsaber and leapt across the hangar to block Dooku’s death blow. While Obi-Wan’s limp form lay beneath the crossed lightsabers, Dooku eyed Anakin and said, “Brave of you, boy. But I would have thought you had learned your lesson.”

“I am a slow learner,” Anakin said as he maneuvered Dooku away from Obi-Wan’s form.

“Anakin!” Obi-Wan shouted. He’d used the Force to retrieve his fallen lightsaber, and managed to toss it to his Padawan. Anakin caught and activated it so that he was now using two lightsabers against his opponent. But only several swift contacts later, Dooku’s blade swept through Obi-Wan’s weapon, shattering the handle and nearly severing Anakin’s fingertips. Anakin still clutched his own weapon in his other hand, and the duel continued across the hangar.

Trying to suppress his anger, Anakin reached out to the Force as his eyes locked on Dooku’s. Their light-sabers blurred at the edges of his vision, and he believed the Force would guide him to defeat Dooku. But as he continued to meet Dooku’s condescending stare, he felt his rage begin to rise again.

And then Dooku made his move, sweeping his blade through Anakin’s sword arm, just above the elbow. Anakin shouted and felt his breath go out of him as Dooku used the Force to launch him backward through the air. Then everything went dark.

Anakin didn’t know how many minutes had passed as he began to return to consciousness. He felt something shift behind his head, and realized he was lying against Obi-Wan’s legs. Obi-Wan pushed himself up from the hangar floor, then helped Anakin rise. Anakin saw Yoda standing in the middle of the hangar. Parts of the ceiling had broken away, and there was rubble all over the floor.

What happened?

Then Anakin noticed Dooku’s solar sailer was gone.

“Anakin!” Padmé shouted. She had arrived at the hangar with a squad of clone troopers, and it hurt him to see her anguished expression as she came running toward him, seeing what was left of his right arm. She wrapped her arms carefully around him.

At least you’re safe,
he thought, wrapping his left arm around her to hold her close. He didn’t care that Obi-Wan or Yoda were watching. He was dazed and maimed, and he was afraid if he let go of Padmé, his knees would buckle and he’d pass out again. And so he just stood there, holding her.

In the end, not even Master Yoda had been able to prevent Dooku from fleeing into space, or stop the worlds of the Republic from entering a civil war. The Clone Wars had begun.

To make matters worse, Count Dooku had told Obi-Wan that hundreds of Senators were under the control of a Sith Lord called Darth Sidious. Although the Jedi did not consider Dooku a trustworthy source, they agreed to keep a closer eye on the Senate.

Following his duel with Dooku, Anakin was outfitted with a cybernetic arm, and he escorted Padmé back to Naboo. There, on the same terrace by the lake where they had exchanged their first tentative kiss, they arranged a secret meeting with a Naboo holy man. Padmé was dressed in a white gown with flowered trim and Anakin wore his formal Jedi robes. With C-3PO and R2-D2 as their only witnesses, they were married.

Anakin had no idea how long they could keep their marriage a secret, but he didn’t care.
She’s mine. At last, my beloved Padmé is mine.
It was truly a dream come true. And on their wedding day, it was easy for him to believe that his greatest troubles were behind him.

He never imagined the nightmares that were yet to come.

Almost overnight, the Galactic Republic acquired a massive military force that included interstellar battleships, weapon-laden starfighters, and enormous ground vehicles. While Senators argued whether Supreme Chancellor Palpatine had been wrong to conscript and deploy the hastily raised Grand Army of the Republic, more worlds were quick to join Count Dooku’s Separatist movement, which had officially named itself the Confederacy of Independent Systems. As Master Yoda had foreseen, the Clone Wars spread like an explosive virus throughout the galaxy.

Although Palpatine had always presented himself as a cautious, unassuming politician, he made it known to all that he would do whatever was necessary to preserve the Republic. Despite his modest protests, the Senate demanded that he stay in office long after his term had expired. But as the Clone Wars escalated, even his most trusted advisors were surprised by his many amendments to the Republic Constitution, which extended his own political powers while limiting the freedom of others.

The Jedi Council reluctantly agreed to allow Jedi to serve as generals to the Grand Army’s clone troops. However, not every Jedi was willing to engage in warfare; some chose to serve as healers, and others abandoned the Jedi order entirely.

Compelled to fight on behalf of the Republic, Obi-Wan Kenobi became a general, and Anakin, like many other Padawans, was promoted to knighthood sooner than expected to accommodate the Grand Army’s needs. Although members of the Jedi Council observed that Anakin was still prone to arrogance and impatience, no one disputed the fact that he continued to grow even stronger with the power of the Force.

Lethal droids were not the only adversaries to the Jedi, as Count Dooku had recruited such deadly beings as the Sith aspirant Asajj Ventress and the nearly indestructible Gen’Dai bounty hunter, Durge, to fight on his behalf. Dooku himself had trained Ventress in the art of lightsaber combat, but often ridiculed her preference to wield two lightsabers at the same time. Anakin nearly defeated Ventress on the fourth moon of the gas giant Yavin. One of their duels, in the industrial sector of Coruscant, left him with a deep scar on the right side of his face.

Three years after the Battle of Geonosis, Ventress and Durge no longer posed a threat, but Count Dooku led the Confederacy, and the Jedi were no closer to finding the mysterious Darth Sidious. The Clone Wars raged on.

After destroying a secret Confederacy laboratory on the planet Nelvaan in the Outer Rim, Anakin and Obi-Wan were leaving with R2-D2 in a Republic Star Destroyer when they received an urgent message. R2-D2 plugged into a communications console and projected a hologram of Mace Windu, who said, “Kenobi, Skywalker. Coruscant is under siege, and General Grievous has abducted the Supreme Chancellor. You must return immediately. You must rescue Palpatine.”

“Grievous,” Anakin snarled as the holographic message ended. Count Dooku’s most notorious lieutenant, the cyborg General Grievous commanded the Confederacy’s droid armies. Grievous had been trained in lightsaber combat by Dooku himself, and had a penchant for killing Jedi and collecting their lightsabers. Although some Jedi wondered just how much Palpatine was trying to end the war, Anakin had come to consider the Republic’s leader among his most trusted friends.

I won’t let the Chancellor die!
Anakin vowed to himself.

Stepping away from R2-D2 and Obi-Wan, Anakin addressed the armored clone troops in the Star Destroyer’s hangar. “Battle stations. All crews to their fighters. Prepare to jump into hyperspace. Move!”

* * *

Republic Star Destroyers and Confederacy gunships were fully engaged in an explosive battle over the skies of Coruscant when Anakin and Obi-Wan returned from the Outer Rim. Antifighter flak flashed in bright bursts near every ship, and decimated vessels tumbled from orbit and smashed into the spires of the city-covered world below.

Flanked by a squadron of veteran clone aviators and with R2-D2 acting as Anakin’s copilot, the two Jedi left their own Star Destroyer in a pair of starfighters and raced into the melee. Blasting droid ships while evading missiles, Anakin and Obi-Wan courageously made their way through the deadly flow of enemy vessels until they infiltrated the Confederate flagship, Invisible Hand, on which Supreme Chancellor Palpatine was held hostage by General Grievous.

To increase speed and maneuverability, Jedi star-fighters were engineered without shield generators. Although this led some opponents to believe that such starfighters were more vulnerable to attack, most Jedi pilots were adept at using the Force to anticipate, evade, and attack their enemies. Anakin was considered among the top pilots in the Jedi order, but unlike other Jedi, he did not hesitate to rely upon technology to help achieve his goals. The way Anakin saw things, the Force had not been enough to save his own right arm or stop Dooku on Geonosis, and he doubted the war would be won by the Force alone either.

The Jedi moved stealthily through the ship until they reached the Invisible Hand’s main communications and sensors pod, a lofty chamber with expansive windows that provided a 180-degree view of the surrounding space battle. It was in this chamber that they found Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, who sat in a tall chair, his wrists pinned by energy binders to the chair’s arms. Palpatine’s face was pale, and he did not look relieved to see the Jedi.

“Are you all right?” Anakin asked as he and Obi-Wan approached the Chancellor’s seated form.

Palpatine nervously looked past the two Jedi and said, “Count Dooku.”

Anakin and Obi-Wan turned and looked up to see the impeccably attired Dooku and two super battle droids step onto an elevated balcony that hugged the aft wall of the chamber. Although Dooku was in his ninth decade, he moved with the grace of a jungle predator. Anakin’s mind flashed back to his confrontation with Dooku on Geonosis, when he’d made the mistake of charging Dooku without Obi-Wan right at his side.

Keeping his eyes on Dooku as he addressed Anakin, Obi-Wan said, “This time we will do it together.”

“I was about to say that,” Anakin said.

Dooku stepped away from his droids, leapt over the balcony’s railing, and executed a neat flip before landing a short distance from the Jedi. He reached to his side and drew his lightsaber.

“Get help,” Palpatine said urgently from his seat. “You’re no match for him. He’s a Sith Lord.”

Obi-Wan offered an assuring smile. “Chancellor Palpatine, Sith Lords are our specialty.” Obi-Wan and Anakin shed their Jedi robes, letting them fall to the floor as they drew their own lightsabers.

“Your swords, please,” Dooku urged as he walked toward the Jedi. “We don’t want to make a mess of things in front of the Chancellor.”

“You won’t get away this time, Dooku,” Obi-Wan said. He and Obi-Wan ignited their blue-bladed light-sabers and advanced on Dooku, who ignited his own red-bladed weapon. The beams of their lightsabers hummed and clashed as they moved across the chamber. Dooku defended himself effortlessly.

On the level above, the two droids didn’t budge, but watched silently as the figures came to a momentary standstill. While the three lightsabers continued to blaze, Dooku grinned at his opponents and said, “I’ve been looking forward to this.”

Not intimidated by the elder swordsman, Anakin said, “My powers have doubled since the last time we met, Count.”

“Good,” Dooku said. “Twice the pride, double the fall.”

The Jedi charged once again. Dooku backed up as he parried their blows, then used the Force to throw Obi-Wan to the floor. As Anakin continued his assault on Dooku, forcing him back up the steps to the upper level, Obi-Wan recovered himself and leapt up to rejoin the fight.

The two droids fired at Obi-Wan, but he batted their fired energy bolts back at them and cut them down as he moved fast for Dooku. Unfortunately, Dooku moved faster, extending his left hand toward Obi-Wan as he used the Force to lift the Jedi off his feet while at the same time constricting his throat. As Obi-Wan gasped, Anakin swung at Dooku from behind, but Dooku kicked Anakin’s stomach with his left foot, smashing the young Jedi against a nearby wall.

Obi-Wan was still suspended in the air when Dooku gestured again with his hand to send his choking victim sailing across the chamber. Obi-Wan crashed against the railing of an extended balcony, then collapsed like a broken doll to the floor. With another gesture, Dooku used the Force to tear a section of the balcony away from its braces and pin Obi-Wan’s unconscious form to the floor.
Master!