Darth Plagueis

13: RIDERS ON THE STORM

In mad pursuit of their prey and all but taking flight, the two Sith, Master and apprentice for eleven years now, bounded across the grassy terrain, their short capes snapping behind them, vibroblades clenched in their hands and bare forearms flecked with gore; blood caked in the human’s long hair and dried on the Muun’s hairless brow. Twisting and swirling around them was a herd of agile, long-necked quadrupeds with brown-and-black-striped fur; identical and moving as if possessed of a single mind, leaping at the same instant, reversing direction, cycloning gregariously over the short-napped savanna.

“This is not a chase,” Plagueis said as he ran, “this is a summoning. You need to get behind the eyes of your target and become the object of its desire. The same holds true when you summon the Force: you must make yourself desirable, fascinating, addictive, and whatever power you need will be at your command.”

Blended into the herd, the animal Sidious had fixed his sight on would have been indistinguishable to normal beings. But Sidious had the animal in his mind and was now looking through its eyes, one with it. Alongside him suddenly, the creature seemed to intuit its end and tipped its head to one side to expose its muscular neck. The moment the vibroblade stuck, the creature’s eyes rolled back and grew opaque; hot blood spurted but quickly ceased to flow — the Force departing, and Sidious drawing its power deep into himself.

“Now another one,” Plagueis said in a congratulatory tone. “And another one after that.”

Sidious felt himself shoved into motion, as if by a gale-force wind.

“Feel the power of the dark side flow through you,” Plagueis added from behind him. “We serve nature’s purpose by culling the herd, and our own by sharpening our skills. We are the predatory swarm!”

The low-gravity planet was known then as Buoyant, its bewildering jumble of flora and fauna the result of an experiment by a long-forgotten species that had tweaked the atmosphere, set the world spinning faster than nature had intended, and encouraged the growth of lush forests and expansive grasslands. The still-functioning machines of the ancients dotted the landscape, and millennia later the animals they had imported were thriving. Nothing moved slowly or ponderously on rapidly spinning Buoyant, even day and night, or the storms that scrubbed the atmosphere with violent regularity.

Elsewhere on the planet — in dense forests, in arid wastes, beneath the waves of inland seas — the two Sith had already taken the lives of countless creatures: culling, sharpening, marinating themselves in a miasma of dark side energy.

Kilometers from where the quadruped hunt had commenced, Plagueis and Sidious sat under the enormous canopy of a tree whose trunk was wide enough to engulf a landspeeder, and whose thick branches were burdened with flowering parasitic plants. Breathing hard and drenched in sweat, they rested in silence as clouds of eager insects gathered around them. The pulse-beats of the Muun’s trio of hearts were visible beneath his translucent skin, and his clear eyes tracked the slaloming movements of the escaping herd.

“Few of my people are aware of just how wealthy I am,” he said at last, “since most of my riches derive from activities that have nothing to do with the ordinary business of finance. For many years my peers wondered why I chose to remain unwed, and ultimately reached the conclusion that I was in essence married to my work, without realizing how right they were. Except that my real bride is the dark side of the Force. What the ancients called Bogan, as separate from Ashla.

“Even the Jedi understand that there is no profit in partnering with a being who lacks the ability to understand what it means to be in the grip of the Force, and so the Order restricts marriage by dogma, in service, so the Jedi say, to the purity of Ashla.

“But Ashla is a perversion,” he went on, “for the dark has always preceded the light. The original idea was to capture the power of the Force and make it subservient to the will of sentient life. The ancients — the Celestials, the Rakata — didn’t pronounce judgment on their works. They moved planets, organized star systems, conjured dark side devices like the Star Forge as they saw fit. If millions died in the process, so be it. The lives of most beings are of small consequence. The Jedi have failed to understand this. They are so busy saving lives and striving to keep the powers of the Force in balance that they have lost sight of the fact that sentient life is meant to evolve, not simply languish in contented stasis.”

He paused to glance at Sidious. “No doubt the texts I’ve provided contain references to the so-called Potentium theory — that light and dark depend on the intention of the user. This is yet another perversion of the truth perpetrated by those who would keep us shackled to the Force. The power of water and the power of fire are entirely different. Glaciers and volcanoes both have the potential to transform landscapes, but one does so by burying what lies beneath, where the other spews forth new terrain. The Sith are not placid stars but singularities. Rather than burn with muted purpose, we warp space and time to twist the galaxy to our own design.

“To become one of grandiloquent power requires more than mere compliance; what’s needed is obstinacy and tenacity. That’s why you must always be receptive to the currents of the dark side, because no matter how nimble you are, or think you are, the Force will show you no pity. As you’ve learned, your body sleeps but your mind is never at rest.”

Getting to his feet, Plagueis extended his long arms in front of him and loosed a storm of Force lightning that crackled over the landscape, igniting fires in the grass.

“A Jedi sufficiently strong in the Force can be trained to produce a facsimile, but not true Sith lightning, which, unabated, has the power not only to incapacitate or kill, but to physically transform the victim. Force lightning requires strength of a sort only a Sith can command because we accept consequence and reject compassion. To do so requires a thirst for power that is not easily satisfied. The Force tries to resist the callings of ravenous spirits; therefore it must be broken and made a beast of burden. It must be made to answer to one’s will.

“But the Force cannot be treated deferentially,” he added as a few final tendrils sparked from his fingertips. “In order to summon and use lightning properly, you will someday have to be on the receiving end of its power, as a means of taking the energy inside yourself.”

Sidious watched the last of the brush fires burn out, then said, “Will I eventually be physically transformed?”

“Into some aged, pale-skinned, raspy-voiced, yellow-eyed monster, you mean. Such as the one you see before you.” Plagueis gestured to himself, then lowered himself to the ground. “Surely you are acquainted with the lore: King Ommin of Onderon, Darths Sion and Nihilus. But whether it will happen to you, I can’t say. Know this, though, Sidious, that the power of the dark side does not debilitate the practitioner as much as it debilitates those who lack it.” He grinned with evil purpose. “The power of the dark side is an illness no true Sith would wish to be cured of.”

On Hypori they were the prey, standing back-to-back in their black zeyd-cloth hooded robes at the center of concentric rings of droids, retrofitted by Baktoid Armor to function as combat automata. Two hundred programmed assailants — bipedal, treaded, some levitated by antigrav generators — armed with a variety of weapons, ranging from hand blasters to short-barreled burst-rifles. Plagueis hadn’t allowed his young apprentice to wield a lightsaber until a few years earlier, but Sidious was brandishing one now, self-constructed of phrik alloy and aurodium, and powered by a synthetic crystal. Made for delicate, long-fingered hands — as much a work of art as a weapon — the lightsaber thrummed as he waved the blade from side to side in front of him.

“Every weapon, manufactured by whatever species, has its own properties and peculiarities,” Plagueis was saying, his own blade angled toward the ferrocrete floor of the battledome’s fabricated cityscape, as if to light a fuse. “Range, penetrating power, refresh rate … In some instances your life might depend on your ability to focus on the weapon rather than on the wielder. You must train yourself to identify a weapon instantly — whether it’s a product of BlasTech or Merr-Sonn, Tenloss or Prax — so that you will know where to position yourself, and the several ways to best deflect a well-aimed bolt.”

Plagueis put his words into action as the first ring of droids began to converge on them, staggering the attack and triggering bursts at random. Orbiting Sidious, the Muun’s blade warded off every volley, returning the bolts to their sources, or deflecting them into the façades of the faux buildings surrounding them or into other droids. At other times Plagueis made no attempt to redirect the attacks, but simply twisted and torqued his rangy body, allowing the bolts to miss him by centimeters. Around the two Sith, the automata collapsed one after the next, gushing lubricants from holed reservoirs or exploding in a hail of alloy parts, until all were heaped on the ferrocrete floor.

“The next ring is yours,” Plagueis said.

Rugged, uninhabited Hypori belonged to the Techno Union, whose Skakoan foreman, Wat Tambor, owed his seat in the Republic Senate to Damask Holdings. In exchange, the bionic humanoid had made Hypori available as a training ground for members of the Echani Sun Guard and provided the necessary battle droids. Calling in another favor, Hego Damask had requested a private session in the fabricated cityscape, so that Plagueis and his apprentice could be free to employ lightsabers — though only for the purpose of deflecting bolts rather than dismemberment or penetration.

When it came Sidious’s turn to demonstrate his skill, Plagueis spoke continuously from behind him, adding distraction to the distinct possibility of inadvertent disintegration.

“A being trained in the killing arts doesn’t wait for you to acquire him as a target, or establish him or herself as an opponent, as if in some martial arts contest. Your reactions must be instantaneous and nothing less than lethal, for you are a Sith Lord, and will be marked for death.”

The droids continued to converge, ring after ring of them, until the floor was piled high with smoking husks. Plagueis issued a voice command that brought the onslaught to an abrupt end and deactivated his lightsaber. The pinging of cooling weapons, the hiss of escaping gas, the unsteady whir of failing servomotors punctuated the sudden silence. Alloy limbs spasmed and photoreceptors winked out, surrendering their eerie glow. The recycled air was rotten with the smell of fried circuitry.

“Feast your eyes on our handiwork,” Plagueis said, gesturing broadly.

Sidious switched off his weapon. “I see nothing but ruined droids.”

Plagueis nodded. “Darth Bane advised: One day the Republic will fall and the Jedi will be wiped out. But that will not happen until we are ready to seize that power for ourselves.”

“When?” Sidious said. “How will we know when the time is right?”

“We are close to knowing. For a thousand years the Sith have allowed themselves to be reduced to the stuff of folklore. Since it serves our purposes we’ve done nothing to counter the belief that we are perversions of the Jedi, evil mages, embodiments of hatred, rage, and bloodlust, capable even of leaving the residue of our malefactions and dastardly deeds in places of power.”

“Why have we not yet visited those places, Master — instead of worlds like Buoyant and Hypori?”

Darth Plagueis gazed at him. “You are impatient. You see no value in learning about weapons or explosives, Force suggestion or the healing arts. You hunger for power of the sort you imagine is to be found on Korriban, Dromund Kaas, Zigoola. Then let me tell you what you’ll encounter in those reliquaries: Jedi, treasure hunters, and legends. Of course there are tombs in the Valley of the Dark Lords, but they have been plundered and now draw only tourists. On Dxun, Yavin Four, Ziost, the same is true. If it’s history that has caught your fancy, I can show you a hundred worlds on which esoteric Sith symbols have been woven covertly into architecture and culture, and I can bore you for years with tales of the exploits of Freedon Nadd, Belia Darzu, Darth Zannah, who is alleged to have infiltrated the Jedi Temple, and of starships imbued with Sith consciousness. Is that your wish, Sidious, to become an academic?”

“I wish only to learn, Master.”

“And so you will. But not from spurious sources. We are not some cult like the Tetsu’s Sorcerers of Tund. Descended from Darth Bane, we are the select few who refuse to be carried by the Force and who carry it instead — thirty in a millennium rather than the tens of thousands fit to be Jedi. Any Sith can feign compassion and self-righteousness and master the Jedi arts, but only one in a thousand Jedi could ever become a Sith, for the dark side is only for those who value self-determinism over all else that existence offers. Only once in these past thousand years has a Sith Lord strayed into the light, and one day I will tell you that tale. But for now, take to heart the fact that Bane’s Rule of Two was at the start our saving grace, putting an end to the internecine strife that allowed the Jedi Order to gain the upper hand. Part of our ongoing task will be to hunt down and eliminate any Sith pretenders who pose a threat to our ultimate goals.”

Sidious remained silent for a long moment. “Am I to be equally distrustful of the lessons contained in Sith Holocrons?”

“Not distrustful,” Plagueis said gravely. “But holocrons contain knowledge specific and idiosyncratic to each Sith who constructed them. Real knowledge is passed by Master to apprentice in sessions such as this, where nothing is codified or recorded — diluted — and thus it cannot be forgotten. There will come a time when you may wish to consult the holocrons of past Masters, but until then you would do better not to be influenced by them. You must discover the dark side in your own way, and perfect your power in your own fashion. All I can do in the meantime is help to keep you from losing your way while we hide in plain sight from the prying eyes of our enemies.”

“ ‘What celestial body is more luminous than a singularity,’ ” Sidious recited, “ ‘hiding in plain sight but more powerful than all?’ ”

Plagueis grinned. “You are quoting Darth Guile.”

“He goes on to compare the Sith to a rogue or malignant cell, too small to be discovered by scans or other techniques, but capable of spreading silently and lethally through a system. Initially the victim simply doesn’t feel right, then falls ill, and ultimately succumbs.”

Plagueis locked eyes with him. “Consider the mind-set of an anarchist who plans to sacrifice himself for a cause. For the weeks, months, possibly years leading up to the day he straps a thermal detonator to his chest and executes his task, he has lived in and been strengthened by the secret he carries, knowing the toll his act will take. So it has been for the Sith, residing in a secret, sacred place of knowledge for one thousand years, and knowing the toll our acts will take. This is power, Sidious. Where the Jedi, by contrast, are like beings who, as they move among the healthy, keep secret the fact that they are dying of a terminal illness.

“But true power needn’t bear claws or fangs, or announce itself with snarls and throaty barks, Sidious. It can subdue with manacles of shimmersilk, purposeful charisma, and political astuteness.”

The location of the planet known to the Sith as Kursid had been expunged from Republic records in distant times, and for the past six hundred years had been reserved for use as a place of spectacle. Masters and apprentices of the Bane lineage had visited with enough regularity that a cult had come into being in that part of the world based on the periodic return of the sky visitors. The Sith hadn’t bothered to investigate what Kursid’s indigenous humanoids thought about the visits — whether in their belief systems the Sith were regarded as the equivalent of deities or demons — since it was unlikely that the primitives had yet so much as named their world. However, visiting as apprentice and — more often than not — as Master, each Sith Lord had remarked on the slow advancement of Kursid’s civilization. How, on the early visits, the primitives had defended themselves with wooden war clubs and smooth rocks hurled from slings. Two hundred years later, many of the small settlements had grown to become cities or ceremonial centers built of hewn stone, with social classes of rulers and priests, merchants and warriors. Gradually the cities had become ringed with ranged weapons of a crude sort, and magical guardian symbols had been emblazoned on the sloping sides of defensive walls. At some point previous to Darth Tenebrous’s visit as an apprentice, replicas of the Sith ships had been constructed in the center of the arid plateau that served as a battleground, and enormous totemic figures — visible only from above — had been outlined by removing tens of thousands of fist-sized volcanic stones that covered the ground. On Plagueis’s first visit, some fifty years earlier, the warriors he and Tenebrous faced had been armed with longbows and metal-tipped lances.

That the Sith had never demanded anything other than battle hadn’t kept the primitives from attempting to adopt a policy of appeasement, leaving at the ships’ perpetual landing site foodstuffs, sacrificial victims, and works of what they considered art, forged of materials they held precious or sacred. But the Sith had simply ignored the offerings, waiting instead on the stony plain for the primitives to deploy their warriors, as the primitives did now with Plagueis and Sidious waiting.

Announcing their arrival with low runs over the city, they had set the ship down and waited for six days, while the mournful calls of breath-driven horns had disturbed the dry silences, and groups of primitives had flocked in to gather on the hillsides that overlooked the battleground.

“Do you recall what Darth Bane said regarding the killing of innocents?” Plagueis had asked.

“Our mission,” Sidious paraphrased, “is not to bring death on all those unfit to live. All we do must serve our true purpose — the preservation of our Order and the survival of the Sith. We must work to grow our power, and to accomplish that we will need to interact with individuals of many species across many worlds. Eventually word of our existence will reach the ears of the Jedi.”

To refrain from senseless killing, they wielded force pikes rather than lightsabers. Meter-long melee weapons used by the Echani and carried by the Senate Guard, the pikes were equipped with stun-module tips capable of delivering a shock that could overwhelm the nervous systems of most sentients, without causing permanent damage.

“The next few hours will test the limits of your agility, speed, and accuracy,” Plagueis said, as several hundred of the biggest, bravest, and most skilled warriors — their bodies daubed in pigments derived from plants, clay, and soil — began to separate themselves from the crowds. “But this is more than some simple exercise in proficiency; it is a rite of passage for these beings, as they are assistants in our rise to ultimate power, and therefore servants of the dark side of the Force. Centuries from now, advanced by the Sith, they might confront us with projectile weapons or energy beams. But by then we will have evolved, as well, perhaps past the need for this rite, and we will come instead to honor rather than engage them in battle. Through power we gain victory, and through victory our chains are broken. But power is only a means to an end.”

To the clamorous beating of drums and the wailing of the onlookers, the warriors brandished their weapons, raised a deafening war cry, and attacked. A nod from Plagueis, and the two Sith sped across the plain to meet them, flying among them like wraiths, evading arrows, gleaming spear tips, and blows from battle-axes, going one against one, two, or three, but felling opponent after opponent with taps from the force pikes, until among the hundreds of jerking, twitching bodies sprawled on the rough ground, only one was left standing.

That was when Plagueis tossed aside the stun pike and ignited his crimson blade, and a collective lament rose from the crowds on the hillsides.

“Execute one, terrify one thousand,” he said.

Hurling the warrior to the ground with a Force push, he used the lightsaber to deftly open the primitive’s chest cavity; then he reached a hand inside and extracted his still-beating heart.

The keening of the crowd reached a fevered pitch as he raised the heart high overhead; then it ended abruptly. Following a protracted moment of silence, the fallen warriors were helped from the battleground and the crowds began to disperse, disconsolate but emboldened by the fact that they had discharged their duty. Horns blew and a communal chant that was at once somber and celebratory was carried on the wind. In the principal city, a stone stele would be carved and erected for the dead one, and the day-count would commence until the return of the Sith.

Plagueis placed the still heart on the primitive’s chest and used the hem of his robe to wipe the blood from his hand and forearm.

“At one time, though I recognized that Muuns are a higher class of beings, I puzzled over the fact that beings would relinquish their seats for me, or step into the muck to allow me to pass. But early on in my apprenticeship I came to realize that the lumpen species were making room for me not because I was a Muun, but because I was in fact superior to them in every way. More, that they should by all rights allow me to step not merely past them but on them to get where I needed to be, because the Sith are their salvation, their only real hope. In that we will ultimately improve the lives of their descendants, they owe us every courtesy, every sacrifice, nothing short of their very lives.

“But there are dark times ahead for many of them, Sidious. An era of warfare necessary to purge the galaxy of those who have allowed it to decay. For decay has no cure; it has to be eradicated by the flames of a cleansing fire. And the Jedi are mostly to blame. Crippled by empathy, shackled to obedience — to their Masters, their Council, their cherished Republic — they perpetuate a myth of equality, serving the Force as if it were a belief system that had been programmed into them. With the Republic they are like indulgent parents, allowing their offspring to experiment with choices without consequence, and supporting wrong-headedness merely for the sake of maintaining family unity. Tripping over their own robes in a rush to uphold a galactic government that has been deteriorating for centuries. When instead they should be proclaiming: We know what’s best for you.

“The galaxy can’t be set on the proper course until the Jedi Order and the corrupt Republic have been brought down. Only then can the Sith begin the process of rebuilding from the ground up. This is why we encourage star system rivalries and the goals of any group that aims to foment chaos and anarchy. Because destruction of any sort furthers our own goals.”

Plagueis paused to take the warrior’s heart back into his hands.

“Through us, the powers of chaos are harnessed and exploited. Dark times don’t simply emerge, Sidious. Enlightened beings, guiding intelligences manipulate events to bring about a storm that will deliver power into the hands of an elite group willing to make the hard choices the Republic fears to make. Beings may elect their leaders, but the Force has elected us.”

He glanced at his apprentice. “Remember, though, that a cunning politician is capable of wreaking more havoc than two Sith Lords armed with vibroblades, lightsabers, or force pikes. That is what you must become, with me advising you from the dark.”

“Are we grand enough?” Sidious said.

“You should ask, are we crude enough?” Plagueis quirked a smile. “We’re not living in an age of giants, Sidious. But to succeed we must become as beasts.”

Taking a bite from the warrior’s heart, he passed the blood-filled organ to his apprentice.

14: THE SHAPE OF HIS SHADOW

“You appear to be enjoying the steak, Ambassador Palpatine.”

“Exquisite,” he said, holding her gaze for a fraction longer than might have been called for.

Working on her third glass of wine since dinner began, she interpreted his ready smile as permission to turn fully toward him. “Not too gamy?”

“Scarcely a trace of the wild.”

A dark-haired human beauty with big blue eyes, she was attached in some way to the Eriaduan consulate on Malastare — host of the gala at which the Dug winners of the Vinta Harvest Classic were being feted.

“Are you on Malastare for business or pleasure?”

“As luck would have it, both,” Palpatine said, patting his lips with a napkin. “Kinman Doriana and I are members of Senator Kim’s party.”

He indicated the clean-shaven, slightly balding young man in the adjacent seat.

“Charmed,” the woman said.

Doriana smiled broadly. “You’re not kidding.”

Her gaze moved to the neighboring table, where Vidar Kim sat with members of the Gran Protectorate and politicians from nearby Sullust, Darknell, and Sluis Van.

“Senator Kim is the tall one with the quaint beard?”

“No, he’s the one with the three eyestalks,” Doriana said.

The woman blinked, then laughed with him. “A friend of mine was asking about Senator Kim earlier. Is he married?”

“For many years, and happily,” Palpatine told her.

“And you?” she said, turning to him again.

“Frequent travel forbids it.”

She watched him over the rim of the wineglass. “Married to politics, is that it?”

“To the work,” he said.

“To the work,” Doriana said, raising his glass in a toast.

Just twenty-eight, Palpatine wore his reddish hair long, in the tradition of Naboo statesmen, and dressed impeccably. Many who encountered the ambassador described him as an articulate, charismatic young man of refined taste and quiet strength. A good listener, even-tempered, politically astute, astonishingly well informed for someone who had only been in the game for seven years. A patrician at a time when few could claim the title, and destined to go far. Well traveled, too, courtesy of his position as Naboo’s ambassador-at-large but also as the sole surviving heir to the wealth of House Palpatine. Long recovered from the tragedy that had struck his family more than a decade earlier, but perhaps as a result of being orphaned at seventeen, something of a loner. A man whose love of periodic solitude hinted at a hidden side to his personality.

“Tell me, Ambassador,” she said, as she set her glass down, “are you one of those men with a friend in every spaceport?”

“I’m always eager to make friends,” Palpatine said in a low monotone that brought sudden color to her face. “We’re alike in that way.”

Taking her glossy lower lip between her teeth, she reached for her wineglass once more. “Are you perhaps a Jedi mind reader disguised in ambassadorial robes?”

“Anything but.”

“I’ve often wondered whether they have secret relationships,” she said in a conspiratorial voice. “Gallivanting around the galaxy, using the Force to seduce innocent beings.”

“I wouldn’t know, but I sincerely doubt it,” Palpatine said.

She looked at him in a calculating way, and raised her hand to caress his chin with a manicured forefinger. “On Eriadu some believe that a cleft chin identifies someone the Force has pushed away.”

“Just my luck,” he said in mock seriousness.

“Just your luck, indeed,” she said, sliding a flimsi-card across the table toward him. “I have hostess duties to attend to, Ambassador. But I’m free after midnight.”

Palpatine and Doriana watched her walk away from the table, teetering slightly on high heels.

“Nicely played,” Doriana said. “I’m taking notes.”

Palpatine slid the flimsi-card toward him. “A gift.”

“When you earned it?” Doriana shook his head. “I’m not that desperate. Yet, anyway.”

The two of them laughed. Doriana’s engaging smile and innocent good looks belied a sinister personality that had brought him to Palpatine’s notice several years earlier. A Naboo, he had a troubled past and, perhaps as a consequence, talents that made him useful. So Palpatine had befriended him and clandestinely drawn him into his web, in accordance with Plagueis’s instructions that he always keep an eye out for allies and would-be co-conspirators. That Doriana wasn’t strong in the Force made no difference. In eleven years of Sith apprenticeship and of traveling far and wide in the galaxy, Palpatine had yet to encounter a single being whose strength in the Force had gone unrecognized or unexploited.

At the neighboring table, Vidar Kim and the rest were enjoying themselves, their privacy ensured by the table’s transparent sound-muting umbrella. Envy gnawed at Palpatine while he watched Kim … the position he enjoyed in the Galactic Senate, the posting on Coruscant, easy access to the galaxy’s elite. But he knew that he needed to bide his time; that Plagueis would move him to the galactic capital only when there was some good reason to do so.

As often as Plagueis maintained that the Rule of Two had ended with their partnership, the Muun remained the powerful one, and Palpatine the covetous one. Bane’s dictum notwithstanding, denial was still a key factor in Sith training; a key factor in being “broken,” as Plagueis put it — of being shaped by the dark side of the Force. Cruelly, at times, and painfully. But Palpatine was grateful, for the Force had slowly groomed him into a being of dark power and granted him a secret identity, as well. The life he had been leading — as the noble head of House Palpatine, legislator, and most recently ambassador-at-large — was nothing more than the trappings of an alter ego; his wealth, a subterfuge; his handsome face, a mask. In the realm of the Force his thoughts ordered reality, and his dreams prepared the galaxy for monumental change. He was a manifestation of dark purpose, helping to advance the Sith Grand Plan and gradually gaining power over himself so that he might one day — in the words of his Master — be able to gain control over another, then a group of others, then an order, a world, a species, the Republic itself.

Doriana’s elbow nudged him out of his reverie.

“Kim’s coming.”

“Don’t think I didn’t see that,” the Senator said when he reached Palpatine.

Palpatine let his bafflement show.

“The flimsi-card that woman slipped you,” Vidar said. “I suppose you entertained her with the usual tall tales.”

Palpatine shrugged in a guileless manner. “I may have said something about getting to know the galaxy.”

“Getting to know the galaxy’s women, he means,” Doriana interjected.

Kim laughed heartily. “How is it that I come to have assistants who leave trails of conquests, and a son who meditates on the Force in the Jedi Temple?”

“That’s what makes you so well rounded,” Doriana said.

More than even Plagueis, Kim had been Palpatine’s mentor in the sphere of mundane politics. Their relationship went back fifteen years, to when Palpatine had been forcibly enrolled in a private school in Theed, and Kim had just completed his stint in the Apprentice Legislator program. In the time since, Palpatine had watched Kim’s family grow to include three sons, one of whom — Ronhar, six years Palpatine’s junior — had been turned over to the Jedi Order as an infant. When Plagueis had learned of this, he had encouraged Palpatine to allow his friendship with Kim to deepen, in the expectation that sooner or later his and Jedi Ronhar’s paths would cross.

Give order to the future by attending to it with your thoughts, his Master frequently told him.

“Come and join us at the table,” Kim was saying.

Palpatine stood and fell into step beside Kim as he headed back to the larger table.

“One day you’ll be replacing me at this job,” the Senator said quietly, “and the sooner you grow accustomed to what goes on, the better.” He sighed with purpose. “Who knows, a few hours of senatorial gossip might even be enough to deter you from going into galactic politics altogether.”

Some dozen beings were grouped in a circle, all of them male but not all of them human. The prominent chairs were occupied by Gran Protectorate Senator Pax Teem and his aide, Aks Moe. To both sides of them sat Sullustan and Sluissi Senators. Also present were Eriaduan Senator Ranulph Tarkin and his aide, Bor Gracus; the Darknell ambassador; and Dugs, Boss Cabra — a Black Sun Vigo — and his son, Darnada, guests of the Podrace winners and attendees of the most recent Gathering on Sojourn.

By then Palpatine had made three visits to the Hunters’ Moon, but only to observe and to familiarize himself with some of the galaxy’s key players. Plagueis, as Hego Damask, had gone to great lengths to avoid being identified as Palpatine’s benefactor. Only King Tapalo’s chief minister, Ars Veruna, knew that Damask was grooming him for a career in galactic politics, and, as a personal favor to the Muun, had appointed Palpatine Naboo’s ambassador.

“Ah, new blood,” Pax Teem remarked after Kim had introduced Palpatine to everyone.

“I quite enjoyed the Podraces,” Palpatine said as he sat down.

Teem’s leaf-like ears twitched. “You’re too young to have witnessed them in their glory days, Ambassador. Before Tatooine succeeded in capturing the fancy of race enthusiasts.” The Gran pronounced Tatooine as if an execration.

Palpatine knew that Plagueis had been responsible for Tatooine’s rise, as well for weakening Malastare’s once-lucrative trade in fuel, by helping to make Naboo’s plasma resources available to many worlds.

“Have your duties taken you to that horrible place?” Aks Moe asked.

Palpatine nodded as he sat. “Just two months ago.”

“And how did you find it?” Cabra said.

Palpatine turned to the Dug crime boss. “Contentious. What with the Desilijic and Besadii Hutts vying for control.”

The statement met with murmurs of concurrence.

Teem spoke to it. “Perhaps Gardulla’s rivalry with Jabba Tiure will one day result in Malastare’s resurgence.” His eyestalks twisted toward the Dugs. “Though I’m certain Boss Cabra favors Gardulla, out of respect for the help she provided on Nar Shaddaa.”

Young Darnada bristled at the remark. “Whatever mark we’ve made on Nar Shaddaa, we made on our own. Ask any Black Sun—”

Stopping him before he could go on, Cabra said, “We will always be indebted to Gardulla for her efforts on our behalf.”

Kim watched the Dugs, then gestured negligently. “Tatooine is too remote and lawless to have an impact on galactic events, in any case. It’s the activities of the Trade Federation that should concern the Republic. Look what the Federation has done to our own Naboo.”

Kim became the object of everyone’s gaze. An outspoken critic of King Tapalo and Ars Veruna, he continued to serve in the Senate only as an appeasement to those noble houses that were aligned against the regent.

“It is my understanding that Naboo embraced the arrangement,” Ranulph Tarkin said.

“Some did.”

“No can one deny that your world has prospered as a result,” Teem interjected.

“Prospered, yes,” Kim said, “but not nearly to the extent it should have. If not for the deals Hego Damask brokered with the Banking Clan, the Trade Federation, and—” He glanced at Cabra. “—Outer Rim Construction, Naboo would be as wealthy as Kuat or Chandrila.”

The Dug remained silent while Kim continued. “Naboo’s plasma is being sold for ten, sometimes twenty times what the Federation pays for it.”

“A monster of our own creation,” Tarkin muttered. “The Trade Federation didn’t become powerful by exploiting the Outer Rim. It was supported by Eriadu’s own House Valorum, and supported by Tagge and others.”

“Then perhaps the time has come for us to make our dissatisfaction public,” Kim said, glancing around the table. “The Muuns are merely avaricious, but the Trade Federation has the potential to become dangerous.”

“I agree with the good Senator from Naboo,” the Sullustan delegate said. “Even now the Trade Federation seeks to seat its client worlds in the Senate, as a means of fortifying its voting block. Mechis, Murkhana, Felucia, Kol Horo, Ord Cestus, Yinchorr … the list goes on and on.”

The Sluissi Senator made a sound of disapproval, and a tremor seemed to snake through his humanoid upper torso. “Don’t dismiss too lightly the part the Muuns play in all this. Yinchorr’s Senate seat was Damask Holdings’ doing.” He looked at Cabra. “Is that not the case?”

The Dug’s powerful shoulders heaved. “I’m not in a position to know.”

Laughter from the others prompted Darnada to part his muzzle just enough to reveal the tips of his fangs.

The Sluissi looked at Kim and Palpatine. “Perhaps Black Sun is unaware that the son of Hego Damask’s operating officer — Larsh Hill — is in line to replace Tonith as chairman of the Banking Clan.”

Tarkin put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “I’ve heard the rumors to the effect that Damask has been meeting with the heads of the guilds, the Corporate Alliance, and the Techno Union. What might become of trade — of any sort — if he brokered a deal between them and the Trade Federation?”

“Here’s the point,” Kim said. “If we’re going to prevent the Trade Federation — and the Muuns — from tightening their hold on the Senate, we need to band together and vote to defeat the proposed legislation.”

Before Kim could add anything, Tarkin said to Palpatine, “Do you agree that the Trade Federation needs to be taken down a notch, Ambassador?”

Palpatine glanced at Kim, who said, “Speak freely.”

“Senator Kim and I are in complete accord on the issue, and have been for some time. No single corporate entity can be allowed to grow too powerful — especially at the expense of developing worlds. Naboo must safeguard its interests, just as Eriadu and Sullust and Sluis Van have safeguarded theirs.”

Tarkin watched him closely. “Is Naboo prepared to assume control of transporting its plasma? Aren’t you in danger of biting the proverbial hand that feeds you?”

“Naboo has no intentions of planetizing the Trade Federation’s facilities. We’re simply pressing for a renegotiation of the original contracts.”

Tarkin thought about it. “So you feel that a defeat in the Senate might make the Trade Federation more … pliable, as it were.”

Palpatine vouchsafed a thin smile. “Only those bills that support well-reasoned regulation should win approval in the Senate.”

“Well put,” Tarkin said.

Palpatine waited for someone to point out that he had offered nothing of substance, but no one did. Even Kim failed to grasp that he was being undermined.

Pax Teem was about to speak when a Gran messenger intruded on the privacy canopy.

“Senator Kim, we are in receipt of an urgent communiqué from Naboo.”

While Kim was excusing himself, Palpatine dropped into the Force. Conversation at the table grew faint, and the physical forms of Pax Teem and the others became indistinct — more like blurs of lambent energy. He kept himself still as a disturbing echo reached him. By the time an ashen Kim was returning to the table, Palpatine was already out of his seat and hurrying to meet him.

“What is it? What’s happened?”

Kim stared at him as if from another world. “They’re dead. Everyone. My wife, my sons …”

And he collapsed sobbing against Palpatine’s shoulder.

The funeral for the Kim family was everything it hadn’t been for the Palpatines. In keeping with tradition, the bodies of Kim’s wife, two sons, and the ship’s pilot and copilot had been returned to Theed from the crash site in seaside Kaadara and cremated in the Funeral Temple. A procession hundreds-strong led by King Tapalo and his chief advisers proceeded on foot from the Temple to the nearby Livet Tower, where everyone spent a moment gathered around the Eternal Flame, contemplating transience and the importance of living a harmonious life; then moved in solemn precision to the banks of the Solleu River, where the grief-stricken Senator scattered the ashes and wept openly as the current carried them over the Verdugo Plunge to the flatlands beyond.

Following the ceremony, mourners gathered to express their condolences to Vidar Kim, who wore a robe of deep green over a black tunic. When Palpatine’s turn came, the two men embraced.

“I have only one hope for a family, Palpatine, one hope.” Kim’s eyes were red-rimmed and brimming with tears. “Ronhar.”

Palpatine compressed his lips in uncertainty. “He is a Jedi Knight, Vidar. His family is the Order.”

Kim was insistent. “I need him more than the Order needs him. Only he can carry the Kim line forward — just as you will someday carry on the Palpatine line.”

Palpatine said nothing.

With vehicular traffic banned from Theed’s narrow streets, the city seemed almost as it had a decade earlier, before antiquated laws had been repealed and wealth had worked its dubious magic; before Flash speeders and R2 astromech droids had become the rage, and fads and fashions — in dress, transport, and food — had poured in from the Core.

The murders of Cosinga and the others had left Palpatine emancipated and wealthy. Though interrogated by numerous officials, he had been absolved; his story, his alibi, accepted. Some of the influential nobles had their suspicions that Palpatine had furnished intelligence to Damask Holdings to secure the election of Bon Tapalo, but most Naboo had offered sympathy and support. On the heels of Tapalo’s ascension to the throne, Palpatine had sold the Lake Country estate and taken an apartment in Theed, stocking it with extra-system art that had found its way to Naboo from Core and Mid Rim worlds. In the early years of his apprenticeship to Darth Plagueis he had remained in mandatory public service; he then spent five years in the Apprentice Legislator program before being appointed ambassador, following Tapalo’s reelection.

Palpatine supposed he could have lobbied for a more prestigious position, but only at the risk of undermining Plagueis. Equally important, a high-status post might have interfered with his ability to rendezvous with his Sith Master on remote worlds, where they had been able to be observed together without consequence.

As he left Kim to the next mourner in line, he noticed Ars Veruna separating himself from a group that included Palpatine’s allies Kinman Doriana and Janus Greejatus.

“A word, Ambassador,” Veruna said when he drew near.

Palpatine allowed himself to be steered by the elbow into an unoccupied viewing area near the Solleu Bridge.

“My heart goes out to poor Vidar,” Veruna began. Roughly the same height as Palpatine, he wore a brocaded cloak and tall headpiece. “A starship crash, of all things. One would have thought that a tragedy of such nature might have compelled him to retire from politics, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.” He rested his elbows on the stone balustrade and gazed at the fast-moving river. “Well, you of all people would know better than most the effect of such unforeseen developments.”

“Vidar is planning to return to Coruscant before the month is out.”

“On Senate business?”

“Personal, I suspect.”

Veruna grew pensive, then said, “The last time you and I stood together was at the inaugural ceremony for the plasma generator.” He turned to regard Palpatine. “You look well. Changed, I think. From your travels.”

“Broadened,” Palpatine said.

“The very word I was searching for.” Veruna paused briefly. “It has reached my ear that you made quite an impression on Seswenna sector Senator Ranulph Tarkin when you were on Malastare recently.”

Palpatine shrugged. “I wasn’t aware.”

“He enjoyed hearing your views regarding the Trade Federation’s plan to seat some of its client worlds in the Senate. Would you care to elaborate on what you told him?”

Palpatine smiled lightly. “I offered nothing substantive. In fact, I was merely playing politics.”

Veruna nodded knowingly. “I am greatly relieved to hear that.” He glanced around before continuing. “As you well know, the King and I have our separate arrangements with the Trade Federation. Now, however, we’re forced to take into account the discontent of our constituents. Unfortunately, the person largely responsible for Tapalo’s election and our party’s continued popularity is not going to take kindly to hearing that Naboo plans to vote against the very legislation Damask Holdings has been lobbying to see enacted.”

“I can appreciate your predicament,” Palpatine said. “Why not order Senator Kim to vote in favor of the Trade Federation?”

Veruna laughed shortly. “Would that it were as simple as that. The problem is that Kim knows about our separate arrangements, and intends to use this opportunity to send a message to the Trade Federation — as well as to Tapalo’s detractors — that Naboo will no longer allow itself to be exploited.” He inhaled deeply. “Recalling him from Coruscant would be tantamount to admitting that Naboo remains at the mercy of the Trade Federation, and might jeopardize our standing with many of the trade worlds on whom we have come to depend.”

Palpatine pretended to consider it. “Perhaps it will be worth the risk to vote against the Trade Federation.”

Veruna studied him with sudden interest. “Go on.”

“Whether the legislation is enacted or becomes embroiled in procedure, Naboo’s contracts with the Trade Federation will remain binding and inalterable. The Federation will continue procuring our plasma for meager credits and marketing it for inflated prices. But Naboo will at least be on the public record as having stood up to the galactic conglomerates.”

“More playing politics, is that it?”

Palpatine rocked his head from side to side but said nothing.

“And what about Magister Damask?”

“Apprise him of the plan beforehand. He’s not unreasonable.”

Veruna stroked his beard in thought. “That just might work.” He smiled slyly. “It’s a pity Naboo already has a voice in the Senate.”

Palpatine sniffed. “Should the opportunity ever arise, I would, of course, accept. But until then, I’m content to serve in my own way.”

“Serve Naboo.”

“Who or what else?”

Veruna rubbed his hands together. “One day, if I have my way, our Space Corps will include a fleet of swift Nubian fighters capable of chasing the Trade Federation from our system.”

“I, too, foresee the day,” Palpatine said.

Veruna laughed again. “Ah, but when? How long will we have to wait, Palpatine?”

“Only until Hego Damask awards you the throne.”

15: QUANTUM BEING

A gift to Damask from the Council of Elders on the occasion of Yinchorr’s seating in the Senate, the towering reptilian condemned murderer shuffled to the center of the energy field that defined his cage on Aborah and, with confusion contorting the features of his beaked face, prostrated himself on the permacrete floor and mumbled in Basic: “I’m honored to be here and to perform whatever tasks you require of me.”

Standing at the field’s shimmering perimeter, 11-4D pivoted his head toward Plagueis. “Congratulations, Magister. At last he responds to your suggestion. You have undermined his resolve.”

That resolve, Plagueis had learned after more than two years of experimentation on the Yinchorri, was in fact a kind of Force bubble fashioned by the turtle-like alien’s limited number of unusually willful midi-chlorians. This suggested that the Yinchorri was actually strong in the Force, despite his pitifully low count. The discovery had come as a breakthrough, and Plagueis was still grappling with the implications.

The Force bubble itself was similar to those generated by creatures that drew on the Force to avoid predation by natural enemies. The relationship between the arboreal ysalamir and its adversary, the vornskr, provided a curious example, in that the latter was attracted to the former by the very mechanism the ysalamir employed as a defense. Where an extremely low midi-chlorian count might have bolstered the odds of survival, nature had instead made the ysalimir species strong in the Force. So strong, in fact, that several of the creatures acting in concert could create a Force bubble encompassing kilometers rather than meters. In a sense, the Jedi Order had done the same on a galactic scale, Plagueis believed, by bathing the galaxy in the energy of the light side of the Force; or more accurately by fashioning a Force bubble that had prevented infiltration by the dark side, until Tenebrous’s Master had succeeded in bursting the bubble, or at least shrinking it. How the Order’s actions could be thought of as balancing the Force had baffled generations of Sith, who harbored no delusions regarding the Force’s ability to self-regulate.

The Yinchorri former convict wasn’t the only new addition to Plagueis’s island facility. In the eleven years that had elapsed since the capture of Venamis and the recruitment of Sidious, Plagueis had collected more than a dozen beings of diverse species and had been subjecting them to a wide range of experiments involving volition, telepathy, healing, regeneration, and life extension, with some promising results. As for the Bith would-be Sith Lord, he was alive and well, though kept comatose more often than not, and always under the watchful photoreceptors of 11-4D or a host of custodial droids.

Plagueis hadn’t lost interest in Venamis by any means, but the Yinchorri’s immunity to Force suggestion — an immunity the species shared with Hutts, Toydarians, and others — had provided him with a new line of investigation. Unlike ysalamiri, which created a Force bubble in the presence of danger, the Yinchorri were in a perpetual state of involuntary immunity to Force suggestion. The fact that immunity was in a sense hardwired into them meant that the ability was an adaptation, prompted by a past threat to the survival of the species. To Plagueis, it meant that the Yinchorri’s midi-chlorians had evolved to provide protection to a species that was naturally strong in the Force. If that were indeed the case, then the Yinchorri were living proof that the Sith of the Bane line had been on the right path from the very start.

For while toppling the Jedi Order and the Republic was essential to the task of restoring order to the galaxy, that goal belonged to the realm of the ordinary — to the world that was nothing more than a byproduct of the eternal struggle between the light and dark forces, both of which were beyond any concepts of good or evil. The greater goal of the Sith involved toppling the Force itself, and becoming the embodiment of the galaxy’s animating principle.

It had been theorized by Jedi and Sith alike that balance between the light and dark sides was actually under the guidance of a group of discorporate entities — the ones called the Celestials, perhaps — who had merged themselves with the Force thousands of generations earlier, and had continued to guide the fate of the galaxy ever since. In effect, a higher order of intermediaries, whose powers were beyond the understanding of mortal beings. But many Sith viewed the notion with disdain, for the theoretical existence of such a group had little bearing on the goal of making the Force subservient to the will of an enlightened elite. Only the Sith understood that sentient life was on the verge of a transformative leap; that through the manipulation of midi-chlorians — or the overthrow of the Forceful group that supervised them — the divide between organic life and the Force could be bridged, and death could be erased from the continuum.

As evidenced by those few Lords who had managed to perpetuate their spirits after physical death — foremost among them Emperor Vitiate, who was said to have lived a thousand years — the ancient Sith had come halfway across that bridge. But those few had been so focused on worldly power that they had ended up trapping themselves between realms. That they had never provided the Order with guidance from beyond attested to the fact that their influence had been negligible, and had long since faded from the world.

In the same way that the pre-Bane Sith had been responsible for their own extinction, the great dark side Lords of the past had doomed themselves to the nether realm through their attempts to conquer death by feeding off the energies of others, rather than by tapping the deepest strata of the Force and learning to speak the language of the midi-chlorians. Plagueis was finally learning to do that, and was just beginning to learn how to persuade, prompt, cajole, and coax them into action. Already he could command them to promote healing, and now he had been successful in enticing them to lower their defenses. If he could compel a murderous Yinchorri to become peaceful, could he — with a mere suggestion — accomplish the opposite by turning a peaceful being into a murderer? Would he one day be able to influence the leaders of worlds and systems to act according to his designs, however iniquitous? Would he one day conquer not only death but life, as well, by manipulating midi-chlorians to produce Forceful beings, even in the absence of fertilization, as Darth Tenebrous might have attempted to do with gene-splicing techniques and computers?

Perhaps.

But not until the singular flame of the light side was extinguished from the galaxy. Not until the Jedi Order was stamped out.

From the start of his apprenticeship with Plagueis, his Master had demanded to know what Palpatine regarded as his greatest strength, so that he would know how best to undermine him; to know his greatest fear, so that Plagueis would know which to force Palpatine to face; to know what Palpatine cherished most, so that Plagueis could take that from him; and to know the things that Palpatine craved, so that Plagueis could deny him.

Some combination of the strictures — or perhaps recognition on Plagueis’s part for his apprentice’s unabated craving to visit Sith worlds — had landed Palpatine on scenic Dathomir. Sparsely populated and largely unexplored, Dathomir wasn’t Korriban or Ziost, but it was powerful in the Force, in part because of its fecundity, but mainly due to the presence of groups of female adepts who practiced dark side magicks.

He was meandering without clear purpose through one of Blue Desert City’s dustier quarters, far from the city center, when he became aware of a faint pulse of Force energy, the origin of which was indistinct but close at hand.

Calling more deeply on the Force, he allowed himself to be drawn toward the mysterious source, as if he were a starship surrendering to the embrace of a tractor beam. A tortuous series of turns delivered him into a market area brimming with knockoff goods, ersatz jewelry, and bits and pieces of junk that had found its way to Dathomir from who knew where, and ultimately to a small square amid the hustle and bustle, on one corner of which stood a human female, whose symmetrically blemished face was the color of burnished durasteel, and whose flamboyant clothing identified her as a visitor to the city, likely from some remote village on the planet’s far side. The hood of her crimson robe was raised, and from one shoulder hung a soft bag the size of a small suitcase.

Palpatine moved to the square’s diagonal corner to observe her. She was eyeing individuals in the passing crowd, not as if searching for someone in particular, but with a gaze more in keeping with target acquisition. She didn’t strike Palpatine as a thief or pickpocket, though she did exude a dark energy informed by equal measures of urgency and deceit. Abruptly he made himself discernible in the Force, and immediately she turned her head in his direction and began to hurry across the square in his direction.

“Good sir,” she said in Basic as she drew near.

Feigning interest in the cheap wares of an itinerant trader, he pretended to be taken by surprise when she approached him from his blind side.

“Are you addressing me?” he asked, turning to her.

“I am, sir, if you’ve a moment to indulge a being in need.”

Her oblique eyes were rimmed by dark blemishes that matched the tint of her thick lips; poking from the wide sleeves of her robe, the tapered fingers of her hands bore long, talon-like nails.

Palpatine pretended impatience. “Why single me out, among this crowd of more richly attired beings?”

“Because you’ve the look and bearing of a man of intelligence and influence.” She gestured broadly. “The rest are rabble, despite their fine cloaks and headwear.”

He made a decorous show of suppressing a yawn. “Save your adulation for the rubes, woman. But since you’ve correctly identified me as better than the rest, you’re obviously aware that I’ve no time to waste on confidence games or tricks. So if its mere credits you’re after, I suggest you widen your search for someone more charitable.”

“I don’t ask for credits,” she said, studying him openly.

“What then? Come to the point.”

“It’s a gift I offer.”

Palpatine laughed without merriment. “What could you possibly have to offer someone like me?”

“Just this.” She opened the soft shoulder bag to reveal a humanoid infant of less than a standard year in age. The infant’s hairless head was stippled with an array of short but still pliant horns, and its entire body had been garishly and ceremonially tattooed in red and black pigments.

A male Zabrak, Palpatine told himself. But not of the Iridonian sort; rather, a Dathomirian. “How do you come by this newborn? Have you stolen him?”

“You misunderstand, good sir. My own child, this one is.”

Palpatine glowered. “You say that he is a gift, and yet you dissemble. Have you had dealings that have led you into such deep debt that you would part with your own flesh and blood? Or perhaps you’re addicted to spice or some other intoxicant?”

She stiffened. “Neither. I seek only to save his life.”

Palpatine’s expression changed. “Then speak honestly. You’re a long way from your coven, Nightsister. And a practitioner of magicks more than sufficient to keep your child from harm.”

Her eyes opened wide and bored into him, in search of explanation. “How—”

“Never mind how I know, Witch,” Palpatine said sharply. “The child, whether yours or not, is a Nightbrother, conceived for the purpose of serving the sisterhood as a warrior and slave.”

She refused to avert her gaze. “You’re not a Jedi.”

“Clearly I am not, as I suspect you have already intuited. But you still haven’t answered my question. Why are trying to rid yourself of the infant?”

“To spare the one for the sake of the other,” she said after a moment. “Half a clan pair, this one is. And I want one to live freely, since the other can’t.”

“Who poses the threat?”

“Talzin is her name.”

“Who is Talzin?”

“The Nightsister Mother.”

Palpatine filed the information away. “Where is the infant’s father?”

“Dead — by tradition.”

He snorted. “Will the infant not be missed?”

“Talzin knows only of the one, not the other.”

“You delude yourself.”

Gently, she pushed the shoulder bag toward him. “Then take him. Please.”

“What would I do with him?”

“This one is strong in the Force. In the right hands, he can become a powerful asset.”

“Servitude of a different sort.”

She ignored the remark. “Take him. Save him.”

Palpatine regarded the newborn again. “Have you named him?”

“Maul, he is called.”

“Befitting the power you divine in him.”

She nodded. “Take him.”

Palpatine gazed at her and, motioning with his right hand, said, “You will forget this encounter.”

She locked eyes with him. “I will try.”

“For your own sake, I hope you do. Now, go. Before I change my mind.”

Placing the bag in his hands, she turned and hurried off, disappearing into the crowd.

Palpatine studied the bundle of life he held. That the Force was strong in the infant was reason enough not to allow him to wander about unprotected, and perhaps fall into the hands of the Jedi.

Now Palpatine simply had to figure out what to do with him.

From a high turret in the old fort on Sojourn, Plagueis and Sidious observed the revelry in the courtyard below. There, amid the blazing fires, the smell of fresh blood and roasting meat, the cacophony of guttural chants, strident music, and screams of abandon, a Gathering was in progress. Returned from the hunts, beings of many species told tall tales and shared in vulgar laughter, while exotic dancers writhed atop tables laden with food and intoxicating drinks. Away from the roasting pits, beings huddled in the sultry night air, forming alliances, revealing hidden agendas, hatching plots. Passion, envy, and conspiracy were on the loose. From the high turret, the two Sith could see Damask’s Sun Guards and Muuns circulating, Larsh Hill introducing his eldest son, San, to representatives of the Commerce Guild and the Techno Union. The Gotal Grand Mage of the Order of the Canted Circle was speaking with starship designer and Santhe/Seinar CEO Narro Sienar. Boss Cabra was making the rounds, as well, pressing the flesh, the scales, the rough hide of partners and potential allies. Members of the Trade Federation were in attendance, including a richly dressed Neimoidian. And for the first time in decades, representatives of various hive species were present — the Xi Charrian prelate, the Geonosian Archduke, even a couple of mistrustful and dangerous-looking insectoid Colicoids, from the Colicoid Creation Nest.

“We will not be denied,” Plagueis was saying with unusual annoyance. “We will have our way in the Senate, regardless of what the Gran Protectorate, Black Sun, and the rest wish to see happen. Let the beings of the Hydian Way and Rimma Trade Route worlds go on thinking that the Trade Federation is seeking to tighten its grip on intersystem commerce. The real danger in seating the Federation’s client worlds will emerge when the Senate ignores the needs of those worlds, and disenfranchisement begins to spread through the Mid and Outer Rims. Then the Republic will reap the whirlwind, and we will harvest the benefits.”

He exhaled in disgust. “Pax Teem and the rest aren’t acting out of concern for the Republic but out of fear that their entitlements might disappear if trade shifts to the outer systems. Half of them sit in the Rotunda only because I want them there. They’ve forgotten how effortlessly they can be replaced.” He swung away from the view of the courtyard to face Sidious. “As for Veruna, you should encourage his plans to amass a Space Corps to defend Naboo against the Trade Federation. When we make him King, we will lead him by the nose into a morass that will appear to be of his own making.”

Plagueis lowered his gaze to the courtyard. “The climate begins to shift, Darth Sidious. The body politic begins to show signs of contagion. The reemergence of anger, hatred, and fear signal a loss of faith in the Force. The light is waning, pushed into retreat by dark matter, and the universe begins to seem inimical rather than comforting. In such times, beings are wont to look for solutions in the enactment of harsh laws, the ostracism of strangers, and warfare. Once the Republic has fallen, the Jedi are but a memory, and beings have nowhere to turn but to us, we will provide them with a sense of stability and order: a list of enemies, weapons capable of decimating entire star systems, durasteel prisons in which they can feel secure.” He gestured to the courtyard. “Look how they hunger for the dark.”

A fierce light came into Plagueis’s eyes. “We must demand the attention of the dark side to aid us in dictating the future. Together and separately we will see to that, and once we’ve put these Senate issues behind us, we will set the stage for the next act. With the promise of unlimited funding, guilds and unions will ally, and the hive species will turn pincer and claw to the manufacture of weapons, even in the absence of conflict, let alone all-out war.”

Doubt tugged at the corners of Sidious’s mouth. “The Jedi won’t simply stand by and do nothing, Master. While I have no affection for them, I do respect their power. And weakening the Republic without weakening the Jedi could provide them with justification for attempting a coup. They have the numbers to succeed.”

Plagueis took it under advisement. “Their time is coming, Sidious. The signs are in the air. Their Order might have already been decimated had it not been for the setback Darth Gravid dealt the Sith. But his apprentice carried the imperative forward, and each successive Sith Lord improved on it, Tenebrous and his Master most of all, though they wasted years attempting to create a targeted virus that could be deployed against the Jedi, separating them from the Force. As if there were some organic difference between the practitioners of the light and darks sides; as if we communicate with the dark side through a different species of cellular intermediaries! When, in fact, we are animated by the same power that drives the passion of these beings gathered below. Target midi-chlorians and we target life itself.”

“An attack of that sort would fail, regardless,” Sidious said, as if thinking out loud. “The Jedi are widely scattered, and it’s unlikely that we would be able to act quickly enough to kill all of them in the same instant. We would need to assign an individual assassin to each, and there would be no way to still the tongues of that many assassins. Our plan would be revealed. We would be betrayed and become the targeted ones.”

Plagueis paced away from the turret’s window, his hands interlocked behind his back. “We don’t want them to die too quickly in any case. Not, that is, until the Republic has been so ravaged, so weakened, that beings will willingly embrace the stability we impose.”

“Are the weapons that will be produced by the Colicoids and the others meant ultimately to be used against the Jedi?”

“We shall see what comes to pass. Until such time we must accept the fact that no mere army can overwhelm the Jedi. The ancient Sith were tens of thousands strong and failed the test. Once the galaxy teemed with warriors and warships. Now we have only isolated bands of mercenaries and star system defense forces. That’s why we must strive to return the galaxy to a state where barbarism is the norm.”

“The Jedi will have to be felled from within,” Sidious said, his eyes tracking Plagueis as the Muun paced the floor. “Lured into a trap of their own devising, as you said we will do with Veruna.”

Plagueis stopped to regard him. “Follow that thought.”

Sidious took a moment. “We will have to exploit their vanity and blind obedience to the Republic,” he said with greater confidence, and as if the truth of it should be obvious. “They must be made to appear the enemies of peace and justice rather than the guardians.”

“The enemies of peace and justice rather than the guardians,” Plagueis repeated, in revelation. “Even the survivors of a purge would be forced into hiding …” Coming back to himself, he cut his gaze to Sidious. “Great care has to be taken not to turn them into martyrs, Darth Sidious — if in the end we want the beings of the galaxy to turn their backs to the light side of the Force.”

“Forceful beings will continue to be born.”

“In the absence of training and brainwashing, they will pose no harm to us. You will see to that, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.”

Sidious looked at the floor and shook his head. “You should be the one, Master.”

“No,” Plagueis said firmly. “It must be you. You have the political skills, and more to the point, you are a human. In this era only a human is capable of rising to the top of Coruscant’s biased political heap.”

“Human or not, my knowledge of the dark side will never equal yours. The title, the crown, should be yours.”

“And it will be, once you openly appoint me co-chancellor. Feared and respected by the galaxy’s most powerful beings, Hego Damask will be seen as a windfall for the Republic. But even then I will advise only in secret from behind your throne.”

Sidious bowed his head in deference. “In the annals of Sith history, you will be known as Plagueis the Wise.”

Plagueis quirked a cunning smile. “You flatter me.”

“Whatever you ask of me, Master, I will do it.”

Plagueis fell silent for a long moment, then said, “You need now to hear about the first mission I performed for Darth Tenebrous. The events transpired some twenty-five years into my apprenticeship. At the time, Tenebrous had sought to expand his network of influential beings by reaching out to a human industrialist named Kerred Santhe—”

“The former owner of Santhe Corporation.”

“The same,” Plagueis said. “Santhe Corporation had been designing freight vessels for generations, but had only limited success with its line of personal starships. My Master believed that he might entice Kerred into an alliance by offering him exclusive rights to a Rugess Nome ship. Santhe leapt at the opportunity, but only to manipulate Tenebrous into a situation where agents of Santhe Security were able to steal the plans.”

Plagueis paused in narrow-eyed reflection. “It was one of the few times I saw my Master outmaneuvered. But he didn’t set his sights on revenge — not immediately, at any rate. Once in production, the starship met with such success that Kerred Santhe was able to acquire a controlling interest in Sienar Technologies and Republic Sienar Systems. Only by agreeing to an arranged marriage between his youngest daughter was Sienar’s president, Narro, able to retain his position as chief designer. By then, though, Narro had entered into a secret partnership with Tenebrous, and the time had come to settle scores.”

Plagueis moved as he spoke.

“Damask Holdings was in its infancy, but I had already earned a reputation among the galaxy’s elite, and so received an invitation to attend a design conference on Corulag, which was then headquarters not only for Sienar Technologies but for Aether Hypernautics, Danthe Artifice, and a dozen other corporations. The guest speaker was the Senator representing the Bormea sector, and many luminaries from Coruscant, Corellia, and Kuat attended. From distant Lianna came Kerred Santhe and his young and unhappy wife, supported by an entourage of retainers and Santhe Security guards. I was seated at a table directly across from him, and the menu specialty that night was bloateel. Have you ever tasted it, Sidious?”

“As a teenager. At a gala hosted by House Palpatine.”

“Then you know that the creature is one of the most poisonous to be found in the galaxy. The preparation is both dangerous and exacting, as the creature must be skinned while alive to guard against its toxins infiltrating the flesh. Needless to say, nothing enlivens a banquet like the prospect of near-instant death, and the hall could barely contain the anticipation as individual portions were served.

“I waited to act until I saw Santhe chewing his first bite.”

Plagueis brought the thumb and forefinger of his left hand close together, and Sidious, taken by surprise, felt his throat close. He gasped for breath.

“Yes. Just so you have an understanding of what Santhe must have felt.” Plagueis opened his fingers and Sidious inhaled deeply, his face flushed and his hands stroking his throat.

“Only then I kept the pressure on until his face began to turn red, his hands flew to his throat, his muted calls for help brought everyone around him out of their chairs. I think his bulging eyes might have found mine when I finally pinched his trachea closed completely. Of course, medtechs had been standing by in the event of just such an emergency — Ithorians, if I recall correctly, armed with doses of antitoxin and medicines to counter the effects of anaphylactic shock. But none did the trick that night, for the dark side of the Force had Santhe in its grip and no drug or resuscitation technique was equal to the task of keeping him alive.”

Plagueis touched his chin. “Many alleged that Rugess Nome and Narro Sienar had somehow engineered an assassination. Others, that Malkite Poisoners or a sect of the GenoHaradan had been contracted to carry out the kill. But in the end the chefs were held accountable, and given long prison sentences. Santhe Security squads made several attempts on my Master’s life afterward, but we dealt with them. Much later we learned that Santhe’s body had been placed in carbonite freeze, and that all his internal organs had been replaced by vat-grown ones. The surgical teams may even have been successful at restarting his body, but the Kerred Santhe they had known was irretrievable.”

Plagueis said nothing for a long moment, then continued: “The circumstances will be different for you. You won’t have the satisfaction of seeing our opponent die in person, because we want to ensure your deniability. A public assassination on Coruscant would be best for sending a message.”

“Senator Pax Teem,” Sidious said in a raspy voice, tinged with residual anger.

Plagueis shook his head. “Teem may yet prove useful. I’m referring to Senator Vidar Kim. His sentiments have made him a liability. More important, his death will allow us to position you where you’ve long yearned to be.”

16: BOLD AS LOVE

The hood of his stylish robe raised against a chill wind, Palpatine hurried through the streets of Theed. The sudden turn in the weather abetted his desire to avoid making eye contact with strangers or, worse, encountering anyone he knew. As he grew stronger in the dark side, the profane world became a stranger and stranger place, swept by currents he’d had no previous awareness of and populated by vaguely outlined life-forms he saw as magnitudes of the Force. As Plagueis ordered, he had been living in the future, consorting with the dark side to execute the plans he and his Master had designed.

Vidar Kim’s office was in the eastern portion of the city, a long walk from the apartment Palpatine had been renting for the past several years, and the quickest route required crossing and recrossing the Solleu tributaries that defined Theed’s districts and neighborhoods. He had never had much fondness for the city, with its ancient buildings, public squares, its tens of thousands of residents going about their lives, and now Theed began to seem like some stage set in an elaborate theater production, and Naboo itself a node in a vast web being woven by the dark side, into which so many planets and species would ultimately be drawn.

At no time during the visit to Sojourn had Darth Plagueis asked to hear his feelings about the death order he had issued for Vidar Kim. And no wonder, since Palpatine had given his word to do anything Plagueis asked of him. But it was obvious that the Muun had sensed Palpatine’s conflict. Fear and hatred had prompted him to murder his family in cold blood, but his relationship with Kim was as close as he had come to having a true friendship — even though, as Naboo’s Senator, Kim stood between Palpatine and his immediate goal. On Sojourn, Plagueis’s parting words to him were: Remember why the Sith are more powerful than the Jedi, Sidious: because we are not afraid to feel. We embrace the spectrum of emotions, from the heights of transcendent joy to the depths of hatred and despair. Fearless, we welcome whatever paths the dark side sets us on, and whatever destiny it lays out for us.

Clearly Plagueis knew that Palpatine had helped seal Kim’s fate by encouraging him to take a stand against the Trade Federation, and therefore against Plagueis. That his Master hadn’t said as much was perhaps his way of reminding Palpatine that he would have to be prepared to accept any and all consequences that sprang from his machinations. It was a subtle lesson, but one Palpatine took to heart. From then on, he would be careful to plan his moves meticulously; and more important, to allow the dark side to complete its lapidary work of transforming him into a powerful being. Recalling Plagueis’s surprise Force choke, he pledged also never again to lower his guard. But he viewed the lesson as part of the process of their learning to rely on each other and forge themselves into a team. United in the dark side, they could keep no secrets; there could be no chance of one being able to act without the other being aware. They had to learn to see through each other.

Palpatine hadn’t been attempting to flatter Plagueis when he had called him wise—not entirely, at any rate. The Muun was powerful beyond Palpatine’s present understanding. The only being capable of guiding the galaxy into the future. A crescendo. At times it was difficult to grasp that they would see in their lifetime the fall of the Republic and the annihilation of the Jedi Order, and yet Palpatine seemed to know it to be true. A grand design was unfolding, in which he wasn’t merely a player but an architect.

Resigning himself to Kim’s death was easier than it might have been because Kim, too, had become a broken man in the wake of the deaths of his wife and younger sons. His reaching out to the son he had voluntarily surrendered to the Jedi was an act of desperation — and based on nothing more than a desire to assure that the Kim family line continued. How like the self-important royals among whom Palpatine had been raised. So fervent to be remembered by those who followed!

Rather than demand or ensure that Palpatine get his hands dirty once more, Plagueis had insisted on providing him with an agent to facilitate the assassination. Plagueis had said that they needed to guarantee Palpatine’s deniability and make certain that no hint of scandal pursue him. But Palpatine had begun to wonder: Despite all the talks about partnership and disclosures, had Plagueis merely been making excuses for the fact that he harbored doubts about Palpatine’s abilities?

Palpatine thought back to the story Plagueis had recounted about the murder of Kerred Santhe. Blame had fallen on the chefs who had prepared the bloateel. Kim’s death, however, wouldn’t result from food poisoning but public assassination. So who might emerge as having the most to gain from his death? Certainly not the Naboo, or the Gran Protectorate. The fact that fingers would point instead to the Trade Federation made him wonder why Plagueis would want to place the cartel in a position that jeopardized its chances of seating new worlds in the Senate. So once more he found himself wondering: Did Plagueis have an ulterior motive for not wanting the Trade Federation to succeed?

He wanted Kim’s death to be viewed as a message. But by whom? Perhaps Palpatine was meant to be the recipient. When Plagueis said that many of the Senators were expendable, that they retained their seats only because of him, was he, in the same breath, saying that Palpatine, even as Sidious, was also expendable, easily replaced by another Forceful apprentice? While the Muun encouraged transparency in Palpatine, he sometimes made himself opaque. Would he at some point bequeath all his knowledge to his apprentice, or would he hold back, merely to keep the upper hand?

“Thank you for coming on such short notice, Palpatine,” Kim said in a rush, ushering him into an office cluttered with data disks and flimsi printouts, and smelling of sweat, stale air, spoiling food. Tall windows opposite the hardwood entry doors overlooked the palace, including the new tower that Tapalo — in accordance with tradition — had constructed on being elected monarch.

“What I have to say will place you at some risk, but there’s no one I trust more than you.” Kim was in constant motion while he spoke, moving from his desk to the windows and back again. “I’m not entirely sure that this office is secure, but we have to take the chance.”

Palpatine concealed a frown of misgiving and gestured to the couch. “Please, Vidar, sit and unburden yourself.”

Kim came to a halt, exhaled wearily, and did as Palpatine suggested. His face was drawn, his hair in disarray, his normally neat beard and mustache in need of grooming.

“Palpatine, I have good reason to suspect that Tapalo and Veruna arranged the crash that claimed the lives of my family.”

Palpatine’s surprise was sincere. “Vidar, the crash was investigated and ruled an accident. Some problem with the antigrav—”

“Accidents can be faked — planned! You’ve piloted speeders ever since I’ve known you. You know that systems can be sabotaged.”

Palpatine sat down opposite him. “What possible motive would they have for killing your family?”

Kim’s bloodshot eyes fixed on him. “I know their dirty secrets, Palpatine. I know about the payments they’ve been receiving from the Trade Federation since Tapalo took office. The laws they’ve enacted to open all of Naboo to survey and plasma exploitation. I know about the deals they struck with certain members of the electorate to engineer Tapalo’s unprecedented victory in the last election.”

“Even so,” Palpatine said after a moment, “why would they bring your family into this?”

Kim all but growled. “By relieving me of my plenary duties they risk angering many of the royals who support me. Instead they hope to persuade me to tender a resignation — out of grief, out of fear, out of I don’t know what.”

“Tapalo would know better than to attempt such a despicable act.”

“You give him too much credit. The crash was meant to be a message to me. But it had the opposite effect.”

“How so?” Palpatine said, leaning toward him.

“I’m leaving for Coruscant this afternoon. And my first act will be to notify the Jedi Order.”

Palpatine sat up straight. “Vidar, the Jedi listen only to the Senate and the Supreme Chancellor. You can’t simply walk into the Temple—”

“I’ll contact the members of the Council through my son. If I can convince Ronhar to leave the Order, the information will be my gift to the Jedi.”

“And suppose Ronhar doesn’t want any part of this.” Palpatine crossed his arms across his chest. “Have you even been able to speak with him? It’s my understanding that Jedi aren’t permitted contact with their parents.”

Kim scowled and studied the carpet. “Regardless, I was able to make contact.”

“And?”

Kim’s expression was cheerless when he looked up. “He told me that I’m a stranger to him, and that the Kim name has no significance for him.”

Palpatine sighed. “Then that’s the end of it.”

“No. He has agreed to speak with me in person on Coruscant. I’m determined to convince him, Palpatine. Family must come first.”

Palpatine bit back what he was about to say and began again. “Will you promise to keep me informed? Or at least let me know how to reach you?”

Kim went to the desk and sorted through the mess until he found the flimsi he was looking for. “This is my itinerary for the coming week,” he said, passing the flimsi to Palpatine. “Palpatine, if something untoward should happen to me on Coruscant …”

“Stop, Vidar. We’re getting way ahead of ourselves.”

Kim ran a hand over his head. “You’re right.” He returned to the couch and sat. “Palpatine, we’re too close in age for me to have thought of you as a son, but I do consider you the younger brother I never had.”

Palpatine nodded without a word.

“If I fail to get through to Ronhar or the Jedi, I can at least alert my colleagues on the Senate Investigatory Committee.”

Palpatine restrained an impulse to stand. “I think you’re wrong about Tapalo and Veruna, Vidar. But I can say without hesitation that you will be risking your life by making such accusations public.”

“I’m perfectly aware of that, Palpatine. But if Ronhar rejects my plea, what else will I have to live for?”

Palpatine placed his hand on Kim’s shoulder.

The small part you will play in the revenge of the Sith.

By the time he left Kim’s office the weather had turned sharply colder. Snow flurries were swirling around the palace towers, and the shallows to the Solleu tributaries were sheened with ice. The agent from Coruscant whom Plagueis had provided — Sate Pestage — was waiting in a small plaza behind the Parnelli Art Museum, warming his hands with his breath.

“The Naboo have never heard of climate control?” he commented as Palpatine approached.

Recalling his early conditioning sessions on glacial Mygeeto, Palpatine almost laughed at the man’s remarks. Instead he said, “Radical change has always come slowly to this world.”

Pestage cast a glance at the stately columns that enclosed the domed museum. “No doubt about that.”

Slightly taller and older than Palpatine, he was sinewy and capable looking. His brown eyes were close-set and glistening, and his pointed nose and angular cheekbones were emphasized by black hair that had receded from his forehead and temple. Plagueis had mentioned that Pestage had been born in Daplona on Ciutric IV — an industrialized ecumenopolis outside of which Darths Bane and Zannah had once lived secret lives. Plagueis hadn’t revealed how he had discovered Pestage — perhaps Damask Holdings had had dealings with Pestage’s influential and extensive family — but he had said that Pestage was someone Palpatine might want to consider adding to his growing entourage of aides and confidants.

From the pocket of his robe, Palpatine prized the flimsi Vidar Kim had given him and handed it over. “His itinerary for Coruscant.”

“Perfect.” Pestage slipped the flimsi into his pocket.

“I want you to wait until his business on Coruscant is concluded.”

“Whatever you say.”

“He’s threatening to alert the Jedi Order and the Senate Investigatory Committee about various deals that were made.”

Pestage snorted. “Then he deserves everything that’s coming to him.” He scanned their surroundings without moving his head. “Have you made a decision about who to use from the data I supplied?”

“The Maladians,” Palpatine said.

A group of highly trained humanoid assassins, they had struck him as the obvious choice.

Pestage nodded. “Can I ask why?”

Palpatine wasn’t accustomed to having to justify his decisions, but answered regardless. “The Mandalorian Death Watch has its own problems, and the Bando Gora its own galactic agenda.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Pestage said. “Besides, the Maladians are known to honor all their contracts.”

“How soon can you have them on Coruscant?”

Pestage looked at him askance. “Perhaps it’s best that that remains on a need-to-know basis.”

The man’s audacity both impressed and bridled Palpatine. “There can be no mistakes, Sate.”

A long-suffering look flared on Pestage’s face, but his tone was compliant when he responded. “If there are, then I’m certain this will be our final conversation. I know fully well what Magister Damask and you are capable of, and I hope to make myself worthy of continuing to serve you. One day, perhaps, you’ll begin to think of me as family, as I’m sure Senator Kim does you.”

Just how much does this man know? Palpatine wondered.

“You’ve no qualms about living a double life, Sate?”

“Some of us are simply born into it,” Pestage said, indifferent to Palpatine’s penetrating gaze.

“You’ll contact me here?”

“As soon as the work is completed. Just make sure to stay close to your comm.”

“You’ll also be contacting Magister Damask?”

Pestage rocked his head. “He gave me the impression that he would be unavailable for the next few weeks. But I suspect we’re safe in assuming that the results won’t escape his notice.”

On a planet at the edge of known space, above the holo-well of a gleaming metallic table, a quarter-sized three-dimensional image of a tall biped rotated between graphs and scrolling lines of anatomical and physiological data. In a spoon-like seat suspended from the white room’s towering ceiling sat Hego Damask, dwarfed by a trio of slender, tailed scientists — two crested males and a female whose complexion was more gray than white.

“This being is representative of the entire species?” the scientist called Ni Timor asked in a gentle, almost sussurant voice.

“This one murdered six members of his species,” Damask said, “but he is otherwise typical of the Yinchorri.”

Tenebrous had introduced him to the planet Kamino early on in his apprenticeship, but he hadn’t visited in more than three years. In stocking Sojourn’s greel forests with rare and in some cases extinct fauna, he had hired the Kaminoans to grow clones from biological samples he procured through brokers of genetic materials. The glassy eyes, long necks, and sleek bodies of the bipedal indigenes spoke to a marine past, though in fact they had been land dwellers for millions of years preceding a great flood that had inundated Kamino. With global catastrophe looming, most technologically advanced sentient species would have abandoned their homeworld and reached for the stars. But the Kaminoans had instead constructed massive stilt cities that were completed even while the oceans of their world were rising and submerging the continents. They had also turned their considerable intellect to the science of cloning as a means of ensuring the survival of their species, and along the way had taken genetic replication farther than any known species in the galaxy. Residing outside the galactic rim, the Kaminoans performed their work in secret and only for the very wealthy. It was unlikely, in any case, that they would have abided by the Republic’s restrictions on cloning. Moral principles regarding natural selection seemed to be something they had left on the floor of what was now Kamino’s planetwide ocean, which perhaps explained why they were no more reluctant about providing game animals for Sojourn than they were about supplying shovel-handed clones to work in the mines of inhospitable Subterrel.

Damask considered them to be one of the galaxy’s most progressive species: almost Sith-like in their emotional aloofness and scientific objectivity.

The female scientist, Ko Sai, had highlighted an area of the Yinchorri’s midbrain. “The lack of neural pathways to the forebrain indicates an innate proclivity for violence. Although the absence could be idiosyncratic.”

The third Kaminoan, Lac Nor, called for an enhancement of the highlighted area. “The Yinchorri’s violent nature could complicate matters, Magister. Without access to sociological studies, we have no means of determining to what degree the culture of violence shapes the beings born into it. A clone raised in a laboratory setting might exhibit feral behavior unless provided with some means to express aggression.”

“An outlet,” Ko Sai offered.

“Scientific studies are available,” Damask said. “The question is, can compliance be bred into them without affecting their violent tendencies?”

“Probably not without disturbing the basic personality matrix,” Ko Sai said. “We might produce a clone that is merely Yinchorri in aspect, but lacks the signature characteristics of the species.”

Damask frowned. “That won’t do.”

“Have you considered using a more acquiescent species?” Ni Timor asked

“Which would you recommend?

“One of the placid species. Ithorians, for example. Or Caamasi.”

Damask shook his head. “Neither species would suit my purposes. What about humans?”

“Our experience with humans is limited — though of course we have grown many replacement organs.”

“Human emotionalism is somewhat problematic,” Ko Sai added, “but not unsolvable.”

Damask considered the comment, and then agreed with the Kaminoan’s assessment.

Emotion in human beings was a fatal flaw. The same characteristic that fueled their need to form strong bonds and believe that all life was sacred made them compassionate to a fault. Only weeks earlier on Sojourn, he realized that even Sidious, for all his growing strength in the dark side, remained a prisoner of his emotions. That Sidious was feeling an urge to stretch out with his new powers was to be expected and encouraged, but he had to be taught the lesson every Sith needed to learn. With great subtlety Sidious had manipulated Vidar Kim into a position where he had become a liability, and therefore had to die. He hadn’t bothered to address the issue directly because the time had come for Sidious to embark on the political career that would carry him to the chancellorship. Still, Sidious’s reaction to the assassination orders — fleeting as it had been — had convinced Plagueis of the need for additional tests. Sidious didn’t need to have his mistakes explained to him; he needed to experience the consequences.

“Perhaps, Magister,” Lac Nor was saying, “if we understood your plans for the Yinchorri clones.”

“I would expect them to serve as soldiers.”

“Ah,” Ni Timor said. “Then obedience, not mere compliance, must be a prime consideration.”

“And yet the need for some measure of free will,” Ko Sai was quick to point out. “Or else why not simply use combat automata?”

Lac Nor’s large eyes fixed on Damask. “These Yinchorri appear to be ready-made for war, Magister. Are there so few of them in the galaxy that you need to clone an army?”

He had deliberately avoided mentioning Yinchorri immunity to Force suggestion because he should have no way of knowing about that, or indeed anything about the actions of midi-chlorians. But it was precisely the reptilians’ capability to fashion Force bubbles that he hoped to explore.

“As you’ve already pointed out,” he said after a moment, “their innate bellicosity interferes with their ability to follow orders.”

Mostly to himself, Ni Timor said, “We would need to assure that their violent tendencies remained intact, while their behavior was less willful.”

“Yes,” Damask said.

Ko Sai craned her long neck. “Very challenging. Though perhaps if we could be supplied with a template for experimentation …” She gestured toward the 3-D images. “Is this specimen available for thorough evaluation?”

“I could have him delivered to Kamino,” Damask said. “Assuming for the moment that you can discover some way to provide me with what I need, how much time would be required to grow a mature clone?”

The three scientists traded looks.

“In the case of the Yinchorri,” Ni Timor said at last, “certainly no fewer than twelve standard years, to allow for both physical and mental development. As you know we have had some success in accelerating the growth rate of certain cloned creatures, but not yet with full sentients, owing to the plasticity of the youthful brain.”

“More important,” Lac Nor said, “while we might be able to grow a few clones, our facilities are at present inadequate to produce an army of any size.”

“We would also need to consult with military specialists regarding programming,” Ko Sai added.

“That can all be arranged,” Damask said. “Would you have any objections to working with Rothana Heavy Engineering?”

“Of course not,” Ni Timor said.

“Then Damask Holdings can provide whatever funding you need.”

Ko Sai’s eyes appeared to widen. “The Prime Minister will be very pleased to learn of this,” she said with what passed for animation on Kamino.

In his apartment in snowbound Theed, Palpatine watched a HoloNet replay of Jedi Knight Ronhar Kim leaping from a Coruscant taxi in midflight onto a monospeeder piloted by the Maladian contracted to assassinate the elder Kim. At the same time Palpatine spoke by comlink with Sate Pestage.

“Is Naboo threading the story?” Pestage asked.

“On every network.”

“Breaking news, Coruscant,” a female correspondent was saying. “Chommell sector Senator Vidar Kim, of Naboo, was killed earlier today while en route to Mezzileen Spaceport, in what appears to have been an assassination. A hovercam stationed at Node SSJ in the Sah’c District captured the moment when a monospeeder approached Senator Kim’s taxi from behind, and its helmeted pilot unleashed a salvo of blaster bolts, killing Kim instantly and barely missing a second passenger — an as-yet-unidentified Jedi Knight. The hovercam recording shows the human male Jedi, armed with an activated lightsaber, hurling himself from the taxi and knocking the pilot assassin from the seat of the monospeeder. Eyewitnesses state that the Jedi managed to steer the assailant to a pedestrian walkway close to where the speeder crashed and burned, but Realtime News has yet to learn whether the assassin survived the fall. Wounded in the attack, the pilot of the taxi was taken to Sah’c Med-Center, where his condition is listed as grave.”

“Is the Maladian alive?” Palpatine demanded of Pestage.

“No. She spiked herself with a neurotoxin while Ronhar was trying to force information from her.”

“You’re certain?”

“Absolutely certain.”

“The fool,” Palpatine fumed. “Why didn’t she wait until Kim had exited the taxi at Mezzileen?”

“You instructed me to make it public, which is exactly what I told her. She made a point of firing in full view of the security cam, but I haven’t been able to determine whether or not she knew that Kim was riding with a Jedi. Based on the placement of the blaster bolts, I think she planned on taking out both of them.”

“And if she’d succeeded, the Jedi would be conducting their own investigation.”

“They are, regardless,” Pestage said. “Because Ronhar issued a statement to the media that he may have been the target.”

Palpatine directed a scowl at the comlink cam. “Why didn’t you warn her about Ronhar?”

“I did warn her. Maybe she wanted to add another Jedi kill to her résumé.”

“Another?”

“As I told you, the Maladians are very good at what they do.”

Palpatine considered it. “If Ronhar is under the impression that he might have been the target, then Kim may not have revealed his suspicions about Tapalo and Veruna.”

“He didn’t. I had him under surveillance from the moment he arrived on Coruscant, and he didn’t go anywhere near the Jedi Temple or meet with anyone on the Senate Investigatory Committee. I have recordings of the three meetings he had with Ronhar in his office in the Senate Annex, and at no time did he offer anything more than veiled references to intrigues on Naboo.”

“Was he able to persuade Ronhar to leave the Order?”

“No. Ronhar said that he respected Kim for being his — what was the word he used? — progenitor. But that he considers the Temple to be his home and the Jedi to be his family.”

Palpatine forced an exhale. “I warned him.”

“Kim tried to convince him that family blood comes first, but Ronhar might as well have been listening to an episode of Coruscant Confessions.”

“Magister Damask will not be pleased. What rumors are circulating in the Senate?”

“That Kim may have been involved in shady business; that he double-crossed a group of lobbyists. You’ve got the Senate worried — if that was the idea.”

Plagueis would be satisfied to learn as much, Palpatine thought. The message, he now realized, had been directed not to anyone in particular, but to the Senate itself. Beyond the goal of advancing Palpatine’s political career ahead of schedule, the murder of Kim had spread apprehension in the galactic capital.

“It’s done, in any case,” he said finally.

“And without any leads for the police or the Jedi to pursue. You’re completely in the clear.”

Palpatine relaxed somewhat. “You’ve done well, Sate — the close call notwithstanding. There’s a place for you among my support group if you’re interested.”

Pestage, too, sounded relieved. “Then I suppose I’ll be seeing you on Coruscant. Senator Palpatine.”

17: DAYS OF WINE AND IMPROPRIETY

Supreme Chancellor Thoris Darus was largely responsible for the heady atmosphere that prevailed on Coruscant. A human native of Corulag, Darus had brought a sense of style to the galactic capital that had been absent a decade earlier when Vaila Percivas held the position, and hadn’t really been seen since the era of Eixes Valorum. Darus was unmarried, an incorrigible womanizer, an enthusiast of sport, opera, legitimate gambling, and high cuisine; his first term of office was characterized by a marked upswing in intemperance and, in the end, rampant corruption. Following the example set by the Supreme Chancellor, many of the tens of thousands who served in the Senate or lobbied on behalf of autocratic corporations and cartels had transformed Coruscant into a den of self-indulgence unrivaled anywhere in the Core or Inner Rim. From all areas of the galaxy had come beings eager to attend to the needs of the new political elite — from chefs to artists to specialists in pleasure. Courtesy of the Trade Federation and its numerous affiliates and corporate partners, goods flooded in from thousands of worlds, giving rise to new fashions, new foods, and novel forms of extravagance. Privileged Coruscanti, determined to enjoy life at the center, turned a blind eye to the storms that were brewing on the edges of civilization — intersystem rivalries, piratism, organized crime — and spiraling their way toward the Core. In three years the planet saw more immigration than it had seen in the preceding hundred, primarily from the Outer Rim, whose nonhumanoid species arrived in complete ignorance of the hardships that awaited them.

For Palpatine, Coruscant exceeded his expectations. Five years of travel and adventuring in the Expansion Region and Colonies had given him a taste for the high life, and here was a place not simply where his darkest desires could be fulfilled, but also where he could put his unique talents to the test. Its topography of cloudcutting edifices was a microcosm of the galaxy: swarming with beings who were willing to do whatever was necessary to claw their way from the depths, overseen by a tiered elite that nursed on their misery. If Coruscant was a magnet for those without skills or promise, it was also a paradise for those with credits and connections. And with assistance from many of the scions of wealth Palpatine had met while serving as Naboo’s ambassador, along with Hego Damask’s coterie of cronies and minions, he felt that he was on his way to the summit of the Senate Podium from the moment his boots touched the unnatural ground.

He grasped immediately that the only way the Republic might have saved itself was by removing the Senate to a world where temptation wasn’t lurking at every traffic nexus; opportunity in every balconied café; vice in every canyon — although the racket that Supreme Chancellor Darus and the Senate had going was obvious only if one knew where to look, and that frequently required having unrestricted access to the private clubs and back rooms to which bribes gravitated. Even without the Force, Palpatine knew he would have succeeded. The task would prove no more challenging than gaining the full confidence of his peers. With everyone striving to outdo one another he need only ensure that he dress well, dine in the right places, associate with the proper company, and renew his season passes to the Galaxies Opera. At the same time, he understood that he could be almost as anonymous as he wished, simply by venturing up or down, dressing up or down, mingling with merchants rather than politicians, or consorting with the hucksters, shysters, con and scam artists that populated the lower levels.

His first apartment wasn’t luxurious, but it was located in the government district, with room enough for his growing art collection, which now included a costly neuranium-and-bronzium sculpture of the ancient sage Sistros — appropriate for the affluent head of House Palpatine — and containing his original hand-built lightsaber, concealed in a cylindrical cavity undetectable by security scans.

The fact that his first official duty as Naboo’s interim Senator was to attend a funeral — his second that year — seemed only appropriate, given the Sith’s eventual plans for Coruscant.

Orders to attend Vidar Kim’s funeral had come both from Naboo and from Plagueis, who said that he should use the opportunity to seek out Ronhar Kim and speak with him personally. Palpatine had yet to meet one-on-one with a Jedi, and a conversation with Ronhar would allow him to test his ability to conceal his true nature from another Force-user.

As wicked as Coruscant is, Plagueis had told him, the Force is strong there because of the presence of so many Jedi. If you are successful in hiding in plain sight, you will be able to conceal your nature even from the most powerful among them. Take Ronhar into your confidence, and once you have, spend some of your time on Coruscant acquainting yourself with the spired headquarters of our enemy, and ask yourself: Is this not a fortress designed to hold the dark at bay?

Otherwise, Plagueis’s silence on the matter of Kim’s assassination had been deafening. On learning that King Tapalo had appointed Palpatine interim Senator, Plagueis had offered his congratulations, but nothing more. After months of not seeing him, Palpatine had hoped to find Plagueis waiting for him on Coruscant, but Hego Damask and the Muuns who made up Damask Holdings were conducting unspecified business on distant Serenno.

The funeral service was held at Naboo’s embassy, which was located below and to the west of Monument Plaza and the Senate. Dressed in a high-collared cape and purple robes, Palpatine arrived at the ornate monad in the company of Kinman Doriana, Sate Pestage, and Janus Greejatus, who had been dispatched to Coruscant by Tapalo, and whom Palpatine suspected had some strength in the Force. Kinman and Sate had forged an instant bond. The youthful Doriana was made for a world like Coruscant, and he couldn’t have asked for a better guide to the galactic capital’s titillating underbelly than Pestage, who seemed to know every nook and cranny of the place.

Ronhar Kim was among several dozen guests who were attending the service. Palpatine waited until the Jedi was alone in the viewing room before approaching him.

In concealing yourself, you will not be able to rely on your dark gifts, Plagueis said. Instead you must be yourself, submerged in the unified pattern to which the Jedi are attuned; visible in the Force, but not as a Sith. Since you cannot allow yourself to be seen, you must make certain that you are taken for granted. Disguised in the profane; camouflaged in the routine — in those same realms from which you can attack without warning when necessary.

A tall, muscular young man attired in black robes, Ronhar had thick black hair pulled into a bun behind, and with long strands in front dangling from temples to chin. In him, Palpatine could see Vidar, whose body was lying in state, supine on a massive rectangular stone bier. A simple blanket covered the corpse from shoulders to knees, and on the chest sat a shallow metallic bowel containing purple flowers and a lighted candle meant to symbolize the Livet Tower’s Eternal Flame. Janus Greejatus would transport the cremation ashes to Naboo, where they would be scattered in the Solleu River.

“Jedi Ronhar Kim,” Palpatine said as he entered the room, “please forgive the intrusion, but I wanted to offer my condolences in person.”

Roused from his thoughts, Ronhar whirled on him, almost in defense, and scanned him head-to-toe. “Who are you?”

“Palpatine,” he said. “I’ve been appointed to succeed Vidar Kim as Senator of Naboo. I knew your father well.”

Ronhar’s vigilance eased. “Forgive me for not knowing more about Naboo, Senator … Palpatine. But in fact, until several weeks ago I wasn’t aware that Vidar Kim was my biological father, or even that Naboo was my homeworld.”

Palpatine feigned understanding. “No need to apologize. I imagine that the Force is, in some sense, its own domain.”

Ronhar nodded. “I scarcely knew the man. Were it not for the fact that he was a Republic Senator, the Jedi Council would not have granted dispensation for me to meet with him.”

Palpatine allowed himself to stretch out with the Force, but only for a moment, and chiefly to gauge the Jedi’s reaction, which proved to be indiscernible. “Excuse me for asking, but why then did you choose to attend the service?”

Ronhar grew pensive. “No doubt you know about the tragedy that claimed the lives of his wife and sons.”

“I do.”

“Vidar Kim contacted me to ask if I would consider renouncing my pledge to the Jedi, in order to become the bearer of the family name.”

Palpatine moved closer to him and added compassion to his voice. “He told me, Ronhar. Does your presence here reflect doubt as to your obligations?”

“No,” the Jedi said, perhaps more firmly than he intended. “I’m only here out of respect for the man. As you may also know, he died at the hands of an assassin while in my company.” Ronhar’s voice betrayed disappointment rather than anger. “If I had acted sooner, he would be alive, and at present I can’t be certain that the assassin’s blaster bolts weren’t meant for me, rather than Vidar Kim.”

“Who in their right mind would target a Jedi Knight?”

The Jedi sniffed and narrowed his dark eyes. “The Jedi do not lack for enemies, Senator. Doling out justice and ensuring the peace doesn’t sit well with some beings.”

“The world of politics is no safer, Ronhar. Not in this era, with so many in need. Thank the Force we have the Jedi.”

“I wonder,” Kim said.

Palpatine regarded him with interest. The Jedi was less interested in solving the murder of Vidar than he was in agonizing over his failure to prevent it. “You wonder about what, Ronhar?”

“What my life might have been had I not become a Jedi.”

Palpatine adopted a look of shock. “The choice was not yours to make. You have the Force. Your destiny was a foregone conclusion.”

Ronhar mulled it over. “And if Vidar Kim had elected not to surrender me to the Order?”

“A line of thought impossible to follow to any conclusion,” Palpatine said.

The Jedi looked at him and squared his shoulders. “There are many forks in the path, Senator. Had I remained on Naboo I might have followed in Vidar Kim’s footsteps and entered politics. Perhaps it’s not too late.”

Palpatine showed him a tolerant smile and came alongside him, confident now that his true nature was beyond detection. “I have to admit that the notion of a politician with Jedi values is not without its appeal. In fact, the Republic was once overseen by Jedi chancellors only. But I’m afraid you’re something of an anachronism, Ronhar. The galaxy appears to have rejected the idea of enlightened leadership. The best politician presently is merely exceptional, where every Jedi is extraordinary.”

Ronhar laughed shortly. “More and more, Senator Palpatine, you begin to sound like my former Master.”

“Would that I had such talents,” Palpatine said, making light of it. “But I do have a proposition, Ronhar. Not only am I new to the Senate, I’m new to Coruscant. And it would be good to have someone to count on as a friend. So what would you say to an alliance between a politician and a Jedi? Through me you could gain insight into the workings of the Republic, and through you I might better understand the Jedi, in their roles as peacekeepers.”

Ronhar inclined his head in a bow. “I respect Vidar Kim all the more for bringing us together. May the Force be with you, Senator Palpatine.”

On Serenno, remote from the Core along the Hydian Way, a female servant of Count Vemec, costumed in garb from an era long past, escorted the quartet of human Jedi into the castle’s expensively modernized conference room. First to be introduced to those assembled — including dignitaries and politicians representing Serenno and nearby Celanon, and the Muun core of Damask Holdings — was Jedi Master and Council member Jocasta Nu, a pleasant-looking woman with straight hair, pronounced cheekbones, and brilliant blue eyes. Accompanying her were distinguished Jedi Masters Dooku and Sifo-Dyas, and a tall, powerfully built Jedi Knight named Qui-Gon Jinn, who remained standing while the rest took their designated seats at the circular table. The three men carried themselves with palpable self-assurance, and affected beards of different styles — Dooku’s terminated in a stylish point; Sifo-Dyas’s followed his strong jawline; Qui-Gon’s was long and thick.

Plagueis, who rarely missed an opportunity to interact with Jedi, had planned to leave the business on Serenno to Larsh Hill and the others — until learning that Dooku would be present.

Fifty or so standard years old, Dooku was Serenno’s native son, hailing from a noble lineage analogous to the Naboo Palpatines. Had he not been born strong in the Force, he would have been a Count, in the same way that Palpatine would have been a royal. But on the few occasions Plagueis had encountered Dooku, he had sensed something in him that warranted further investigation. Dooku was said to be one of the Order’s finest lightsaber masters, and he had earned a reputation as a skilled diplomat, as well; but his passion and restlessness were what had captured Plagueis’s attention. For all his decades in the Order, he seemed to have kept one foot anchored in the mundane. In place of the homespun brown robes worn by most Jedi — like the hale Qui-Gon Jinn — Dooku favored cloaks and robes more appropriate to a night at the opera on Coruscant. In addition, he was a candid critic of Supreme Chancellor Darus and the corrupt practices of the Senate.

Most important, perhaps, Dooku was linked to the Sith’s Grand Plan in ways that went beyond circumstantial. Some twenty years earlier, in a scheme engineered by Tenebrous to replace human Senator Blix Annon with a young upstart named Eero Iridian, Dooku and his then-Padawan, Qui-Gon Jinn, were caught up in the events and had managed to send some of the principal players to prison. Dooku had also unwittingly sabotaged several of Tenebrous’s plans to foster intersystem dissent in the Expansion Region.

In the aftermath of the near-disastrous assassination of Vidar Kim, Plagueis’s interest in Dooku had assumed a new urgency. He felt certain that Sidious would evolve into a commanding Sith, but just now the young Naboo was drunk with power and prone to make mistakes. When the dark recognized one as a true ally, a novice could lose his or her way, as had almost happened to Plagueis following the murder of Kerred Santhe. Bane-adoring Sith Masters like Tenebrous might have used the meeting on Serenno as a means of threatening their apprentices with replacement. Plagueis, however, had no such intention, which was why he hadn’t mentioned to Sidious that Jedi would be attending the meeting. Even so, he found himself wondering whether a dissatisfied Jedi like Dooku could be insurance against a reversal of fortune — some unexpected event that would rob him of Sidious — or perhaps turned to the dark without formal enlistment, and manipulated into instigating a schism in the Order.

As he had told Sidious, even a trained Jedi could succumb to the lure of the dark side on his or her own. One hundred thirty years earlier, on a former Sith world in the Cularin system, a Padawan named Kibh Jeen had been so strongly affected by the lingering power in a fortress on Almas that he submitted himself to the dark side and initiated a systemwide conflict. Perhaps, under Plagueis’s influence, Master Dooku could be inspired to do something similar. The Jedi would bear closer observation.

One of Celanon’s legal advocates was the first to speak when everyone had been seated.

“Celanon protests the presence of Jedi Master Dooku at this meeting, since it has come to our attention that he is Serennian by birth.”

Serenno’s arrogant Count Vemec started to respond when Dooku cut him off, addressing himself to the litigator. “If you had investigated further, you would also know that I renounced all ties to my family and Serenno on being accepted into the Jedi Order.” He turned his penetrating gaze on Celanon’s ambassador. “I assure you that I will be as impartial as any one of you.”

Celanon’s ambassador — a large, bumptious human — cleared his throat in a meaningful way. “Jedi Master Dooku’s reputation for even-handedness precedes him. We trust that he will be as fair in this matter as he is known to have been elsewhere.”

“With that issue behind us,” Vemec said, “I call for an official start to these proceedings.”

The issue at hand involved the planned construction of an Aqualish-manufactured hyperwave repeater in Celanon space that would expand the reach of the HoloNet well into the Corporate Sector — a vast region of the Tingel Arm that had become an economic playground for the Banking Clan and the Corporate Alliance, through lucrative deals brokered by Damask Holdings. In compensation for the fact that placement of the repeater would necessitate changes in hyperspace trade routes, Celanon had announced that ships entering Celanon space from the systems of the upper Hydian would be required to pay substantial transit taxes. Plagueis had limited interest in the debate. Secretly he hoped that mediation would fail. Citing controversy, Damask Holdings could then withdraw, and the project would collapse, leaving systems in the Tingel Arm fuming over having been victimized by a foolish squabble between two wealthy Republic worlds.

After four hours of pointless back-and-forth, Plagueis began to feel like the victimized one. When Count Vemec finally called a break in the proceedings, and many of the participants headed to the food tables, Plagueis found himself alone with Dooku, Sifo-Dyas, and Qui-Gon Jinn, and drew the cloak of the profane over himself.

“Bickering is becoming all too common,” he remarked to no one in particular. “In the absence of resolution, it will be the outlying systems that will suffer most.”

Dooku nodded sagely. “The hyperwave repeater should have been a Republic undertaking. The Senate erred in allowing the HoloNet to be privatized.”

Qui-Gon Jinn’s ears pricked up, and he glanced at Plagueis. “Discontent in the outer systems is in keeping with the aims of Damask Holdings, is it not, Magister?”

“On the contrary,” Plagueis replied in a composed voice. “We advocate for the interests of neglected worlds when and wherever we can.”

The tall Jedi wasn’t persuaded to back off. “By supporting the likes of the Trade Federation and other cartels?”

“The Trade Federation has brought progress to many a backward world, Master Jinn.”

“Through exploitation that leads ultimately to ruin.”

Plagueis spread his hands. “Progress often comes at a cost. On occasion a world will go through growth pangs as a result, but to call the end result ruination is overstating the case.” He studied Qui-Gon. “Surely the Jedi have had to ignore consequences of the same magnitude in enforcing the laws of the Republic.”

Sifo-Dyas’s dark brows formed a V. A short, muscular man, he had a broad nose, prominent cheekbones, and lustrous black hair cinched in a high topknot. His hands were large and callused, as if from physical labor. Concern shone in his brown eyes. “It is a misconception that we serve only the Republic, Magister. Our Order serves the greater good.”

“As the Order defines it,” Plagueis said, only to wave the remark away. “But then you have the advantage of being able to act in concert with the Force, where the rest of us are left to grope in the dark for what is just and right. Damask Holdings tries, nonetheless, to take the long view.”

“As do the Jedi,” Qui-Gon said. “But in several instances where we have had to resolve conflicts, it is your name that has surfaced.”

Plagueis shrugged. “The wealthy are held to higher standards than the poor.”

Dooku thought about it. “I blame the Senate for encouraging the galaxy to turn on credit.”

Plagueis glanced from Dooku to Qui-Gon. “I’m willing to concede Master Jinn’s point that the Muuns have cornered the market on finance, if he is willing to concede that the Jedi have cornered the market on ethics.”

Qui-Gon granted Plagueis a dignified bow. “And so we find ourselves on different sides, Magister.”

“Not necessarily. Perhaps we are after the same thing.”

“Different paths to the same destination? It’s a clever rationalization, but I refuse to accept it.” Qui-Gon placed his hands in the opposite sleeves of his robe. “If you’ll excuse me …”

Dooku smiled lightly as the tall Jedi sauntered off. “My former apprentice does not mince words.”

“Frank talk is a rarity these days,” Plagueis said. “The Senate could learn from beings like Qui-Gon Jinn.”

Dooku made a glum face. “The Senate listens only to itself. Endlessly, and without purpose. If it and Supreme Chancellor Darus are going to perpetuate a climate where injustice can advance, then it will.”

Sifo-Dyas grew uneasy. “The Rotunda is an arena even we don’t enter,” he said in a level voice, “except as spectators.”

Plagueis could not restrain a smile. “But you have, from time to time, been known to lobby.” He continued before Sifo-Dyas or Dooku could answer. “It can be a circus. One thing is certain, however: the Core is not holding. New leadership is needed.”

“Darus will undoubtedly be elected to another term,” Dooku said.

Plagueis pretended concern. “Is there no one who can defeat him, Master Dooku?”

“Frix, possibly. Kalpana — eventually. At present he isn’t strong enough to overcome the special-interest lobbies.”

Sifo-Dyas’s unease increased. “We are sworn not to take an active role, in any case.”

“Kalpana would certainly set a different tone,” Plagueis said, “but perhaps an equally risky one. His stance against piratism, smuggling, even slavery is well known. Unfortunately, many of the outer systems survive only because of such practices.”

“Then those worlds will have to find alternative means,” Sifo-Dyas said.

Plagueis turned to him. “Without assistance from the Republic? It begins to sound to me as if the Jedi will have their work cut out for them.”

Sifo-Dyas compressed his lips. “The Judicials and the Jedi will maintain peace.”

“There’s certainty in your voice,” Plagueis said. “But let me pose a question: If discontent spreads and intersystem conflict breaks out — if member worlds threaten secession, as Serenno threatened in times past — would your loyalties not be divided?”

“The Republic will be preserved.”

Plagueis grinned. “Again, that comforting confidence. But suppose the Republic’s goals were not in keeping with the greater good? Suppose conflict grew to become actual schism?”

The two Jedi traded looks. “In the absence of armies there can be no war,” Dooku said.

“Are the Jedi not an army — or at least capable of becoming one should the need arise?”

“We were an army at one time, but our enemies were vanquished,” Sifo-Dyas said with deliberate vagueness. “No matter the extent of the conflict, we would attempt to forge a peace — and without becoming the ruling body you seem to fear.”

Plagueis didn’t reply immediately. Sifo-Dyas was proving to be even more interesting than Dooku, though in a different way. Only a misguided sense of loyalty to the Jedi Order kept him from giving voice to the real extent of his apprenhensions.

“And yet you say forge a peace. That has the ring of semantics to it, Master Sifo-Dyas. But for the sake of argument, what if the disaffected systems raised an army? Wouldn’t the Jedi be obligated to serve and protect the Republic?”

Sifo-Dyas forced an exhale. “From where would these hypothetical armies arise? The outlying systems lack the resources …” Realizing his error, he trailed off.

Plagueis waited a moment, his satisfaction concealed. “I didn’t mean to suggest that the Republic is purposely depriving the outlying systems of the right to self-determination. I’m merely speculating, because I do see a growing threat.”

Dooku regarded him. “You are not alone in seeing it, Magister.”

“Then one final question, if I may: If attacked, would you counterattack?”

“The Republic has pledged to remain demilitarized,” Dooku said. “It would militarize only in the instance of a perceived threat.”

“Once more, you’ve reframed your initial question, Magister Damask,” Sifo-Dyas interrupted, a new fire in his eyes. “You’re hypothesizing an attack on the Jedi Order itself.”

“I suppose I am,” Plagueis said self-deprecatingly. “I suppose I was thinking of the recent assassination of Senator Vidar Kim. A Jedi was involved, if I’m not mistaken.”

“That matter is being looked into,” Sifo-Dyas said in a controlled voice. “There’s no evidence to suggest that the Jedi in question was targeted.”

The silence that followed was broken by the voice of Jocasta Nu, who was summoning the Jedi to the far side of the conference room. Plagueis studied Sifo-Dyas peripherally. While Nu and the others conferred, he thought back to the conversation he’d had with Sidious on Sojourn.

We will have to exploit their self-righteousness and blind obedience to the Republic, Sidious had said at one point. The Jedi must be made to appear the enemies of peace and justice, rather than the guardians.

Mulling it over anew, Plagueis began to wonder whether he had taken the wrong approach on Kamino. Perhaps, he thought, it would be better to have the Kaminoans create an army capable of fighting alongside the Jedi rather than against them …

Sifo-Dyas was the first to return to Plagueis’s corner of the room, as if eager to continue the conversation.

“Lest you’re thinking of investing in military enterprises, Magister, I can assure you that the Republic will not reverse its stance on demilitarization.” His words were forceful, but lacked certainty. “The Ruusan Reformations will not be repealed.”

Plagueis showed the palms of his hands. “And I can assure you, Master Jedi, that my questions were in no means motivated by thoughts of profit. We — that is, I — don’t wish to see the Republic caught off guard. For now I’ll place my faith in the Jedi, and in the belief that an army could be raised if necessary.”

Sifo-Dyas’s gaze faltered. “Out of thin air? Unlikely, Magister.”

“Grown, then.”

“Manufactured, you mean.”

“No, I was being literal,” Plagueis said. “But I know of only one group that might be up to the task. The group who grew laborers to work the mines of Subterrel.”

Puzzlement wrinkled Sifo-Dyas’s face. “I’m not familiar with Subterrel.”

Plagueis was about to mention Kamino when he spied Jocasta Nu approaching, and a feeling from deep in the dark side rose up inside him, strangling his voice box, as if refusing to let the word escape.

“I apologize, Master Jedi,” he said when he could. “The name of the group was on the tip of my tongue, but I seem to have swallowed it.”

18: ARTFUL DODGING

Palpatine had been on Coruscant for just over two standard months when the Senate convened to vote on whether or not to seat Felucia, Murkhana, and half a dozen other planets considered by many to be client worlds of the Trade Federation. In the hope of generating public interest, Coruscant climate control had promised to provide perfect weather over the government district. Clouds had been swept aside and orbital mirrors had been positioned to provide maximum daylight. Maintenance droids had refreshed the paving stones of Senate Plaza and polished the thirty-meter-tall statues that lined the Avenue of the Core Founders. Police had cordoned off large areas of the district between levels 55 and 106, and deployed sniper units, squads of bomb detector automata, and three times the usual number of security hovercams. Reporters, documentarians, freelance journalists, and op-ed columnists were out in force, calling in favors in an effort to be as close to the action as possible. Limousine services were working overtime, and taxis were nearly impossible to find, which left aides and assistants to fend for themselves, arriving on foot or by mag-lev, ensembles freshly laundered, headpieces blocked, fur coiffed, boots buffed. Even the Jedi Knights and Padawans stationed throughout the plaza as a show of force appeared to be sporting their cleanest robes and tunics.

Analysts were touting the vote as landmark, though it had been an admittedly slow news week on Coruscant. More to the point, a vast majority of the capital’s residents couldn’t have cared less about the outcome, since most only knew of the Trade Federation through self-serving advertisements that streamed on the HoloNet. Local gossip was always more interesting than politics, in any case.

For weeks, however, opponents and supporters of the amendments that would revise the rules regarding member status in the Republic had been giving voice to their arguments in the great Rotunda, often vociferously enough to shake their repulsorlift platforms, jabbing fingers and other appendages in the air for emphasis or accusation, in defiance of calls by the vice chancellor for order and decorum.

Standing with Sate Pestage and Kinman Doriana beneath the abstract statue of Core Founder Tyler Sapius Praji, Palpatine felt one step closer to his destined place, even if the scene in the plaza struck him as more vanity fair than Senatorial assembly. Like many of the others, he had been out half the night, drinking and dining with lobbyists eager to win his favor. At tapcafs, cantinas, restaurants, and nightclubs throughout the entertainment districts, credits had flowed freely, whispered bribes had been proffered, promises made, deals struck. Now some of the players he had encountered during the long evening were shuffling bleary-eyed through the gaping entrances of the umbrella-shaped Senate Building: Senators and their top aides; commissioners of the investment sector and securities exchange; members of the Trade Federation delegation and the board of the InterGalactic Banking Clan.

Elsewhere on the broad avenue — at key intersections, taxi stops, and mag-lev exits — stood groups of Jedi, a few with the hilts of their lightsabers conspicuously visible. For Palpatine the sight of so many of them in one place was at once exhilarating and sobering. Though thoroughly cloaked in the everyday, he could feel their collective pride trickle into him through the Force. Only the baseness of Coruscant’s populace, the almost sheer absence of anything natural, kept the world from being as strong in the light as Korriban was in the dark. While he accepted that he and Plagueis were more than equal to the most powerful of the Jedi Order, he understood that they were no match for their combined strength — the Sith imperative notwithstanding. The Jedi would fall only with the full collaboration of the dark side; that was, only when the dark side of the Force was ready and willing to conspire in their downfall.

His musings were interrupted by a sudden gust of wind, whipped up by a luxurious landspeeder that was alighting in the center of the avenue. Preceded by a vanguard of ceremonial guards wearing floor-length blue robes, Supreme Chancellor Darus emerged, waving to the crowd and for the hovercams that rushed in to immortalize his every expression. Palpatine studied him as the guards began to maneuver him through the throng, a train of handpicked journalists following dutifully in his wake: the easy way he carried himself; the way he made a point to stop and greet some while ignoring others; the way he laughed on cue …

He recalled the two coronations he and his father had attended in Theed, and could remember as if yesterday the envy that had wafted from Cosinga like sour sweat. How cravenly his inept father had desired to wield such power! And would that Cosinga could see his son now, standing so close to the center, surveying the Senate as Cosinga might have the Palpatine lands in the Lake Country, thinking: Everything my gaze falls on will be mine: these buildings, these monads, these statues I will have slagged, this airspace whose use I will restrict to the powerful, that penthouse in 500 Republica, this Senate …

Again his musings were interrupted, this time by the Gran Protectorate Senator Pax Teem, who was waddling briskly toward him, followed closely by the Senators from Lianna, Eriadu, and Sullust.

“Are you ready to make history, Senator?” Teem said, his eyestalks quivering in excitement.

“Rather than be a casualty of it,” Palpatine told him.

The Gran grunted in amusement. “Well said, young sir. Needless to say, many are counting on you.”

“Better many than all, because we cannot please everyone.”

Teem grew serious. “Perhaps not. But we can strike a blow for utilitarianism. The greatest good for the greatest number.”

Palpatine smiled in the way he had seen Darus smile. “And strike a blow we shall, Senator.”

“Good, good,” Teem chortled. “Then we’ll see you inside where the galaxy’s business is done.”

Pestage snorted a laugh as Teem was moving away. “The greatest good for the greatest Gran.”

It was true. Teem harbored no ill will toward the Trade Federation. He merely wanted to see Naboo blunder, Hego Damask cut down to size, and Malastare returned to its quondam grandeur.

The contingent of Senators had scarcely left when Palpatine heard his name called; turning, he saw Ronhar Kim in the company of two older human Jedi. Quietly he pulled his powers deeper into himself and adopted a mask of cordiality.

“Jedi Ronhar,” he said, inclining his head in greeting.

The black-haired Jedi returned the nod. “Senator Palpatine, may I introduce Masters Dooku and Sifo-Dyas.”

Palpatine was familiar with the former, but only by reputation. “A great honor, Masters.”

Dooku appraised him openly, then arched an eyebrow. “Excuse me for staring, Senator, but Ronhar’s descriptions of you led me to expect someone older.”

“I disguise myself well, Master Dooku. My age, that is.”

“Either way,” Sifo-Dyas remarked, “a talent required by your position.”

“An ignoble truth, Master Sifo-Dyas. But we strive to remain faithful to our conscience.”

Dooku smiled with purpose. “Hold tight to that, Senator Palpatine. Coruscant will surely test your resolve.”

Ronhar Kim had his mouth open to speak when another familiar voice rang out.

“I didn’t realize that you were acquainted.”

Over Dooku’s shoulder Palpatine saw in surprise that Hego Damask, Larsh Hill, and two other black-robed Muuns were threading their way toward him. That he hadn’t sensed his Master spoke to Plagueis’s power to completely conceal himself, even from a fellow Sith.

“Magister Damask,” Dooku and Sifo-Dyas said simultaneously, turning to greet him.

Damask looked at Palpatine. “Recently — on Serenno, in fact — Masters Dooku, Sifo-Dyas, and I engaged in a spirited discussion about the current state of the galaxy and our hopes for the future.”

“Serenno,” Palpatine said, more to himself and mildly confounded. Damask hadn’t said anything about Jedi attending the meeting there. So what message was he sending now? Glancing at the trio of Jedi, he thought back to his Master’s remark that even Jedi could be turned to the dark. Had the near-bungled assassination of Vidar Kim persuaded Plagueis to entice and recruit a Jedi to serve as his apprentice?

“Ronhar just introduced us to the Senator,” Sifo-Dyas was explaining.

Dooku’s eyes moved from Damask to Palpatine and back again. “May I inquire how it is that you and the Senator know each other?”

Damask motioned to Palpatine. “Senator Palpatine and Damask Holdings share a dream for Naboo …” He gestured inclusively to Hill and the other Muuns. “Palpatine was one of the few who early on saw the wisdom of ushering in a new era for his homeworld.”

Palpatine sensed scrutiny from someone outside the circle the ten of them had formed. Just short of the Senate Building’s Great Door, Pax Teem had stopped and was gazing at Palpatine, his eyestalks extended. And Palpatine could scarcely blame him, since even he had been caught off guard by Plagueis’s eagerness to acknowledge him in public.

“How does it feel to have realized your wish for your homeworld?” Dooku said.

Palpatine came back to himself. “One can’t very well stand in the way of destiny.”

Again, Dooku glanced from Palpatine to Damask. “The will of the Force begets uncommon fellowships.”

Chimes sounded, announcing that the session was beginning, and everyone began to file through the doors into the massive structure, going their separate ways from the atrium, some to spectators’ boxes or media areas, and others, like Palpatine, Sate, and Kinman, to turbolifts that accessed Naboo’s station in the Senate’s middle tier — one of a thousand identical docking stations in the Rotunda, outfitted with a detachable repulsorlift platform and a suite of private offices. Central to the artificially lighted space was an elegant tower emblazoned with the seal of the Republic, at the summit of which rested the Supreme Chancellor’s podium. Darus, the vice chancellor, and the administrative aide were already present, and after brief introductory remarks by the Supreme Chancellor, the vice chancellor called the matter to a vote.

A few Senators spoke, but most simply cast their votes, a tally of which was relayed to monitor screens at each station and projected overhead, along the inner curve of the dome. By the time the vice chancellor recognized the Chommell sector, the vote was tied. Though Palpatine’s vote would break the stalemate, several systems had yet to weigh in.

Detached from the docking station, the platform carried Palpatine out over the lower tiers and deep into the kilometers-wide Rotunda. A hush fell over a portion of the Senate, and he inhaled the moment deep into himself. Still the platform continued to move toward the podium, as if even the Supreme Chancellor wanted a closer look at him, and it pleased him to know that his reputation had spread that far.

Then Palpatine spoke to them.

“The Trade Federation came to Naboo some ten years ago. It didn’t arrive by force but by invitation, after a vast reservoir of plasma was discovered beneath Naboo’s lush mantle — vast enough to supply clean energy to hundreds of disadvantaged worlds along the Hydian Way and, at the same time, introduce Naboo to the galactic community.

“Following months of reasoned debate, our newly elected monarch decided that Naboo should share its resources with the galaxy. Agreements were struck between Naboo and the Trade Federation, along with several construction conglomerates. Mining was begun, processing plants were constructed, and spaceports were enlarged to accommodate the fleet of shuttles needed to ferry the plasma to cargo ships parked in orbit.

“Three years later, plasma was flowing out into the galaxy and wealth was flowing into Naboo and the worlds of the Chommell sector, and an era of unprecedented prosperity had begun.

“That prosperity came with hidden costs, but Naboo was willing to absorb them, primarily for the sake of those beings who were benefiting from what nature had bequeathed to our small world.”

He paused and turned slightly in the direction of the Trade Federation’s platform.

“The Trade Federation has been accused of price fixing, exploitation, and monopolistic practices, but those matters are not at issue today. Today the Republic is being asked to widen its embrace to include several planets in the outlying systems many consider to be client worlds of the cartel. Many of you are concerned that seating these worlds will tip the balance of power by giving the Trade Federation and its corporate allies too strong a voice in the Senate. But was this matter not already settled when the Courts of Justice ruled that the Trade Federation should be treated as if it were a world? That decision opened the door to entities like the Commerce Guild, the Techno Union, and the Corporate Alliance, all of which enjoy their separate platforms in this hall. So the issue of legality is not up for debate.

“Instead, we must set ourselves to the task of deciding if the Trade Federation has become too aggressive in its pursuit of a louder voice.”

Again he paused, this time to allow individual debates to come and go.

“Not three standard months ago,” he said at last, “the Chommell sector’s Senator of long standing was assassinated, here, on Coruscant. Senator Kim was known to many of you as an honest being, concerned about the growing influence of the cartels and the potential for a shift in power in the Senate. His tragic death provoked allegations and prompted investigations, and yet no progress has been made in determining the motive for his murder or identifying the agents behind it. This, despite inquires by Judicials, the Senate Investigatory Committee, even the Jedi Order.

“As a consequence of and, yes, in protest against the manner in which the investigation into Senator Kim’s death has been handled, I am instructed by my regent, King Bon Tapalo, to announce that Naboo and the Chommell sector worlds are abstaining from the vote.”

The hush that had fallen over a select section of the Senate spread to include the entire Rotunda. Then the outbursts that erupted — both damning and championing — were so clamorous and prolonged that the vice chancellor ultimately curtailed his attempts to restore order and let chaos reign.

19: THE TRIALS

In the aftermath of the Trade Federation victory in the Senate, Felucia, Murkhana, and other former client worlds became members of the Republic, unswerving in their allegiance to the needs of the Trade Federation. While Pax Teem and a handful of similarly disappointed Senators shunned Palpatine, accusing him — and Naboo — of having been bought by the cartel, most of the Senate dismissed the matter with a shrug. Palpatine was new to the game and, in fact, was merely expressing the wishes of King Tapalo. More important, the seating of new worlds meant new revenue and additional opportunities for graft. Ronhar Kim thanked Palpatine personally for not mentioning him in his address to the Senate. Moved by Palpatine’s appeal, Supreme Chancellor Darus sent a personal message stating that he was instructing the Judiciary Committee to use its wide-ranging powers to unravel the Kim assassination.

Plagueis was pleased by the results, since it was only a matter of time before the newly seated worlds would find themselves caught between the Republic on the one hand and the Trade Federation on the other; taxed by the former, exploited by the latter — the perfect recipe for resentment. The two Sith did not meet in person, but Plagueis notified his apprentice that he and the other Muuns would be remaining on Coruscant for the foreseeable future, primarily to attend the induction of Larsh Hill into the arcane Order of the Canted Circle, many of whose members were regulars at the Gatherings on Sojourn.

For Darth Sidious, the weeks following the vote were a return to business as usual. With the Senate still in session, he spent most of his days in the Rotunda and most of his nights continuing to explore Coruscant, often in the company of Pestage and Doriana. In secret he continued his Sith training, accepting the absence of actual guidance from his Master as a sign that he was meant to stretch out on his own. And so he did, delving into many of the ancient texts Plagueis dismissed as worthless, including treatises on Sith sorcery and holocron construction.

Toward the end of the third week he was contacted by a lobbyist for an energy consortium known as Silvestri Trace Power. In several comlink exchanges, the lobbyist, a Sullustan, made it clear that Senator Palpatine stood to profit greatly by advocating for STP in the Senate, and suggested a meeting to discuss terms. Sidious probably wasn’t supposed to dig too deeply into the origins of STP, or succeed in discovering ways around the roadblocks the consortium had constructed to thwart just such investigations, but he did, and was intrigued to learn that STP had once been a shell company created by Zillo Fuel Resources, which was based on Malastare.

Suspecting an attempt at entrapment, Sidious agreed to a daytime meeting, the location of which served only to further arouse his suspicions. Unlike the upper-tier restaurants patronized by the political crowd, the Shimmersilk was in a low-tier district known colloquially as POTU, which to most beings stood for “the periphery of the Uscru,” but to the better informed meant “the peril of the Uscru”—a slowly gentrifying area accessed by the Deep Core Mag-Lev Line that had once been the haunt of turf gangs, serial killers, molesters, thieves, and other bottom feeders, on a world whose bottom was uncommonly deep. With residents preying mainly on one another, the police saw little reason to patrol, and even security cams were scarce, as they were frequently stolen and disassembled for parts. Still, the risk of mayhem or murder appealed to the Rotunda crowd, and it wasn’t unusual to encounter a Senator or an aide slumming in the POTU, mingling with shady beings, indulging in proscribed substances, flirting with danger.

Sidious considered bringing Pestage and Doriana along, but ultimately rejected the idea. In the absence of undergoing any formal training with Plagueis, he was eager to see what he could do on his own.

Cramped and rattled by the frequent passage of nearby mag-lev trains, the Shimmersilk catered to what looked like a local crowd. Dressed down for the meeting, as was Sidious, the Sullustan lobbyist was waiting at a corner table, with his back to a wall adorned with cheap holoimages. Only six other tables were occupied — nonhuman couples in the main — and catered to by three clumsy human waiters and a Dug bartender. Instrumental jatz music, barely audible, wafted though air in sore need of recycling.

Sidious adopted a look of wide-eyed innocence as he sat down opposite the Sullustan. They began to talk in a general way about current events and Senate business, before the lobbyist steered the conversation toward STP’s need for Senate approval to expand its operations along the Rimma Trade Route. Drinks and appetizers were ordered and reordered, and before too long Palpatine’s interest began to wane.

“I think you may have overvalued my worth to STP,” he said at last. “I’m nothing more than the voice of Naboo’s regent.”

The Sullustan waved his small hand in a gesture of dismissal. “And I think you undervalue yourself. Your short speech to the Senate put you on the map, Senator. Beings are talking about you. STP believes that you can be of great service.”

“And to myself, you said.”

“Naturally—” the Sullustan started, but Sidious interrupted him.

“In fact, you’re not here to recruit me.” Motioning negligently, he repeated: “You’re not here to recruit me.”

The Sullustan blinked in confusion. “In fact, I’m not really here to recruit you.”

“Then why are we here?”

“I don’t know why we’re here. I was instructed to meet with you.”

“Instructed by whom?”

“I, I—”

Sidious decided not to press him too hard. “You were saying?”

Again the Sullustan blinked. “I was saying … Just what was I saying?”

They both laughed and sipped at their drinks. At the same time, Sidious used the Force to shift the apron of one of the waiters just enough to reveal the grip of a hold-out blaster the man was wearing at his waist. Lifting his glass for another swallow, he did the same to another of the waiters, whose apron concealed an identical weapon. Both had been manufactured by BlasTech, but not for common consumption. The E-series 1–9—the aptly named Swiftkick — was available only to elite members of Santhe Security, headquartered on Lianna.

“I had better slow down,” he said with purposeful awkwardness. “I believe I’m becoming a bit light-headed.”

The Sullustan’s demeanor changed, though almost imperceptibly. “You just need some more food.” He slid a menu across the table. “Choose whatever you wish. Cost is no issue.” He stood. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, we’ll order as soon as I return.”

Sidious noted that the Sullustan wasn’t the only one getting to his feet. Under low-voiced orders from the waiters, patrons were calling for their checks and exiting. In moments he would be the Shimmersilk’s sole customer. As he swung slightly in his chair to stare into the corner of the room, a scenario began to emerge in his imaginings. The Sullustan, STP’s link to Malastare, Santhe Security agents, even the Dug bartender … Their issues were not with him but with Damask Holdings. He wasn’t being set up for an eventual allegation of corruption; a far more sinister deception was unfolding, and his interest was immediately renewed.

His first thought was that they had attempted to drug him. His investigations into Sith sorcery had taught him how to nullify the effects of many common poisons and venoms — a practice he had performed routinely before he’d even seated himself at the table. Perhaps, then, they were waiting for him to slump forward and lapse into unconscious or froth at the mouth and be shaken by spasms …

Just when he was thinking that it was his acting ability that was going to be put to the test, two of the waiters converged on him, now showing their discreet but powerful weapons.

“Someone wants a word with you, Senator,” the taller of the pair said.

“Here?” Sidious said in apparent confusion.

The other one motioned to a door. “Through there.”

Sidious masked his smile: the Shimmersilk had a back room.

He stood clumsily, leaning deliberately toward one of the security men, gauging his body temperature, heart rate, and respiration. “I’m slightly intoxicated. I may have to count on you for support.”

The man made a sound of exasperation but allowed Sidious to place one arm on his shoulder.

How effortless it would be, he thought, as the dark began to rise in him, searing and hungry, yearning to assume control of his body and unleash itself, to break the necks of both of them, to tear their beating hearts from their chests, to hurl and plaster them against the walls, to bring the entire sour-smelling place down on their heads …

But he didn’t. He needed to meet his abductor. He needed to learn the names of all those responsible. He needed to prove to his Master that he was adroit and capable — a true Sith Lord.

The back room had a second door that opened into a dark corridor leading to an ancient turbolift. Shoved forward by the guards, Sidious calculated the distance they had come from the Shimmersilk to the turbolift. He fell silent as they began to rise, and devoted his attention to calculating their rate of climb. He estimated that they had risen fifty levels when the turbolift came to a halt, depositing them in a corridor as aged as the first, though wider, tiled, and illuminated by wall sconces. Perhaps a maintenance corridor for the monads above, though still far below what would constitute the deepest of the sub-basements. The Santhe Security men guided him north across a stretch of stained permacrete floor to an intersection where a four-being speeder was idling, a heavily armed Rodian seated at the controls.

This one isn’t Santhe, Sidious told himself. A freelance mercenary or assassin.

Shoved roughly onto the speeder’s rear bench seat, he was reminded not to do anything foolish. Restraining an impulse to reveal that they already had, he continued to play the intimidated abductee, cowering in the seat, hands interlocked in his lap, avoiding eye contact. The speeder traveled east at a moderate speed until the first intersection, then turned in the direction of the government district and resumed the same speed for a longer duration. Sidious reckoned that they were twenty or so tiers beneath the outlying buildings of the Senate when the speeder swung west into an even broader corridor toward a district known as The Flats or The Works — a kind of industrial plain situated well below the governmental plateau, overlooked to the far north by the Jedi Temple and the horizontal landing fields of Pius Dea Spaceport, and to the south by the resiblocks and commercial towers of the Fobosi district.

Where Plagueis was attending Larsh Hill’s induction into the Order of the Canted Circle.

The Rodian speeder pilot delivered them to an antigrav turbolift car. While pretending to tremble in fear, Sidious had come to an additional conclusion: the fact that his abductors had gone to a lot of trouble to keep him out of public view meant that the plan called for him to be held for ransom or executed clandestinely rather than publicly.

The elevator carried them to a midlevel docking area of an abandoned factory, where several more guards were waiting. Oblique, particulate-suffused daylight streamed though massive windows yet to be smashed by the gangs that ruled The Works, falling on items that had been deemed worthless when the factory’s owners had abandoned Coruscant for less costly worlds in the Mid or Outer Rim. Sidious’s human handlers forced him to sit atop the boxy body of an overturned power droid. A portable holoprojector was moved into position in front of him, and a transmission grid placed under his feet.

One of the Santhe guards spent a moment activating the projector, then stepped aside as a faintly blue, life-sized image of Gran Protectorate Senator Pax Teem took shape above. Teem was dressed in a richly brocaded robe and a shimmersilk tunic banded by a broad cummerbund. The stable and sharply detailed quality of the image suggested that its source was Coruscant or a nearby Core world, rather than Malastare.

“We apologize for not having provided a seat more suited to your station, Senator. No doubt the head of House Palpatine is accustomed to more comfortable surroundings.”

Sidious rejected outrage and intimidation for rankled curiosity. “Is this the point where I’m expected to ask why I’ve been abducted?”

Teem’s eyestalks lengthened. “You’re not the least bit interested?”

“I assume that this has something to do with Naboo’s abstention in the vote.”

“That’s certainly part of the reason. You should have voted as your predecessor would have, Senator.”

“Those were not my instructions.”

“Oh, I’m certain of that much.”

Sidious folded his arms across his chest. “And the rest of it?”

Teem rubbed his six-fingered hands together in eagerness. “This has less to do with you than with the beings you serve. In a way, it’s simply your bad luck that you find yourself in the middle.”

“I don’t believe in bad luck, Senator, but I take your point to mean that my abduction is an act of retribution. And as such, you demonstrate that the Gran Protectorate is willing to employ the same tactics used by those who ordered the assassination of Vidar Kim.”

Teem leaned toward the cam that was transmitting his image and allowed anger to contort his features. “You say that as if it’s still a mystery, when we both know that the murder wasn’t ordered by the Trade Federation but by your Muun master. By Hego Damask.”

Sidious’s expression didn’t change. “He is hardly my master, Senator. In fact, I scarcely know him.”

“He greeted you in front of the Senate Building like a close friend.”

“He was extending his greeting to two Jedi Masters I happened to be standing with.”

Teem’s right forefinger jabbed the air. “Don’t delude yourself into thinking that you can save yourself by lying. You and Damask have known each other for more than ten years. Ever since you were instrumental in helping him guarantee the election of Bon Tapalo.”

Sidious gestured casually. “An old rumor that has no basis in fact, begun and perpetuated by rivals of House Palpatine.”

“Again, you lie. Your treachery was to your father and his royal allies. In exchange for the information you released and the subsequent spying you carried out for Damask, he rewarded you by persuading Tapalo to appoint you ambassador.”

Sidious hid his ruefulness. That his enemies on Naboo had reached out to Teem came as no surprise. But the revelation firmed his decision to have those enemies eliminated at the first opportunity. And to see to it, as well, that information regarding his past disappeared from the public record.

“The appointment as ambassador came years later,” he said. “As a direct result of my political accomplishments on Naboo.”

Teem snorted a laugh. “In the same manner in which the appointment to the Senate was a result of your accomplishments?”

“Speak plainly, Teem,” Sidious said, his voice flat and menacing now.

Teem showed him a bitter smile. “Perhaps you had no direct hand in Kim’s death, but I suspect that you were complicit.” He paused, then added, “That little speech you gave in the Senate … I understand that it succeeded in attracting the attention of the Supreme Chancellor. Clearly you have all the makings of a career politician. Unfortunately, we plan to cut your career short.”

Sidious brushed dust from the shoulder of his robe. “Release whatever allegations you have. They will provide gossip for the day and be forgotten the next.”

Teem planted his large hands on his hips and laughed heartily. “You misunderstand me, Palpatine. We’re not interested in besmirching your reputation or holding you for ransom. We intend to kill you.”

Sidious took a moment to respond. It was odd to think now that he had once known fear. Though never incapacitating fear, and never for very long. But as a child, he’d experienced fear as a conditioned response to threat. Despite a reassuring voice inside him that had promised no harm could come, there had been, for a time, a chance that something terrible could happen. More than once his father’s raised hand had made him cringe. Eventually, he had understood that he had conjured that voice; that he hadn’t been fooling himself by exercising some infantile belief in invulnerability. And he understood now that it had been the dark side telling him that no harm could come to him, precisely because he was invulnerable. Since the start of his training, the voice had quieted by becoming internalized. Teem’s belief that he had power over him might long ago have moved him to pity instead of stirring anger and loathing. Raw emotion was a consequence of leading a double life. While he relished his secret identity, he wanted at the same time for it to be known that he was a being who could not be trifled with; that he wielded ultimate authority; that merely to gaze on him was tantamount to glimpsing the dark matter that bound and drove the galaxy …

“What is it you hope to gain by killing me?”

“Since you ask: to rid the Senate of yet another useless crony, and to send a special message to Hego Damask that his days of influencing the Senate have come to an abrupt end. For ten years we’ve been waiting to execute this … retribution, as you call it. For some of us, even longer. Reaching back to Damask’s partnership with a Bith named Rugess Nome.”

The assassination of Kerred Santhe, Sidious thought. “I fear, Senator, that you have not given this matter sufficient thought.”

Teem’s face took on color. “Repercussions, Palpatine? Ah, but we have thought through the matter, and have taken the necessary precautions.”

Sidious nodded. “I’ll give you one final chance to reconsider.”

Teem swung to someone off cam and loosed a belly laugh. “Tell that to the beings who hold your life in their hands, Palpatine. And do take heart in the fact that you accomplished so much in your brief career.”

No sooner did the holoimage dissolve than two of the security men began to advance on him. Sidious readied himself for action. A Force blow to send them reeling back toward the holoprojector, then a leap, arms extended, hands curled into claws, one for each windpipe, which he would tear from their throats—

The Force intruded, drawing his attention to the windows in the upper walls.

At once, the sound of repeating blasters and pained cries echoed from adjacent rooms; then a nerve-jangling shattering of glass as Sun Guards crashed through the high windows and began to rappel to the filthy floor, firing as they slid down on their microfilament lines, catching the Santhe men and the Rodian with so many bolts that their bodies were left quartered by the volleys.

Other towheaded Echani rushed into the landing from both sides, some carrying force pikes, others blasters. Sidious had yet to move a muscle when a silver-eyed female hurried over to him.

“You’re safe now, Senator Palpatine.”

He smiled at her. “I can see that.”

An Echani male standing alongside the holoproj was using a handheld device to extract information from it. A moment later, an image of Hego Damask dressed in a ceremonial robe genied into view where Teem’s had been; the droid 11-4D stood behind him.

“We have the source, Magister,” the Sun Guard said. “Panoply Orbital Facility.”

Damask nodded. “Rendezvous with the rest of your team and execute the assault.”

The Sun Guard nodded briskly. “Shall I leave personnel with Senator Palpatine?”

“No,” Damask told him. “Senator Palpatine doesn’t require your protection. Leave us.”

Sidious could hear airspeeders hovering outside the factory. Without further word, the Sun Guards began to race from the room.

“You’ve obviously been keeping a close eye on me,” Sidious said as he approached the projector.

Darth Plagueis nodded. “Your abduction has been in the planning stages for some time.”

“Ever since you made it a point to greet me openly at the Senate.”

“Even before that. Veruna alerted me to the fact that a group of disgruntled nobles had made contact with the Gran.” Plagueis paused a moment. “You might consider using Sate Pestage to settle the score with them.”

“The thought occurred to me.”

“As for our public meeting, I needed to dangle you in front of them.”

“Without my knowledge.” The ruddiness that had come to Sidious’s face deepened. “Another test?”

“Why should I need to test you?”

“Perhaps you thought I was becoming so enthralled with life on Coruscant that I wouldn’t recognize danger.”

“Clearly you weren’t. I could see that you were aware from the start. You were determined to please me, and indeed you have.”

Sidious inclined his head in a respectful bow.

“Even in partnership with Santhe Security, Teem and the other Gran are rank amateurs,” Plagueis continued. “Our agents persuaded them to use the eatery in Uscru, and the factory in which you find yourself — owned by us, as it were, through a holding company called LiMerge Power. We were unable, however, to determine where the Gran would be taking refuge.”

“And now you know,” Sidious said. “But why go to such lengths to set them up? Why not simply kill them?”

“This isn’t Sith business, apprentice. For the sake of appearances we need to justify what we are about to unleash on them. They failed to understand our message and now they must be taught a lesson. Still, other interests need to be convinced of our reasoning.”

“How can I help?”

“You’ve already played your part. Now go about your usual business. We’ll speak again when the ceremony at the Order of the Canted Circle is concluded.”

Sidious fell silent for a long moment, then said, “Is there an end to these trials?”

“Yes. When there is no further need of them.”

20: THE CANTED CIRCLE

The stage was set.

A perfect circle, twenty meters in diameter, had been cut from a single slab of imported stone and constructed so that one end touched the floor while the other was held ten degrees above it by concealed antigrav generators. This was the Canted Circle, known only to members of the order — which, throughout its long history, had never numbered more than five hundred in any given period — and was housed in the clear-domed summit of the esoteric society’s monad in the heart of Coruscant’s Fobosi district. Legend had it that the round-topped building — thought to be one of the oldest in that part of the planet — was built over an ancient lake bed and had been the sole survivor of a seismic event that had tipped it ten degrees to the southwest. A century after the quake, the structure had been righted to vertical, except for the central portion of the canted floor of its uppermost story, which later supplied the name for a clandestine organization founded by influential beings who had purchased the building sometime during the reign of Tarsus Valorum.

Just then, Larsh Hill, draped in black robes, was standing at the raised end of the circle, and Plagueis, 11-4D, and ten other Muuns — also wearing black garments, though different from the order’s hooded garb — stood at the other. Scheduled to begin at the top of the hour, the initiation ceremony would commence with the high official joining Hill on the circle, initiating him, and placing around his neck the order’s signature pendant. Plagueis had declined an offer of enrollment twenty years earlier, but had continued to do business with the Grand Mage and many of the order’s most prominent members, several of whom were regulars at the Gatherings on Sojourn. The Order of the Canted Circle was content to serve as an exclusive club for some of the galaxy’s most influential beings; its aims were narrow in focus and its rituals universally allegorical, replete with secret phrases and handshakes. Plagueis understood the need to instill members with a sense of furtive fraternity, but he couldn’t risk having the high officials dig too exhaustively into his background. Larsh Hill’s past, on the other hand, was exemplary — even the decades he had spent working with Plagueis’s father. Once initiated, Hill would become Damask Holding’s principal agent on Coruscant, and his son, San, would become Hego’s right hand, in preparation for his eventual role as chairman of the InterGalactic Banking Clan.

Returned from the short holocommunication with Sidious, Plagueis was filled with a sense of triumph. Before night fell on the Fobosi district, the members of the Gran Protectorate would cease to be a concern. Pax Teem and the rest believed they had found shelter aboard one of Coruscant’s orbital facilities, but the Sun Guards — save for a pair Plagueis had kept in reserve in the order’s initiation room — were on the way to them now, in forces sufficient to crush whatever defenses Santhe Security might be providing. Sidious had played his part perfectly, and had redeemed himself fully in Plagueis’s eyes. The time had come to bring his apprentice deeper into the Sith mysteries he had been investigating for most of his life; to introduce him to the miracles he was performing on Aborah.

From a series of arch-topped doorways lining the circumference of the room came the sounds of solemn chanting as perhaps three dozen of the order’s black-robed members began to file in and take their places along the perimeter of the Canted Circle. Last to emerge was the high official, who wore a mask and carried the circular, emblematic pendant draped over both hands, which he held as if in prayer. Rituals of a similar sort had been enacted by the ancient Sith, Plagueis thought, as Larsh Hill genuflected before the high official.

At the same instant Hill’s right knee touched the polished stone, a jangle of foreboding laddered up Plagueis’s spine. Turning ever so slightly, he saw that 11-4D had rotated its head toward him in a gesture Plagueis had come to associate with alarm. The dark side fell over him like a shroud, but instead of acting on impulse, he restrained himself, fearful of betraying his true nature prematurely. In that instant of hesitation, time came to a standstill, and several events happened at once.

The high official gave a downward tug to the pendant he had placed around Hill’s neck, and the old Muun’s head toppled from his shoulders and began to roll down the tipped stage. Blood geysered from Hill’s neck, and his body fell to one side with a thud and began to jerk back and forth as one after another of his hearts failed.

Yanking their hands from the roomy, opposite sleeves of their robes, the hooded members of the order made sidelong throwing motions, which sent dozens of decapitator disks screaming through the air. Muuns to both sides of Plagueis fell to their knees, their last breaths caught in their throats. A disk buried deep in his forehead, one of the Sun Guards twirled in front of Plagueis like a crazed marionette. Blood fountained, turning to mist. Struck in at least three places and leaking lubricant, 11-4D was trying to limp to Plagueis’s side when another disk whirled into its alloy body, touching off a storm of sparks and smoke.

Plagueis pressed his right hand to the right side of his neck to discover that a disk had made off with a considerable hunk of his jawbone and neck, and in its cruel passing had severed his trachea and several blood vessels. He cupped the Force against the injury to keep himself from lapsing into unconsciousness, but he fell to the floor regardless, with blood pumping onto the already slick stone circle. Around him, slanted in his faltering vision, the assassins had drawn vibroblades from the other sleeves of the robes and were beginning a methodical advance on the few Muuns who were still standing. A hail of bolts streaked from the blaster cradled in the arms of the remaining Sun Guard, sweeping half a dozen hooded beings off the rim of the circle, before he himself was butchered.

Tricked, Plagueis thought, as pained by the realization as he was by the wound. Outmaneuvered by a group of inferior beings who at least had had sense enough to place artfulness above arrogance.

In his small but orderly Senate office, Palpatine gazed out on a sliver of Coruscant. On the far side of a ceaseless current of mid-tier traffic was the sheer cliff-face of a drab government complex.

Go about your usual business, Plagueis said. But how could he be expected to behave as if nothing had happened, even in the interest of establishing an alibi? Did Plagueis expect him to return to the Uscru and finish lunch? Go for a stroll in Monument Plaza? Keep his appointment to meet with the inconsequential Bothan who chaired the Finance Committee?

He stormed away from the office window, victim of his own unreleased rage.

This was not the life he had imagined for himself ten years earlier when he had sworn loyalty to the dark side of the Force. His hunger to be in closer contact with the Force, to be an even more powerful Sith, knew no bounds. But how was he to know when he had arrived at some semblance of mastery? When Plagueis told him?

He regarded his trembling hands.

Would his ability to summon lightning come more effortlessly? What powers had Sith Lord Plagueis kept to himself?

He was standing in the center of the room when he sensed someone in the corridor outside. Fists pummeled the door; then it slid to one side and Sate Pestage burst into the room. Seeing Palpatine, he came to a sudden stop, and the panicked look he wore on entering transformed to one of visible relief.

“I’ve been trying to reach you,” he nearly screamed, running a hand over his forehead.

Palpatine regarded him quizzically. “I was occupied. What has happened?”

Pestage sank into a chair and looked up at him. “Are you sure you want to know?” He paused, then said, “In the interest of separating what I do from what you do—”

Palpatine’s eyes blazed. “Stop wasting my time and come to the point.”

Pestage gritted his teeth. “The Maladian commander I did business with during the Kim affair.”

“What of him?”

“He contacted me — two, maybe three hours ago. He said that he felt humiliated because of the manner in which the Kim contract had been implemented, and wanted to make it up to me. He said he’d just received word that a Maladian faction had accepted a contract to carry out a major hit on Coruscant, involving someone closely affiliated with Damask Holdings.” Pestage kept his eyes on Palpatine. “I feared it might be you.”

Palpatine swung back to the window to think. Had the Santhe guards planned to turn him over to the Maladians following the holocommunication with Pax Teem?

He turned to Pestage. “Who took out the contract?

“Members of the Gran Protectorate.”

“It fits,” Palpatine said, more to himself.

“What fits?”

“Where are these Gran now?”

“As soon as I heard from the Maladian, I asked Kinman to keep an eye on them. They’re holed up in the Malastare ambassador’s residence.”

Palpatine blinked. “Here? On Coruscant?”

“Of course, here.”

“It’s not possible that they’re offworld?”

“No, they’re downside.”

Palpatine paced away from Pestage. He opened himself fully to the Force, and was left staggered by an inrush of overwhelming malevolence. He planted his left hand on the desk for support and managed a stuttering inhale. Somewhere close by, the dark side was unspooling.

“Palpatine!” Pestage said from behind him.

“Hego Damask,” Palpatine said, without turning around.

Pestage was too stunned to reply.

The Gran had turned the table on him! On both of them. Plagueis had been so fixed on executing his own plan that he had neglected to consider that the Gran might also have a plan. How, though? How could he have been so blind?

“Ready a speeder, Sate!”

He heard Pestage leap to his feet.

“Where are we headed?”

“The Fobosi. The lodge of the Canted Circle.”

Slumped on his right side, knees drawn up to his chest, eyes open but unmoving, Plagueis watched the second Echani succumb to multiple stabs from the assassins’ vibroblades. With blood welling out from under Plagueis’s cupped right hand and glistening in a pool on the floor beneath his neck, they had taken him for dead. But now they were moving from the body of one fallen Muun to the next, checking for signs of life and finishing what they had begun. A few had lowered their black hoods, revealing themselves to be Maladians — the same group Sidious had employed to deal with Vidar Kim.

For an instant he wondered if Sidious had secretly taken out a second contract, but he immediately dismissed the thought — born as it was of his not wanting to admit to himself that the Gran had bested him. He wondered if the Maladians had actually been bold enough to kill the prominent Canted Circle members they were impersonating. Unlikely, given that the assassins were known and respected for their professionalism. The members had probably been rendered unconscious by gas or some other means.

Not a meter away stood 11-4D, five decapitator disks protruding from his alloy body and telltale lights blinking, in the midst of a self-diagnosis routine. Having run himself through a similar test, Plagueis knew that he had lost a great deal of blood, and that one of his subsidiary hearts was in fibrillation. Sith techniques had helped him perform chemical cardioversions on his other two hearts, but one of them was working so hard to compensate that it, too, was in danger of becoming arrhythmic. Plagueis moved his eyes just enough to fix the locations of some of the two dozen assassins that had survived the Sun Guards’ counterattack; then he dug deep into the Force and catapulted himself to his feet.

The closest of the assassins swung to him with raised vibroblades and rushed forward, only to be flung backward off the canted stage and against the room’s curved walls. Others Plagueis felled with his hands by snapping necks and putting his fists through armored torsos. Spreading his arms wide, he clapped his hands together, turning every loose object in the vicinity into a deadly projectile. But the Maladians were far from run-of-the-mill murderers. Members of the cult had killed and wounded Jedi, and in response to confronting Force powers, they didn’t shrink or flee but simply changed tactics, moving with astounding agility to surround Plagueis and wait for openings.

The wait lasted only until Plagueis attempted to unleash lightning. His second subsidiary heart failed, paralyzing him with pain and nearly plunging him into unconsciousness. The assassins wasted not a moment, throwing themselves at him in groups, though in a vain attempt to penetrate the Force shield he raised. Again he rallied, this time with a ragged sound dredged from deep inside that erupted from him like a sonic weapon, shattering the eardrums of those within ten meters and compelling the rest to bring their hands to their ears.

In blinding motion his hands and feet smashed skulls and windpipes. He stopped once to conjure a Force wave that all but atomized the bodies of six Maladians. He spun through a turn, dragging the wave halfway around the room to kill half a dozen more. But even that wasn’t enough to deter his assailants. They flew against him again, making the most of his momentary weakness to open gashes on his arms and shoulders. Down on one knee, he levitated a Sun Guard blaster from the floor and called it toward him; but one of the assassins succeeded in altering its trajectory by hurling himself into the path of the airborne weapon.

With nothing more than the Force of his mind, Plagueis rattled the floor, knocking some of the assassins off their feet, but others rushed in to take their places, slashing at him with their vibroblades from every angle. He knew that he had life enough to conjure one final counteroffensive. He was a moment from loosing hell on the Maladians when he sensed Sidious enter the room.

Sidious and Sate Pestage, in whose hands a repeating blaster fashioned a hell of its own, a barrage of light that separated limbs from torsos, hooded heads from cloaked shoulders. Hurrying to Plagueis’s side, Sidious lifted him upright, and in unison they brought swift death to the rest.

In the stillness that followed, 11-4D, glistening with leaked lubricant, reenabled itself and walked stiffly to where the two Sith were standing, syringes grasped in two of its appendages.

“Magister Damask, I can be of service.”

Plagueis extended his arm toward the droid and then lowered himself to the floor as the drugs began to take effect. He lifted his gaze to Pestage, then glanced at Sidious, who, in turn, showed Pestage a look that made abundantly clear he had become a member of their secret fraternity, whether he wanted to or not.

“Master, we need to leave at once,” Sidious said. “What I felt, the Jedi may have felt, and they will come.”

“Let them,” Plagueis rasped. “Let them inhale the aroma of the dark side.”

“This carnage is beyond explanation. We can’t be here.”

After a moment, Plagueis nodded and summoned a gurgling voice. “Recall the Sun Guard. When they’re done here—”

“No,” Sidious said. “I know where the Gran are. It won’t be business as usual this time, Master.”

The Malastare ambassador’s residence occupied three mid-tier stories of a slender building located at the edge of the government district. The front of the residence looked out on the stand-alone Galactic Courts of the Justice Building, but the rear faced a narrow canyon that was more than fifty levels deep and off limits to traffic. Following directions furnished by Pestage, Sidious rode turbolifts and pedestrian walkways to a meager balcony ten levels above the upper story of the residence. His fury notwithstanding, he would have preferred to linger until nightfall, which came early to that part of Coruscant, but he was certain that the Gran were expecting word that the Maladians had satisfied the terms of the contract, and he couldn’t risk having them flee for the stars before he got to them. So he lingered on the balcony until it and the walkway in both directions were unoccupied, then jumped from the overlook and called on the Force to deliver him safely to a narrow ledge that ran beneath the lowest floor of the residence. There he perched only for the time it took to activate the lightsaber he had retrieved from Plagueis’s starship and use it to burn his way into a wide maintenance duct that perforated the building at each level.

Crawling to the first egress — a distance of scarcely ten meters — he lowered himself into a murky storage room and once more called the weapon’s crimson blade from the hilt. Constructed to fit the Muun’s large hand, the lightsaber felt unwieldy in Sidious’s, so he switched to a two-handed grip. Moving with a caution that belied his murderous intent, and on the alert for cams or other security devices, he eased out of the room into a tight corridor and followed it toward the front of the building. There, in a formal entryway, two Dugs were standing guard in a desultory way. Moving quickly, a blur to human senses, he caught them by surprise, splitting open the chest and abdomen of one and beheading the other while the first was attempting to prevent his entrails from spilling onto the glossy mosaic floor. A brief scan of the foyer revealed the presence of cams installed in the walls and high ceiling. He wondered how the killings appeared to anyone monitoring a display screen. It must have seemed as if the two Dugs had been butchered by a phantom.

Still, all the more reason to hurry.

He sprinted up the stairs to the next floor, where he heard a cacophony of human voices muffled by the thick door to a nearby room. Blowing the door inward with a Force push, he took a wide stance in the shattered doorway and positioned the blade of the thrumming lightsaber vertically in front of him. Through the weapon’s glow he saw a dozen or more Santhe guards in uniform seated around a table littered with food and drink containers gape at him in disbelief before reaching for weapons fastened to their hips or scurrying for others buried beneath the rubble of their celebratory meal.

Sidious waded into the room, returning volleys of blaster bolts from those first to fire, then attacked, raising his left hand to levitate two guards into midair before running his blade through each of them. Snarling like a beast, he whirled through a circle, ridding three guards of their heads and cutting a fourth in half at the waist. The blade impaled a guard who had flattened himself to the floor in abject terror, then went straight into the shrieking mouth of the last of them.

As that one collapsed in a heap, Sidious caught a glimpse of himself in an ornate mirror: face contorted in rage, red hair in electrified disarray, mouth webbed with strands of thick saliva, eyes a radioactive shade of yellow.

He flew back to the stairwell and raced to the top of the next flight, which opened into a large room filled with female Gran and younglings, along with Gran and Dug servants. Having heard the commotion from below, some were already on their huge flat feet; others, though, were too shocked to move.

All the better for him, and he left not a single one of them alive.

Then: through a warren of expensively appointed rooms to another set of closed doors, from behind which issued the sounds of a banquet in progress — one that had probably commenced hours earlier and wasn’t meant to end until hours later, with the deaths of Senator Palpatine, Hego Damask, and the other Muuns an accomplished fact.

Now Sidious gave full vent to his ire. Crashing through the doors, he landed in the center of a table covered with plates of grains and grassy plants and surrounded by a herd of grazing Gran, whose boisterous laughs froze in their throats. From the head of the table, Pax Teem gawked at him as if he might be a creature escaped from his most horrifying nightmare. And yet he wouldn’t be the first to taste Plagueis’s blade but the last: once he had been forced to watch the rest of his party butchered, from hooves to eyestalks; the painted ceiling brought down by Sidious’s Force pull; the flames of a gentle gas blaze in the room’s fireplace incited to a blistering inferno that Sidious tugged behind him as he soared from the table to the floor and closed on his final victim.

In desperate flight from the Sith and the spreading flames, Pax Teem had backed himself to a tall window framed by floor-to-ceiling curtains. Entreaties of whatever sort tried to thrust themselves through his stricken voice box and past his square teeth, but none succeeded.

Deactivating the lightsaber, Sidious beckoned the flames with his fingers, encouraging them to leap from the table to the curtains. A bleating scream finally emerged from Teem’s narrow muzzle of a mouth as the blazing fabric collapsed around him, and Sidious watched him roast to death.

21: INVESTITURE

Assassinations, murders, and other crimes were no match for the codes of silence that had governed the Order of the Canted Circle, the Gran Protectorate, Santhe Security, and the Jedi High Council almost since their inceptions. Had the elite members and private guards of the Canted Circle not been drugged and found unconscious in dressing rooms and other places, police investigators summoned to the headquarters by two Jedi Knights would never have been allowed to enter the landmark building, let alone the order’s vaunted initiation room, in which were discovered the bodies of two Echani, believed to be bodyguards; a dozen Muuns, killed by decapitator disks and vibroblades; and three times that number of Maladian assassins dressed in borrowed robes, who had succumbed to blaster bolts, blunt-force injuries, and, in some cases, traumatic amputations. So scattered were the latter, investigators initially suspected that an explosive device had been detonated, but no trace of a device was ever uncovered. The Muuns were quickly identified as top-ranking members of a clandestine financial group known as Damask Holdings, though its wealthy founder and chief operating officer, Hego Damask, was believed to have survived the sneak attack. The Jedi who had alerted the police never revealed what had drawn them to the Fobosi district to begin with, or why they expressed such interest in the case. As well, the members of the Order of the Canted Circle refused to answer any questions.

At the Malastare embassy in the heart of Coruscant the evidence was even more baffling, and complicated by a fire and ensuing gas explosion that had swept through the building. Fire marshals and forensics specialists were picking through the charred remains of the three-story resiblock when two members of the Jedi Council had paid an unannounced visit. Again, the Jedi had declined to explain their actions, but the police were able to make progress on their own. The amount of blood residue discovered at the scene led investigators to determine that, prior to the arrival of the police, several bodies had been incinerated on site, which suggested the work of elements of organized crime. In the wake of the recent assassination of Senator Vidar Kim, the Senate Investigatory Committee formed a special task force to look into the matter. Many beings were interviewed and interrogated, and many security cam recordings studied during the course of the investigation, but most of the principal players and witnesses hid behind their lawyers, even when threatened with imprisonment for obstruction of justice.

A standard month after the events on Coruscant, Plagueis summoned Sidious to Muunilinst. Sidious had visited the High Port skyhook but had never been invited downside, and now he found himself soaring over one of the planet’s unspoiled blue oceans in a stylish airspeeder piloted by two Sun Guards. As the speeder approached Aborah, he settled deeply into the Force and was rewarded with a vision of the mountain island as a transcendent vortex of dark energy unlike anything he had ever experienced. It was something he would have expected to encounter only on Korriban or some other Sith world.

The droid 11-4D — fully repaired — was waiting for him on the landing zone and led him inside, leaving the guards to wait with the airspeeder.

“You appear to be in much better condition than when I last saw you, droid,” Sidious remarked as a turbolift dropped them deep inside the complex.

“Yes, Senator Palpatine, Aborah is a restorative place.”

“And Magister Damask?”

“I leave it to you to judge for yourself, sir.”

Exiting the turbolift, the first thing to catch Sidious’s eye was the library: rack after rack of texts, scrolls, disks, and holocrons — all the data he had been craving since his apprenticeship began. He ran his hands lovingly over the shelves but barely had time to revel in his excitement when 11-4D ushered him onto a descending ramp that led into what might have been a state-of-the-art medical research facility.

His eyes darting from one device to the next, he asked, “Is this new since the Magister’s injuries?”

“Only some of what you see,” the droid said. “For the most part this area is unchanged since I was first brought here.”

“And when was that?”

“Approximately one standard year before I was introduced to you on Chandrila, sir.”

Sidious considered it, then asked, “Is Magister Damask your maker, droid?”

“No, sir. He is simply my present master.”

Deeper in the complex, they moved past cages containing as many creatures as could be found in a well-stocked zoo. OneOne-FourDee indicated a cluster separate from the rest.

“These are the Magister’s most recent pregnancies.”

“The Magister’s?” Sidious repeated in bewilderment.

“His success rate has improved.”

Sidious was still trying to make sense of the droid’s statements when they entered a long corridor lined with windowless cells. Through the Force he could sense life-forms behind each locked door.

“Captives?”

“Oh, no, sir,” 11-4D said. “Ongoing experiments.”

As they turned a corner at the end of the corridor Sidious came to a dead stop. Centered in a kind of operating theater stood a towering bacta tank, in which floated a male Bith.

“That is Venamis,” Plagueis said in a voice that wasn’t entirely his.

Sidious pivoted to see his Master limp into the room, mouth, chin, and neck concealed behind a breath mask or transpirator of some sort. Most of the vibroblade wounds had healed, but his skin looked especially wan. Sidious had been wondering if Plagueis had been weakened by the attack, but he saw now that, for all the punishment his body had sustained at the hands of the Maladian assassins, the Muun was no less strong in the Force.

“Your thoughts betray you,” Plagueis said. “Do you think that Malak’s powers were weakened by Revan’s lightsaber? Bane by being encrusted in orbalisks? Do you think Gravid’s young apprentice was hindered by the prosthesis she was forced to wear after fighting him?”

“No, Master.”

“Soon I will be stronger than you can possibly imagine.” Plagueis forced himself to swallow, then said, “But come, we have much to discuss.”

Sidious followed him into a cool chamber, furnished only with a bed, two simple chairs, a cabinet, and a square, exquisitely woven rug. Motioning Sidious into one of the chairs, Plagueis lowered himself with noticeable difficulty into the other. After a long moment of silence, he nodded in satisfaction.

“I am pleased to see how greatly you have changed — how powerful you have become, Lord Sidious. What happened on Coruscant was meant to happen, but I take consolation in the fact that the events have shaped you into a true Sith Lord. You are indeed ready to learn the secrets I have been safeguarding.”

“What is this place, Master?”

Plagueis took a moment to gather enough strength to continue. “Think of it as a vessel that contains all the things to which I am devoted. All the things I love.”

“This may be the first time I have ever heard you utter the word.”

“Only because no other term exists that adequately expresses my unconditional attachment to the creatures and beings with whom I share this place. Love without compassion, however, for compassion has no part in this.”

“The Bith — Venamis …”

“Dispatched by Tenebrous to test me — to eliminate me had I failed. But Venamis has been a gift; essential in helping me unlock some of the deepest secrets of the Force. Every creature you have glimpsed or sensed here has been a similar blessing, as you will see when I lead you into the mysteries.”

“What did the droid mean when it said the Magister’s pregnancies?”

Beneath the breath mask, Plagueis might have quirked a smile. “It means that the pregnancies were not achieved by normal means of conception, but rather through the Force.”

Surprise and disbelief mingled in Sidious’s blue eyes. “The Force?”

“Yes,” Plagueis said pensively. “But I failed to exercise due caution. As we attempt to wrest the powers of life and death from the Force, as we seek to tip the balance, the Force resists our efforts. Action and reaction, Sidious. Something akin to the laws of thermodynamics. I have been audacious, and the Force has tested me the way Tenebrous sought to. Midi-chlorians are not easily persuaded to execute the dictates of one newly initiated in the mysteries. The Force needs to be won over, especially in work that involves the dark side. It must be reassured that a Sith is capable of accepting authority. Otherwise it will thwart one’s intentions. It will engineer misfortune. It will strike back.”

“The Maladians—”

“Perhaps. But in any case this is why the Jedi Order has descended into decadence and is dragging the Republic down with it. Because the Jedi have lost the allegiance of the Force. Yes, their ability to draw energy from the Force continues, but their ability to use the Force has diminished. Each of their actions engenders an opposite, often unrecognized consequence that elevates those attuned to the dark side; that buoys the efforts of the Sith and increases our power. Yet our use of that power requires delicacy. We must be alert to moments when the light side falters and openings are created. Then, and only then — when all the conditions have been met — can we act without fear of meeting resistance or repercussion.

“To say that the Force works in mysterious ways is to admit one’s ignorance, for any mystery can be solved through the application of knowledge and unrelenting effort. As we had our way with the Senate, and as we will soon have our way with the Republic and the Jedi, we will have our way with the Force.”

Silenced by awe, Sidious scarcely knew how to respond. “What would you have me do, Master?”

The transpirator emitted a series of tones, and Plagueis inhaled deeply. “I will relocate to Sojourn in order to devote myself fully to our investigations, to furthering the imperative, and to healing myself.”

“What will become of Aborah?”

“For the time being it can serve as a repository.”

“And Damask Holdings?”

“The group will not be re-formed, though I may continue to host annual Gatherings. And I will tutor San Hill personally, to prepare him for assuming chairmanship of the Banking Clan.”

“Why do we need them?”

In a harsh whisper, Plagueis said, “Because war is now on the agenda, Sidious. But our actions must be circumspect, restricted to those star systems rife with petty conflicts, where appropriate beings can be encouraged, appropriate operations can be funded … We must arrange for worlds in the Outer Rim to suffer while the Core prospers. Pathetic as those worlds may be, we have no choice but to use what we have at hand.

“The IBC will be essential in financing the war we will slowly foment. We will need the Banking Clan to finance the manufacturers of weapons and to sustain an alternative economy for the eventual enemies of the Republic.” Plagueis looked directly at Sidious. “Our success will be measured by signs and portents. There is much you need to learn regarding the Yinchorri and the Kaminoans. But all in due time. For now, Sidious, know that you are the blade we will drive through the heart of the Senate, the Republic, and the Jedi Order, and I, your guide to reshaping the galaxy. Together we are the newborn stars that complete the Sith constellation.”

Sidious touched the cleft in his chin. “I’m relieved to learn that I didn’t disappoint you, Master. But the Jedi summoned the police to the Fobosi district moments after we left. The plan is already endangered.”

Color rose in Plagueis’s cheeks. “The Jedi have long known that the dark side has been reawakened and cannot be checked by them. Now they have felt it on their own Coruscant.”

“Even so, we can’t continue to risk exposure,” Sidious said carefully.

Plagueis studied him. “You have more to say about this.”

“Master, would you consider training someone in the Sith arts to execute whatever missions are required?”

“Another Venamis? In defiance of our partnership?”

Sidious shook his head. “Not an apprentice; not someone who could ever aspire to become a true Sith Lord. But someone skilled in stealth and combat, who could be eliminated when no longer needed.”

Surprise shone in Plagueis’s eyes. “You already have someone in mind.”

“You instructed me to keep an eye out for beings who might prove helpful. I found such a one on Dathomir not a year ago. A male Dathomiri Zabrak infant.”

“Many Zabrak demonstrate strength in the Force. By nature, it would seem.”

“This infant does. The mother birthed two and sought to save one from the clutches of the Nightsisters, especially from one known as Talzin.”

“You purchased him?”

“Accepted him.”

“Where is he?”

“I brought him to the accounting facility that Damask Holdings maintains on Mustafar, and left him in the care of the custodial droids.”

Plagueis closed his eyes briefly. Mustafar had served as a place to dispose of enemies and evidence long before Boss Cabra’s reclamation station had been made available to Hego Damask and others.

“And the mother?” he asked.

“Alive — for now.”

“Might not this Talzin pursue the infant?”

Sidious looked inward. “She may.”

Plagueis growled in irritation. “Then it will be your business if she does.”

Sidious bowed his head in acceptance.

“Leave the infant on Mustafar in the care of the droids,” Plagueis added at last, “but begin to train him. Inure him to pain, Lord Sidious, so that he will be able to serve us fully. Should his Force talents fail to mature, eliminate him. But if he measures up, relocate him at your discretion to Orsis. There you will find an elite training center operated by a Falleen combat specialist named Trezza. He and I have had dealings. Trezza will raise the Zabrak to be fierce but steadfast in his loyalty. You, however, will supervise his training in the dark side. Do not speak of the Sith or our plans until he has proven himself. And do not deploy him against any of our salient enemies until I have had a chance to evaluate him.”

Sidious inclined his head. “I understand, Master.”

“The Force provides, Sidious,” Plagueis said after a moment. “As nature provides more male beings in the aftermath of war, the Force, ever mindful of balance, provides beings strong in the dark side when light has ruled for too long. This Zabrak bodes well.”

“The Sith Lords who follow us will pay tribute to your wisdom, Master,” Sidious said in earnestness.

Plagueis stood and touched him on the shoulder. “No, Lord Sidious. Because we are the end of the line.” He gestured broadly. “Everything done here has been for a single purpose: to extend our reign indefinitely.”