[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Covalent Bonds

Chapter 38

It was teatime on Serenno, but tea was the last thing on Count Dooku's mind. A fully-revealed Sith advances, never retreats. Dooku charged the two Jedi who both confronted and affronted him. In my home! He Force-leaped to the desktop, a lightsaber arcing blood rays from each hand to lop off their offending heads.

With a close-footed spin and flourish of his two red blades, he spun to see the carnage. It takes a Sith to catch a Sith. And neither of you are Sith. Dooku knew he had missed by millimeters, and there they were, in his home, still defying him. How dare they? He back-flipped from the wall in a move that should have, should have placed him between them and the door, but didn't. The two usurpers of his domain went on the offensive against the blades that he had won from the Black Sun Souvenirs auction house. The auction house dealt in black market items, more than JediNow! did and so it was that he paid more attention to Ventress' curved-handle dual lightsabers than he ever had to her. Occasionally he wondered why the matched pair had stayed together, traveling from Boz Pity to Black Sun Souvenirs, but he had not enough momentum beyond velleity to seek Ventress' or his former Padawan's, Komari Vosa's, Force-signature on them. They were tools that he had learned to use to a higher degree than in his Jedi swordsmanship dabbling with the form, because a Sith never stops learning, either. A Sith grows, evolves, and Lord Sidious' decade of instructions had impressed Dooku with the need to learn. So he obtained these lightsabers cheaply, he remembered Ventress' moves and improved on them as if her loss had been no loss at all. If he had had her from the beginning of her pathetic underprivileged life, he might have considered her as an apprentice. Now he had none, and was content. Though at this moment, I might have sacrificed an apprentice as a pawn.

It was youngling's play to get inside Kenobi's guard and kick Kenobi's kneecap while pulling Skywalker's left forearm, making his Great-Grand-Padawan stumble into his off-balance Master. Dooku stepped backwards and against all his dignity, secured his lightsabers to his belt before dropping to the ground to roll on the carpet for some floorwork. He flung himself in a blindingly fast spin, knocking the Jedi off their feet to join him on the floor. In midair, Master and Padawan each checked his lightsaber into its clip to avoid an accident. Grunting, the Sith and the Jedi grappled for dominance.

Anakin slid himself behind Dooku, clamping his mechno-arm under Dooku's right arm and across his chest, grasping Dooku's left wrist. From there he went to a full Anakkona Rear Mount with his legs around Dooku's waist to hook his feet just inside Dooku's knees, pushing outward with his insteps. From here Dooku could shift a hip to create a wedge between their frames and gain leverage enough to break free. Anakin had no intention of allowing this. He crashed them both on their right sides.

Good work, Padawan! Obi-Wan slipped the popper syringe from his belt, flicked off the needle's protective cap and stuck the plastene cylinder between his teeth. He crawled to their struggling forms and ripped away Dooku's veda cloth collar, baring a white stretch of muscled neck, starkly pale against the ragged edges of the black cloth. Eyes wild as a reek's, pressure growing on his pivot vertebra and pharynx, Dooku struggled against Anakin's weight, thrashing as best he could despite the choke hold that Anakin pressed even harder.

"Now, Ma-- " Anakin made a beginner's error. To secure his grip even further, he crossed his ankles and squeezed Dooku's torso with his thighs. Dooku promptly brought his own ankles together and caught Anakin's legs in a powerful leglock. Anakin cried out as both heels' tendons came close to being crushed. Dooku smiled, upped the pressure, and broke the Anakkona Rear Mount in one of only a few successful ways.

Padawan, you needed to put your right foot over Dooku's left arm and cross your ankles up there and then go for an armbar while controlling the far wrist, we practiced that. Obi-Wan replaced the popper syringe's tethered protective cap as the three scrambled to their feet, Anakin favoring his right leg. This bred a pause, a battle stop.

Kenobi, panting, roughly-stubbled face far from the arrogant man in Geonosis' containment field. Skywalker, flexing that atrocious arm, eying him for an opening to re-engage. And himself, a Sith imbued with enough wit and brawn to master a new lightsaber form at eighty-three Standard years of age. They'll not know what hit them, he thought, and charged. Crack-zzzzzpz. His momentum was checked by a cable -- from my new astromech droid? -- that captured his right ankle. He fell to one knee, swinging both lightsabers like a Concord Dawn harvester's scythes at reaping time. The Jedi retreated. Well, they would since they considered him down for the count. This Count is not down, he's just begun to fight! Without seeing his target, Dooku stabbed his lightsaber backwards and severed the cable. The droid screamed in a way that Dooku would have wiped out of his circuits and retracted its shorn cable into a duplicitous recess, undoubtedly filled with more treachery. Palo of Naboo, I'm coming for you. Before the accursed astromech could regroup, Dooku thought of a plan and bent his mind to it. The five boxes of holocards shook, opened and thousands of holocards flew like vibroshivs through the air towards the Jedi, a tornado of cutting plastene edges.

Our own plan, against us ... Obi-Wan made himself into a Hoth snow-wedge, shielding Anakin by the power of his mind's control over the Force. The Force obeyed his command, forming a Vev-shaped prow into the holocards, which flew to either side of the Jedi, some slicing into the expensive greel-wood panelling behind them where they quivered as if in a high wind. With the queer slowing down of time while in the embrace of the Force, Obi-Wan saw fly by his and Anakin's features on their special Dual Duelling run of holocards. How appropriate.

A thumping that Anakin had thought was coming from Artoo's anxious rocking on his treads localized in the door behind him, which cycled open jerkily. ARC6754 and the rest of his squad shinnied through the door, which had stuck at one-quarter diameter. Six took in the Jedi's ragged appearance and Anakin's limp as he signaled the troopers to fan out. The group of seven formed a half-circle around the beleaguered Count of Serenno.

My astromech, now my aides turned against me? Dooku felt the injustice of it all more than he had felt anything as an idealist in a long time. This is not right! It's time for Juyo. Dooku performed the split-second invocation of the technique that Mace Windu termed 'Vaapad.' Dooku now saw the room as if limned in red and black, the colors of the Zabrak assassin's Sith tattoos. If Sidious had talked me into getting some of those ... no. He didn't even try. Further and further he Fell even as he clipped the handles of the lightsabers together to form a saberstaff. Holding each handle in the peculiar style that he himself had originated, ARC397 was the first to fall to his blades' swath, the clone's weapon raised, trigger finger a millimeter from squeezing off a round. The two halves of the clone's body had not separated yet before they were joined by ARC58134 and ARC7811, both squeezing off wild rays of bolts in their death throes, none of which connected with a living being. On Dooku's reverse swipe, his aim was marred by that ungrateful ranking clone's steady firing and Dooku was forced to withdraw his rightmost blade into its hilt. Blast, I didn't want them to know yet that I can vary the lengths of the blades in battle. He parried the bolts effortlessly with his left lightsaber.

They're dead, I felt them die, poor brave lads. Obi-Wan charged into the fray, trusting that Anakin would hold back and then cover his feint. Thrust, parry, riposte, don't think of how much this duel resembles the one between Maul and Master Qui-Gon and myself. Anakin flourished his own lightsaber, testing his leg, willing the pain away, sensing that his time to help was seconds away.

When Obi-Wan drew out Dooku into single combat, Six and ARC1830 stopped their barrage and dragged their brothers' halved corpses off to one side. There was no blood, though the clones wished for their helmets to filter out the sickening charred-flesh odor. We'll see how His Countship deals with two Jedi and two commandos. Six waited for an opening to aid his commanders.

Obi-Wan, watch out, he's doing something strange -- "Master!" -- he's joining the hilts again and offsetting them into a Leth-shape, it's like he's doubling his range of motion -- "I'm coming!" Anakin leaped next to Obi-Wan and as they saw the mounting danger in the ceaseless weaving of the blades whirring in Dooku's defense, they acted as one and cut at the center of the saberstaff. Dooku evaded the blow easily.

One danger in using a saberstaff is that its longer hilt-length means that its wielder must use it either horizontally or vertically with full extension of each blade while keeping the blades in constant motion. Many a practitioner of Form VII gave up learning a saberstaff's use beyond its basics due to the difficulty of Force-manipulating the lengths of each blade while in combat's chaos. Dooku had not given up. He cycled the bottom most blade to just over a half-meter in length, intending to present his right side to his antagonists as a smaller target while tipping the uppermost blade into Skywalker's right shoulder and, if Darkness prevailed, slanting all the way through to the Padawan's waist, carving away that hideous metal arm. Kenobi feinted back from their ill-conceived forward thrust, as if foreseeing Dooku's move, while the more inexperienced Skywalker continued towards Dooku on shaky legs. You're stumbling into my range, all the better to kill y-- "No!" In a spinning movement that surely must have come from the rapture that Dark Side users experienced while standing on the terentatek carpet, Dooku's heady ambition to slay the Jedi's Chosen One led him to flip the shortened length of the saberstaff forward, leaving the opposite full length end stabbing and scorching its way into the green priceless rug and even into the floor. What have I done?

Now. Obi-Wan threw Anakin forward with a Force-push after first shutting off Anakin's lightsaber and his own. Dooku's shock at his possession's damage was momentary and his grip on his staff loosened for a mere second, but that was enough to retract the deadly red beams. Anakin's chest smacked into Dooku's midriff and Obi-Wan dived after him while Six and ARC1830 rushed up to take a leg each.

As Obi-Wan shoved the popper syringe home below Dooku's jaw and saw the Sith's eyes roll up in his head, Anakin scrambled off Dooku's trembling form. "You could have warned a Padawan before using him as a battering ram," Anakin complained as he pulsed some Force-healing into his throbbing heels.

Obi-Wan sat back on his haunches, trying not to breathe in too deeply the stench of the mutilated clones. Artoo tweedled mournfully to himself.

Meanwhile, on Naboo ...

"What's your name? Your real name?"

"Ferus, Representative Retbax."

"Mine is Ommané, and if you're here to accompany Dormé and Palo and me to the Ando Free Colonies Embassy Ball, I think first names are in order. You call me 'Ommané,' I'll call you 'Ferus,' Ferus."

"Very well. I'll call the transport around."

"'Ommané.'"

"Ommané."
< br> "I already called the pilot, Ferus."

"You're efficient and timely."

"Qualities you like?"

"I ... yes, I do."

"Then we shall get along splendidly."

"What are you doing?"

"It's a warm summer evening. You don't need your hood. This is a masked ball."

"A hood will suit as well as a mask."

"But it makes you appear Jedi."

"And you know that I am not."

"Do I? Palo's botanist brother of whom I have never heard, here to cross-pollinate cloudflowers with flameflowers for a certain Fee Corporation. If you are successful, will you name a strain after me?"

"I will if you have the first dance with me."

"The second it must be. The first belongs to the Ambassador. Don't they teach you etiquette at Coruscant, I mean Theed, University?"

"I don't believe you'll want to do much dancing after he tromps your toes, Ommané."

"It's true, Aqualish swim gracefully, but on land they tend to ... lumber. Here, this extra mask may fit you."

"I can tie it on myself."

"But I'm here, so you don't need to. There. It's silver, like your hair, in part."

"'Silver' is a nice way of saying, 'gray,' Ommané."

"I color mine out."

"But you're nineteen Standard!"

"And you're twenty-four. Life in a responsible position in wartime is hard, Ferus. I think you've seen a lot of hardness, too."

"I can't wait for the war to end. It blocks research, it hardens our hearts, it blocks ... um, the space lanes for travel ... "

"Your research, yes, of course. Do you like to cross-pollinate, Ferus?"

"I've never done it, successfully I mean, between cloudflowers and flameflowers. If I'm successful, I'll name the first avatar 'Suspicion,' after you."

"That's not very flattering, Ferus."

"I can see through you."

"Now that's insulting. And I thought we were getting along so well."

"You are efficient. And you love our world. Have you been offplanet other than as a Senatorial duty to Coruscant?"

"To Coruscant, yes. I'm not interested in travel for pleasure. Where is that pilot?"

"There are downlevel pleasures there, the next time you go. I could give you directions."

"Ferus!"

"What? I mean the lowest level that anyone could go to, the Western Sea. On the northern hemisphere. You must not travel much when you go there. You can't get any lower than sea level, Ommané."

"No, no, Ferus. You're right. And what do you enjoy most about the Western Sea?"

"Beyond snorkeling, I think ... maybe ... "

"Yes, what dark secret yearning does a botanist plant down deep?"

"I'd like to have my own home on the shore. I don't have any funding, though, I mean for other things than research. I haven't Palo's talent or business sense."

"Or family resemblance, but that's all right, Ferus. Eh, here's the pilot. We'll shoot over to Dormé and Palo's in a Coruscant minute."

"After you, Ommané."

TBC

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