Chapter Nine: With Real Power
Though Coruscant's sun predictably set over the eastern horizon each evening, the coral glows it painted between the spires and skyscrapers of the planet's skyline were always replaced with a different sort of light—the diffuse glow of illuminated windows laced through a chilled evening fog. Tonight, Anakin found himself staring at the twilight glow through the panorama window of the Executive Office. Four members of Palpatine's administration—people with real power, a voice in his head was quick to remind him—sat across from each other, gathered around the central furniture of the office suite while the chancellor himself looked on from his desk.
Anakin had received remarkably little instruction before the meeting began. You'll stand over there, Palpatine had told him, pointing to a spot on the floor at his right hand and slightly behind.
And what? Anakin had wanted to say—though he'd kept the retort to himself. Look menacing? Eavesdrop? Make notes on their body language? Perhaps memorize their office addresses so I can hand deliver thank-you notes and gift baskets tomorrow morning?
He'd settled for silence, merely staring out the window at ground zero of the Confederacy's attack. The scar still ran through Capitol Plaza where the Charybdis had left its mark, and as his mind wandered to earlier this evening—to Obi-Wan's invitation—he wondered how the Classical District had fared. How many more districts on Coruscant looked like this one. How many more across the galaxy might come to resemble it unless he went out there and stopped Maul himself.
How many more might come to resemble it because of you going after Maul?
The intrusive thought was mercifully short lived, as a chorus of voices turned Anakin's eyes toward the center of the room. One rose above the rest—shrewd and nasal, it was an unsettling mismatch for the man it belonged to. Armand Isard—head of the Senate Bureau of Intelligence—sat toward the edge of his chair with one ankle perched atop the opposite knee.
Everything about him—save his voice—carried a certain harshness to it; from the streak of gray that permeated his otherwise jet black head of hair, to his sharp jawline, to his white-accented dress uniform that looked as though he'd ironed it mere minutes before the meeting. "These are the facts, I'm afraid. The Confederacy we've been fighting no longer exists as a cohesive whole."
"You cannot possibly expect us to treat every remnant of the Confederacy as a separate enemy state!" This voice belonged to Sate Pestage—longtime advisor to Palpatine, Pestage had served alongside the chancellor as far back as his planetary government career on Naboo. Though they didn't get along, Anakin had the mildest amount of fondness for the man—if only because Pestage often ended up with a bulk of the more dreary political work that could have otherwise fallen on him.
Pestage's outburst seemed to have opened up a gap in the conversation, one which the man jumped into so he could keep speaking. "We would have to declare war on every single faction."
"Congress declares war, Pestage, not you!" Mas Amedda interrupted—the window near Anakin vibrated as the Speaker of the Senate's voice boomed throughout the room.
Turning back toward the window, Anakin allowed himself to tune out the conversation. Listening to politicians arguing at the tops of their voices was hardly the best use of his time. You could be out there, he thought to himself. Fighting back. Making a difference.
Killing Maul? a voice whispered in the back of his head, as if to draw him closer to taking the plunge. All he'd have to do is pull out his commlink and call Obi-Wan, and he'd be away from this life. No more errands. No more meet-and-greets or media appearances.
But one word, a word that was seared into his brain for all eternity, was all it took to bring the thought crashing down. Serenno.
And then he was back in the present, back to reality, as Armand Isard explained precisely why Senate Intelligence was so convinced that Maul and Valis had gone rogue. A forensic team had, it seemed, discovered bodies aboard the Charybdis. The bodies of the CIS Executive Board.
Sate Pestage huffed and threw his hands up in the air. "This proves nothing. They could have simply brought the Board with them to Coruscant as passengers. They were, after all, intent on taking over the planet. One would have needed a governing body to install."
Isard's jaw hardened. "I am most certain that is not the case, Pestage. The Board members were dead before the ship crashed."
This seemed to suck the air out of the room for all but one of the occupants—Sapir of Kuat, the feather-crested avian who served as Palpatine's Vice Chair, had said hardly a word since the meeting began. Now, Anakin could see, her headcrest was deepening in color, growing a rich blue. The hue meant nothing to Anakin, but the Fosh's body language was enough for anyone to see that she had finally found reason to speak up.
"You're leaving out a rather critical piece of information, don't you think, Director Isard?"
Anakin's eyes darted to Isard—who had slid back quite substantially in his chair. "Madame Vice Chair, I really don't—"
"You tell them, Armand, or I will." As Sapir interrupted the man, her feathers bloomed in a waving color pattern that resembled a windswept flame.
This seemed to humble him into submission—tilting his head toward the floor, Isard spoke. "The Board members were all killed before the Charybdis was deorbited. Forensics found each of them"—he paused, clearing his throat as though he were struggling to get the words out—"bisected by a plasma cutting torch."
The news lingered in the air for a moment. As he continued to stare out the window, Anakin could hear one of them—probably Pestage—gag a little at the thought. "Not a plasma torch," Anakin said without thinking, not speaking up or turning to face the room's occupants. "A lightsaber. He used one on Had Abbadon and Serenno."
A fraction of a second passed before Anakin realized what he said—and in the time he found himself staring even harder out the window, wishing he could somehow turn back time, or that he would wake up on the Spice Dancer next to Padmé and find out the entire night had been a horrible dream.
Then it got worse.
"Thank you, Skywalker," the voice of the Vice Chair rang in his ears. It was enough to get Anakin to whirl away from the window and toward the room's other occupants—just in time to see Sapir face Director Isard and raise a talon in the air. "You see, Armand?" she continued, "I'm not the only one who thinks so."
"So it would seem, Sapir," Isard replied, leaning heavily into an effort to sneer as he spoke the Vice Chair's name. Turning to glance at the rest of the room, he continued: "I'd like to state unequivocally that the intelligence community disagrees with this ridiculous assertion—"
"And if you're wrong?" Sate Pestage said, his voice cracking as it raised. "It's not as if rumors of Maul's . . . peculiarities haven't existed for years. There may be a lightsaber-wielding rogue warlord at large, one who is intent on destroying the Republic. Our Grand Army is not yet equipped to handle this! We must take action."
Sapir's headcrest glowed a vibrant yellow. "On that, Pestage, we can agree."
Anakin's mind raced as the conversation unfolded before him, and words from earlier this evening played back in his head like a recording.
You think I could stop him?
I think you are the person I know who stands the best chance.
Sapir was on her feet now, feathers spread as though she were ready to take flight. "We need the Jedi Order back. They're the ones who should deal with him."
"Madame Vice Chair," Mas Amedda began, his voice rumbling as he leaned in his chair to glare at Sapir. "I find it quite inappropriate that a leader within our Senate is suggesting involving an extralegal entity—"
"That is being rather generous, Mister Speaker! The intelligence community maintains that evidence for the existence of this religious order is dubious at best." Though Armand Isard's posture had tensed considerably, he remained seated as he interrupted Mas Amedda.
Sate Pestage waved a dismissive hand, scoffing at Isard as he rose to his feet before turning to jab a finger at the Vice Chair. "That is not what I meant by 'action,' Sapir. Let's set aside the sheer insanity of the idea for one moment. Convincing the Jedi to return to the war is not even our first obstacle. Contacting them is. None of us know how."
"I do," Anakin said.
He immediately regretted it.
Sapir's words had left the conversation teetering in delicate balance upon a dangerous precipice, and Anakin had just shoved it over the edge. He could feel the eyes of everyone in the room zero in on where he stood, as the true meaning of his words likely dawned on every last one of them. Amedda and Isard, one after the other, rose from their chairs with great hesitation. Sapir even took a step toward Anakin.
"That is quite enough!"
The commanding bark of Chancellor Palpatine's voice seemed to freeze the whole room in time and space. Each individual turned to face him—Armand Isard stared at the toes of his freshly polished boots, and Sapir's head feathers flushed a soft white hue.
"It is clear," Palpatine continued, not rising from his seat, "that this discussion has gone well past the point of being productive. I suggest we adjourn for the evening, and come back to this tomorrow morning." He paused, turning to stare squarely at Sapir before continuing. "With any thoughts of involving the Jedi kept firmly out of mind."
A mumbled chorus of "yes sir"s emerged from the four people standing in front of the chancellor's desk. Anakin kept silent. Though Palpatine hadn't said it, he got the firm sense he wasn't supposed to exit the office with the others.
When the executive suite door had slammed shut behind Sate Pestage—the advisor's walk to the exit had seemed to take an eternity—Palpatine rotated in his chair to face Anakin. The chancellor's stare made Anakin's stomach sink like a rock.
"I apologize, sir," he began with a stammer before Palpatine had a chance to reprimand him. "I shouldn't have said anything—"
"Oh no, my boy," Palpatine interrupted, intertwining his fingers and resting his hands in his lap. The chancellor leaned forward with intent. "I want them"—he angled his head toward the door—"to forget about the Jedi. I'd rather like to hear what you have to say on the matter."
He'd opened his mouth without thinking, spoken without considering what he was saying—and now Anakin would have to face the consequences.
Repercussions within Palpatine's inner circle, at the very least. The four government officials who'd heard him had all shot varying degrees of puzzled stares in his direction as they'd made their way toward the door. Anakin knew there would be follow-up meetings between and among all of them, and in the wake of those there would be whispered conversations and rumors spread among their staffers. By the week's end, the whole Senate building—what remained of it, anyway—would be abuzz with the news that Palpatine's right-hand man somehow had a direct line to the Jedi Order.
Palpatine himself, all things considered, seemed strangely unfazed by what had just unfolded. His words to Anakin were laced not with anger, nor an underhanded scolding tone, but with genuine curiosity. "You've not said one good word about the Jedi since you joined my administration. And now you think you can bring them back to the front lines of the war effort. What's changed?"
Inside, he cursed himself for letting things get to this point. The Jedi had unavoidably come up in conversations with Palpatine over the years, and it was true—Anakin had hardly said a good word about them. He'd hardly said a word at all, instead holding fast to two rules whenever the Jedi came up around Palpatine.
Change the subject quickly, and never make it about yourself.
That, he knew, had all been thrown out the airlock now. A shred of hope dashed across his mind as he remembered Armand Isard's words—a pointed insistence that the Jedi didn't exist. Clinging to that, pretending he agreed with the head of the intelligence community, offered a possible way out.
Except it didn't. He and Palpatine had talked about Isard's beliefs before, in one of their awkward conversations where Anakin had danced around the topic of the Jedi. In denial, Palpatine had called him. These days you'd have to be a fool not to see the signs. Not to mention Anakin had said definitively that he could contact them. Not I can if they exist.
Anakin stammered for a few seconds, trying to find his footing and the right words. "I just think Sapir and Pestage made some good points. Maul is at large, and the Jedi are well equipped to deal with him."
A puff of air escaped Palpatine's nose, and his eyes widened a hair. "You don't really believe that, do you? They've had this whole war to dispatch Maul, and they've yet to do it."
Anakin fought to keep a grimace from forming on his face. The closest anyone had gotten to killing Maul was back at the beginning of the war, on Had Abbadon—and he'd been the one responsible for that, not a Jedi.
Obi-Wan's voice once again echoed in his head—the person I know who stands the best chance. It wasn't just any Jedi who could stop Maul. It was one man. Me.
You can't just tell Palpatine everything, Anakin thought to himself Not after all this time. He wouldn't understand.
But why wouldn't he? The chancellor had been understanding about everything else. He'd hired a man who had grown up on a rusted-out space station, survived childhood by pickpocketing traders and his teenage years by swindling freighter pilots out of the credits they'd earned on their latest haul. Anakin had stolen ships and speeders, robbed stores and corporations, and now he stood at the right hand of the most powerful man in the galaxy.
Palpatine had looked the other way at his criminal record. He'd looked the other way as Anakin's wife repeatedly fired drive-by insults during the state dinners she'd been unfortunate enough to receive an invite to. He'd looked the other way as Anakin had been at the epicenter of the most catastrophic diplomatic incident in the last century. He'd understood all of that.
Why wouldn't he understand this?
"I," Anakin began, choking on the first word—the prolonged silence had seen his throat go dry. "Chancellor, there's something I need to tell you.
"The reason I know how to contact the Jedi is because I used to be one."
The corners of Palpatine's mouth seemed to be tugged downward by an invisible force; the lines on his forehead grew more pronounced as he scrunched his brow and his eyes drifted to one side.
Dread welled up within Anakin as silence stretched and dragged on.
Then, finally, the chancellor spoke.
"My boy, I know."
A black hole sprang into being in the pit of his stomach, dragging Anakin down into the abyss. His head swirled, the edges of his vision became a blur, and he wasn't sure if he was going to slip into unconsciousness or throw up all over the chancellor's robes.
"Contacting the Jedi," Palpatine continued, "is not my concern. I was more interested in why you suddenly seem to believe we need them to return to fighting our wars for us."
Anakin ignored the query. He'd managed to find his voice, if only enough to squeeze two words out in a hoarse half whisper. "You knew?"
Then, louder, he echoed himself: "You KNEW?"
"Anakin, I—"
"Why didn't you say something?" His words were slurred and breathy, weighed down by the huffs of someone who had just run a mile and the diction of a drunk. Stumbling forward as his head grew even lighter, Anakin limped away from Palpatine's desk and toward the center of the office.
"It was your secret to keep or to share," Palpatine's voice carried through the room. It seemed to reverberate inside Anakin's skull as he took sharp, panicked breaths. "It wouldn't have been right for me to pry."
"How long?" Anakin said, gulping down another breath as he spoke—his tongue was dry, his throat scratchy as the sandblasted turbines of Oseon's wind farms. When Palpatine said nothing, Anakin turned to glare at him and raised his voice to a near-shout. "How long have you known?"
It was the first time he'd ever been angry with the Chancellor. Deep down, he supposed he ought to be concerned about that. But he shoved that tiny voice aside.
Right now, getting angry felt good.
The sudden increase in volume prompted Palpatine to hold up a hand and simultaneously glance at the office door, panicked eyes darting back and forth between the exit and his outraged aide. "Calm down, son."
"How. Long."
The chancellor placed a palm against the surface of his desk, leaning his weight into the stone slab of furniture. Raising his other hand to rub his temples, he stared at the crimson carpet for several seconds before answering. "I've had my suspicions for a number of years, but . . . Serenno. I was all but certain after Serenno."
Oh god, Anakin thought, then repeated himself aloud. "Oh god. Serenno." All it took was one word and it was if a vacuum had opened up within him, the rage vanishing with a cavernous pop and leaving only memories of falling platforms.
His knees gave out from beneath him, and he found himself collapsing into the chair previously occupied by Sate Pestage. Sliding down into the furniture—dignity be damned, he couldn't be bothered to sit up straight right now—he covered his eyes with his flesh hand. "Serenno was their fault, you know. Our fault. The Jedi. Every single thing we did to try fixing it just made it worse."
He'd sunk as far into the furniture as it would allow—regrettably, it hadn't simply absorbed him into its cushioned structure. Adjusting his posture, Anakin sat up the slightest bit and turned to shoot the chancellor a pained stare. "You hate the Jedi." It was not a question, but a fact—Palpatine had made his disdain no secret over the years. "How do you still trust me?"
Palpatine moved beside Anakin, then past him, settling in the chair directly across from his right hand man. He perched his elbows on the armrests, leaning in toward the former Jedi and clasping his hands together. "I trust you because you left. You saw what the Jedi were becoming, and you put it behind you."
And now you want to go back. Anakin fought the urge to slump in his chair again, instead settling for tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling. He had been so close to accepting Obi-Wan's offer—first at his old teacher's apartment, and again in this very office when the politicking of Palpatine's inner circle had nearly overwhelmed him. Working for the Jedi Order had ultimately resulted in him getting people killed, yes—but working for Palpatine hadn't resulted in anything at all. Which, he silently wondered, is worse?
"I haven't put it behind me," he said, his mouth a half step ahead of his brain. Before he could reverse course, before he could take the words back, they were already out in the open. "They asked me to come back. Tonight, just before I came here, they invited me to rejoin the Order."
Anakin recoiled inside as he spoke the words—they'd escaped with such bitterness, such vitriol, as if he had only admitted it to hurt the chancellor. Palpatine himself, it seemed, had actually recoiled—breaking eye contact with the ceiling, Anakin looked at the chair across from him to see the chancellor sliding backwards in his seat and raising one hand to cover his mouth.
"They're going after Maul," Anakin continued in an attempt to fill the painful silence that had started to fill the room. "That's why they've disappeared from the broader war. They're sending Knights after Maul. They want me to take him down."
"Are you going to do it?"
Despite his moment of shock, the chancellor didn't sound angry or offended. Just curious.
Strange, Anakin thought. That should have made him calmer. Instead he found himself staring into Palpatine's calm and resenting it.
Unblinking, he replied, "I might."
He held Palpatine's gaze, hoping for some sort of reaction. There was none. The mask was already back in place.
Give me something, dammit, he thought, fighting to stop himself from spitting the words across the room. Here he sat, Useless Errand Boy Skywalker, staring at a chancellor who didn't give a damn whether he walked off the job right now and rejoined a religion that had gotten thousands of people killed. What do I have to do?
Deliver him the Jedi Knights, answered a voice in his head—one that was mostly, but not entirely, his own.
Of course. That was it. Take care of Maul for them, and they'd rejoin the war. They'd turn the tide, wipe out the Confederacy—or what remained of it. They'd once again be the saviors of the galaxy—and Anakin Skywalker would be anything but a useless errand boy. He'd be the one who made it all happen.
(Why should they need you to deliver them Maul before doing the right thing? asked a voice that sounded curiously like Palpatine's.)
He shoved the voice back down into the darkness. Aloud, he explained the plan.
Palpatine scoffed.
"They can't be trusted to keep their end of a deal like that, my boy." His head turned back and forth slowly, a shake of disdain paired with an equally distrustful scowl. "In the last few months, if you're to be believed, they've pulled back from engagement almost altogether. It seems now, looking back on it, that they joined the war solely for the opportunity to fight Maul. They've left the war for the same reason: to fight Maul. What do they gain by rejoining us in battle once he's been defeated?"
(But it wasn't like that, Obi-Wan said they were spread too thin, pulling back to try to protect the enclaves, to consolidate their strength—
Didn't he?)
Aloud, he just asked, "You wouldn't welcome the help, then?" He felt himself slide forward in his chair as his voice desperately climbed in pitch.
Palpatine shook his head, giving off the air of a father who wished he could believe in his boy's fantasies. "If the members of the Jedi Order wish to help, Anakin, each of them are more than welcome to join the Grand Army of the Republic." With that, he shoved against the armrests of the chair, rising to his feet and making way for the executive desk. Arriving at his destination, he settled into the chair behind the grand stone slab and picked up a datapad.
In that moment, Anakin realized the solution to it all had just been dropped in his lap. He rose to his feet—Palpatine glanced up past his datapad at Anakin, raising an eyebrow as if to say what is it?
"I quit."
With that, he turned and strode toward the door.
"Excuse me?"
The two words froze Anakin in his tracks. He risked a glance back at the chancellor—the datapad dangled precariously in his fingertips, and he was staring in Anakin's direction with a sudden sharpness.
Finally, he'd gotten through.
"I'm done running errands," he answered, whirling to fully face Palpatine. "I'm done attending state dinners and escorting senators to conference rooms. I want to get out there. I want to fight back. I'm joining the Grand Army."
The datapad slipped from Palpatine's fingers, clattering against the executive desk. The hand that once held it, Anakin noticed, was shaking imperceptibly—as it wavered, Palpatine curled it into a fist which he lowered gingerly into his lap. "The Grand Army," he began, slowly rising to a standing position, "is not the place for you, Anakin. You are no ordinary frontline soldier. Your potential is far greater. It would be an utter waste to send you off to war. You trained with the Knights of the Jedi Order—but they don't realize this. They will hold you back out of fear of killing a celebrity. One who's close to me on top of that."
Anakin sputtered in protest, holding up his mechanical hand. "I'm not a celebrity—"
"You're the Hero of Had Abbadon! You destroyed a Lancer station! You are Anakin Skywalker, tragic survivor of the horrendous Crisis on Serenno. The Grand Army of the Republic will not send you to battle, my boy. They will stick you behind a desk, use you as a prop in parades and newsreels.
"As for the Jedi, if it is as you say"—he paused, glancing to one side and then the other as if to make sure no one else was listening—"if they did indeed exacerbate what happened at Serenno, then they are far more reckless than I feared. Their repeated attempts to kill Maul will only endanger others—and they will never face the consequences of their actions. They answer to no one."
Anakin glanced down at his feet—without realizing it, he had walked back toward Palpatine. He reached out to brush his fingertips against the stone of the executive desk.
The chancellor inhaled deeply—the sound of his breath filled the silence of the office. "But you," he said. "They were right to reach out to you. More right than they ever could have known." He held an open hand high, gesturing in a wide arc like an orchestra conductor as he spoke—he began by pointing at Anakin.
"You answer to me." His hand moved inward, toward his own chest. "I answer to the Senate." His hand moved outward, toward his office door. "The senators answer to the people of the Republic." His hand swept sideways until it was nearly behind him, pointing toward the window that formed the back wall of his office—then returned to pointing at Anakin. "People like you."
"A perfect circle of accountability," Palpatine said, nodding as if to underscore himself. "I have another idea, son. A better idea. One that lets you fight back. One that realizes your true potential." He placed both palms on the desk and leaned over it until his face was close enough that Anakin could see each and every detail—every pore, every wrinkle that the years of conflict had added. Every flare of his nostril as he took another breath. "Will you help me win this war?"
Anakin opened his mouth, and at first no words came.
Palpatine had asked many things of him in the time they'd worked together. But this was the first time he seemed to be pleading for something he needed. Not the Republic, the man.
There was something gratifying in that.
He swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat, and searched for the words until he found his answer. Sweat formed on his flesh palm, and his heart began to race as he nodded at Palpatine.
"What would you have me do?"
Republic Archives: SBI Report - A Fractured Confederacy
[excerpt from an internal Senate Bureau of Intelligence message discussing changes to the organizational structure of the Confederacy of Independent Systems]
In the wake of the attack on Coruscant, chaos erupted across the Outer Rim. With the loss of the CIS Board, high-ranking individuals of the Confederacy chose not to rally together, but to seize whatever piece of the pie they could get their hands on. If I had to speculate, it's simple panic. They saw what happened in the Core and they want to shore up defenses for the inevitable response.
Small fleets of warships were commandeered by their captains. Systems and sectors were snatched up overnight. What was once a large swath of united CIS territory is now a splintered map of dynamic alliances—indeed, we have already seen Confederate commanders go to war against each other. (This may prove advantageous as our forces work to clean up what remains of the CIS—if we can sic them on each other, that's less work for us).
As for the attack on Coruscant, it is clear now it was far from a united front. The Warlord Maul and his Admiral Valis acted alone, without the authorization of their corporate backers. There is no doubt of that—I have attached the relevant files which serve as quite convincing proof. Proceed with caution, they are not for the faint of heart.
[several images of charred corpses are attached to the message; the bodies are cleanly cut into multiple pieces]