PART ONE: AMONG RUINS

Chapter One: In the Aftermath

Capitol Plaza, "the center of Coruscant," had earned the name through not only its importance but its design—it was perfectly symmetrical, the Senate dome ringed by an artificially constructed disc of duracrete whose entrances and exits were all precisely parallel to one another. Whether or not it was actually the planet's geographic center, looking at it from above, one got the sensation that everything about Coruscant started here and then grew outward.

Now, that symmetry was gone. A ragged furrow had split the plaza, the once-uniform dome pierced by a weapon that was still embedded in its walls—the Charybdis, launched at the Senate like an ion-propelled spear.

Anakin Skywalker stared at the husk of the warship, watching as construction droids carved chunks of the ship off with plasma torches and hauled them away to some undisclosed location. Some pieces, he assumed, would be studied for intelligence purposes. A useless endeavor—the CIS had crashed the ship on purpose. Valis wasn't stupid, she wouldn't have left anything important behind. Most of the rest was being melted down for scrap—which was what they should do with all of it, Anakin thought. Forge it into blasters and battle armor and bombs. Spit it right back at her when they tracked her to wherever she was hiding now.

He sighed, pressing harder against the window's transparisteel with the length of his mechanical forearm. The pane creaked slightly under the pressure—ignoring the noise, Anakin lazily traced along the window with his other hand, following the scar that had been carved into Capitol Plaza as the Charybdis slid along its surface.

Part of him wished he'd been there to see it. It was the second deorbiting of a capital ship he'd only heard of secondhand—though at least this time he knew people who'd been able to watch from outside. There had been no witnesses to the first one, save for the man who'd been on the vessel's bridge . . .

He forced the thought out of his mind. Another part of him, a much larger part, was beyond thankful he hadn't been in Capitol Plaza when the Charybdis had deorbited. It was all too easy to imagine the sounds of it—the horrendous shriek of warship hull against metal and concrete, the roar of fires stoked by interstellar fuel.

The screams of innocents mowed down by the ever-advancing cruiser-turned-projectile. That one, he thought with a shudder, was far too easy to imagine.

He rubbed his sweaty palm against his tunic and swallowed to wet his suddenly dry throat, all the while trying not to hear the phantom sounds in his head. The servomotors in his arm whirred as he shoved away from the window—at the same moment, a pair of patrol starfighters streaked by. Their hulls were adorned with two parallel red stripes.

At the sight of them, Anakin felt a quiet burst of relief, the phantom screams growing fainter. Those ships and the people who flew them had been one of the few good things to come out of this whole debacle. Finally, the groundside security of Coruscant was becoming a priority for the Republic.

"Impressive, aren't they?"

Anakin inhaled sharply, then forced himself to relax as he turned and saw the source of the new voice. "Chancellor! I'm sorry."

"What ever for, my boy?" Palpatine asked, a warm smile crossing his face. An arm draped in regal cloth stretched out toward Anakin as the chancellor rested his hand on the younger man's shoulder. "I should be the one apologizing. I didn't intend to sneak up on you."

After everything—after weeks of watching the people he had been elected to protect fall to Confederate attacks—Palpatine was still the quiet strength, still the understanding father. Anakin felt his stomach drop with sudden, overpowering guilt at his own weakness.

Shrugging, he said, "It's all right. I was just . . ." He trailed off, turning to face out the window once again, his eyes drawn to the wound carved in the street dozens of stories below.

The belated realization of where they were standing hit him. Spinning to face the chancellor again, he moved his own hand up to Palpatine's shoulder. "Sir, you shouldn't be so close to the window!"

As Anakin's metal palm made contact with the puffed shoulders of Palpatine's robes, a wave of heat flashed across his mind. His eyes squeezed shut, but he could still see the burst of green light. He could feel the spray of transparisteel shards bursting into his living room, slashing tiny cuts across his cheeks and arms. He could practically see her mechanical form on the other side of the window; there one instant, gone the next—

Palpatine's voice cut through the images and sensations. "It's all right, son, you needn't worry. The Coruscant Guard has locked the whole neighborhood down. No clones, no pirates."

In spite of those words, Anakin noticed that the two of them had still moved away from the window.

He knew he should be more relaxed. Everyone needed to hold onto resolve now, to keep morale up. But his mind kept returning to the idea: What if he'd been there when the ship came down. What if he'd been in one of the buildings it crashed into. What if what if what if—

Exhaling, he dropped his hand from Palpatine's shoulder and turned to face the room they stood in. Officers of the Coruscant Guard, some in field uniforms and others in plastoid armor—all of which sported distinct red accents—milled about between computer terminals and tactical holotables.

This was one of many field operations centers hastily constructed in the wake of the first terrorist attacks on Coruscant all those weeks ago. Even now, power cables and networking wires were strung haphazardly between terminals, some bolted to the ceiling and others taped to the floor in an effort to prevent anyone from tripping on them. The holotables marked off the districts surrounding the Senate Building in a grid pattern—though the capitol itself was blue, most surrounding squares were varying shades of red. The ones farthest from the Senate Building were the darkest shade.

"I must say, I was surprised to find you here at such an hour. You're up early."

Up late, actually, was the thought that crossed Anakin's mind—though he didn't dare say it. He hadn't gone home at all last night; long after every member of the Coruscant Guard had left the field ops center, he'd been working.

He'd poked and prodded at the holotables, allocating droids and cleanup crews and resources to various neighborhoods as though the streets of Coruscant were the map of some strategy game, the sort he'd seen the spacers on Junkfort Station play in their downtime. He'd hoped there was some perfect solution he wasn't seeing, a way to move everyone around just so to turn every block in the district the same blue as the capitol building. In the time it had taken the sun to set and rise again, he still hadn't found it.

"Couldn't sleep. Figured I'd make myself useful," was all he said aloud.

Palpatine smiled and patted him on the back. "I admire your work ethic. You've done a marvelous job of coordinating this cleanup effort, Anakin."

Cleanup effort. When he'd said the words to Padmé, told her he was assisting with the operation, he had hoped she would assume the best—that he was helping coordinate the movements of Palpatine's new Coruscant Guard and assisting in removing debris from the streets. He suspected she knew the reality: "cleanup" often involved neutralizing the threat of remaining clone forces and the pirates that accompanied them, followed by corpse disposal.

"It's not over yet," the young man said, pointing to one of the outlying neighborhoods on the holomap.

Palpatine nodded slowly, a slight frown tugging at the edge of his mouth. "Indeed, there is still much to be done. It worries me deeply that we haven't the faintest idea how many of the Confederacy's forces still remain in the lower levels." At this, he looked Anakin directly in the eye, his expression shifting from solemnity to resolve. "But that is why I am grateful for the Coruscant Guard. That is why I am grateful for you. We will stay the course and ensure Coruscant's safety."

Turning to face the center of the room, he strolled away from Anakin—his floor-length robes gave him the appearance of gliding over the tile.

As Palpatine drifted away, Anakin's mind wandered, carried by the tides of fatigue that had plagued him since the sun had crested over the capital city's western horizon. The chancellor's fading presence was like an anchor coming untethered from a seabed—the attacks he'd witnessed over the weeks flashed across his vision even as the outside world faded out of focus. A bomb detonated in a bank, a frigate plowed into a luxury residential tower, an art gallery burned to the ground—

"Skywalker!"

The sound of his name, along with the sudden sensation of falling toward the floor, yanked Anakin back into a state of alertness. As he stumbled toward the floor, the plastoid-clad arms of a Coruscant Guard trooper snapped outward to catch him.

His heart rate spiked from the sudden rush of being jolted awake, but the feeling of his face flushing red was far more prominent. The armored trooper who'd caught him offered a nod of the head, while the uniformed officers around him pretended not to notice what had just happened.

Worst of all, Palpatine had seemingly turned around in time to witness the whole thing.

"Anakin," he began, practically whispering the name, "you haven't been here all night, have you?"

You should have known better, Anakin scolded himself. There was no getting anything past the chancellor. Face still burning, he shrugged, said nothing, and bit the inside of his cheek in an effort to keep himself awake.

Genuine concern rather than consternation furrowed the older man's face. "Come here, my boy." As the chancellor drew closer, everyone else in the room seemed to fade out of focus.

"I appreciate you, Anakin, I really do." It was just the two of them now, executive and right hand man. "But you must take care of yourself. We can't do this if we aren't in the proper condition for it."

Palpatine frowned and glanced at the floor, then leaned forward a hair, as though he didn't want to risk anyone else overhearing. "These attacks have torn too many families apart. I don't want your family to be among them. Go home to your wife. Get some rest."

Anakin fought to keep from wincing. Not that Palpatine didn't know it—not that he should know—but home was not exactly a place for him to get some rest these days. Not since the attack. His tired mind raced in an effort to come up with some excuse for staying and working longer that wouldn't sound too pathetic.

He never got the chance. "Come, my boy," Palpatine began, "we'll send you home in a private airspeeder—"

"No!" Anakin interrupted. An awkward silence filled the air before he repeated himself in a softer tone. "No, I'll take the train."

Why? he knew, would be the follow-up question. The truth—that Palpatine's airspeeder drivers, once given a destination, would sooner die than deviate from it—wouldn't do.

"It'll be good optics," Anakin said before Palpatine had a chance to ask for an explanation. His mouth moved almost automatically, as if he were working a mark in a seedy Outer Rim bar rather than standing before the Chancellor of the Republic. "A member of your staff using public transit will help restore faith in the safety of the train network. It communicates confidence—we know Coruscant is safe, and this is how we show the people."

For several seconds, Palpatine said nothing, and Anakin's chest began to tighten.

Then the chancellor broke into a wide grin. "Excellent thinking, Anakin!"

He reached a hand out and patted the younger man on the side of the shoulder. "Though perhaps you've been spending too much time around politicians. You're beginning to sound like Coruscant's next senator. I think taking the train home is a wonderful idea. Stay safe, son."

At this, Anakin let out a slow exhalation. "Thank you, sir," he muttered, somewhat stumbling over the words.

As he backed away from Palpatine and turned toward the operations center's turbolift bay, a sickening tension formed in the pit of his stomach.

He wanted to believe that the chancellor would understand. He wanted to sit him down and spell out, in great detail, why he had stayed out working all night. Though now, of course, was not the time. Not in front of the Coruscant Guard.

More than anything, though, he wanted to believe that Palpatine would understand why Anakin had just had to lie to him.

The train's silence hung over Anakin like a pall. In the days following the first Confederate attacks on Coruscant, the planet's network of public transportation had become eerily deserted, mostly out of fear that a train car or an airspeeder depot would become the next target. The worry, it turned out, had been mostly unfounded—the public transit infrastructure had never been directly attacked by the Confederacy. Of course, that hadn't left it immune to accidents and collateral damage, which had been plentiful over the past several weeks. Deliberate or not, the damage to the transport network had only stoked the public's fears.

And so, despite the fact it should have been morning rush hour, there were more than a few handfuls of empty seats on the train car, a rarity in Anakin's usual experience. Passengers did not smile at one another, did not pause to chat as they boarded and departed. There was only the faint rumble of the train against the gravtrack below, and the hiss of the air circulation system keeping the car cool

Nor was that the silence that bothered Anakin the most.

For nearly his entire life, even a half-full and silent train car would have been alive with the noise of the Force—thoughts and emotions, memories and feelings, all swirling about and emanating from each passenger around him. Even before he'd known to consciously pick up on individual threads of inner noise, they'd been there guiding him.

That was gone now. It had been for two years.

Most days he could ignore the emptiness around him. The densely populated streets of Coruscant, the packed social functions and political gatherings he had to attend alongside Palpatine—all of it was busy enough and noisy enough to drown out the silence in his mind. As long as things were loud, were busy, he could tell himself he didn't miss it, or better yet, realize after a few hours that he hadn't been thinking about it at all.

It was half-empty train cars—and quiet apartments—that brought the deafening silence back into the foreground. And in the aftermath of the siege, that emptiness had only grown bigger.

So, when the train came to a stop and a droid's voice announced they had arrived at Coruscant Central Station, Anakin was the first one out of his seat and through the door.

He'd been in countless train stations throughout his life, from the rust-coated tram depots of Junkfort to the smooth and polished transit hub on Oseon, more art installation than functional travel port. Somehow, there was still something special about Coruscant Central Station—entering it always felt like stepping back in time. The structures surrounding the station were typical Coruscant buildings: skyscrapers with smooth exteriors that reflected sunlight and their neighboring buildings back into the world, spires of glass gently growing toward the heavens. Central Station felt like a piece of history, a relic of a bygone era—stonework arches framed the doorways, exposed beams crisscrossed in the vaulted ceiling up above. Intricate glasswork set in every window frame allowed natural light to fill the platform hall.

The station was, to Anakin's relief, a fair bit noisier than his train car had been—this made it easier to ignore the nagging hollowness of the people milling about. Conversations and loudspeaker announcements about this train departing or that train getting delayed echoed throughout the artificial cavern.

As Anakin glanced upward, he was greeted by a disturbingly familiar sight staring back down at him. The holographic image, hanging in the air beside the sign displaying the train schedules, was a face he'd not seen since Serenno.

WANTED, the Aurebesh text below the floating face of Admiral Sephone Valis proclaimed, FOR CRIMES AGAINST THE REPUBLIC.

The face changed, though the text did not. Another human all too familiar to Anakin. He'd killed that face more than once. Had Abbadon. The Lancer Station. The Aurebesh beneath the face faded to reveal another sentence.

REPORT ALL CLONE SIGHTINGS TO CORUSCANT GUARD OFFICERS IMMEDIATELY.

Anakin gritted his teeth at the thought of it. Clone sightings on Coruscant. Valis had made her statement, crashed her ship into the Senate Building, and fled the system—or, depending on who you asked, had orchestrated the whole thing from afar and never even come to Coruscant. And yet the people still lived in fear. It was impossible to track every individual on the galactic capital world. Tracking down multiple copies of the same person was only slightly easier.

An Ithorian's rumbling shout brought Anakin back to the present. The ambling alien waved at him frantically, spouting a string of words Anakin barely understood, save for one: move. Too late, he realized he'd stopped still in the middle of the platform and was now decidedly in everyone's way—muttering a shameful "sorry," he stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked briskly to the end of the train platform.

Arriving at the central hub of the train station brought an entirely different sight into view. The backdrop of history was still woven across the train station's heart—a massive circular room with arms jutting off it like spokes of an ancient cart wheel. That backdrop, though, was now coated with ash—and numerous harsh reminders of the hell Coruscant had just been through.

A hulking signboard sat planted in the center of the room—an old split-flap display rather than a modern holoprojector, original to the train station. It offered the first reminder that things on Coruscant had yet to return to normal—more trains were listed as "Delayed" or "Canceled" than "On Time." Just beyond the signboard, sunlight streamed in from a still-fresh hole in the roof, shining like a spotlight on the wreckage of an ARC-170 heavy starfighter.

Plastoid-clad officers of the Coruscant Guard wandered the concourse in pairs, blaster rifles slung over their shoulders or clasped in both hands. Though most travelers seemed to give the armored men a wide berth, Anakin relaxed as he moved closer to them. As his eyes met the reflective black visor of one officer's helmet, the trooper lowered his head in a slight nod. The officer may have spoken his name—a muffled sound escaped the helmet vocabulator, one Anakin failed to make out as his gaze drifted beyond the helmet and into the distance.

The wrecked heavy starfighter changed shape as he stared at it, morphing and shifting into one of the craggy spheroids that had seemed to fall from the sky of Had Abbadon. He felt the heat of the turbolaser blasts ripping into the planet's crust, the sound of rock vaporizing or melting into globs of molten goo that burned his clothing. He remembered grabbing Padmé's hand in his own—his flesh right hand, back when the hellfire that had befallen Had Abbadon's surface hadn't yet taken it from him. A searing pain shot up what remained of his right arm, and when the vision of Had Abbadon's crumbling surface faded, Anakin was standing alone next to the wreckage of the fighter.

The crowd in the grand concourse had thinned out considerably—a glance at a nearby clock revealed the standard workday had begun. An announcement sounded over the station loudspeakers to signal the departure of another train; Anakin could just make out the rhythm of hurried footfalls echoing against the stone floor of the station.

Turning away from the crashed ARC-170, he stared up at the schedule signboard and weighed his options. There was one leaving for his neighborhood soon, and there were always trains headed back to where he worked. The entertainment district—what was left of it, anyway—had an occasional departing train, and there was even one headed for a historical district he'd spent plenty of time in in years past.

None of those options felt right. He turned on a heel and strolled away from the grand concourse, wandering in whichever direction had the fewest people.

His meandering brought him to a roped-off archway, the entrance to a wing of the train station still under construction. Glancing sideways to make sure no one was looking, he ducked underneath the barrier and continued into the unfinished wing.

Though it was a new addition to the train station, the added terminal was faithful to the original style and built from many of the same materials. Unopened food stands and shops with empty shelves were set into the walls, their signage dim and interiors unlit.

Plastic tarps hung from the hall's windows, which had yet to be filled in with the same glasswork pieces as the rest of the train station—as a breeze from the outside pushed the tarps aside, shafts of natural light sliced their way into the hall. Anakin squinted against them as his eyes adjusted to the ebb and flow of illumination. Then, in the distance, something glinted in the light.

A droid.

Memories rushed at him—the sensation of hot air and shards of glass blasting inward at his face, the green fireball slamming into the outdoor patio and leaving nothing in its wake. The sound—perhaps real, perhaps imagined—of a homemade droid shrieking as she fell hundreds of stories to the streets below their apartment.

The droid in the distance turned away from him, shuffling deeper into the construction site. He followed hastily, ducking beneath scaffolding and striding over sections of unfinished flooring. He wanted to call out after it, to stop it from moving away—but he couldn't find the words. Only a name, one he couldn't bring himself to say. It didn't belong to this droid, he was all but certain of it.

Still a sliver of hope remained, stoked by a backward glance from the robot as it stopped and looked in his direction. The droid's eyes, for just a moment, seemed to flash red—

"Excuse me, sir!" it spoke, and any notion of this droid being Anakin's shattered. The voice was too shrill, tuned to a note of forced politeness often found in mass-manufactured units.

"What're you doing back here?" Anakin snapped at the machine between deep breaths, exhaustion brought on by a mix of his run down the hall and a rush of confused grief.

I could ask you the same thing, he heard in his head, the tones of Liz's gruffer voice echoing in his memory. It's what she would have retorted with, if this had been her.

Instead the droid blabbered some excuse about reporting to its post within the construction site—despite not being surprised, Anakin's heart still managed to sink within his chest. Scoffing at the droid and giving it a dismissive wave, he pushed past it and shuffled deeper into the terminal.

He had expected his journey to take him further into darkness, and was surprised as a hint of illumination appeared at the end of the hall. Daylight streamed in through a gaping hole in the corridor, as though someone had taken the end of the hallway and sawed it off.

The opposite was true, of course—the corridor's terminus had yet to be constructed. Despite their appearances, most train stations and tunnels on Coruscant were not underground like the subways found on other worlds. "Underground" had little meaning on Coruscant, the actual surface having long since been obscured by the ever-advancing upward movement of construction and expansion.

Instead the train tracks ran through sealed metal tubes, built onto the sides of skyscrapers and woven through the air in places where they would be safe from speeder traffic. Only rarely did they dip below what passed for street level. So, when Anakin approached the edge of the construction site and stared through the opening, he was greeted with the sight of a midmorning Capitol District.

Speeders whizzed from one end of the city to the other. The Senate dome sat cradled amidst the taller spires of the buildings surrounding it, still smoldering from the attack, the Charybdis' hull jutting from its walls—from this distance, it looked like a model sculpture one might someday find in a museum about the war. Despite the noise—the rush of wind, the buzz of arispeeders zipping by, the scrapes and shrieks of construction droids cleaning up the aftermath of the attack—it was the silence and emptiness behind Anakin that burrowed their way deeper into his head.

Glancing down at his feet, he sighed and kicked a pebble of construction material out into the urban abyss.

Eventually he found himself back in the mercifully noisy grand concourse of Coruscant Central Station. Hours had passed; the sun now hung directly overhead, projecting its rays straight down through the roof into the center of the rotunda. The morning's spare population had expanded somewhat—crowds of midday commuters crisscrossed the station, bound for the various departure terminals or the ticket machines lining every wall.

Two things had driven him from his aimless journey through the empty halls of the construction site. The first was the hiss of silence scratching at the back of his skull, the tinnitus that underscored his moments of isolation. As precious as time alone was, it had started to become unbearable.

The second reason was much simpler—his commlink had buzzed the telltale pulse of an incoming message. He couldn't have watched it back in the empty halls—it was a video message, one his handheld comm was incapable of displaying on its own. For that he'd need a comm booth—and though the unfinished train terminal had them in spades, all of them sat dormant and unpowered.

Sliding into the queue that had formed by the comm booths, Anakin fiddled with his commlink and rolled it between mechanical fingers. The device, one he'd built by hand and used for years, was little more than a microphone, some buttons, and a couple of lights, all strung together by a bundle of wires and housed in a casing built from spare ship parts. Even after he'd been inducted into the chancellor's staff, he'd insisted on keeping the thing, only allowing the Senate technicians to swap the antenna inside for a more secure model. There was something about the way the old thing felt between his fingers that he couldn't let go of.

As he stepped into the comm booth, slipping past the Quarren who had just finished using it, Anakin jacked the commlink into the terminal and slid the door shut behind him, leaving barely enough room to move. A small projector situated just below eye level was designed to create miniature holoprojections of incoming messages. He braced himself for whatever was about to appear—he hadn't been expecting anyone to call.

The face that materialized before him made his chest tighten.

"Hey," the hologram of Padmé Amidala began—the miniature projection of Anakin's wife shook her head, crossed her arms, and glanced at the floor. "Long day at work, huh? Look, I get it. Gods know you're not the only one who's busy, but if you're not going to come home at night, just . . ." She trailed off for a moment, then looked up. "Just call me first so I don't have to wonder whether or not you're alive. I know I might not act like it all the time, but I miss you. Us. Maybe I'll see you tonight."

Anakin stared on as the image of his wife faded away. His stomach was sinking lower than he thought possible, and though he hadn't eaten in hours he thought he might be sick.

Then, without warning, the next message saved on his commlink began to play automatically. A bearded man in robes appeared, his words flowing in a refined Core accent.

"Hello, Anakin. I'm probably the last person you expected to hear from—"

"Dammit," Anakin whispered, yanking the commlink free from the projector—the blue-tinged hologram of Obi-Wan fizzled out of existence. He cursed under his breath and rushed out of the booth, nearly knocking over the man who was waiting to use it next.

He shrugged off the man's annoyed shouting—it wasn't in Basic, easy to ignore—and hastily shuffled away from the cluster of comm booths. Despite the fact he'd pulled the plug on Obi-Wan's message, he couldn't help but hear the rest of it in his head. When his old teacher had sent it days prior, the younger man had watched it over and over again in numb shock. The gall of it, to disappear for two years and then just . . . reach out.

A half sneer, half frown played across his face for a moment, and then he paused to consider the message from his former friend. Anakin had been asked to leave work, and there was no point in taking the next train home—Padmé wouldn't be there, not at this time of day, and he wasn't about to spend time in the apartment alone.

And he'd give Obi-Wan this—it would be good to see him. Past the hurt, and the exhaustion, and the gnawing absence that seeing his old friend would only bring flooding to the foreground . . . he really did miss him.

His mind again flitted to the fallen veranda just outside his apartment, to the droid-shaped absence that filled the place now. You don't know how long you have to spend with anyone, really.

Maybe it was meant to be. Maybe it was time to take Obi-Wan up on his—

"Fellow citizens of the Republic . . ."

The unmistakable voice of Chancellor Palpatine echoed throughout the grand concourse. Up above, a holosign that had once displayed the faces of wanted clones and pirates now broadcast a message from the Republic's leader.

It was a recording, of course—one Anakin had been present for. He gazed up at the projected visage, remembering himself standing just beside Palpatine, barely out of the holocam's range, as the chancellor had recorded a series of public announcements in the wake of the attacks on Coruscant.

"Know that your safety is of utmost importance," the recording continued—as Anakin stood and stared up at it, commuters milled about around him, a scattered head here or there glancing upward at the screen. "Our home has been attacked, and though the attackers have been driven back, I will not hide the truth: some of their agents yet remain here on Coruscant." The projection of Palpatine paused, closed his eyes, and shook his head. "It saddens me greatly to think that you may feel threatened as you move about our great planet. That is why I have deployed the Coruscant Guard—but they alone cannot fight this threat. Public safety and security is everyone's responsibility. If you see something, say something. Thank you for your support of the Galactic Republic."

Palpatine's image faded away, replaced briefly by the emblem of the Coruscant Guard. A few seconds later, the holographic wanted poster of a clone had returned.

A mechanical squeal emerged from Anakin's right hand, and he unclenched a fist he hadn't realized he'd been making. His eyes darted across the concourse, bouncing from one commuter to the next as they went about their afternoon. Most seemed blissfully unaware of what had just played over the station loudspeakers.

If he did his job right, perhaps that was a luxury they could continue to afford.

He'd stayed up all night because there was work to be done—and that hadn't changed just because he'd been dismissed for the day. Sleep or no sleep, the threat to Coruscant had not been neutralized.

Moving in the direction from whence he'd entered the grand concourse, Anakin eventually broke into a jog toward the platform he'd arrived on. The train back to the Capitol Plaza was departing soon, and he was going to be on it.

He could sleep on the ride there.

Republic Archives: Executive Order 1156-83

Executive Order 1156-83 is the 83rd executive order issued in the fourth full year of Palpatine of Naboo's term as Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic. The order lays forth a plan to establish the Coruscant Guard—a federal police force reporting to the Office of the Supreme Chancellor and patrolling the entirety of Coruscant, its airspace, and its orbital space.

The executive order is part of Chancellor Palpatine's "Unified Coruscant" initiative, which consolidates administrative functions across the Republic capital, eliminating redundancy between the planetary-level government and the executive office of the Republic.

Critics of the order, and of the entirety of the Unified Coruscant initiative, accuse Palpatine of erasing Coruscant's status as an independent world and turning it into nothing more than an arm of the Republic government. The initiative's supporters have responded to these accusations with reminders that Coruscant still has a planetary governor as well as ample representation in the Galactic Senate.