Darth Rabbits- Glad you like things so far.
Ashla- Glad you liked it. I felt it had to be magnanimous and apocalyptic given the circumstances.
Jepsie- That's fine. I'm glad you still enjoyed it though. Maybe this will be more to your liking. I just felt that I had to be a little bombastic and classical given the circumstances of what I was writing.
Chocolate Teapot- As always I am deeply appreciative of you pointing this out. My spell check is very terrible apparently. I only reread twice before publishing.
Loteva- Glad you enjoyed it.
Special inspiration for this chapter came from my loyal reviewers and from the opening scene of the British TV series House of Cards. I highly recommend it. It is absolutely captivating. As an aside I am starting to run a little low on inspiration for this story. I still have some ideas, but I am starting to run out of new material. So, within the confines of a character study, if you guys could send some suggestions it would be greatly appreciated. Please leave a review.
The room is cavernous and dark, darker than usual. For the first time in what feels like an eternity the great black doors to this room open and a solitary figure enters. The only source of light comes from the hall. Footsteps echo throughout the room and reverberate across ceilings and walls. Such a disturbance is unwelcome and unseemly. The room has been darkened out of respect for the man who once inhabited this room.
Onwards, deeper and deeper into this room the man treads, his purple robes sweeping across the floor as he reaches is objective.
The man approaches a chair sitting at the end of the black room in front of a large window that has been draped over with black cloth.
The chair itself is covered in a shroud as black as the abyss.
But this isn't an ordinary chair, nor is this an ordinary room. Nor are these ordinary circumstances.
This is the throne of the Emperor, and this is his throne room.
At least, it was.
The man turns his eyes to the curtain and pulls them down, allowing the light to flood the room once more. It is a dim light, a sickly light that seeks to gain entrance into this, the Emperor's sanctum sanctorum.
The man then walks back to the throne and stares at it, eyeing it almost warily.
With a single, shaking hand the man reaches out, as if fearful that the throne shall leap up and bite him. Finding his courage the man grabs the black shroud and pulls it away, revealing that which it covered.
The throne of His Majesty the Emperor, Palpatine.
But it is not his throne anymore.
The Emperor is dead.
Dead.
Dead.
Dead?
A week has passed since the Emperor's demise, and still the thought of it is practically inconceivable. The end of an era, cut short far too soon. Even now, two weeks after his passing the pain is still fresh in the hearts and minds of many. The man's mind is filled with thoughts, memories and ideas.
It has all gone by so fast. When word had first gotten back to the Capital that His Majesty had died, no one could, or indeed would believe it. The Emperor dead? It was inconceivable!
It wasn't possible.
He had been around so long.
He was the only constant in our lives. Individual men came and went with the passing of time but the Emperor was eternal. He was the cornerstone upon which the New Order was built. He was our leader, our father, our savior.
And now he is gone. Why did you leave your devoted servants behind Sire?
When the reality of the situation finally sank in and the truth became unavoidable, many an imperial asked themselves that question.
Some even sought to join their Master in death, no longer seeing a point to living in a galaxy where there was no Palpatine.
Weak fools the lot of them. His Majesty always detested those who went to pieces in a crisis. If he was still here he would berate them as fools. They still had a duty to the Empire that needed to be carried out whether the Emperor was alive or not.
The Empire, what will become of it now?
The Empire was the Emperor's legacy. He was the beating heart of the Empire. He breathed life into it and gave it purpose and direction.
But now that beating heart is still.
The Rebels did this. They took him from us. And now everything that he built is coming apart.
Without the Emperor's unifying presence worlds have begun to secede with impunity. The military is in chaos. No one knows who is in charge. Moffs and Admirals have been declaring themselves the new lords of their own personal fiefdoms, carving up the Empire that they had sworn to protect.
The Emperor died without an heir, and he died without declaring a successor, which only made sense if one gave the subject some thought. If the Emperor had declared an official successor than he would only have signed his own death warrant. Any successor in a system like this would have worked hard to have the Emperor killed so that he could attain his position early.
It is, after all, what he would have expected. It is, after all, what he would have done had he been in such a position.
Unofficially though I knew why the Emperor never wanted a successor; he wouldn't have needed one. He had been so close, so close to attaining the secrets of immortality that would have allowed him to rule for all of eternity.
I should know; I was the one who helped him to discover the artifacts that led him on his path for ultimate power.
I was His Majesty's closest confidante. He could confide in me almost anything at all, even the deepest and most arcane knowledge of the Sith. After all, there was no potential harm in telling me such dark secrets, for I did not possess the potential to use that knowledge against him.
One could even argue that I am the only person who ever fully knew him. I am proud to know that of all of his allies and associates that he ever had, I was the only one who fully understood him.
Palpatine was beholden to no one. In his life there only existed one type of person or object; those who possessed potential usefulness to himself. Anything or anyone else who did not fit into this category was systematically dealt with. I am honored to say that I fell into this category of usefulness, and I am even further honored to say that I was his instrument, by which those that needed to be dealt with were dealt with.
I was the Emperor's right hand, his angel of vengeance as it were. I swooped down behind the scenes and dealt with those who needed to be dealt with. I was much like a surgeon's scalpel, effortlessly and subtly slicing away those appendages that posed a threat to the body politic. I was his enforcer as well. From the days when I was merely a Senators aide to the time when I was Personal assistant to the Chancellor to the present I was his Lieutenant, putting a bit of stick about in order to keep the troops in line with official Imperial policy. Whenever there was a problem, be it an unruly Senator or a discontented Minister it was my job to streamline the process of governing and ensure that His Majesty's agenda got through come hell or high water.
I was also his guardian angel as well. It was my duty, my purpose to protect him from the outside world. I screened his calls, deflected all criticism away from his office, dealt with his rivals, assassinated his enemies, stamped out sedition, and even tasted his food for poison.
He valued my loyalty. Good, dependable help is so very often difficult to find. I was his co conspirator as well. In many ways the Empire that he created and maintained was the fruit of my labor just as much as it was his. I liked to think that we were partners in a sense, unequal partners to be sure, but partners nonetheless.
We both shared a glorious vision of the future; a vision of order and power, a vision of a galaxy indivisible, answerable only to one supreme authority, an authority that knew how to rule and how to keep the rabble in line.
Such a vision he shared with me early on, shortly after I had discovered his secret Sith affiliations when he was still a Senator. It was an intoxicating vision, and it was then that I knew.
Had any other man spoke to me of such a vision I would have laughed at them then and there.
Overthrow the Republic? Kill all of the Jedi? Establish an Empire? Such ideas would surely be the signs of a delusional mad man!
But this Palpatine was different. Even now, so many years after that conversation took place I can remember it clear as day. I saw in his eyes a coldness, a ruthless conviction that proclaimed to the universe that nothing could stop him.
If any mortal creature could accomplish such a task I was convinced in that moment that Palpatine could. I joined his cause and pledged my life to his service.
He rewarded me well for my loyalty.
In my time at his side I achieved power beyond my wildest imaginings. Everything was at my beck and call. Nothing was impossible. Palpatine had made it possible.
We had much in common, the two of us. We had both sought to court that woman we call power, with varying degrees of success. We both believed in the power of fear and the effectiveness of the truncheon. We saw before us endless realms of opportunity, and we both decided that we would not be satisfied until we had achieved all that could be achieved.
We were both intelligent men, above and beyond those insignificant vermin that populated the galaxy and polluted it with their ignorance and impurity. We were cut from a finer cloth. We saw the universe for what it was and we recognized the path that needed to be followed in order to achieve unlimited power.
In the end I think I was the closest thing to a friend he ever had. He never had much use for such foolish things, and frankly neither did I. But I like to think that we had a sense of mutual understanding and respect for one another that could be construed by some as being friendship. We didn't detest one another, that is for sure. Perhaps that is what friendship is, simply not detesting someone. I wouldn't really know. I've never really liked anyone.
We understood one another though. I realized that I was his servant. Never once did I delude myself into believing that I was his equal. And he of course understood that I was loyal to his cause and useful to his realizing the grand vision that we both sought to bring about.
Above all though I appreciated his truthfulness. What endeared me most to the cause of the Emperor was that, frankly put, he never tried to delude himself. Many a dictator has believed that he was creating a revolution to improve the lot of the people and that he was doing that which he did on purely selfless grounds that sought only to benefit all of sentientkind.
Palpatine believed this only to a small extent. But this would merely be a trickle down side-effect of what he really wanted.
Palpatine wanted power. He yearned for control and coveted order, an order imposed by him and him alone. He sought to impose his will upon a meaningless creation and re organize not only the government, but society and the very laws of nature and physics so that they would revolve around him. As a minor byproduct of this he believed that the galaxy would finally know peace. He used the truth selectively by taking things out context and presenting them from a different point of view, misleading those around him into believing anything that he wanted them to. He never told a lie. He just omitted that which needed to be with held and manipulate the facts to suit his agenda.
His Majesty's first and primary goal was to further his own cause. He was loyal to no living thing and held allegiance to no flag or nation. He was out for himself and he had the intellect and the tenacity to get what he wanted. I admired his strength and skill. I admired his glorious vision.
He was the architect who built the Empire from the ground up and reshaped the galaxy in the furnaces of war, molding the stars themselves in his own image. How could anyone not be drawn to such great power?
And now it is all coming apart. The Empire is tearing itself apart, disintegrating as the Rebels and their allies tug at the threads of Imperial strength, causing everything to unravel and disintegrate.
The Empire is dying of sorrow, the orphaned child whose father has died long before his time. We have no direction, no inspiration, no shining light to guide us. We are powerless in the face of such despair.
Without power, one dies.
My musings are interrupted by the sharp clacking of jackboots on the floor. The Director of Imperial Intelligence has just entered the room, her face contorted into a contemptuous scowl. It has become unofficial dogma to leave the Emperor's throne room empty with the window covered up and the throne covered in a shroud. We do this out of mourning for the great man whose loss has affected us all. To have entered this room and removed the shroud to the throne is tantamount to heresy. She dispenses with any pleasantries and skips directly to the point.
"Grand Vizier, the Rebels have launched a major offensive in the Southern Outer Rim. Command and control over all military forces in Oversector Outer are on the verge of collapse. If something isn't done to organize the fleet we will lose the whole of the Outer Rim Territories by the end of the year!"
I stare at her for a moment, and then I do the unthinkable.
I lower myself into the throne and take my seat.
"That is Emperor to you, Madame Director." I reply icily. It is no secret that we despise one another.
"Excuse me?!" She asks. Her eyes bulge and flame with indignation. Her lips curl into a snarl. She still hasn't dealt with the grief of the Emperor's demise. To see this occur now must be like cold steel to her heart. All I can do is give a melancholy and world weary sigh. It has been a long, tiring week.
"Nothing lasts forever. Even the longest, most glittering reign must come to an end someday."
She just stands there, her entire body quivering with rage and, perhaps, is that sorrow I detect?
"His Majesty's death has shaken us all Ysanne," I use her first name, dropping titles in order to hopefully drive through the point. "But we must move on. The Empire needs a leader to rally behind. Every moment we spend wallowing in despair over the dead is a moment given to our enemies. The Empire is dying Ysanne. We have a sacred duty to His Highness to make sure that his dream, his Empire does not die shortly after him. We must do this Ysanne. It is what he would want. For Palpatine."
"For Palpatine." She whispers in response.
I straighten my robes and lean back in the throne. "Summon the ruling council and the admiralty at once, we must prioritize the Empire's defense and prepare for a counteroffensive."
At this point all the Director is capable of is giving a curt nod of the head instead of the customary bow.
"At once, sssssssSire." The last word comes out as if it was caught in her throat. It clearly pained her to have said that. Without a further word she turns around and leaves.
It will be difficult, but we must do that which needs to be done. The Empire is in her darkest hour, and I will not abandon it, for it is a shrine to my old friend's greatness that must be preserved. I will lead this Empire in His Majesty's absence. It is the least I can do for him. Destiny calls me. At last my hour has come. I dare not shrink from it now.
A new Emperor, a new age, a symbol for potential peace and hope for the future, etc. etc. But he is just a man, a man without the charisma or the know how to lead. He is a creature of shadow like his Master before him, capable of governing and pulling strings in the dark, but he is ill suited for the light. He does not know how to garner the loyalty of the powerful or the support of the masses. He will not last long. The seeds of his damnation have been sown for many a year and now they are starting to grow at a moment most inopportune. He is surrounded by those who covet the power he has come to possess, and he cannot instill in them the fear that kept them at bay when the Dark Lord held the throne. A system built upon greed, mistrust and violence cannot stand, for it is but a House of Cards, waiting for a gentle breeze to send it all tumbling down.
