James Luceno - Darth Plagueis

Unruffled, the guard shrugged his broad shoulders. “It’s a job, kid. That’s the long and short of it.”

Surrendering to the inevitable but angered by the sudden change in plans, Palpatine trailed the guard through a maze of similar connectors to one that accessed the family starship. The elder Palpatine was waiting in the entry air lock.

“Why wasn’t I informed of this beforehand?” Palpatine demanded.

His father nodded for the guard to seal the hatch. “Your mother and siblings are aft. I’ll join you there once we’ve completed the jump.” Maneuvering around Palpatine, he slipped into the cockpit. Palpatine turned to the air lock hatch and considered leaving while he had the chance, but ultimately thought better of it and went aft, though into not the main compartment but a smaller one that housed the communications suite. Strapped into an acceleration chair, he stewed through the launch and the jump to hyperspace. Unfastening himself when the ship was between worlds, he stood up and began to pace back and forth in the cabin, and was still in motion when his father entered a few minutes later.

“Our course is set for Chommell Minor.”

Palpatine stopped to stare at him.

“For the foreseeable future, you’re going to be residing with the Greejatus family. Clothes and other items we thought you’d like to have with you are already aboard.” When Palpatine said nothing, he continued. “You and Janus got along well the last time we visited. A change of scene will do you good.”

“You decided this without conferring with me?” Palpatine managed to ask at last. “What about my university courses? What about my obligations to the youth program?”

“That has all been arranged. You can partner with Janus in Chommell Minor’s program.”

“The Greejatus’s hatred of nonhumans meets with your approval, then.”

“Their chauvinism notwithstanding, I approve of them a lot more than I do your current friends.”

Palpatine began shaking his head. “No. No.”

His father’s tone turned harsh. “This is for your own good.”

Palpatine’s nostrils flared. “Father of lies,” he muttered. “How would you know what’s good for me? Have you ever even cared? This is about my friendship with Hego Damask, isn’t it?”

The elder Palpatine snorted in derision. “Is that what you think it is? Damask is merely using you as a means of securing information about our strategies for the election.”

“Of course he is.”

Taken aback momentarily, Cosinga said, “And yet you continue to … befriend him.”

“What you consider the rape of Naboo, I consider to be an essential step forward, and Hego Damask a blessing. He’s powerful, influential, and brilliant — more so than any of my professors. Head and shoulders above you or any of your royal confederates.”

Cosinga’s lip curled. “It begins to sound to me that this confrontation goes beyond mere political differences.”

“You know it does. You’re using the situation as an excuse to put me under your thumb again.”

“Which wouldn’t be necessary if you showed even the slightest ability to conduct yourself appropriately.”

Palpatine sniffed. “My social infractions and trespasses. I refuse to go over old ground.”

“You’re easy on yourself, considering the shame you’ve nearly brought on us.”

“I’ve brought no more shame on the family than you have.”

“We’re not discussing me,” Cosinga said.

Palpatine threw up his hands. “All right. Leave me on Chommell Minor — but I won’t remain there.”

“I can see to it that you do.”

“By assigning some of your musclemen to keep me in line? I’m a lot smarter than them, Father.”

Cosinga made his lips a thin line. “After what you already did to counter our plans for Tapalo, there can be no hint of scandal. Have you no idea what’s at stake for Naboo?”

“And for you,” Palpatine said, with a sly smile. “The brother of your mistress becomes king, and you attain the lofty position you’ve always desired but don’t deserve.”

Cosinga flung his words with cruel abandon. “It will be so good to have you gone.”

“Finally you admit as much.”

Cosinga was suddenly crestfallen. “You’re as much a mystery to me now as you were when you were young.”

Palpatine’s smile bloomed. “Only because you lack the ability to understand me fully.”

“Grandiose, as ever.”

“Grandiose, in fact , Father. You have no idea what I’m capable of. No one does.”

Cosinga exhaled deeply. “I know that you are of my blood, because I had you tested, just to be certain. But in truth, I don’t know where you came from — who or what you’re actually descended from.” He glared at Palpatine. “Yes, there it is: that glower I have been on the receiving end of for seventeen long years. As if you want to murder me. Murder has always been in your thoughts, hasn’t it? You’ve merely been waiting for someone to grant you permission to act.”

A darkness came over Palpatine’s face. “I don’t need anyone’s permission.”

“Precisely. You’re an animal at heart.”

“King of the beasts, Father,” Palpatine said.

“I knew this day would come. I’ve known it since the first moment I tried to swaddle you, and you fought me with a strength that was too powerful for your size or age.”

Palpatine looked out from beneath his quirked brows. “I was born mature, Father, fully grown, and you hated me for it, because you grasped that I was everything you can never be.”

“Hated you more than you know,” Cosinga said, allowing his ire to rise once more. “Enough to want to kill you from the start.”

Palpatine stood his ground. “Then you had better do it now.”

Cosinga took a step in Palpatine’s direction, only to be hurled back against the bulkhead separating the communications room from the main cabin. A female voice from behind the closed hatch asked in distress, “What was that?”

Nursing an injured shoulder, Cosinga looked suddenly like a trapped animal, his eyes wide with surprise and fear. He made a move to strike the handplate that opened the hatch, but Palpatine thwarted his effort without raising a finger. Twisting violently around, Cosinga fell over one of the acceleration chairs, bloodying his face as it struck the armrest.

A pounding began on the hatch.

“Guards!” Cosinga shouted, but the word had barely left his lips when the bulkhead against which he was slouched buckled inward, heaving him face-first to the floor and driving the breath from him.

Palpatine stood rooted in place, his hands trembling in front of him and his face stricken. Something stirred behind his incandescent eyes. He heard the pounding on the hatch and whirled.

“Don’t come in! Stay away from me!”

“What have you done?” It was his mother’s voice, panicked. “What have you done?”

Cosinga pushed himself to his knees and began a terrified retreat, leaving smears of blood on the deck. But Palpatine was advancing on him now.

“If the Force birthed you, then I curse it!” Cosinga rasped. “I curse it!”

“As I do,” Palpatine growled.

The hatch began to slide to, and he heard the voice of the guard who had escorted him from the Jafan III . “Stop!”

“Cosinga!” his mother screamed.

Palpatine pressed the palms of his hands to his head, then in eerie calm streaked to the hatch, pulled the surprised guard through the threshold, and tossed him clear across the cabin.

Raising his face to the ceiling, he shouted, “We’re all in this now!”

They could have been torturers: Plagueis and 11-4D, leaning over an operating table on Aborah that supported Venamis, still in an induced coma and now anesthetized, as well; the droid’s appendages holding bloodied scalpels, retractors, hemostats, and Plagueis, gowned and masked and with eyes closed, his shadow puddled on the floor by the theater lights, but in truth nowhere to be found in the mundane world. Folded deeply within the Force, instead, indifferent to the meticulous damage 11-4D had done to the Bith’s internal organs, but focused on communicating his will directly to the Force’s intermediaries, the droid monitoring cellular activity for signs that Plagueis’s life-extending manipulations, his thought experiments, were having their intended effect.