“Did you speak with him?” Palpatine asked, while the voice of the Senator from Kuat boomed through the Rotunda’s speakers.
The Muun shook his head in anger. “Qui-Gon had already been there. They’ve gone to the Temple.”
“There’s still a chance—”
“Yes,” Damask said. “But if the boy’s midi-chlorian concentrations are as high as Dooku hinted they are, then the Jedi aren’t likely to allow him to escape their clutches.”
“High midi-chlorian counts don’t always equate to Force talents. You told me yourself.”
“That’s not what concerns me,” Damask said, but he went no further. Gesturing broadly, he asked, “Where do we stand?”
“Antilles was placed into nomination by Com Fordox. Teem, by Edcel Bar Gan.”
“Traitors,” Damask seethed. “Fordox and Bar Gan.”
Palpatine was about to reply when the voice of Mas Amedda filled the Rotunda. “The Senate recognizes Senator Orn Free Taa of Ryloth,” the Chagrian said from the podium. Sei Taria was there, as well, but Valorum — all but ousted from power — had either disappeared or was seated out of sight.
The big blue Twi’lek stood proudly in the bow of the platform as it floated toward the center of the Rotunda, flanked by hovercams. In the curved rear of the platform were Free Taa’s consort, a petite red-skinned Twi’lek, and Ryloth’s co-Senator and death stick distributor, Connus Trell.
“Ryloth is proud to place into nomination one who has not only devoted twenty years of unflagging service to the Republic while managing to steer a gallant course through the storms that continue to lash this body, but whose homeworld has become the latest target of corporate greed and corruption. Beings of all species and all worlds, I nominate Senate Palpatine of Naboo.”
Cheers and applause rang out from nearly every sector of the hall, growing louder and more enthusiastic as Naboo’s platform detached from the docking station and hovered to join those of Alderaan and Malastare.
“You’ve done it, Darth Plagueis,” Palpatine said quietly and without a glance.
“Not yet,” came the reply. “I will not rest until I’m certain of a win.”
It was late in the evening when Plagueis made his way onto a public observatory that provided a vantage on the proprietary arabesque of a landing platform on which Queen Amidala’s Royal Starship basked in the ambient light.
With the cowl of his hood raised, he moved to one of the stationary macrobinocular posts and pressed his eyes to the cushioned eye grips. Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the boy had arrived at the platform in a Jedi ship; Amidala, her handmaidens and guards, and a loose-limbed Gungan in an open-topped hemispherical air taxi. Just then the latter group was ascending the starship’s boarding ramp, but Qui-Gon and the round-faced desert urchin had stopped short of the ship to speak about something.
What? Plagueis asked himself. What topic has summoned such an earnest look to Qui-Gon’s face, and such confused urgency in the boy?
Lifting his face from the macrobinoculars, he stretched out with the Force and fell victim to an assault of perplexing images: ferocious battles in deep space; the clashing of lightsabers; partitions of radiant light; a black-helmeted cyborg rising from a table … By the time his gaze had returned to the platform, Qui-Gon and the boy had disappeared.
Trying desperately to make some sense of the images granted him by the Force, he stood motionless, watching the starship lift from the platform and climb into the night.
He fought to repress the truth.
The boy would change the course of history.
Unless …
Maul had to kill Qui-Gon, to keep the boy from being trained.
Qui-Gon was the key to everything.
Plagueis and Sidious spent the day before the Senate vote in the LiMerge Building, communicating with Maul and Gunray and seeing to other matters. Early reports from Naboo indicated that Amidala was more daring than either of them had anticipated. She had engineered a reconciliation between the Naboo and the Gungans, and had persuaded the latter to assemble an army in the swamps. Initially, Sidious had forbidden Maul and the Neimoidians to take action. The last thing the Sith needed was to have Amidala emerge as the hero of their manufactured drama. But when the Gungan army had commenced a march on the city of Theed, he had no choice but to order Gunray to repel the attack and slaughter everyone.
Plagueis neither offered advice nor contradicted the commands, even though he knew that the battle was lost and that the boy would not die.
Instead he arranged for a conference comm with the leaders of the Commerce Guild, the Techno Union, the Corporate Alliance, and others, telling them that, despite the legality of the blockade, the Trade Federation had brought doom upon itself.
“Pay heed to the way the Republic and the Jedi Order deal with them,” Hego Damask told his holo-audience. “The Federation will be dismantled, and the precedent will be set. Unless you take steps to begin a slow, carefully planned withdrawal from the Senate, taking your home and client systems with you, you, too, risk becoming the property of the Republic.”
As daylight was fading over The Works, Sate Pestage informed them that Senators Teem and Antilles were crippled, and that some of Coruscant’s political oddsmakers were now giving Palpatine the edge in the election.
That left only one piece of business to finalize.
Attend the opera.
Suspended like a scintillating ornament from a bracket of roadways and pedestrian ramps, Galaxies Opera was owned by notorious gambler and playboy Romeo Treblanc, and designed to function as an alternative to the stuffy Coruscant Opera, which for decades had been patronized by House Valorum and other wealthy Core lineages. With the Senate scheduled to convene in extraordinary session the following morning, excitement gripped Coruscant, and in celebration of the possibility that the election of a new Supreme Chancellor might usher in an era of positive change, half the Senate had turned out. Never had so much veda cloth, brocart, and shimmersilk graced the lavish carpets that led to the front doors; and never had such a diverse assortment of Coruscanti spilled from the taxis and limos that delivered them: patricians and doyennes, tycoons and philanthropists, pundits and patrons, lotharios and ingénues, gangsters and their molls … many clothed in costumes as ostentatious as those worn by the performers on the stage.
Valorum had declined to appear, but both Ainlee Teem and Bail Antilles were among the thousands streaming in to enjoy the debut performance of a new work by a Mon Calamari mastermind. Only Palpatine and Damask, however, were personally welcomed by Treblanc — Palpatine wrapped in a dark cloak, and the Muun in deep green, with matching bonnet and a breather mask that left part of his hoary jaw exposed.
“Word has it that he lost a fortune at the Boonta Eve Podrace,” Damask said when they were out of Treblanc’s earshot.
“The event Anakin won,” Palpatine said.
Damask stopped short in surprise, and turned to Palpatine for explanation.
“He captured first place.”
Damask absorbed the news in brooding silence, then muttered, “The boy’s actions already echo across the stars.”
A Nautolan female escorted them to a private box on the third tier, close to the stage, their appearance prompting applause from some of the beings seated below, rumormongering by others.