Chapter Twenty-Five: New Plan

Bail risked a quick glance around the main room of the hotel suite. All eyes were on Padmé now, and his chief of security seemed to be enjoying the new attention. Her eyes had brightened, and as she spoke she gestured enthusiastically with both hands. Bail couldn't help but smile; it was fun watching her do the thing she did best—scheming.

"When Ellis and I duplicated all these files," she began, sweeping an arm wide to indicate the dining table covered by a mound of loose papers, "there was this librarian helping us. The Twi'lek, remember?" Padmé shot a glance at Ellis and cocked her head to the side in time with the question. "She was, shall we say, rather chatty."

"That's an understatement," the Clawdite muttered, leaning back in her chair and rolling her eyes. "I thought you were supposed to be quiet in a library; she wouldn't stop running her mouth."

Padmé waved a dismissive hand. "Yeah, yeah. Anyway, while we were feeding documents to the copy machine, she said something about how we were lucky Palpatine had moved on to galactic government, because if he were still here on Naboo his administrative records would be in 'the vault.' Maybe that vault is where we need to look."

Bail's heart sank, and it felt as though the air were sucked out of the room. Everyone looked entirely disappointed with Padmé's idea, save two people. Mace Windu's expression was his default: stony and unreadable. Padmé seemed confused at the negative reception.

"Yeah, pack it up, we're done here," grumbled Kazan, leaning forward and placing his head in his hands. Ellis reached forward and snatched a datapad off the table, poking at it halfheartedly with a claw.

Padmé stopped her excited pacing, planting her weight on one foot and crossing her arms. "Okay, I guess I'm out of the loop here. What's wrong?"

"What's wrong," Ellis said, "is that." The Clawdite threw the datapad across the table—it skittered through the stacks of paper, coming to a stop in front of Padmé. The security chief leaned down to stare at the display as Ellis jabbed a finger at it. "Your 'vault' is a highly secure Republic facility."

"'Subterranean Long-term Storage Archive?" Padmé said, drawing out the words on the datapad as if they were foreign to her.

Bail cleared his throat, sitting up slightly to join the conversation. "It's a branch of the Republic's archival department. The Republic constructs the vaults, the planetary government maintains them. This one's jointly controlled by Theed Palace and the university."

"Okay, so we're sneaking in to some underground storage room," Padmé said with a shrug. "No biggie."

Bail shook his head. "Come on, Padmé. You were a con artist, not a bank robber. This is out of our league."

The look that crossed his security chief's face gave Bail both a sense of uneasiness and intense curiosity—it was as if the woman were trying not to raise her eyebrows. "Wait. Have you robbed a bank before?"

"Maybe."

"Well my point still stands. This is leagues beyond that. The equivalent vault on Coruscant is one of the most well-guarded places in the capital district. We're not just going to waltz into this vault in the next few days."

"There's no way this one is as well guarded as the one on Coruscant," she shot back. "Let me do a little digging and see if it's feasible. If we can get in there, we can probably find whatever we're looking for."

The uneasiness in Bail's stomach grew as he considered the idea. He couldn't deny that he had been open to venturing into a legal gray area from the moment they had started this trip—even though he never would've said so to anyone. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that this was too risky.

"Absolutely not," he said with a shake of his head. "I can't sign off on something like this. These vaults are massive facilities. Hundreds of shelves. We aren't just going to break into one so we can 'probably' find useful information. Without a concrete plan, a specific thing to look for—"

"I might be able to help with that."

All eyes turned to face the source of the interruption. The Jedi, Windu, had stepped closer to the circle of conversation. He looked decidedly less grumpy than Bail had come to expect from his limited interaction with the man, as if his newfound usefulness had somehow invigorated him.

Silence filled the room for several moments before Padmé nodded and said, "Go on."

"It's like your librarian said: current government officials still have their records sealed. If Palpatine is doing anything shady, he's not gonna do it himself. He's gonna have a fall guy."

"The Weequay to his Hutt," Padmé mumbled in apparent reference to Windu's earlier story.

"Exactly," the Jedi said with a nod. "Just so happens I spent the day finding out who that might be." He moved toward the table, shuffling through the stack of papers until he extracted one containing a photo. Bail didn't recognize most of the people depicted in it, but one stood out—a slightly younger Palpatine.

"This guy," Windu continued, poking at the photo to indicate the man beside Palpatine, "served alongside our dear Chancellor in Theed Palace's Ministry of Agriculture. Then, when Palpatine left to run for Senate, the guy won the governor's seat for Theed Province."

Bail's eyes instantly widened. "You want to go after the region's sitting governor?"

"Respectfully, Senator," Windu snapped, "that's a step down from what we were doing before."

He has a point, Bail thought. He raised his hands in mock surrender, then motioned for the man to continue.

"Now, our two suspects here didn't just help write policy on agriculture. They're in the business themselves. Palpatine, of course, has his winery"—the Jedi motioned to one of the wine bottles sitting on the dining table—"but this guy seemed more interested in high-volume production. He owns a farm on the agro-world of Telos IV."

"Owned a farm, you mean," Padmé interrupted. "Telos system got swept up by the CIS months ago."

"I meant what I said," Windu replied, heavily enunciating each word. "The governor sure isn't acting like someone who lost a huge business. No personal lifestyle cuts. He didn't buy another farm on some other planet that's still part of Republic space. Far as I can tell, he's still spending money keeping up his fields on Telos IV."

Oh, Bail thought, his eyes growing wide. OH. A glance around the room led Bail to believe that the same realization was dawning on everyone else.

"You think there's some record in the vault of what the money's really going toward?" Ellis asked, leaning forward in apparent renewed interest.

"Could be," Windu said with a shrug. "Even if there isn't, all we have to prove is that he's somehow maintaining a farm on a Confederate world. Could use that to apply some pressure, get him to flip on the Chancellor."

Bail suddenly felt an intense gaze fall on him—Padmé was looking intently at him, a mischievous smile playing across her face. "Well?" she said. "That enough of a 'specific thing' for you?"

He didn't want to admit that it was—to do so would launch his entourage into an incredibly risky endeavor. But there was a curiosity Bail couldn't shake. He wanted to know whether Palpatine's old colleague was funneling money to the CIS. He wanted to find out if it connected back to the Chancellor at all. More than anything else, Bail wanted to stop the man before his rule got entirely out of hand.

"We're not prepared for something like this, Padmé," were the words that left his mouth. "We came here to attend a banquet, not break into a data vault. We just don't have the tools for the job."

A chuckle from one side of the room drew Bail's attention. It was Windu, an uncharacteristic smile forming at the edges of his mouth. "I might be able to help with that too. The Jedi quartermaster has a fondness for tools that are suited for . . . covert entry. I may have swiped a few things from his office before I left the Temple."

"Alrighty then, Windu, you're with me," Padmé said as she swiped a datapad off the dining table. "I want to know what sort of gear we're working with." She spun on a heel and made for one of the offices off the suite's center room, a renewed vigor in her step. The Jedi wordlessly followed her.

As the office door shut behind them with a satisfying click, Bail could practically feel the awkward tension in the main room. A muffled cough from Raymus, a creak from Kazan's chair, and the gentle whir of droid servomotors all filled the space.

Finally, the silence was shattered as Ellis leaned forward and plucked a wine bottle off the table. "Drink, anyone?"

Breathing deeply, Padmé placed a palm squarely on the office door and pushed against it. The wooden slab slid aside with a gentle swish, revealing the hotel suite's main living room.

The mood of the space was noticeably different from when she'd left it. Bail still sat at the table—he'd pushed aside the layer of scattered papers enough to plant both elbows squarely on the surface, and had propped his chin on his clasped together hands. The senator's eyes were half closed, though they fluttered open in time with the office door.

The room's other occupants were scattered about. Liz, currently in one of her good moods, was standing quietly in the corner. Kazan had stretched himself out across one of the couches, while Raymus and Ellis shared another couch—and another bottle of wine between them, which Padmé was certain was not their first of the night. Upon making eye contact with the Clawdite, Padmé was met with a slight eye roll.

"What?" she asked, tilting her head to the side.

The answer came not from Ellis, but from the pilot seated beside her. "We had a little bet going about how long you'd be in there," Raymus said. Chuckling, he shot a sideways grin at Ellis. "Korven owes me thirty credits, she thought it'd take you three hours."

"Damn, Ellis, give me a little credit," Padmé laughed.

"Thirty more minutes and she'd have won," Bail muttered, tapping at the chronometer strapped to his wrist. "Please tell me you've come up with something."

"I think we have," Padmé replied, nodding confidently. Glancing behind her, she locked eyes with Windu, who was leaning against the doorframe of the office they'd just emerged from. The Jedi narrowed his eyes—then, with a slight grunt, he heaved himself away from the doorframe and trudged over to stand beside her.

Leaning down to place both hands on the dining table, Padmé swept her gaze across each of the room's occupants. Clearing her throat, she rose again to a standing position. "The Subterranean Long-term Storage Archive is a network of secure underground vaults commissioned by the Galactic Republic Archives Administration. This . . . is SLS Three."

She made a sweeping motion with her right hand, and the Jedi standing beside her tossed a palm-sized metal disk onto the center of the dining table. Out of it cascaded a brilliant flare of cool blue light—at first a scattered glow, the illumination quickly coalesced into a wireframe projection of two buildings. One bore the distinct outline of Theed Palace.

Padmé gestured beneath the hovering images of the buildings. "The facility itself is underground, situated between the central structure of the palace and the main hall of the university. It can be accessed from either building via a sub-basement."

Kazan let out a gruff cough. "The palace sub-basement isn't open to the public."

"Neither is the university's," Bail chimed in.

Padmé took a step back from the table, waving a dismissive hand. "I know, but that's not really the hard part. We should be able to get down to the vault lobby easily enough. Once we're there, things get tricky. See, this vault isn't called SLS Three because it was the third one to be built. They called it that because it was the first to use three factor authentication."

She spun on a heel, pacing as she talked. "The other SLS vaults—Coruscant, Corellia, Kuat, and so on—used to all be secured by a huge number of armed guards. Naboo wanted a more subtle approach. They didn't feel like posting a huge military complement right outside a school and the Queen's residence, so the security really starts with the vault lobby.

"When you enter, you're greeted by one of two things: during office hours, there's a woman who sits at this reception desk. She can let people into the vault if they don't normally have access, but she accompanies them the whole way. Not really ideal for our circumstances. During off-hours, a protocol droid sits at the desk. We'll want to go when he's there."

Bail let out a slight cough and gingerly raised his hand. "Pardon my ignorance, but . . . we do have a Jedi with us." He turned to glance at Windu. "Couldn't you just do that mind thing? Convince this receptionist to let us in the vault and then look the other way?"

Windu chuckled, shaking his head. "You've got the wrong Jedi for that. Kenobi may be good at mind tricks, but they're not really my thing. Last time I tried it on someone, they passed out and woke up with a nasty headache. Came on too strong, I guess."

Padmé waved a hand to interrupt the exchange, stepping forward slightly to stand between Windu and Bail. "It's fine. The droid won't pay us any mind if we act like we belong. At the back of this lobby is the first of three vault doors."

"Three doors," Ellis mumbled, swirling her wine glass in one hand. "Three factor authentication. I'm assuming there's a connection there."

"Indeed." Padmé nodded approvingly. "Three doors, one after the other. Only one can be open at a time. Each has a different security method. One of the three factors: something you know, something you have, and something you are.

"The first door is secured by something you know: a six-digit passcode that is changed at the beginning of every week. The keypad could probably be bypassed with a security spike, but if the protocol droid sees us do that we're in trouble. So we'll need to get that passcode."

"You say that like it'll be easy," Raymus groaned, slouching further down in his spot on the couch.

A knowing smile crossed Padmé's face as she resumed her pacing. "Compared to what's next, it will be easy. The next door is secured by something you have: a keycard. They're issued to a handful of security personnel, but we can't just steal one."

"Why not?" Kazan asked—the grizzled bodyguard was still laying across one of the room's couches, and was staring up at the ceiling rather than watching Padmé.

"If a staff member reports their keycard is missing, every single card in circulation is deactivated, and everybody is issued new ones. If we stole a card, it'd be useless within the hour."

"Padmé." Bail stretched out the name, as if he were scolding a child. "This sounds impossible."

"The third door," she continued, ignoring her boss entirely, "is secured by something you are. There's a biometric lock on it. A handprint scanner, to be precise."

Raymus let out a snort and shot a sideways glance at the Clawdite sitting next to him. "Huh. We just had to bring along a shapeshifter who can't actually shapeshift."

"Screw you, Antilles," Ellis snapped back. "Even if I could, it wouldn't matter. The best Clawdite shapeshifters can't mimic fingerprints." Returning her attention to the pacing security chief, Ellis continued, "I don't see how this works, Padmé. We can't bypass a biometric lock."

"You're right, we can't." The grin on her face grew slightly. "Luckily, we don't have to. Entering the vault requires all of these security checks, but to leave the vault, you just have to open the door. If we had someone waiting inside for us—"

"No," a mechanized voice hissed. "Absolutely not."

It was Liz, Padmé knew—the droid had been standing silently in the corner, sweeping her blue-eyed gaze across the room. The robot's optics were now a deep crimson, and focused directly at Padmé.

Padmé watched as the rest of the room's occupants glanced with hesitation between the droid and the security chief. Finally, Bail spoke up: "I think I'm missing something. What's she so upset about?"

"The idiot wants to stuff me in a damn box!" Liz snapped—then, her eyes shifting blue, she slowly turned to face Bail and bowed slightly at the waist. "Sir."

Bail raised an eyebrow and rotated back to look at Padmé. "Is she serious?"

"It's worked once before. Anakin and I shipped her to this warehouse, then had her sneak out of the shipping crate and open the back door for us." Padmé shrugged. "If we can find an excuse to have something added to the vault, I don't see why it wouldn't work."

"Okay, so let me get this straight," Bail said, sitting up slightly and leaning onto the dining table. "You want to figure out a passcode we don't know, steal a keycard that can't be stolen, and get your droid submitted into the Republic Archives, then break into the vault . . . all before the University of Theed's fundraising banquet."

"Oh, no," Padmé said with a grin. "Not before the banquet. During it."

A wave of competing emotions washed over Bail Organa. He had listened as Padmé had outlined her crazy plan, forced himself to entertain the idea of letting his staff break in to a Republic archival vault, but this added wrinkle of doing so in the middle of a university event was too much. He placed his palms squarely on the dining table and rose to his feet.

"Padmé, no. That's insane. There will be hundreds of people directly above the vault in the university's main hall. Security presence at the palace and the university will be doubled. Tripled, maybe. It's an all hands on deck event."

"Exactly," she replied, leveling a pointed finger at him. "That's our in."

"Amidala and I will enter dressed in security uniforms," Mace Windu said, joining the conversation. "If any of the security staff don't recognize us, we can say we work opposite shifts, or were hired just for this event. Plenty of ways to deflect suspicion, and the uniforms will get us into the sub-basement."

"The banquet is the perfect distraction, Bail," Padmé said. "Nobody's going to be thinking about what's going on in the vault below. More importantly, nobody's going to think you had anything to do with the robbery."

Bail gently lowered himself back into his chair. As he stroked his beard with one hand and rapped his knuckles against the table with the other, his thoughts briefly drifted off to nowhere.

They were quickly pulled back as Padmé sat down beside him, leaning in and speaking in a hushed and somber tone. "Bail, I'm not doing this lightly. Palpatine is out there annexing planets. He might be dragging out a galactic war just for the sake of political power. Someone has to stop him. We've got a chance to."

He let out a long sigh. "I know."

"We've got a few kinks to work out, I'll admit," she continued, "but I'm confident we can pull this off. Are you in?"

Closing his eyes, the senator nodded slowly. After a moment of silence, he spoke: "As long as everyone else is on board, of course." He glanced around the room, briefly locking eyes with each member of his crew. Padmé and the Jedi were the most confident, of course, and the droid's blue-eyed expression was unreadable. In Ellis he saw excitement mixed with trepidation. Raymus seemed only nervous, but as Bail met his gaze the pilot shot him a snappy nod. Even Kazan, who Bail had expected resistance from, nodded in the affirmative—it was perhaps a wearier affirmation than the others, but still seemed to carry the same resolve.

Bail looked back at Padmé. "All right, then," he said. "Let's do it."

A grin bigger than any of her previous grins grew across Padmé's face. "Let's rob the Republic Archives."

Republic Archives: Galactic Republic Archives Administration

Though the secession conflict prior to the Ruusan Reformation ended without war, Chancellor Tyria Ruusan publicly expressed a concern that, should a war occur, the history of the many species of the Republic could easily be lost. Founded by Chancellor Ruusan in the years following the Reformation, the Galactic Republic Archives Administration is responsible for the collection, cataloguing, storage and preservation of historical records of the Republic.

The Administration works to collect recorded history from each world in the Republic and store the records in one of many data archival facilities—the Subterranean Long-term Storage vaults. Several Republic worlds are home to SLS vaults, and each vault houses an identical data server containing a standalone backup of the Republic Archives—if all vaults save one were destroyed, the Archives would still remain intact.

The GRAA also houses physical artifacts and sensitive materials in its vaults—as part of each vault construction agreement, the vault's "host world" is welcome to use a significant portion of the secure storage shelving found within. The Administration prides itself on the security of these facilities. They are inaccessible to any unauthorized persons, and are virtually indestructible, enveloped in an energy shield designed to withstand even direct orbital bombardment.