James Luceno - Darth Plagueis

Palpatine frowned. “Naboo doesn’t honor that practice. I’m in his sway until I’m twenty-one years old.”

“The legalities of emancipation don’t interest me, and they shouldn’t interest you. I speak of freeing yourself — of completing the act of recreation you began when you rejected your given name.”

“You mean disobey him?”

“If that’s as far as you’re willing to go. And without thought to consequences.”

“I’ve wanted to …”

“Uncertainty is the first step toward self-determination,” Plagueis said. “Courage comes next.”

Palpatine shook his head, as if to clear it. “What would I do?”

“What do you want to do, Palpatine? If the choice was yours and yours alone.”

The youth hesitated. “I don’t want to live as ordinary beings live.”

Plagueis regarded him. “Do you fancy yourself extraordinary?”

Palpatine seemed embarrassed by the question. “I only meant that I want to live an extraordinary life.”

“Make no apologies for your desires. Extraordinary in what way?”

Palpatine averted his eyes.

“Why are you holding back? If you’re going to dream, then dream large.” Plagueis paused, then added, “You hinted that you had no interest in politics. Is that true?”

Palpatine firmed his lips. “Not entirely.”

Plagueis came to a stop in the middle of the walkway. “How deep does your interest go? To what position do you aspire? Republic Senator? Monarch of Naboo? Supreme Chancellor of the Republic?”

Palpatine glanced at him. “You’ll think less of me if I tell you.”

“Now you underestimate me, as you do your father.”

Palpatine took a breath and continued. “I want to be a force for change.” His look hardened. “I want to rule .”

There! Plagueis thought. He admits it! And who better than a human to wear the mask of power while an immortal Sith Lord rules in secret!

“If that can’t happen, if you can’t rule, then what?”

Palpatine ground his teeth. “If not power, then nothing. ”

Plagueis smiled. “Suppose I said that I would be willing to be your ally in the quest.”

At a sudden loss for words, Palpatine stared at him; then he managed to say, “What would you expect of me in return?”

“Nothing more than that you commit to your intent to free yourself. That you grant yourself the license to do whatever is necessary to realize your ambitions, at whatever risk to your alleged well-being and in full expectation of the solitude that will ensue.”

They had not yet reached the lodge when Plagueis steered them into a gazebo that occupied the center of a luxuriant garden.

“I want to tell you something about my past,” he began. “I was born and raised not on Muunilinst but on a world called Mygeeto, and not to my father’s primary wife but to a second wife — what Muuns call a codicil partner. So I was a young adult before my father was finally returned to Muunilinst and I had my first taste of the planet that gave rise to my species. Owing to Muunilinst’s regulations governing population growth, no Muun of less influence than my father would have been allowed to import a nonindigenous offspring, let alone a half-clan. And yet the members of my father’s family regarded me as a trespasser, lacking proper legality and the social aplomb that comes to those born and raised on Muunilinst. For if there is anything the Muun detest more than wasteful spending it is nonconformity, and I had it in abundance.

“They were model citizens, my fair brothers and sisters: insular, self-important, identical in their thinking, thrifty to a fault, given to gossip, and it angered me deeply to have been accepted by the galaxy’s downtrodden only to be rejected by this hive of self-serving parochial beings. Much to their further displeasure, they were forced to accept that I was a fully bonded clan member, entitled to the same share of my father’s vast wealth as the rest of them. But as is the case with all members of the elite clans, I had to prove myself worthy of the status by preparing successful financial forecasts and allowing myself to be judged by the ruling elect.

“I passed my tests and trials, but soon after, my father took ill. On his deathbed I sought his advice concerning my predicament, and he told me that I should do whatever I needed to do, as my very survival was in jeopardy. He said that lesser minds needed guidance, and punishment on occasion, and that I shouldn’t hesitate to use whatever means necessary to protect my interests; that I owed as much to myself, my species, to life itself.”

Plagueis paused.

“The cause of his premature death was determined to be a rare genetic abnormality that affected the tertiary heart, and one that all of my siblings had inherited, but I — having been born to a different mother — had not. Panicked by the thought of early death, my siblings launched a galactic search for the finest geneticists credits could procure, and ultimately one surfaced, claiming knowledge of a curative procedure. And so they underwent treatment, each and every one of them — my clan mother included — in full confidence that they had dodged the family curse and could soon return to their primary passion, which was to have me legally ostracized from the family.”

He looked hard at Palpatine.

“Little did they realize that I had hired the geneticist, and that the treatments he provided were as phony as his credentials. And so, in due course, they began to grow ill and die, each of them, as I watched from afar, gloating, even entertaining myself by feigning sadness at their funerals and indifference at the allocation rituals that transferred portions of their accumulated riches to me. Eventually I outlived all of them and inherited everything.”

His amalgam of fact and fiction concluded, Plagueis stood tall and folded his thin arms across his chest. In turn, Palpatine trained his gaze on the gazebo’s wooden floor. Plagueis detected the quiet whir of 11-4D’s photoreceptors focusing on the youth.

“You think me a monster,” he said when a long moment of silence had elapsed.

Palpatine raised his head and said, “You underestimate me, Magister.”

Hanna City Spaceport was chaotic with the launch of starships returning youth program trainees to their near and distant homeworlds. In the central passenger cabin of the Naboo vessel Jafan III , Palpatine and a young trainee from Keren were comparing notes on their experiences during the previous week. On a track to becoming close friends despite their political differences, the pair had segued into discussing Naboo’s upcoming election when a flight attendant interrupted them to say that Palpatine needed to return immediately to the spaceport terminal. The attendant didn’t know who had requested his presence or why, but no sooner had he entered the connector than he recognized the stern countenance of one of the security guards his father had recently hired.

“Palpatine won’t be reboarding,” the guard told the attendant.

Confused, Palpatine demanded to know why he had been removed from the ship.

“Your father is here,” the guard said after the attendant had reentered the starship. He pointed through the connector’s transparisteel viewport to the far side of the field where sat a sleek starship bearing the crest of House Palpatine.

Palpatine blinked in surprise. “When did he arrive?”

“An hour ago. Your mother and siblings are also aboard.”

“They didn’t say anything to me about coming here.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” the guard said. “You’ve already cleared Chandrila customs, so we can proceed directly to the ship.”

Palpatine glared at him. “Just discharging your orders, is that it?”