"Matthew Woodring Stover - Clone Wars - Shatterpoint" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stover Matthew Woodring)

They all stirred, rousing themselves, instinctively adjusting their clothing. Palpatine's office now looked
unreal: as though the clean carpeted floor and crisp lines of furniture, the pure filtered air, and the view of
Coruscant that filled the large windows were the holographic projection, and they all still sat in the jungle.

As though only the jungle were real.
Mace spoke first.

'She's right." He lifted his head from his hands. "I have to go after her. Alone." Palpatine's eyebrows
twitched. "That seems. unwise." 'Concur with Chancellor Palpatine, I do," Yoda said slowly. "Great risks
there would be.

Too valuable you are. Send others, we should." 'There is no one else who can do this." 'Surely, Master
Windu"-Palpatine's smile was respectfully disbelieving-"a Republic Intelligence covert ops team, or even
a team of Jedi-" 'No." Mace rose, and straightened his shoulders. "It has to be me." 'Please, we all
understand your concern for your former student, Master Windu, but surely-" 'Reasons he must have,
Supreme Chancellor," Yoda said. "Listen to them, we should." Even Palpatine found that one did not
argue with Master Yoda.

Mace struggled to put his certainty into words. This difficulty was a function of his particular gift of
perception. Some things were so obvious to him that they were hard to describe: like explaining how he
knew it was raining while he stood in a thunderstorm.

'If Depa has. gone mad-or worse, fallen to the dark side," he began, "it's vital that the Jedi know why.
That we discover what did it to her. Until we know this, no more Jedi should be exposed to it than is
absolutely necessary. Also, this all might be entirely false: a deliberate attempt to incriminate her. That
ambient noise on the recording." He glanced at the agent. "If her voice was faked-say, synthesized by
computer-that noise could be there precisely to blur the evidence of trickery, couldn't it?" The agent
nodded. "But why would someone want to frame her?" Mace waved this off. "Regardless, she must be
brought in. And soon-before rumor of such massacres reaches the wider galaxy. Even if she had nothing
to do with them, having a Jedi's name associated with these crimes is a threat to the public trust in the
Jedi. She must answer any charges before they are ever publicly made." 'Granted, she must be brought
in," Palpatine allowed. "But the question remains: why you?' 'Because she might not want to come."
Palpatine looked thoughtful.

Yoda's head came up, and his eyes opened, gleaming at the Supreme Chancellor. "If rogue she has gone.
to find her, difficult it will be. To apprehend her." His voice dropped, as though the words caused him
pain. "Dangerous, that will be." 'Depa was my Padawan." Mace moved away from the desk and stared
out the window at the shimmering twilight that slowly darkened the capital's cityscape. "The bond of
Master and Padawan is. intense. No one knows her better-and I have more experi ence in those jungles
than any other living Jedi. I'm the only one who can find her if she doesn't want to be found.

And if she must be-" He swallowed, and stared at the moondisk of light scattered from one of the orbital
mirrors.

"If she must be. stopped," he said at length, "I may be the only one who can do that, too." Palpatine's
eyebrows twitched polite incomprehension.

Mace took a deep breath, finding himself once more looking at his hands, through his hands, seeing only
an image in his mind, sharp as a dream: lightsaber against lightsaber in the Temple's training halls, the
green flash of Depa's blade seeming to come from everywhere at once.