STAR WARS: Presage of the Force (A Fan Fic by Michael Holiday)

Chapter 2

Fourteen years later.

Anakin cried out, "No!" He stepped between the chancellor laying on the floor and Master Windu, activated his saber and sliced the Jedi's right arm off.

The amethyst blade fell from Mace's grip, arm smoking, cauterized from the intense energy from Skywalker's humming lightsaber. His eyes popped wide in shock as he held up his severed limb, turned toward Anakin, until—

"Power!" The Supreme Chancellor leveled his hands at Master Windu as Force lightning shot from his fingertips.

The venomous strike surged through the Jedi's body, tearing through muscle and fiber, shocking him into disbelief. Flashes of energy washed across his face as Palpatine doubled his efforts, and all Anakin could do is watch in horror at the undoing of the great Jedi. Mace rose in the air, willed so by Palpatine, and his body flung across the sprawling canyon of Coruscant's cityscape.

Master Windu's body smacked the side of a towering building and bit his tongue in half. The coppery tang of his blood filled his mouth as rain pounded down from above. He fell straight toward the mist and fog blanketing Coruscant's surface streets.

The building angled out halfway down. Mace slammed into the duraplast windows, but they held, bouncing his body off like a child's doll and tumbling him down the grade before dumping him off another vertical drop.

A hundred meters, 90, 80, the lights blurred as he rushed toward certain death. Seventy, 60, 50 meters, Windu braced for the inevitable, 40, 30 meters. He burst through an enormous red, canopy.

Twenty meters.

The next awning absorbed his fall, but it creaked and bent under the strain, bouncing him into the air. Mace grasped for the valance with his sole hand, but the wet fabric slid through his fingertips even as he tightened his grip.

Ten meters.

With no more canopies, nothing below him but lights and permacrete, he plunged.

Five meters.

At the last instant, Mace summoned all his remaining energy and focused on the Force. Unable to execute a landing from the fall in his battered state, he absorbed what he could.

His body crumpled into a heap of spent mortality in the middle of the puddle riddled street. A torrent of pain struck Mace's every nerve as he writhed on the ground. Must get up. He moaned and pushed to his knees. Must get help. He pushed again and gained his feet, but only for a moment.

His knees buckled, and he collapsed onto his hands and knees. An alarm went off inside his head, the Force sending him a warning—too late.

Blur of red, a landspeeder whizzed past and hammered Mace in the head with the front fender. The world seemed to move in heartbeats. Stinging vibrations sang through his body, an off-key pain that not even the Force could mask completely. The metal trim sliced a gash on his forehead. Blood dribbled out and sprinkled the wet road like a new-modern painting, growing in downward spires in the puddles like the kelp forests of Mon Cara. His head slammed the ground and his eyes rolled back to the verge of unconsciousness.

Mace laid on the permacrete, his body unresponsive. He grimaced in pain as the stinging from his severed arm spiked. A squad of Stormtroopers surrounded him as he lay motionless, their BlasTech E-11 rifles fixed on him. He let his unconsciousness take him. After all, he foresaw this event happening. I accept my fate. May the Force be with me.