Star Wars work in progress You Became to Me

[polgarawolf]

Twenty-second part of a work in progress
Title: You Became to Me (as suggested by avari_maethor)
*Pairing: Mainly Anakin/Obi-Wan with some mention of Padmé
Rating: Fairly PG-13ish now, but inevitably at least an R (?)
Disclaimer: I do not own the lovely boys from Star Wars, more's the pity! What I do have is an extremely contrary muse that refuses to shut up and leave me alone . . .
Summary: This is the one thing Darth Sidious never saw coming: a minor incident of collateral damage with repercussions that can potentially utterly undo all of his schemes
*Author’s Note: 1) Please see most previous author's notes and warnings.
2) Lengthy pieces in italics denote information being passed on directly through the Force via memory-impressions. Some memories will, necessarily, be a bit repetitive, so bear with me, please, okay?
3) The last scene from the previous chapter posting continues immediately below.
4) The last scene here continues immediately in the next chapter posting!


While it is true that Sidious has entrusted the teaching and the ordering of creatures like the Ventress woman largely to Dooku, leaving the details mainly to his own discretion, it is also true that Sidious has no real inkling of the true extent - much less the nature and purpose - of Dooku’s interest in Obi-Wan Kenobi, and that is precisely the way that Dooku would prefer to keep things, for the sake of his own safety and well-being, as well as that of the young Jedi Master who was once the Padawan of Dooku’s own Padawan learner.

Clearly, this is going to require more than the usual amount of finesse, to clean up.

Of course, fixing it will require the complete absence of Ventress from the picture. And soon. Hopefully, through the permanency of death, though Dooku would not be adverse to seeing that death come only after much pain, given the contents of the reports he has had regarding the way Ventress treated Obi-Wan, until the resourceful young man managed to escape from her . . .

Dooku allows himself the purely destructive euphoria of reducing one more droid to its component parts, and then he turns away, reining himself in and bringing his unruly emotions back under control.

Calm. Patience. Subtlety. Finesse. These are his trademarks. If he wants to keep his own Dark Master from uncovering the true nature and depth of his interest in Obi-Wan, then he will simply have to wait a bit longer than he has planned and be even colder, even more remorselessly and relentlessly logical, than he normally is . . .

*********

Poor Gunray, thinks Dooku, Count of Serenno and oriflamme of the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Pitiful creature . . . Still, doubtless the Trade Federation Viceroy deserves all of the fear that Grievous has doubtlessly put into him, for having been careless enough to have left the mechno-chair behind on Cato Neimoidia.

Secluded in his castle on Kaon, Dooku has just finished speaking with General Grievous regarding the unexpected loss of this device, and is pondering how best to handle the situation. While the incident at Belderone isn’t truly conclusive proof that the Republic has managed to decrypt the Separatist code and intercept Grievous’ most recent transmission to Gunray, it seems prudent to assume that such is the case. Dooku has therefore already ordered Grievous to refrain from using the code again, at least for the time being. But the matter of the expropriated hyperwave transceiver is nonetheless cause for added concern. The very fact that the Republic has essentially tipped its hand, for all intents and purposes declaring, at Belderone, the success of its eavesdropping, implies that the mechno-chair has furnished more than mere intelligence data - quite possibly clues to secrets that would astonish even Grievous.

The Supreme Commander of the Droid Armies of the Confederacy of Independent Systems is, frankly, not accustomed to losing in battle. Even while still a general among his own species, he had suffered few defeats. That fact is what originally had brought him to the attention of Sidious. After the Sith Lord had expressed interest in Grievous to Dooku, Dooku, in turn, had expressed interest in Grievous to Chairman San Hill, of the InterGalactic Banking Clan.

Poor Grievous, Dooku thinks. Pitiful creature . . .

During the Huk War as well as later, while in the direct employ of the IBC - which had offered Grievous and his people a way out of the disastrous debt incurred during the Huk War - Grievous had survived numerous attempts on his life, so an assassination attempt had been ruled out almost immediately. Hill himself had come up with the idea of a shuttle crash, though that, too, presented risks, the chief of them being that Grievous could actually die in the crash. Dooku had assured Hill that if that were to happen, then the Separatists would simply look elsewhere for a commander. Fortunately, Grievous had survived - if a bit too well. Most of the life-threatening injuries Grievous sustained ended up occurring after he had been pulled from the flaming shuttle wreck, inflicted swiftly and deliberately, while he was unconscious, with very precise calculation. When Grievous had at last agreed to be rebuilt, promises were made that no critical alterations would be made to his mind. Fortunately, the Geonosians have ways of modifying the mind without a patient ever being aware that he had been tampered with. Grievous certainly has always honestly believed that he naturally is and always has been the cold-blooded conqueror he is now, though in truth his cruelty and prowess owes much more to his rebuilding than to his actual natural temperament.

Sidious and Dooku certainly couldn’t have been more pleased with the result. Dooku, especially, since he’s never had any interest in commanding an army of droids and, at the time, already had his hands full nursemaiding the likes of Nute Gunray, Shu Mai, and the hive-minded others who would eventually form the Council of Separatists. More, Grievous had proved to be a delight to train, in spite of Dooku’s personal distaste for mechanicals and bio-droid devices in general. There was no need to coax him to release his anger and rage, as Dooku had been forced to do during the training of his other so-called Dark Jedi disciples. The Geonosians had handily arranged for Grievous to be nothing but anger and rage. And as to the General’s combat skills, few, if any, Jedi would be capable of defeating him. There had been moments during the extensive combat sessions when even Dooku had been hard-pressed to outduel the cyborg.

Of course, Dooku had kept some secrets for himself.

Just in case.

Manipulation of the sort that had gone into the transformation of Grievous goes to the heart of what it means to be a Sith - if, indeed, the words heart and Sith could be used together. The essence of the Dark Side lies in a willingness to use any means possible to arrive at a desired end - which, in the case of Lord Sidious, means a galaxy brought under the dominion of a single, brilliant mind. Sidious is not just any Sith Lord. Indeed, he is the Sith Lord: the one born with the power needed to take the final step.

Dooku had given much thought to seeking the Sith Lord out in order to destroy him, after the reprehensible waste of his former apprentice Qui-Gon Jinn’s life during the Battle of Naboo had revealed that the Sith were once again out in the open and that a Sith Lord was at work somewhere nearby in the galaxy. Yet, what little faith Dooku could muster for the prophecy of the all too obviously unfolding dark times and the coming of the Chosen One had been enough to raise a reasonable doubt in his mind as to whether or not even the death of the Sith Lord could halt the advance of the Dark Side. It had seemed inevitable that another would come, and another, no matter what action Dooku chose to take. As it had happened, though, there had been no need for him to hunt for Sidious, as Sidious himself had soon approached Dooku. Sidious’ boldness had surprised Dooku at first, but it hadn’t taken long for him to become fascinated by the Sith. Instead of a lightsaber duel to the death, there had been much discussion and a gradual but inevitably dawning understanding that their separate visions for how the galaxy might be rescued from depravity were not so different after all.

Yet, partnership with a Sith does not make one a Sith. Just as the Jedi arts must be taught, so, too, must the powers of the Dark Side. And so began his long apprenticeship. The Jedi warn that anger is the quickest path to the Dark Side, and it is true that anger is a good conduit to that power, but in truth anger is nothing more than raw emotion. To truly know the Dark Side, to do more than merely be caught up in its flood and carried along by its strength, one has to be willing to rise above all morality, to throw love and compassion aside, and to do whatever is necessary to bring about the vision of a world and a galaxy brought firmly under control - even if that means taking lives, even if those lives belong to those who are essentially innocent. Dooku had been an eager student, once he understood that anger was merely a stepping stone along the path, and yet for some time Sidious had continuously held him at arm’s length. Possibly, he had been secretly working with other potential replacements for his earlier apprentice, the savage Darth Maul, who, in fact, had been nothing more than a minion, rather like Asajj Ventress and General Grievous himself. Regardless, Sidious must have recognized in Dooku the makings of a true accomplice - an equal from the other camp, already trained in the Jedi arts, a master duelist, and a political visionary. Yet, he had nonetheless felt he needed to thoroughly gauge the depth of Dooku’s commitment.

One of your former confidants at the Jedi Temple has perceived the coming changes, Sidious had eventually told him. This one has contacted a group of cloners, regarding the creation of an army for the Republic. The order for the army can stand, for we will be able to make use of that army someday. But Master Sifo-Dyas cannot stand, for the Jedi cannot learn about the army until we are prepared to have them learn of it.

Dooku had felt some pause, at first. After all, Master Sifo-Dyas had been Dooku’s true confidant, while he had been an active, loyal member of the Jedi Order. Yet, in the end, Dooku had realized that Sifo-Dyas, for all his professed concern about unfolding events and the looming darkness, had not been strong enough to take action. The man was weak, and a traitor to the ideals that he was supposedly devoted to, as a Jedi and guardian of the Republic. And so, with his murder, Dooku had embraced the Dark Side fully, and Sidious had conferred on him the title of Darth Tyranus. His final act before leaving the Jedi Order completely was to erase all of the information on and every mention of Kamino from the Jedi Archives. Then, as Tyranus, he had found Jango Fett on Bogg 4 and hired him for an assassination that was, in actuality, a test to find a suitable template for an army of perfect clone soldiers; had followed the Mandalorian to Kohlma, where the bounty hunter had triumphed over his only surviving potential rival and even defeated Komari Vosa, a former pupil of Dooku’s whose fall to the Dark Side via torture to the point of insanity had allowed her to become the leader of the murderous, Force-worshiping Bando Gora cult and criminal organization; had, after dispatching the beaten and grievously wounded former Jedi, instructed the Mandalorian to deliver himself to Kamino for his reward; and had even arranged for payments to be made to the cloners through appropriately circuitous routes. Ten years had eventually passed while the Republic at first recovered somewhat under its new Supreme Chancellor and then grew even more corrupt and beset with problems than before. As best they could, Sidious and Tyranus had helped things along. They were continually aided in their efforts by Sidious’ ability to see deep into the future, but there was always the threat of the unexpected. With the power of the Dark Side, though, there comes much flexibility. After all, the Sith are far more adaptable than the Jedi: that is why the Jedi will inevitably fall.

Having traced Jango Fett to Kamino after a second failed attempt to assassinate Senator Amidala of Naboo, though, Obi-Wan Kenobi had unexpectedly turned up on Geonosis. All at once, there was Qui-Gon Jinn’s former Padawan learner, right under Dooku’s nose. Yet, when he had informed Sidious of Obi-Wan’s capture, Sidious had only said, Allow events to play out as they will, Darth Tyranus. Our plans are unfolding exactly as I have foreseen. The Force is very much with us. In spite of the young Jedi Knight’s all too tempting presence, Dooku had been forced to allow his own designs on the boy to fall by the wayside . . . after planting a few seeds of his own, for later reaping. A reaping that had later been thwarted and set back by the disgraceful blundering of one of his own tools, the Dark Adept Asajj Ventress, whose hatred (and the extent to which that hatred undermined her ability to function rationally and intelligently) Dooku had, unfortunately, underestimated.

And now, there is yet anther new wrinkle: as a result of Nute Gunray’s blunder at Cato Neimoidia, the Republic and the Jedi have chanced on a way to possibly trace the whereabouts of Sidious and actually expose him. After all, the mechno-chair’s exceptional transceiver - and others like it - had been specifically created for Sidious by a host of beings, a few of whom are still living. And if agents of the Republic - or the Jedi, for that matter - could prove to be both clever and persistent enough, they might succeed in learning far more about Sidious than he would ever want anyone to learn . . .

He has to be informed, Dooku realizes, nodding.

Or did he?

For a heartbeat, Dooku hesitates, imagining the power that could be his - the power that will, inevitably, be his, when the time is right and Sidious’ planning has taken care of all the many obstacles that stand between the galaxy as it is now and their vision of a Force-policed and absolutely enforced control of an Empire of Man, a time when the Sith Lord will have lost his usefulness. He thinks of a time when the Jedi and the Sith alike will be extinct, when a new order of Force-users will spring into existence under his guiding hands.

He also thinks of Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas, who was - or so Dooku had eventually learned, years after Sidious had ordered his death - used by Sidious’ public political persona, given a direct order to secretly contact the Kaminoans and arrange for the creation of a clone army for the Republic. After Sifo-Dyas had completed this mission, Sidious had ordered Dooku to murder the Jedi - not to test Dooku’s commitment or to keep the planned for creation of the clone army a secret from the Jedi, but rather to simply sever a potential loose end to his plottings and so protect himself, his alter ego, from possible detection. Sidious had lied to Dooku entirely about this, and Dooku has not and will not forget or forgive him for this. Sifo-Dyas had been a friend of his and he had not needed to die. Dooku could have easily managed all of the arrangements himself. Murder had not been necessary.

Most of all, though, he thinks of Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, senselessly murdered by Darth Maul.

Then, sighing regretfully, Dooku heads directly to the hyperwave transmitter that Sidious has given him, where he swiftly begins his transmission.

Unfortunately, Obi-Wan Kenobi has proven to be a far harder nut to crack than Dooku ever dreamed he would be. Dooku cannot afford to hasten Sidious’ destruction until he has his own worthy apprentice at his side, ensuring the continuance of a blended course of instruction in all aspects - Living and Unifying as well as the Light and also the Dark Side - of the Force.

Soon, though. Dooku will claim Obi-Wan - a deception in return for the deception that cost Sifo-Dyas his life - and then together they will claim revenge for Qui-Gon Jinn.

It is only a matter of time.

*********

Coruscant contains many places where one simply cannot persuade a droid air taxi drive to carry one, not even with a promise of a free year of lubrication baths at Industrial Automaton.

There’s the labyrinth of dark back streets south of Corusca Circus, for one.

Daring Way, where it crosses Vos Gesal in upper Uscru, for another.

Hazard’s Skytunnel in the Manarai Uplift.

And also just about anywhere in the sector known colloquially as "The Works."

Foot mat to the Senate District, with its New Architecture spires and domes, its blade-thin obelisks that resemble oft-used candles dipped in gleaming alloy, The Works had been a booming manufacturing area, once upon a time, until escalating costs had finally driven the production of spacecraft parts, labor droids, and construction materials offworld. Kilometer after cheerless kilometer of flat-roofed factories and assembly plants; towering cranes and enormous gantries; endless stretches of pitted mag-lev tracks that might have been overgrown with weeds if any weeds actually willingly grew on Coruscant; skyscraping clusters of vacant corporate buildings with rocket-fin buttresses . . . For standard centuries, the sector had been the destination for billions of hardworking immigrants from the Inner Rim and the Colonies, seeking employment and new lives in the Core. Now, The Works is a destination for fugitives from Nar Shaddaa who need a hole to crawl into. A Coruscanti might possibly risk a visit to The Works if he has just been laid off by the Bank of Aargau and is looking for someone to disintegrate his former boss. Or perhaps when death sticks no longer satisfy and a capsule of Crude is in order . . .

It is the gritty, toxic smoke that still belches from the stacks of factories closed for generations that make for the crimson-and-gold splendor of Coruscant’s sunsets, which are gawked at by the affluent habitués of the Senate District’s Skysitter Restaurant. The entire sector might have been demolished if it could only have been determined with any certainty just who owned what. Rumors persist that hired assassins and crime syndicates have buried so many bodies in The Works that it should be considered a cemetery.

Yet, surprisingly, Dooku loves the place.

Though it is the antithesis of his native Serenno, The Works is very much a home away from home for the human who has earned the title Darth Tyranus. There is one structure in particular - columnar in shape, round-topped, propped by angular ramparts - rising from the defiled core of The Works, like a stake driven into its heart, that Dooku adores. Strong in the Dark Side of the Force - made so by Darth Sidious - this particular building was the place of Dooku’s apprenticeship, just as it had served as a training ground for Darth Maul before Dooku, and who knew who or how many other Sith disciples before Maul. During the ten years preceding the outbreak of the war proper - when Count Dooku of Serenno is believed to have been peddling his Separatist agenda to disenfranchised worlds in the Mid and Outer Rims - he had, in fact, spent long periods of time in The Works, coming and going at will, or as required of him by his Master, Darth Sidious. Even in the three years since the war began, he has been able to visit Coruscant without fear of detection, thanks in part to unique countermeasures the Geonosians have engineered into his interstellar sloop.

The modified Punworcca 116 even now rests on its slight landing gear in the building’s vast docking space. With its needle-tipped bow carapaces and the spherical cockpit module they grip, the sloop is typically Geonosian in design. However, its signature sail had been obtained with Sidious’ help from a dealer in pre-Republic antiquities in the Gree Enclave. Furled into the ventral carapace now - seldom used any longer, though in perfect working order - it had been created by an ancient spacefaring race that had taken to the grave the secrets of supralight emission propulsion. Having ordered the sloop’s FA-4 pilot droid to remain the ball cockpit, Dooku would, normally, be walking some of the stiffness of the long voyage out of his long legs and surveying the docking bay with a certain nostalgic fondness, recalling the years he had spent under Sidious’ tutelage, learning the ways of the Sith, practicing the arts of the Dark Side, giving himself over to the Dark Side and perfecting himself in the Force. Learning such things as how to become as a force of nature itself, paranormally strong and quick, capable of conjuring Sith lightning, of exteriorizing rage, and all without the need for those ridiculous hand passes - so reminiscent of the meaningless conjuring motions of a street magician - that the Jedi are always so fond of employing.

At the moment, though, Dooku is hurrying towards Sidious and trying not to dwell on the troublesomely recurrent thoughts of his old Jedi mentor, Master Yoda, who had admitted to him on Vjun, only months ago, Carry a darkness within me, I do, before going on to hint that Dooku himself, despite his recent deep delving into the Dark arts, would still be welcome at the Jedi Temple, were he so inclined to return . . .

Shaking his head, Dooku forces himself to focus on Sidious, who is clearly unhappy with recent events, since the loss of that infernal mechno-chair by Nute Gunray - and the growing threat of the Jedi Order’s attempts to expose the Sith Lord. Before this moment, Dooku had been able to count on one hand the number of times he had ever seen Sidious genuinely angry. Now he suddenly finds himself needing both hands, and the thought that Kenobi and Skywalker have accomplished this fills Dooku with a strange combination of pride and fear.

Once Master and Padawan and now, strangely, apparently inseparable partners in the Force, Kenobi and Skywalker have become the scourge of Dooku’s existence. On Geonosis he had obeyed Sidious’ instructions and deliberately allowed them to pursue him, despite an oddly persistent bad feeling about doing such a thing. Also as instructed - if not precisely within the context that Sidious would have wished - Dooku had made Kenobi aware of the existence of Darth Sidious, as a means of confusing the Jedi Order by telling them the truth. In the sloop’s docking bay, he had also demonstrated his mastery to Kenobi and Skywalker - though Skywalker hadn’t nearly been so easily defeated the second time they had dueled there, fiercely protective of his fallen Master. Clearly enraged, the young Jedi had proved to be a truly powerful opponent, and Dooku rather suspects that the Knight has only continued to grow steadily more powerful since Geonosis. Although Dooku is, in the main, unimpressed with Anakin Skywalker - given that the boy is obviously no real Jedi, despite his increasingly enormous potential in the Force - Dooku is increasingly proud of Obi-Wan Kenobi for having raised up such a tirelessly dedicated and powerful warrior, even if the boy is far too emotional and unrestrained to ever truly fit the Jedi mold. It bothers Dooku that Sidious continuously overlooks Obi-Wan in favor of Skywalker. Skywalker is powerful, true, but Obi-Wan is Obi-Wan. The young man is frankly extraordinary, subtly different from other Jedi, with a unique relationship to the Force that makes him special in ways that Dooku cannot even begin to understand. He is quite certain that he could study Obi-Wan happily for years, and still not do more than scratch the surface of what the unusual young Jedi Master is capable of. The thought of destroying the young Jedi Master rather than seeking a way to harness his strength fills Dooku with the same sort of helpless sick rage that he often fell prey to, as a Jedi, when he learned of priceless artifacts and irreplaceable works of art or knowledge being destroyed through acts of war or carelessness or even natural disaster. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, it is not this remarkable young man who fascinates Sidious, but rather Obi-Wan’s callow (and, to Dooku’s eyes, rather shallow and overweeningly prideful as well as overexcitable) former apprentcie.

Long have I watched young Skywalker, Sidious had once admitted to him.

And all the more so of late.

"I want you to see to it that Obi-Wan Kenobi ceases to be an irritant," Sidious is saying to him now, sneering at the name.

"He represents so forceful a threat to our plans?" Dooku cannot help but to raise an eyebrow at that, intrigued, wondering if Sidious has finally recognized Obi-Wan’s potential.

But Sidious only shakes his head. "Hardly. But Skywalker does. And Kenobi . . . Kenobi has been as a father to him. Orphan Skywalker once and for all, and he will shift."

"Shift?" Both eyebrows rise at that. There is something . . . off about Sidious’ assessment of the relationship between the two Jedi, which Dooku finds rather amusing, given how much time the man spends with young Skywalker in his public persona. If Sidious cannot sense it, though, Dooku is certainly not going to volunteer the information.

"To the Dark Side."

"As an apprentice?" Dooku’s eyebrows all but disappear into his hairline at that - or they would, at least, if his eyebrows and eyelashes were not still as black as on the day he was born, unlike the silver-tinged white purity of the rest of his hair.

Sidious merely smiles mysteriously and promises, "In good time, Lord Tyranus. All in good time."

As Dooku reviews his instructions, returning to his ship, he bites back a frustrated snarl.

That infernal bad feeling is back again.

*********

In a forward hold of Grievous’ flagship, Dooku watches the cyborg general duel with his elite MagnaGuards, three of his trophy lightsabers in constant motion, parrying thrusts of the guards’ pulse-weaponed staffs, slicing the recycled air a hairbreadth from the expressionless faces of his opponents, incapacitating arm and leg servos when he could. Grievous is a force to be reckoned with, to be sure, but Dooku deplores his habit of collecting lightsabers, and he finds that it bothers him more and more, the longer he has to deal with Grievous. It had only irritated him when Ventress and lesser combatants such as the bounty hunter Aurra Sing had adopted the foul practice. Yet, for some reason, Grievous’ habit strikes Dooku as the very worst sort of profanation. Even so, he knows that he is not about to discourage the practice, however much he may personally loathe it. The more Jedi that can be dispatched now, the better and the easier it will be for him, later. Still . . . more and more, Dooku finds himself gritting his teeth and biting his tongue, to keep himself from snapping at Grievous. The only aspect of Grievous’ technique that vexes him more is the General’s penchant for using four blades at once. Two is bad enough - as in the form they had been used by Darth Maul, or in Anakin Skywalker’s sad attempt to employ the technique on Geonosis. But three and even four at a time?

What is to become of elegance and gallantry if a duelist cannot make do with one blade?

Well, what has become of elegance and gallantry in general, in any case?

Dooku sighs. Grievous is certainly fast, and so are his IG 100-series sparring partners. They have the advantage of size and brute strength. They execute moves almost faster than the human eye alone can follow. Their thrusts and lunges demonstrate a singular lack of hesitancy. Once committed to a maneuver, they never falter. They never stop to recalculate their actions. Their weapons go exactly where they have meant for them to go. And they always aim for points beyond their opponents in order to slice clear through them with their blows. Dooku taught Grievous well and so Grievous has taught his elite well. Coupled with Dooku’s coaching in the seven classic forms of lightsaber dueling in the Jedi arts - in Shii-Cho, Makashi, Soresu, Ataru, Shien and Djem So, and Niman - and the basics of the unfinished fighting form of Juyo, which Mace Windu has recently perfected into Vaapad, their programming make them lethal opponents. But they are not invincible, not even Grievous, because they can be confused by unpredictability, and they have no true understanding of finesse. A player of dejarik can memorize all the classic openings and countermoves and yet still not be a master of the game. Defeat often comes at the hands of less experienced players who know nothing about the traditional strategies. A professional fighter, a combat artist, can be defeated by a cantina brawler who knows nothing about form but everything about ending a conflict quickly, without a thought to winning gracefully or elegantly.

Enslavement to form opens one to defeat by the unforseen.

This is often the failing of trained duelists, and it will also eventually, inevitably, be the failing of the Jedi Order.

Given that elegance, gallantry, and enchantment are gone from the galaxy, it is only fitting that the Order’s days are numbered - that the fire that has been the Jedi is guttering and dying out. As with the corrupt Republic itself, the Order’s time has come. The noble Jedi, bound to the Force, sworn to uphold peace and justice, are seldom seen as heroes or saviors any longer, more often being thought of as bullies or meddlesome members of an elitist but corrupt and sometimes brutal police force of a bloated and failing government.

Still, Dooku finds it increasingly sad that it has fallen to him to help usher them out.

The conversation he’d had with Yoda on dreary Vjun is never far from his thoughts these days. For all his flair with words, all his Force-given personal power, and all the qualities that he has in common with Sidious - principally, that neither is entirely what he appears to be, which is to say made frail by age, or by the intensity required to master the Sith or Jedi arts - Yoda is essentially nothing more than a fossil, unwilling to embrace anything new and indisposed to see any way but his own. Archaic and entirely obsolete. Yet, how terrible not simply to fade away but to expire in the full knowledge that the galaxy has tipped inexorably and at long last to the Dark Side, to the Sith, and might remain so for as long as the Jedi themselves have ruled.

The unforseen . . .

Grievous and his guards are dancing. Going through their programmed motions.

An Ataro attack is answered by Shii-Cho; Soresu is countered with Shien . . .

Dooku simply cannot suffer another moment of it.

"No, no, stop, stop!" he yells, coming to his feet and striding to the middle of the training circle, his arms extended to both sides. When he is certain that he has their attention, he swings to Grievous. "Power moves served you well on Hypori against Jedi such as Daakman Barrek and Tarr Seir. But I pity you should you have to face off against any of the Council Masters." He calls into hand his courtly, curve-handled lightsaber and draws a rapid X in the air - a Makashi flourish. "Do I need to demonstrate what responses you can expect to face from Cin Drallig or Obi-Wan Kenobi? From Mace Windu or, stars help you, Yoda?" He flicks his blade quickly, ridding two of the guards of their staffs and then placing the glowing tip a millimeter from Grievous’ death-helmeted visage. "Finesse. Artfulness. Economy. Otherwise, my friend, I fear that you will end up beyond the repair of even the Geonosians. Do you take my meaning?"

His vertically slit eyes unfathomable, Grievous nods. "I take your meaning, my lord."

Dooku withdraws his lightsaber blade. "Again, then. With some measure of polish, if I’m not asking for too much."

Dooku seats himself and watches them go at it.

Hopeless, he thinks.

He knows that he is at least partially to blame for this. In allowing the Geonosians their tampering, he had inadvertently made the same mistake with Grievous that he would only later discover he had already made with Ventress, by allowing her to fill herself with hate, as if hate could substitute for dispassion. Even the most hateful, the most hate-filled, could be defeated. Even the most angry. There should be no emotion in killing, no self, only the act. When he should have been helping Ventress rid herself of self, he had instead permitted her to grow impassioned. Sidious once confessed to him that he had erred similarly in his training of Darth Maul. Ventress and Maul had been driven by a desire to excel - to be the best - instead of merely allowing themselves to be pure instruments of the Dark Side. That is why they had been defeated, in the end. And it is why Grievous himself will eventually fall, very likely to the first Jedi he meets who manages to face him with the truly dispassionate tranquility that inevitably comes when one has accepted, with serenity, that death might be imminent, and yet has still calmly, thoroughly, immersed oneself so far within the Force that the self falls away and all that remains is an empty, pure vessel of the Force, yielding to its will, its every command.

The Jedi know this about the Force: the best of them are nothing more than instruments.

This is why (all sentimentality about his own former apprentice and lost chances aside) Dooku wants Obi-Wan Kenobi for his apprentice. He knows that Obi-Wan recognizes and understands this truth, unlike the young Jedi Master’s former Padawan, Anakin Skywalker, who is obviously driven by that same dangerous need to excel, to prove himself - a need, Dooku understands, that has ironically been instilled in the boy not by Sidious but by the Jedi themselves, with their strangely largely unaccepting attitude towards the apparently emotionally unstable boy they nevertheless compassionately insisted on allowing into their Order and persist in believing is their Chosen One, the one who will bring balance to the Force.

It is why Dooku knows that Sidious and the Sith, for all their greater adaptability, will not triumph, in the end. Sidious is as blind, in his own way, as the Jedi Masters who sit upon the High Council and refuse to see that the galaxy has changed since the time of the last great Jedi-Sith conflict. Neither side has sense enough to realize that they must learn from their mistakes if they do not wish to fall victim to them again. Neither side has sense enough to realize that it is their emotionality - the Jedi with their compassion and love and loyalty to one another and the Sith with their insistence on focusing solely on anger and hatred when coldly detached dispassion would logically serve them much better - that continuously leads them to fall victim to those same mistakes over and over again.

It is why Dooku is unwavering in his belief that both the Jedi and the Sith must be eradicated and an entirely new order created in their place.

All he needs to do is convince Obi-Wan Kenobi of this, and then Dooku can deal with Sidious - repaying him in kind for the treachery the Sith Lord has sown - himself.

*********

Dooku has ordered the droid pilot of his sloop to revert from hyperspace for a brief time at the planet Nelvaan. Thus, if any ships from among the Republic battle group at Tythe should, by some remote chance, actually manage to plot his escape course, it will appear as though Nelvaan is his actual destination. The sloop’s Geonosian technology will mask the fact that he has jumped almost immediately to Coruscant to join Grievous and to play out the final act of the drama Sidious has so carefully arranged. Just as Sidious has foreseen it would, the abduction of Palpatine has not only abbreviated the search for him, it has also allowed Sidious to escape from Coruscant undetected. But these events are only minor acts. Sidious would have never allowed the Jedi to expose him. And Palpatine is hardly the prize he appears to be, as Dooku well knows. The greatest prize, as Sidious had gloatingly told Dooku during their most recent communication, will be theirs, in the form of Anakin Skywalker.

"Long have you watched him," Dooku had said, once again repeating the words that Sidious has himself so often spoken.

"Longer than you know, Lord Tyranus. Longer than you know. And the time has come to test him again."

"His skills, my lord?"

"The depth of his anger and the power that anger might give to him. His willingness to go beyond the Force as the Jedi know it and to call on the power of the Dark Side. General Grievous will activate a special beacon that will call Skywalker and Kenobi back to Coruscant and onto the stage that we will set for them."

But not to capture them, according to Sidious’ great plan.

"You will duel them," Sidious had instead ordered. "Kill Kenobi. His only purpose is to die and, in so doing, ignite young Skywalker to tap the depths of his fear and rage. Should you defeat Skywalker easily, then we will know that he is not prepared to serve us. Perhaps he never will be prepared. Should he by some fluke best you, however, I will control the outcome to spare you any unnecessary embarrassment, and we will have gained a powerful ally. But above all you must make the contest appear real, Lord Tyranus."

"I will treat it as if it were my crowning achievement," Dooku had promised, only with great effort managing to restrain a slow, satisfied smile, seeing, at last, the opportunity he has been waiting for to turn the tables on his Dark Master. After all, once the duel has begun, Sidious will no longer be able to orchestrate everything that happens . . .

Hyperspace - and his revenge for Qui-Gon, if he finesses this properly - awaits him now.

"To Coruscant," Dooku tells his FA-4 from his comfortable chair in the sloop’s main hold, not bothering to hold back his anticipating smile.

And with that, the ship jumps.

*********

The vast semisphere of the flagship’s view wall blooms with battle. Sophisticated sensor algorithms compress the combat that sprawls all throughout the orbit of the Galactic Republic’s capital world to a view that the naked eye can understand and enjoy: cruisers hundreds of kilometers apart, exchanging fire at near lightspeed, appear to be practically hull-to-hull, joined by pulsing cables of flame. Turbolaser blasts become swift shafts of light that either shatter into prismatic splinters against shields or bloom into miniature supernovae that swallow ships whole. The invisible gnat-clouds of starfighter dogfights becomes a gleaming dance of shadowmoths at the end of Coruscant’s brief spring. Within this immense curve of computer-filtered carnage, the only furnishing is one oversized chair, centered in an expanse of empty floor. This high-backed, almost throne-like black monstrosity is called the General’s Chair, just as this apartment atop the flagship’s conning spire is called the General’s Quarters. With his back turned to that enormous chair and to the man who is shackled within it, arms and hands folded calmly, precisely, behind him beneath his cloak of silken armor-weave, stands Count Dooku - Darth Tyranus, Dark Lord of the Sith. He looks upon his Master’s handiwork, and sees that it is good. No, it is more than good. It is magnificent. It doesn’t matter that his Master is currently chained to the General’s Chair, or that he is wearing the more harmless of his faces. Through the veil of the Dark Side, Dooku can see the strands of shadow obscuring the battle raging outside, the dark threads of influence being grasped and woven, manipulated through methods both subtler and more powerful than mere speech or thought. This battle belongs to his Master - this battle and this war. Even the increasing number of occasional tremors of the deck beneath his boots, as the entire enormous ship shudders under enemy torpedo and turbolaser blasts, feels, to him, like applause. Dooku is basking unabashedly in that praise when the initiating hum of the intraship holocomm sounds behind him and then crackles into a voice that is both electronic and oddly expressive, rather as if a man is speaking through a droid’s electrosonic vocabulator.

"Lord Tyranus, Kenobi and Skywalker have arrived."

"Yes." Dooku has, of course, already felt them both in the Force, but there is no need for the commander of the Invisible Hand to know this. "Drive them towards me."

"But driving them to you also sends them directly toward the Chancellor himself. Why does he remain on this ship at all? He should be hidden. He should be guarded. We should have had him outsystem hours ago!"

Dooku turns. From his commanding height, he stares down at the blue-scanned holoimage of the commander of the Invisible Hand. "Your objections have been noted already, General. Leave the Jedi to me."

"But driving them to you also sends them directly toward the Chancellor himself. Why does he remain on this ship at all? He should be hidden. He should be guarded. We should have had him outsystem hours ago!"

From a certain point of view, there is a great deal of validity to the General’s complaints. However, that point of view unfortunately is uninformed by the fact that the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic and the Sith Lord Sidious are one and the same being. As this is a fact that Darth Sidious has deliberately kept from the cyborg, it is also quite impossible for Dooku to provide a reason capable of supporting the orders that so trouble the General. Thus, "Matters are so," Count Dooku merely calmly reiterates, rather than attempt to argue the point logically, "because Lord Sidious wishes them so, General. Should you desire to press your objections, then please, feel at liberty to take them up with him."

"I, ah, don’t believe that will be necessary . . . "

"Very well, then. Confine your efforts to preventing support troops from boarding. Without their pet clones to back them up, no mere Jedi is a danger to me." The deck shudders again then, more sharply, and that tremor is followed by a sudden shift in the vector of the cruiser’s artificial gravity that would have sent a lesser man stumbling, With the Force to
maintain the dignified solidity of his posture, though, the effect on Dooku is confined to the lift of one eyebrow. "And may I suggest that you devote some attention to protecting this ship? Having it destroyed with both you and me aboard might put something of a cramp in the war effort, don’t you think?"

"It is already being done, my lord. Does my lord wish to observe the progress of the Jedi? I can feed the security monitors onto this channel."

"Thank you, General. That would be most welcome."

"Gracious as ever, my lord. Grievous out."

Count Dooku allows himself a near-invisible smile. His inviolable courtesy - the hallmark of a true aristocrat - is effortless, and yet somehow it always seems to impress both the common rabble as well as those with the intellect of common rabble, regardless of their accomplishment or station - such as, for example, the repulsive cyborg Grievous. Dooku sighs. Despite all of his many failings and limitations, Grievous does have his uses. Not only is the General an able field commander, but he will soon make a marvelous scapegoat upon whom to hang every atrocity of this sadly necessary war. After all, someone has to take that particular fall, and Grievous is just the creature for the job. Force knows it certainly will not be Dooku who shoulders that particular responsibility. Reassigning blame for the shocking brutality of this war is, in fact, one purpose of the cataclysmic battle outside.

But not, by far, the only one.

The blue-scanned image before him blossoms into miniatures of Kenobi and Skywalker as he has seen them so many times before: shoulder-to-shoulder, lightsabers whirling as they enthusiastically dismantle droid after droid after droid, obviously feeling as if they are winning when in truth they are instead being chivvied exactly where the Lords of the Sith want them to go.

Such children, they are! Dooku shakes his head, almost regretfully. It is almost too easy.

Regretting an enemy’s flaw might seem quixotic, to others, but it is merely a part of who Dooku, Darth Tyranus and Count of Serenno, once a colossally powerful Jedi Master and now an even more powerful Dark Lord of the Sith, is.

Dooku is . . . different.

He does not remember quite when he discovered this, though he is fairly certain that it was at some point during his time in the Jedi Temple, long before his apprenticeship to Darth Sidious began; it may have been when he was a young Padawan in the Jedi Temple, betrayed by another initiate who had claimed to be his friend. Lorian Nod had said it to his face: "You don’t know what friendship is." Well, actually, the young boy had furiously snarled the accusation. But the sentiment remained unchanged, regardless of the tone of voice in which it had been stated. And the simple truth of the matter was that Dooku hadn’t. And he still doesn’t, not quite.

Dooku had been angry, certainly; furious that his reputation had been put at risk by this so-called "friend" of his. And he had been even more angry at himself, for his error in judgment: trusting as an ally one who was in fact an enemy. The most astonishing part of the whole affair had been that, even after turning on him before the Jedi, the other boy had continuously expected Dooku to participate in a lie, all in the name of their "friendship."

It had all been so preposterous that Dooku simply hadn’t known how to reply. In fact, he has never been entirely sure what beings mean when they speak of “friendship.” Love, hate, joy, anger: even when Dooku can feel the energy of these emotions in others, they translate in his perception to other kinds of feelings. The kinds of emotions that make sense to Dooku. Jealousy, for example, he comprehends quite well, as well as he understands possessiveness: he does not share his possessions and is implacably fierce when any being encroaches on what is rightfully his. Intolerance, at the intractability of the universe and at the undisciplined lives of a majority its inhabitants: this is Dooku’s normal state. Spite is recreation for Dooku: he takes considerable pleasure from the suffering of his enemies. Pride is as obviously a virtue in an aristocrat as indignation is his inalienable right: both are automatic, involuntary reactions when any dare to impugn his integrity, his honor, or his rightful place atop the natural hierarchy of authority. And moral outrage makes perfect sense to Dooku: when the incorrigibly untidy affairs of ordinary beings refuse to conform to the plainly obvious structure of How Society - And The Galaxy - Ought To Be, how else should any sensible sentient being respond but with moral outrage?

Dooku is entirely incapable of caring what any given creature might feel for/about him. He cares only what that creature might do for him. Or to him. Very possibly, he is what he is because other beings just aren’t very . . . interesting. Or even, in a sense, entirely real. For Dooku, the hereditary Lord of Serenno, other beings are mostly abstractions, simple schematic sketches who fall into two essential categories. The first category is Assets: beings who can be used to serve Dooku’s various interests. Such as - for most of his life and, to some extent, even now - the Jedi, particularly Mace Windu and Yoda, both of whom had regarded him as their friend for so long that it had effectively blinded them to the truth of his activities. And of course - for the moment - the Trade Federation, the InterGalactic Banking Clan, the Techno Union, the Corporate Alliance, and the weapon lords of Geonosis. And even the common rabble of the galaxy, who exist largely to provide an audience of sufficient size to do justice to his grandeur. The other category is Threats. In this second set, he numbers every sentient being - and indeed, most nonsentient beings, simply as a rule - that he cannot include in the first category. Quite often, beings who once fell safely within the first category lose their usefulness and tumble suddenly into the second. It is entirely possible, though, that if Dooku has his way and the galaxy at last submits to his will, one day there will no longer be a second category. Being considered a Threat by Count Dooku is an inevitable death sentence. It is a death sentence that he plans to pronounce, for example, on most of his current allies: the heads of the aforementioned Trade Federation, Corporate Alliance, Techno Union, InterGalactic Banking Clan, and Geonosian weaponeers. Treachery is, after all, the way of the Sith, and Dooku is enough of a Sith - when it suits his needs - to understand the potential applicability of this rule for the motivations that inspire most of his activities.

There is no third category. Not truly. Those incredibly few beings who do not patently fall into one category or the other are the highly rare and invaluable individuals Dooku considers simply to be his. Qui-Gon Jinn had been one such being. Obi-Wan Kenobi is another. Anakin Skywalker is an exceedingly rare conundrum who vacillates between falling into one of the two common categories while somehow retaining the potential of one day simply becoming Dooku’s.

Therefore, Count Dooku watches with a coldly fascinated clinical detachment as the blue-scanned images of Kenobi and Skywalker - one whom he thinks of as a rightful possession whose assumption of his rightful place at Dooku’s side has already been delayed for far too long, and the other of whom he thinks of as largely superfluous but perhaps harmful to his plans, though he is also perhaps potentially an asset and certainly quite possibly a possession by proxy, given the boy’s status as the apparently unshakeable Force-partner and former Padawan learner of the former Padawan learner of Dooku’s own former Padawan learner - engage in a preposterous farce-chase, pursued by destroyer droids into and out of various turbolift pods that shoot upward and downward and even sideways, their movements so erratic that Dooku suspects Grievous has something to do with it.

At length, Dooku gives voice to a single observation. "It will be," he offers slowly, meditatively, and oh so carefully as planned, as though he speaks only to himself, "an embarrassment to be captured by him."

The voice that answers Dooku is so familiar that sometimes his very thoughts speak in its tones, instead of in his own. "An embarrassment that you can survive, Lord Tyranus. After all, he is the greatest Jedi alive, is he not? And have we not ensured that the entire galaxy shares this opinion?"

"Quite so, my Master. Quite so." Again, Dooku sighs. Today, he feels every hour of his eighty-three years. "It is . . . fatiguing, to play the villain for so long, Master. I find myself looking forward to an honorable captivity."

This is Lord Sidious’ stated purpose for this farce: an honorable capture for Lord Dooku and a captivity that will allow him to sit out the rest of the war in comfort; a captivity that will allow him to forswear his former allegiances - when he will conveniently appear to finally discover the true extent of the Separatists’ crimes against civilization - and bind himself to the new government with his reputation for integrity and idealism fully intact. The new government that has been their star of destiny for lo, these many years. A government clean, pure, direct: no messy scrambling for the favor of the ignorant rabble and subhuman creatures that by and large make up the Republic Dooku so despises for its many failures to live up to expectations. The new government that Dooku will serve will be Authority personified. Human authority. For it is, of course, no accident that the primary powers of the Confederacy of Independent Systems are Neimoidian, Skakoan, Quarren and Aqualish, Muun and Gossam, Sy Myrthian and Koorivar and Geonosian. At war’s end, the aliens will be crushed, stripped of all they possess, and their systems and their wealth will be given into the hands of the only beings who can be trusted with them. Human beings. Dooku will serve an Empire of Man and he will serve it as only he can, as he has patently been born to. He will smash the outdated and ineffectual Jedi Order to create it anew, to create an order that is not shackled by the corrupt, narcissistic, shabby little beings who call themselves politicians, but instead free to bring true authority and true peace to a galaxy that so badly needs both. An Order that will not negotiate and will not mediate. An Order that will enforce order. The survivors of the Jedi Order will become the Sith Army. The Fist of the Empire. And that Fist will become a power beyond any Jedi’s darkest dreams. The Jedi are not the only users of the Force in the galaxy: from Hapes to Haruun Kal and from Kiffu to Dathomir, many powerful Force-capable humans and near-humans have long refused to surrender their children to lifelong bound servitude in the Jedi Order. They will not so refuse the Sith Army. They will not have the choice.

Or so Sidious believes that Dooku believes, hateful and hate-filled creature that the Sith Lord is. Dooku’s actual beliefs and intentions are a bit more . . . complicated.

When Dooku first thought of seeking out the Sith Lord, he was motivated primarily by the need to revenge Qui-Gon Jinn’s murder. He was also motivated by a need to act when others would not to halt and reverse or, failing that, to at least direct the growing darkness that, with increasing obviousness, seemed a fulfillment of the prophesied “dark times” said to presage and coincide with the coming of the Chosen One, who would bring balance to the Force. He wanted to find the Sith Lord in order to destroy him. Yet, his motivation had faltered and his goal began to change when Dooku had begun to wonder if killing the Sith Lord would actually do any good, given the specifics of the various prophecies involving the Chosen One and the dark times that were to herald his emergence into the galaxy. Dooku was still unwaveringly determined to avenge Qui-Gon; yet, at the same time, he also began to wonder if the Sith Lord might not be better put to use in directing the inevitable growing darkness. Thus, when the Sith Lord had sought Dooku out, he had listened to Sidious rather than simply striking him down out of hand. Dooku had also become first Sidious’ apprentice and then a Sith Lord himself in order to gain control over the swelling power of that darkness for himself. And because he had become a Sith Lord and yet was still coldly determined to avenge Qui-Gon, Dooku had arrived upon the plan of going along with Sidious’ schemes and obeying his commands while patiently biding his time and working to bring Obi-Wan Kenobi under his own influence so that together they would be able to destroy Sidious, thereby revenging Qui-Gon Jinn, and yet also arrive at a position where they would best be able to reap the full benefits of Sidious’ genius and so bend the galaxy to their will, to Dooku’s will. Not Sidious’ will and not the will of the High Council of the Jedi Order.

While there would indeed be a new galactic government and a new organization of Force-users, who would by all means act as the ultimate enforcers of that new government, there would also be a few crucial differences between Sidious’ vision of the future and the reality that Dooku and Obi-Wan would bring about - the most obvious, of course, being that both the Jedi and the Sith would be completely extinct within that future, with a new Order of Force-users devoted dispassionately to all aspects of the Force, Living as well as Unifying and the Light as well as the Dark Side of the Force, gloriously rising out of the ashes of both the Sith and the Jedi Order to take their rightful places as shepherds and rulers of the galaxy. This new Order will not only maintain a balanced approach to the Force, it will inevitably also help to bring balance to the Force, Chosen One or no, though Dooku would of course prefer to have the Chosen One as one of his, given the boy’s relationship with Obi-Wan.

More importantly, however, even though Dooku does admire the notion of an Empire of Man, he is also intelligent enough to realize how inherently unbalanced and flawed such a form of government actually is, given that it would automatically foment resentment and rebellion among the numerous other sentient races of the galaxy. Thus, while Dooku’s new government will be above the endless petty squabbling of the rabble as well as the power-mongering of the so-called politicians and will also be clearly in favor of pure biologicals rather than droids and cyborg monstrosities, his Empire - an Empire of the Force - will also be a place where proven ability, demonstrated intelligence, and actual merit determine advancement far more than a being’s mere species. And Dooku is determined that grace and nobility and elegance will flourish within his Empire of the Force. The more Dooku has had to deal with the allies Sidious’ plotting have gained him, the more determined he has grown that elegance and gallantry will be both the hallmarks and cornerstones of his Empire of the Force. Obi-Wan’s unquestionable integrity and poise certainly embodies a classical refinement that is at most only half a step removed from the aristocratic elegance that Dooku himself embodies and continually refines. Between the two of them, they should be enough to overwhelm any of the more vulgar influences that Anakin Skywalker, with his unmitigated zeal to excel and the unthinking haste this causes him to exhibit in all areas, might bring to the table, Chosen One or not. And they will be the template of both the new Order and the Empire of the Force. Dooku is certain of this. In fact, he is so certain of this that it has only, of late, occurred to him that in order to accomplish these goals, Dooku must not only win Obi-Wan Kenobi and most likely also Anakin Skywalker to his side, and soon - before Sidious’ plans can advance too far - he must also free himself so utterly of any lingering taint from Sidious and the Separatists that the galaxy will willingly embrace Dooku and his vision after Sidious’ death and the consequent fall of the Republic.

It is this realization and the accompanying unshakable bad feeling that he cannot seem to find a way around that, in the main, account for Dooku’s recent troublesome preoccupation with Master Yoda and the Jedi Order and the part that Dooku has played not only in the destruction of the Order but also the enchantment and gallantry that the Order has always embodied. It is this niggling worry and that troublesomely recurrent bad feeling that has, of late, caused Dooku to start questioning not only his Sith Master’s intentions for him but also the use that Sidious has gotten out of him, while Dooku has essentially been little more than his willing tool. These things disturb Dooku because he is well aware of the fact that Sidious, as a Sith, is primarily a being of treachery, and yet the Sith Lord expounds constantly upon long-range plans that will inevitably yield enormous power to Dooku while seeming entirely ignorant of the possibility that Dooku, as Darth Tyranus, might also have long been planning a treacherous end for Sidious. Dooku cannot quite see how Sidious’ covetous interest in young Skywalker and his stated intentions for Dooku can coincide, even if Dooku would ever be so foolish enough as to kill Obi-Wan and then submit himself to the mercy of the Republic under Anakin’s care. In fact, he cannot quite see how even the control that Sidious’ alter ego enjoys over the boy could ever be enough to keep the young man from simply murdering Dooku in cold blood, the instant he surrenders. And this worries Dooku to no end, for Sidious seems quite sincere about wanting Dooku to kill Obi-Wan and then surrender to Anakin, and he knows that Sidious is intelligent enough to realize how little chance Dooku would honestly have of surviving such a chain of events. And if Sidious does not mean for Dooku to be able to survive surrendering to Skywalker, if this means that Sidious is, in fact, planning some treachery of his own, then does it mean that Sidious has divined Dooku’s plans or does it only go to prove how utterly treacherous and without honor Sidious actually is?

Dooku would not concern himself about this nearly so much if only he could honestly bring himself to believe that it will be as easy to kill Sidious as it would potentially be easy to simply undo all of Sidious’ plans simply by revealing the man for what and who he truly is. Dooku is sure that he could quite easily sway Obi-Wan - and, with him, Anakin - to his side merely by revealing the Sith Lord’s alter ego. However, trying to do so while the man is in the same room is certainly out of the question. Even in restraints, Sidious is more than powerful enough to summon Sith lighting, and, moreover, the Sith Lord has been so reticent to speak of himself and his own apprenticeship under the Sith Lord who preceded him that Dooku is almost certain that the man has access to more than a few other similarly powerful (and painful) tricks that Dooku simply knows nothing about. This concerns Dooku greatly, since Sidious wants Obi-Wan dead and Dooku cannot allow the Sith to harm Obi-Wan or even Anakin, not if Dooku’s revenge against Sidious is to have any real meaning. Dooku wants to avenge Qui-Gon, yes, but not at Obi-Wan’s expense. It is a problem for which Dooku as yet has no viable solution, aside from the possibility of simply surrendering when the two Jedi finally make their way to the room and blindly hoping that Sidious doesn’t simply reveal himself then and there in order to strike down both Obi-Wan and Dooku and incapacitate Anakin in order to steal the boy away for himself. And Dooku is rapidly running out of time.

If Dooku didn’t know better, he might almost suspect that Sidious has prepared this trap not so much for the two Jedi as he has for Dooku himself . . .

Again, this scene continues immediately in the next posting!