Darth Plagueis (28 page)

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?”