James Luceno - Darth Plagueis

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.