James Luceno - Darth Plagueis

“A blockade? Of what system, Lord Sidious?”

“I will inform you in due time.” When Gunray didn’t respond, Sidious said, “What is it, Viceroy? Across the vastness of space, I can perceive the reeling of your feeble brain.”

“Forgive me, Lord Sidious, but, as my advisers have pointed out, the redistribution of our vessels carries with it considerable financial risk. To begin with, there is the cost of fuel. Then, with so many ships allocated to an embargo, a disruption in trade in the Mid and Outer Rims for however long the blockade is maintained. Finally, there is no telling how our investors might react to the news.”

Sidious leaned forward. “So this is about credits, is it?”

Gunray’s muzzle twitched. “We are, after all, Lord Sidious, a commercial enterprise, not a navy.”

Sidious didn’t respond immediately. When he did, his voice oozed disgust. “Even after all I have engineered on your behalf you fail to grasp that by allying with me you are investing in the future.” He flicked his right hand in dismissal. “But no matter. Does it not occur to you that your most valued investors are in a position to reap great profits from your knowledge of what is about to happen? Would they not profit from learning that the Xi Char, the Geonosians, and other unionized insectoids have turned their pincers and claws to the manufacture of weapons? Might you not balance your precious budget by gaining from other shipping companies what revenue the Trade Federation risks losing?”

Gunray looked uncertain. “We feared that such actions might undermine the element of surprise, Lord Sidious.”

“That is the reason for swift action.”

Gunray nodded. “I will order a fleet assembled.”

Sidious sat back in the chair. “Good. Remember, Viceroy, that what I have delivered to you I can just as easily take away.”

Sidious ended the transmission and lowered the cowl.

Was this a vision of the future? A life of micromanaging the affairs of incompetent beings while he and Plagueis set in motion the final phases of the Grand Plan? Or was there perhaps some other way for him to govern, in malevolent satisfaction?

Even without the drenching rain, the ground would have been soft under Plagueis’s booted feet, composed as it was of eons of decayed organic matter. Water dripped from the transpirator mask and the raised hood of his cloak and splashed in the puddles that had formed beneath him. The castle that had once belonged to Veruna’s ancestor the Earl of Vis crowned a desolate hill, with no road leading to it and a view in all directions of the rolling, sodden, treeless terrain. Through night-vision electrobinoculars Plagueis studied the scanners that studded the castle’s walls and the disposition of the guards, some of whom were keeping dry in the shelter of an arch that crowned an ornate portcullis. Parked near the entrance was a veritable fleet of landspeeders, and off to one side, centered in a circular landing zone, sat a space yacht whose gleaming hull even the torrent couldn’t dull. Illumination arrays glowed behind drifting curtains of rain.

Following a deep, fast-moving rivulet, Plagueis descended the hill he had climbed to where he had set his own starship down among a riot of drooping wildflowers and falconberries. OneOne-FourDee was waiting at the foot of the boarding ramp, raindrops pinging on its alloy shell.

“Their scanners may have picked up the ship,” Plagueis said.

“Given that all countermeasures were enabled, that seems unlikely, Magister.”

“They’ve flooded the area with light.”

“As any vigilant being might on a night such as this.”

“A night fit for neither Muun nor shaak.”

The droid’s photoreceptors tightened their focus on him. “The reference escapes my data bank.”

“Seal the ship and remain in the cockpit. If I comm you, reposition the ship above the castle’s southwest corner and keep the boarding ramp extended.”

“Are you anticipating resistance, Magister?”

“Merely anticipating, FourDee.”

“I understand. I would do the same.”

“That’s comforting to know.”

Plagueis fixed the lightsaber hilt to his hip and set out at a fast clip, all but outracing the rain. If the scanners and motion detectors were as precise as they appeared to be, they would find him, though his speed might cause whoever was monitoring the security devices to mistake him for one of the wild, bushy-tailed quadrupeds that inhabited the landscape. He paused at the nebulous edge of the illuminated area to confirm his bearings, then made straight for the castle’s ten-meter-high southern wall and leapt to the top without breaking stride. Just as quickly and as effortlessly he dropped into the garden below and sprinted into the shadows cast by an ornamental shrub trimmed to resemble some whimsical beast. Plagueis reasoned that security would be lax inside the manse, but that Veruna’s wing of rooms would be outfitted with redundant monitoring devices and perhaps pressure-sensitive floors.

That he hadn’t been able to procure an interior plan of the castle was a testament to the self-exiled regent’s hypervigilance.

Plagueis moved to a stained-glass window just as two humans were hurrying through a hallway beyond. With rain overflowing a gutter high overhead, he felt as if he were standing behind a waterfall.

“Check on him and report back to me,” the female was saying.

Plagueis recognized the voice of security chief Magneta. Sticking close to the outer wall, he paralleled the movement of Magneta’s subordinate to the end of the hallway, then through a right-angled turn into a broader hall that led to a control room tucked beneath the sweep of a grand staircase. Plagueis sharpened his auditory senses to hear Magneta’s man ask after Veruna, and a human female reply, “Sleeping like a baby.”

“Good for him. While the rest of us drown.”

“If you’re so miserable, Chary,” the woman said, “you should consider returning to Theed.”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Just don’t expect me to follow you.”

Plagueis stepped away from the wall to glance at the upper-story windows, all of which were dark, save for an arched opening near the end of the wall. Crouching, he maneuvered through bushes under a series of wide windows, then began to scale the wall, fastened to it like an insect. The tall and narrow target opening turned out to be a fixed pane of thick glass; the source of the light, a pair of photonic sconces that flanked a set of elaborately carved wooden double doors. Peering through the glass, he flicked his fingers at a security cam mounted high on the inner wall and aimed at the doorway, dazzling the mechanism and freezing the image of an unoccupied antechamber. Then, placing his left hand at the center of the glass, he called on the Force, pushing inward on the pane until it broke free of the adhesive weatherseal that held it in place. Telekinetically, he manipulated the intact pane to rest atop a table snugged to the opposite wall of the antechamber, and slipped through the opening. For a long moment he remained on the inner windowsill, waiting for his cloak and boots to dry and studying the patterned floor and double doors for evidence of additional security devices. Satisfied that the stunned cam was all there was, he planted his feet on the floor and walked to the doors, using the Force to trick them into opening just enough to accommodate his passing between them.

The only light in Veruna’s enormous bedroom came from a cam similar to the one in the antechamber, and just as easily foiled. The former King himself was sleeping on his back under shimmersilk sheets in the center of a canopied bed large enough to fit half a dozen humans of average size. Plagueis disabled a bedside panel of security alarms, moved an antique chair to the foot of the bed, and switched on a table lamp that supplied dim, yellowish light. Then, sitting down, he roused Veruna from sleep.