Chapter

2

SENATE CHAMBER, GALACTIC CITY; CORUSCANT

28:04:11 ABY:

Every world in the Republic that had representatives in the Senate was represented in the Senate today, which Leia Organa-Solo found to be extremely odd. In most senate debates, sure there were a lot of representatives—but never a full house. That only happened when there was something critically important to discuss or debate.

As her husband, the famous Han Solo, wasn't so well versed in the political activities of the Republic, she wouldn't expect him to notice the oddity of a full house. He even refused to admit its existence when his wife pointed it out to him.

Leia didn't hold a seat on the Senate, and hadn't since her days as Chief of State. But since word of the debate had been leaked to her, she felt the need to make an appearance so she could find out just what was going on. As such, she and her husband were standing in a viewing box usually reserved for special guests; Cakhmaim and Meewalh—Leia's personal Noghri bodyguards—were standing outside on either side of the door, making sure that no one came onto the platform without Leia's personal invitation.

C-3PO was also with her, standing quietly just inside the door awaiting orders.

Leia would much have preferred to be on Yavin 4, though. She and her husband had just been loading the Falconfor the trip there, in fact, when she'd heard about the senate convening. Unfortunately, due to the unexpectedness of the senate congregation, their trip had been delayed.

It irritated Leia—and Han as well, she knew—as they both were eager to check on the progress of Zak Arranda's recovery. The Arrandas had been friends … of a sort … back in the days when Han Solo had been nothing more than a smuggler helping the Rebel Alliance, when Leia had been one of the Alliance's founding members, and when Luke had been an up-and-coming Jedi who was still mourning the loss of his first teacher.

It seemed that Han and Leia's children, Jacen, Jaina and Anakin, had grown to be friends with the Arrandas as well—Jaina especially had grown quite attached to Zak.

Looking around the chamber in the moments preceding the debate; Leia took notice of how much it was like the chamber of the Old Republic and the Galactic Empire.

Though she had served as an official representative in the Imperial Senate only briefly, and thus made few trips to the building with her foster parents, she remembered the grandness of it, the enormity.

The new chamber, rebuilt after the re-establishment of the Republic, had been built to the same model and scale, and as close to the original site as possible. From the exterior, it resembled a massive shield laid flat atop a thick drum base. Inside was a maze of corridors and offices and VIP guest rooms, all taking up spaces near the apex of the dome and around the edges of the rest of the structure. The rest of the interior was taken up by the Senate Chamber itself, which was massive.

The chamber was as a funnelled well—the ceiling wider across than the floor. The walls were lined with hundreds, if not thousands, of decks, each one with a disc-pod anchored to it which had built-in repulsors on the underside to allow it individual and unhindered movement around the chamber. The centre of the chamber was empty, aside from the door-like floor plate.

Leia knew that when the Chief of State made his entrance, the floor plates would open and a separate pod, larger than the rest in the chamber, would extend up from the level beneath them on a long support arm, and that the Chief of State and his aides would be sitting or standing in it.

Such a time was upon them now.

The chatter in the chamber silenced as the doors opened without a sound and the central pod was elevated into the chamber. It stopped halfway to the ceiling, and the silence continued, all eyes now on the leader of the Republic waiting for him to address them all.

Leia ignored the exaggerated sigh from her husband. He, like many others within the Republic, wasn't a fan of Borsk Fey'lya. For a moment, she even thought she heard her husband mutter "here comes the poodoo", but she doubted he had.

"Senators of the Republic," Fey'lya started, his voice booming loudly in the chamber, amplified by speakers in each of the pods. "Thank you all for coming!"

There was a moment of silence before he continued, and Leia in that moment took the time to direct her gaze across the central pod to see its other inhabitants.

Seated in front of him were his two chief aides, a brown-haired Bothan male whose name was Tav Breil'lya, and a Twi'lek female called Annara Seyacn who served as the Chief of State's speech adviser. Standing on each side of the pod behind Borsk Fey'lya was another couple of faces she knew.

To the left behind Fey'lya was a human male with long dark hair and a strong, muscular build. He was dressed in a sand-coloured tunic and a dark brown robe which opened in the middle to show the lightsaber clipped to the front of his belt. He was a Jedi Knight by the name of Keyan Jace, who Leia had a close friendship with through her brother.

Standing on the other side of the Republic's leader was Keyan Jace's apprentice, a human girl about the same age as Jacen and Jaina by the name of Talesa Valara. She had bright red hair, tied back in a tight knot at the back of her head today, and transitional eyes which were currently blue.

Both of them were at rigid attention. Leia noticed that they did not have their gaze fixed on Fey'lya, or on any one point in particular; but that they were in fact scanning the entire periphery of the Senate Chamber to ascertain any possible threats or dangers.

Leia could barely contain the laugh. Things must have been serious for Fey'lya if there were Jedi guarding him, and she knew the Bothan well enough to know how much he no doubt detested Keyan and Talesa's proximity.

But their shifting eyes made her uneasy, and she found herself unconsciously patting her hand reassuringly against her lightsaber, hidden in the side pocket of her trousers under the gown she wore. She shot a sideways glance at her husband to see that he was now standing against the rail, his eyes, too, darting left and right as if looking for a threat.

"Something the matter?" she whispered.

"It's probably nothing," Han said. "I just don't like the way Jace and his kid are acting. I mean, true enough that Fey'lya isn't very popular, but it's as if they're expecting an assassination attempt."

Leia rolled her eyes at her husband calling Talesa a child. "When isn't there one? He's always accusing the Jedi of trying to rip him away from power," Leia said, nodding her head back towards the central pod.

"I'll have a word to Keyan when we're done here," she assured him. Her husband nodded beside her, but did not return to his seat.

Leia returned to the Chief of State's address to find that he had already started. "Would Senator Pwoe come forth and make her statement known to us?" Fey'lya boomed.

There was a hush among the senators and movement to Leia's right caught her eye.

She looked over to see a disc-pod three rows above her and seven columns over detach from its deck and float out into the chamber, beginning its slow rotation around the large chamber. A Quarran male stepped up to the front of the disc, dressed to the nines in aquatic blue robes with a high teal neck piece.

He looked around at the nearby senators before he began to speak.

"Fellow Senators, what I wish to discuss with you today is a matter that I know will result in much debate in the hours, perhaps days, to come. For there are many who would disagree with my standpoint on the matter," he began. "But I feel that this Republic is at a danger of placing too much trust and responsibility with the Jedi."

"Oh my stars, not this poodoo again," Han said, slapping his forehead with an open palm. He continued more quietly; "Now he's getting the senators to push his prejudices!"

Pwoe was right about one thing—the chamber erupted in a dichotomy of concord and outrage.

Leia was rightly angered by the statement. Regardless of how many times the issue was discussed, both as a Jedi herself and as a former Chief of State, Leia did not agree.

While it was true that the Jedi had not been able to foresee, nor stopper, the rise of the Galactic Empire, they had not been at fault for it. The Jedi were the guardians of peace and truth, and the administrators of justice throughout the galaxy when no other enforcement was able to oblige. They weren't mere soothsayers and healers.

If the Republic cut itself off from the Jedi, it would only serve as an open invitation for crime syndicates such as those owned by the Hutt or Dug clans to begin galactic corruption. Not to mention that dark side practitioners might again try to worm their way back into government as Palpatine had.

Knowing there would be questions if she opened her mouth to challenge the accusation, Leia kept silent, and was silently amazed that Han could manage the same.

The Wookiee senator to her left roared for attention, and then began to speak in grunts, growls and rumbles that Leia, having married a man fluent in some Wookiee dialects, did not need a translator for. The senator's pod detached and beginning to float around the chamber.

"The chair has not recognised the representative from Kashyyyk at this time," Borsk Fey'lya growled fiercely over the loud din of cheers and jeers. He wasn't pleased at having his agenda interrupted.

The Wookiee pointedly ignored him. «The Jedi are our protectors and enforcers.»

"They were also protectors and enforcers in the waning days of the Old Republic—not to mention honorary generals within the military. And yet one of their most powerful was corrupted and in fact led to the undoing of the Republic. Can we really risk this happening again, Senators, when there are already signs that it could happen at any moment?"

"Of what do you speak, Senator?" Fey'lya asked Pwoe, calmly and assured that what was about to be said would be something he would agree to.

Leia reached out with her thoughts to probe the Quarran senator, and sensed the probes of several other Jedi from within the chamber doing the same. She weaved through the other probes and into the senator's mind. Her heart skipped a beat at what she saw.

"There are reports," Pwoe began haughtily, looking down at a sheet of flimsiplast, "that there is a danger present at the Jedi Academy in the Yavin system, growing right under the nose of the great Skywalker himself. Reports that a pair of students, one of them the child of the former Chief of State, Leia Organa-Solo, were taken prisoner by a man identified by the Jedi Order only as something called a Sith. It appeared that this 'Sith' planned to use the children in his plans to destroy the Jedi Order completely."

"Of this I am aware," Fey'lya said impatiently. "This Senate sanctioned the military attempt that failed to return the children to Skywalker's care."

"This Senate" clearly didn't apply to Fey'lya, who had been unable to legitimately find a reason to overturn the vote at the time.

"Then you are also aware, honourable President of the Senate, that those children were in fact able to enact their own escape, and fled here to the capital. Here, their captor pursued them, and they were forced into a conflict with the Sith in order to protect themselves."

"Please, Senator," Fey'lya urged, returning instantly to his calm tone again, "hurry to the point you intend to make. This information is not new to this Senate."

"One of those children was responsible for the death of this Sith," Pwoe replied.

Han's grip on the rail in front of them tightened until his knuckles went white, and Leia saw the beginnings of a scowl appearing on his face. She reached out and placed a soothing hand on his arm to calm him.

"A child killed a Sith. Now, as I understand it, a Sith is the equivalent of, say, a Jedi Knight or Master like Skywalker. So, while under other circumstances, such an event would be laughable, and worthy of ridicule of this particular Sith's abilities, the events that followed are hardly amusing.

"The child in question, when returned to the academy at Yavin, then turned against his peers and mentors, resulting in a multitude of injuries, and Skywalker himself having to be treated for severe injuries from an attack upon his person.

"Now," Pwoe paused, and scoffed mockingly, "while Skywalker assures us that the situation is once again under control, and the student in question is no longer a threat, I think that a little scepticism is quite in order here."

«What are you proposing, Senator?» the Wookiee Senator growled, his pod circling slowly around the Quarran delegation's. «That we sever all ties to the Jedi and exile them from the Republic? How would that make us any better than Palpatine's Empire?»

The Senate around them erupted again in outrage at the mention of the Sith who had ruled the galaxy for over three decades, first as the "benevolent" Chancellor of the Old Republic, and then as the Emperor of his own Empire.

"Hardly," Pwoe said with a dismissive wave. Leia frowned at his next words before they were even spoken. "Just that we should give serious though to some Republic oversight of the Jedi training facilities, and perhaps keep a particular eye on the situation on Yavin 4 to make sure that Jedi Skywalker hasn't just exaggerated the situation to alleviate the worries of the Senate and his own Council."

This was bad.

Leia stepped back from the rail and turned around to C-3PO and her husband.

She thought about Pwoe's proposal, but not because she thought there was merit to it.

If the Republic wanted to send a representative to Yavin 4 to observe the situation there, that was reasonable enough. It was, after all, one of the reasons she and Han had taken more than their normal share of trips to the small moon in the past year. But what Pwoe, or perhaps Fey'lya himself, had in mind was a Republic delegation, not one sent by the Jedi.

He harboured such distrust for the Jedi that he didn't trust them not to lie to the Senate for Skywalker's benefit—or he was acting as Fey'lya's delivery man so that the Chief of State could escape the rebounding poodoo.

That meant that Leia and her husband would also be untrustworthy to him, as they were relations to Luke, had three Jedi children, and both very much in favour of the Jedi Order and how it was being managed.

But Leia knew that Luke was not going to approve of Republic interference at the Praxeum. And how could she blame him? If she were the most respected of the Jedi, the one who had brought the order back from the brink of extinction, and her teachings were being questioned and under scrutiny by those that had not known what the Jedi had once stood for, or were too old and bitter to remember, could she honestly say that she would be calm? No; of course she couldn't.

"Threepio," she started, gesturing for the droid to approach her. "Get to the Falcon and send a message to Luke. Tell him to expect company, and why—you can send him a recording of the proceedings if you feel the need. Also tell him that we'll be doing all we can on this end to see that it's at least a Jedi-led delegation that is sent, though understandably I can't promise anything."

"That seems very wise," C-3PO replied in his high, tinny voice. His photoreceptors dimmed for a moment and then lit up again. "Will there be anything else you wish for me to relay to Master Luke?"

"Not for the moment, Goldenrod. Just get onto that message, will you?" Han said. The droid nodded its head and shuffled around to head out through the door.

"Cakhmaim?" Leia called out. Both of the Noghri slipped in through the door, and Cakhmaim bowed at the waist until his nose almost touched the floor while Meewalh kept an eye and blaster trained on the door. "We're leaving. I must speak with a friend immediately."

"Very good, mistress," Cakhmaim hissed.

Leia turned to look out across the grand chamber to the central pod, and saw that Keyan Jace was staring straight back at her. She sent him an urgent request to meet, and saw him nod imperceptibly before she turned back around and followed Meewalh out into the corridor.

Han followed by her side. "I have a bad feeling about this," he said quietly beside her.