Chapter 10

On Coruscant Darth Sidious could not help but feel the explosion of rage that permeated the force from his apprentice. She tried to hide it, but she had never been that good at hiding her feelings from him, and this was a time when he had used this fact even more than usual. When he felt it, he laughed. Oh yes, this had gone down better than he had imagined, and all as he had foreseen. To bring his plan to fruition, all that remained was to give her that one last push. Once it was done...

To that end he utilized the HoloNet transciever. Being the Emperor, his was of course the highest priority that could be had. When Paqua's underling answered on the other end, he put just the right level of annoyance at the delay and general anger into his voice to send the man running off with record speed. That he wasn't just forwarded told him that Paqua wasn't in her quarters, likely already this close to going planet-side with two-thirds of the Iron Fist's Stormtroopers. True annoyance flooded him there. The clone rebellion on Kamino had been dealt with, but the Rebel spy who had managed to slice into the base programming and thus cause the failure of the programme and a clone rebellion that had massively damaged the facilities. More clones could and would be produced, but the idea of replacing the entirety of the Stormtrooper Corps with clones had died along with the prototypes. With the exception of the 501st, clones would be phased out. The danger of sabotage was just too great, somewhat ironic when one considered the role the clones had played during the rise of the New Order. That this rebellion had also killed one of Sidious' other plans, those related to the Deep Core, was something no one would ever find out, and those few that had known even parts of it had already been dealt with.

Paqua appeared and Sidious pushed the matter from his mind, and decided to push forward.

"What is thy bidding, my Master?"

"I have felt a great disturbance in the force."

"A rebel cell has freed the family of the so-called Senator Amidala." Paqua replied and gave a short run-down of what had happened.

Palpatine was pleased. Even though he would have preferred to have them stand trial on Coruscant, this had opened up an opportunity to rid himself of one more piece of his Palpatine persona. And if he played it right...

"Clearly, if you had thought to take proper precautions, this would not have happened, Lady Paqua. Do you at least have an idea where they are?"

He didn't need to be close enough to feel her emotions to be able to tell that she was angry at getting told off like a young child. 'Good,' he thought, 'let your hate flow through you, my apprentice... and then do what you're told.'

"My men are searching as we speak, my Master, but there are indications that they left the planet before we could institute a full blockade."

Glacial words followed. That certainly was not something Sidious had wanted, and he felt the anger building within him. He let this fuel his connection to the Dark Side, and he knew that he would have to order a new batch of training droids very soon.

"How do we know this, my apprentice?"

"One of the members of the group that freed them was captured by pure chance, Master. Eventually, he... was persuaded to talk. He didn't know everything, except that the plan was to get them off-world."

"And you are sure you have managed to make him tell you everything?" Sidious asked, knowing the answer, but deciding to use it to needle Paqua again. He could sense that she was close to the brink, and with a few well-chosen words the outcome he wanted would be very close at hand.

"The rebels are operating in cells. All he knew and all the rest of his cell knew that they had to bring them to a certain place at a certain time and hand them over for transportation off-world. The person they handed them over to left along with them, Master."

Outwardly Palpatine remained perfectly calm.

Inwardly on the other hand it was another matter entirely. He knew that now there was little to no chance to ever find them again. If the rebel scum were smart, and they usually were, he had to admit, then they would have taken steps to make them effectively untraceable. Even if his Hands, and the Emperor's Hands would be tasked with this, managed to find the ship that had taken them off Naboo, then at some point they would have been taken over by a ship directly part of the Rebel fleet and therefore unfindable. This would clearly embolden the Rebel sympathisers in the Senate, but there was little else that could be done about that at the moment, and what he had in mind would take care of that for the moment. It was meant not only as a message to Skywalker, Amidala and the other Rebel scum but also those who supported them. It would not last forever, but right now it was what had to be done. After all, he still needed the Senate.

"Well, then you had better try and find them. Start with the Queen of Naboo. I can forsee that she will be unwilling to betray her rebel friends," he said, not mentioning that he had gone through great pains to ensure that this was so, for an opportunity such as today, "so carry out a suitable form of punishment and solve that problem, as we discussed."

Sidious put in one last barb. "For once."
"Yes, my Master."

"See to it that you do."

With that, he cut the connection. And then, when no one was there to see him, he grinned. Good.

The Emperor's figure faded into nothingness and Paqua rose to her feet. She was glad that the Emperor had not been too probing in his questions, or he would have discovered that she had already had the Queen arrested in order to facilitate her cooperation. Trun had advised against it, using up all of his leeway and though she could see his point, her anger had been boiling when the Queen had claimed to be entirely unaware of how the former Senator's family had escaped or been moved off the planet. Paqua had taken care to interrogate the Queen herself, though between her being the Queen of one of the more important planets in this part of the Galaxy and a strong-willed person, certain means of persuasion had been denied to her. The Queen's adamant refusal of any knowledge had been infuriating, and the latest round of questions had been what had caused the uproar her Master had felt.

Trun, who had remained unseen outside the pickup range of the transceiver, decided to speak.

"Milady, the Emperor has suggested what I think..."

Paqua nodded. Trun felt uncomfortable and hoped that Paqua, who had to feel his emotions, believed that it was because he thought the political consequences would be immense. They would be, and he thought that, but more than that, what the Emperor had all but ordered was just plain wrong in his opinion. He was a loyal servant of the Empire, no doubt about it, but what was suggested here had so far always been a theoretical exercise to him. Being aware of the hypocrisy in this chance didn't change how he felt.

"He has."

"With all due respect, mylady, but you do realize why he never issued a direct order?"

"Of course I do. The Emperor is aware of what needs to be done to sweep the Rebel scum from the Galaxy, but at the same time appearances must be maintained. So if things are done that those unaware of the bigger picture in the galaxy and wavering in their loyalty would not understand, he must be able to maintain deniability. If the public in the galaxy then understand what I am capable of doing to those elements disloyal to the Empire, so much the better. In the end he is much more important than me."

Trun knew that there was more to it than this, and that she would never be this selfless if she could be sure that nothing of what she said would ever make it's way back to Coruscant's centres of power, but there was a certain truth to it in the sense that the Emperor would want to maintain plausible deniability about this. Naboo was not only a world primarily settled by humans, but also the Emperor's own homeworld. So far Trun had had little reason to talk with the Emperor about private matters and he valued his life too much to ever really do it, but if there was one thing he was good at it was reading between the lines of what people said, and he was fairly certain that the Emperor hated his own heritage for some reason.

Of course it would not do for that to ever be public knowledge, mostly because it would not fit with the somewhat grandfatherly persona he liked the public to see.

"Agent, do you have... issues with carrying it out?"

"Of course not, Milady." he lied, "it is just that... I'm not quite sure of the long-term consequences."

"There will not be any. Or at least none that would be detrimental to the Empire. If anything, this will strike fear into the hearts of those who dare oppose us, it will teach the Rebels out there a lesson about the Empire's will and it will punish the core of the Rebellion."

She was of course talking about Senator Skywalker, though Trun would never call her that in public, and he could see why this was done, but did they have to go that far?"

"You worry, Agent."

Trun shrugged. "That's what I do, Milady. Occupational hazard, I suppose."

She looked at him and then shrugged in a odd show of emotion.

"The perils of working with Intelligence. In any case, the ships we need should be here in a few hours, but we will not wait. We will begin operations as soon as we have withdrawn all our assets from the surface. You will order the Queen released first."

"Yes, milday." Trun said and all but fled the room, suddenly unable to remain.

Paqua meanwhile walked over to the viewscreen used for in-ship communications and keyed up an orbital picture for the planet. She looked at and studied it for a few minutes before connecting to the bridge. The Iron Fist's captain answered instantly. Paqua spoke with implacable durasteel in her voice.

"Initiate the Base Delta Zero protocol."

tbc

Yes, I did it! And I don't regret a thing!

On a more serious note, I did not do it because of the Gungans or something. I did however plan this for a very, very long time, I think somewhere around when I decided that Luminara Unduli was going to come back, I also decided that Naboo was going to get the chop at some point. For what it's worth, I already know who is going to make an acquaintance with the Imperial Planetary Ore Extractor too.

The part with the clones was originally supposed to be the core of an entire episode, but I decided to ditch it a few months ago, one because it would have unbalanced the entirety of the Heresyverse main line of stories, meaning five focusing on the Prequel generation and other five focusing on the OT generation, two for this hypothetical sixth story I had only the clone plot and nothing else really, even more so since elements of it were taken to form Episode V. When I get around to writing and you to reading it, you'll see what I mean. The sixth episode would've been bloatware on par with a cheap chinese laptop.

That said, the Clone rebellion is something that I might write a side-story on at some point.

Also, no * censored due to PG-16* Emperor clones. Thank all that's holy for that. Palpatine is also so over the top in the movies sometimes, it's really hard to write him.