Armistice


Scene 54

Bail Organa took the transmission in his private cabin.

There were precious few individuals in possession of the override codes for his illegally secure communications array – and the origination ID indicated a relay station far distant from Alderaan. Suppressing a selfish pang of regret that this would not be a tete a tete with the queen of both his heart and his native homeworld, he slid into the contoured console seat and pressed his hand to the identiprint plate.

When the hologram resolved itself a moment later, he smiled. "Padme."

She was armored for battle – stiff brocade collared gown, the Chandrilan headdress that looked like an overturned turi pot, earrings and makeup and … that indefinable, purposive fire that crowned her natural beauty with a gravity it would otherwise lack. Her liquid brown eyes were wary, and slid sideways more than once, as though leery of eavesdroppers. "I just met with Master Yoda," she informed him, as though a lunch recess meeting with the Grand Master of the Jedi Order were an everyday occurrence.

He saw beneath the brisk tone. "Bad news."

Padme's perfect mouth pursed into a wry line and then softened again. She had to hold her chin very high and proud to sustain that monumental farce atop her head- the forced regality suited her well. "Yes. I didn't understand everything he told me… but apparently some Medcorps volunteers took a special blood test for the damaged clones. They had a Jedi with them, something esoteric to do with midichlorians… he says the sick men all have large traces of this thing inside them."

He had heard – incidentally, in allusion and overheard snippets – of the organism, or whatever it was, before. Arcane Jedi lore, another of their secret and not-quite plausible esoterisms. "How does that affect this mission?"

She looked the holo-cam square in the face. "He says that there is something wrong with the test samples though. I'm supposed to relay this message to Master Kenobi. IS he with you?"

"Alas, no; but Master Skywalker is. What was the message?"

She hesitated, as though stumbling mentally. Bail felt again that twang of private sympathy. Peerless diplomat though Padme might be, it was obvious to one of his experience and years that she was madly in love with one of the two men. Ever since he had been admitted to her trust and intimacy as counselor and friend, and mention of the vaunted duo would provoke a thrill of apprehension or longing in her voice, a subtle timbre of adoration and dread. He was not infallible, of course, and women were in the last analysis inscrutable, but he did not think he had missed the mark in this case. Not that it mattered; he would neither betray her secret nor ever mention it in her presence. He only wondered if Obi-Wan knew. Or if he cared. There was no figuring a Jedi master, and something told Bail that the Negotiator had been the subject of more than one unrequited infatuation in his day.

"Tell them… that Master Yoda says the sick men have been…colonized by compromised midichlorians. I have no odea what he's talking about, Bail, but…"

The word Sith hung unspoken between them, another of those exotic and unlikely Jedi secrets, stuff of fairytale and nightmare brought rudely into the arena of waking reality. They were neither of them supposed to know; they had both of them brushed against the dark truth and lived with the burden of knowledge ever since. There were powers at large in the galaxy that exceeded the comprehension of ordinary sentients. "Spirits of Darkness" as Bail's pious childhood governess would have catechized him. He had long since outgrown mere archetypes and shouldered the more complex mantle of political responsibility – and yet now, in the very nexus of political crisis, of pressing real conflict, he was told the powers and principalities of legend were in fact the titanic and hidden cause of universal strife.

He felt cheated, somehow. And afraid, when he let himself admit it. "I'll pass that on," he responded, tightly.

Padme nodded, a miniscule dip of her head, one calculated to keep that absurd ornament precariously balanced, much as they juggled the Senate's capricious passions and prejudices atop the needle's point of principle. Contortionists and jugglers, he reflected. That is what we are become. Players in a circus of war.

And the Jedi are the carnival show's flame-eaters: crowd-stealers, and those standing most in the way of harm.

"There's more," she continued, after a pregnant pause. "He says that their healers need an antidote."

"The Kaminoans are presently constructing a new template to prevent further contamination," he asserted. "The threat is contained."

"But the new reports show nearly fourteen thousand more cases in the training barracks. There are so many already imperiled – we need a countermeasure."

He hissed through clenched teeth. Even the costliest sieges in the Rims had not yet cost them so many casualties in one fell swoop… and those young clones would not easily be replaced, their brethren not yet ready for duty. The Army was in continual production, one wave following hard upon the heels of the next.. but to waste an entire generation… to witness the wholesale slaughter of so many men…

His buyer's remorse deepened every day into cancerous regret. I vote for this. I gave the word.

"Bail? Are you all right?"

"As one would expect. What about you?"

Padme shrugged. I've been putting on a brave face on the home front for a long time, Bail. I can keep doing that."

Bless the woman; she was as stalwart as any soldier, in her own way. He offered her a rueful smile. "I'm sorry to run off like this and leave you in the lurch."

"I have Mon Mothma and the others… but come back soon." A fractional hesitation. "Safely. I would hate to have to send another rescue party."

It was a courageous jest, one mocking pain and fear but recently laid in a restless grave. He read the entreaty behind the lighthearted tone, and understood. Bring them back safely this time.

Manners dictated that he reply in kind. Dredging up a spark of humor, he pressed his hand to his heart. "Boys will be boys, but we'll do our best."

"You had better." She flashed the briefest of pallid smiles. "Take care, Bail."

And that was that. Bad news heaped upon bad news, like the corpses of dying clones piling up on Deodar and the other Republic outpost training installations. They were running out of time.